Latest / The Rise of Colonialism: How Europe Divided the World — Fexingo History / After Plassey: The Famine That Forged British India
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the battles and treaties that let the East India Company take control of Bengal — Plassey, Buxar, the Diwani Grant. But there's a catastrophe that followed almost immediately, and it reveals something ugly about how the Company actually governed. Luna: You mean the famine of 1770, right? Lucas: Exactly. The Bengal Famine of 1770. It's one of the deadliest famines in history — estimates range from one-third to one-half of Bengal's population dead. Somewhere around ten million people. And it happened just five years after the Company got the right to collect taxes. Lucas: Now, part of it was natural — there were monsoon failures in 1768 and 1769, a drought. But what turned a drought into a famine was human policy. The Company had just acquired the diwani — the right to collect revenue — and they were greedy. Luna: They squeezed the peasants dry. Lucas: Exactly. Under the Nawabs, the tax rate had been about ten to fifteen percent of the crop. The Company, through their Indian agents, pushed it to fifty percent or more. They wanted to extract as much money as possible to pay for their wars and ship dividends back to London. Lucas: And there's this detail that really sticks with me: the Company's own officials were warned. A man named John Shore — later a Governor-General himself — wrote a memo in 1769 saying that if they kept up the revenue pressure, a famine would result. He was ignored. Luna: So the famine was predictable. Lucas: Completely. And when it hit, the Company's response was almost nonexistent. Warren Hastings, who was Governor of Bengal at the time, did try some relief — he remitted some taxes, imported a little rice — but it was too little, too late. And his own letters show he was more worried about the Company's profits than the dying population. Lucas: There's a famous quote from one Company official: 'The country was depopulated, but the revenue was collected.' That sums it up. Luna: That's horrifying. Lucas: It is. And the famine had huge consequences. First, it devastated Bengal's economy and society for generations. Villages disappeared, fields went untilled, artisanal industries collapsed. Second, it caused a political crisis back in Britain. Lucas: When news of the famine reached London — along with reports of Company corruption and mismanagement — there was outrage. Edmund Burke, the great philosopher and politician, took up the cause. He called the Company's rule 'a system of despotism and plunder.' He pushed for parliamentary investigations. Luna: And that led to the Regulating Act of 1773, right? Lucas: Exactly. The British government stepped in for the first time to regulate the Company. The Act established a Supreme Council in Calcutta, with Hastings as Governor-General, and tried to impose some oversight. It didn't solve everything, but it was the beginning of the end of the Company's unfettered power. Lucas: But here's the irony: the famine also reinforced the Company's hold on Bengal. Because when the population crashed, land values fell, and the Company bought up huge tracts. They became landlords as well as tax collectors. Luna: So the tragedy actually made them richer? Lucas: In some ways, yes. And that's the awful pattern of colonial exploitation — a disaster happens, the colonizers profit from it, and then they use the crisis to tighten their control. Lucas: Now, there's a personal angle too. James Rennell, the British surveyor, was mapping Bengal during the famine. His maps show villages that later vanished. He wrote about the 'dreadful mortality' and how the roads were lined with corpses. His work is one of the few sources we have for the scale of the disaster. Luna: It's amazing that we have any records at all. Lucas: Well, the Company kept meticulous accounts — they knew exactly how much revenue they were losing. So we have detailed numbers on tax collection before and after the famine. It's cold, but it lets historians reconstruct what happened. Luna: Speaking of reconstruction — I've always wondered, how do we know the death toll? Ten million seems like a huge number for the 18th century. Lucas: It's an estimate, and historians debate it. The contemporary accounts say things like 'one third of the population perished.' Modern scholars think it was somewhere between seven and ten million out of a population of perhaps thirty million. We don't have census data, but we have tax rolls, grain prices, and reports from Company officials. The consensus is that it was catastrophic. Lucas: One source that's often cited is a Persian chronicle from the time, the 'siyar ul mutakherin', which describes the famine in harrowing detail — people eating leaves, selling their children, the streets full of dead. It's a stark counterpoint to the Company's dry revenue reports. Luna: So the famine is a key turning point, then — not just for Bengal, but for the British Empire itself. Lucas: Absolutely. It forced the British public and Parliament to confront what their Company was doing in their name. And it set a precedent: later famines in India, like the Great Famine of 1876-78, would be met with similar neglect. The pattern was set in 1770. Luna: It's sobering to think that something so distant in time still echoes today. Lucas: It really does. And you know, for anyone coming with us through these conversations — about the Company's rise, its wars, its corruption — this is the moment where the human cost becomes impossible to ignore. If you've gotten something out of these episodes, a couple of dollars a month at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo genuinely helps keep them going. No pressure, just if you can. Luna: Yeah, it makes a real difference for shows like this that don't run ads. Lucas: Exactly. And speaking of echoes — the famine also shaped how Indians viewed the British. For many, it was proof that Company rule was a curse. That memory fueled resistance movements later on. So in a way, the famine is a root of Indian nationalism. Luna: That's a big claim — can you unpack it? Lucas: Sure. When the British later tried to argue that they brought good governance and prosperity to India, Indian nationalists pointed to the famine. Dadabhai Naoroji, one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, wrote about how the British 'drained' India's wealth, and he used the 1770 famine as a prime example. It became a symbol of colonial exploitation. Lucas: And there's a more immediate consequence: after the famine, the Company faced a massive labor shortage. So they started importing indentured laborers from other parts of India to work on plantations. That's the beginning of the system that later sent Indians to Fiji, Mauritius, the Caribbean — the diaspora. Luna: So the famine rippled out across the entire British Empire. Lucas: Exactly. It's not just a Bengal story — it's a world story. And I think that's why it's worth spending an episode on, even though it's a dark chapter. Luna: It is dark, but it's necessary to understand. Lucas: Absolutely. Next time, we'll look at how the Company tried to reform after this disaster — and how Warren Hastings ended up on trial for his life. Luna: The impeachment of Hastings — that's going to be a wild one. Lucas: It is. Burke versus Hastings, a seven-year trial, the first impeachment of a British official for crimes against humanity. But that's for next time.