Famine in Bengal 1770

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The famine in Bengal in 1770 ( Bengali ৭৬-এর মন্বন্তর Chhiattōrer monnōntór ) was a famine between 1769 and 1773 (1176 to 1180 according to the Bengali calendar ), which hit the lower Gangetic Plain of India . The famine claimed an estimated ten million lives. It is mostly attributed to the rule of the British East India Company . The Indian economist Amartya Sen describes it as a man-made famine and points out that India was not affected by any other famine in the 18th century. The East India Company had conquered the area from the Mughal Empire only six years earlier in the Battle of Buxar . It destroyed large quantities of food crops to make way for indigo crops for dyes and opium poppies for the manufacture of psychoactive drugs ( opium ). It increased the tax on agricultural goods from 10% to 50%. As a result, the company's shareholders acquired a large part of the wealth of Bengal. The storage of rice was also banned. Under these conditions, a drought-induced food shortage turned into such a severe famine. It was exacerbated by the unresponsive administration of the company, which was only interested in extracting wealth from the region, regardless of the high cost of life.

The Bengali name refers to the year 1176 in the Bengali calendar. ("Chhiattōr" - "76"; "monnōntór" - "famine" in Bengali ).

background

The famine-hit Bengal was then ruled by the East India Company from the Kingdom of Great Britain . This territory included what is now West Bengal , Bangladesh and parts of Assam , Odisha , Bihar and Jharkhand . It had previously been a province of the Mughal Empire since the 16th century and was ruled by a Nawab as governor. In the early 18th century, when the Mughal Empire began to decline, the Nawab actually became independent from Mughal rule.

The Emperor of the Indian Mughal Empire Shah Alam II , son of the late Emperor Alamgir II , presents the Treaty of Allahabad to Robert Clive , the representative of the East India Company, as a result of the Battle of Buxar on October 22, 1764. It marks the beginning of British rule in India.

In the 17th century, the English East India Company received a trading license in the city of Calcutta from Mughal Prince Shah Shuja . At the time, the company was one of several powers within the Mughal Empire. In the course of the following century, the company acquired sole trading rights for the province and became the dominant power in Bengal. In the Battle of Plassey in 1757 the British defeated the Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah and plundered the Bengali treasury. Their military control was confirmed at Buxar in 1764. The following treaty brought them the diwani , that is, the tax law. The company became de facto ruler of Bengal.

At that time, Najabat Ali Khan (1766-1770), Ashraf Ali Khan (March 1770) and Mubarak Ali Khan Nawab (1770-1793) were the official nawabs of Bengal.

In 1770, a major smallpox epidemic broke out in Murshidabad , killing 63,000 of its residents, including Nawab Najabat Ali Khan, who died on March 10, 1770. He was followed by his brother Ashraf Ali Khan, who also died of smallpox two weeks after his coronation .

The decade before the famine was marked by the raids of the Maratha -Bargis from Nagpur . Their looting of gold, money, food and temple property mostly affected those areas that later suffered most from the famine.

The famine and its consequences

The areas where the famine broke out included the present-day Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal in particular , but the hardship also gripped Odisha and Jharkhand as well as present-day Bangladesh. Among the areas most affected were Birbhum and Murshidabad in Bengal and Tirhut , Champaran and Bettiah in Bihar.

A partial crop failure, which was not considered unusual, occurred in 1768. It was followed by far more serious terms in late 1769. In September 1769 there was a severe drought and alarming reports of rural emergencies arrived. However, the company's agents ignored them.

Malnutrition occurred at the beginning of 1770 and by mid-1770 starvation resulted in large numbers of deaths.

During the year, rain contributed to a good harvest and the famine eased. However, further crop failures in the following years caused further deaths. About ten million people, almost a third of the total population in the affected area, are believed to have died in the famine.

As a result of the famine, large tracts of land were depopulated and reverted to rainforest over the course of decades as survivors moved away in search of food. Much cultivated land was given up. Large parts of Birbhum , for example, became a jungle and were subsequently almost impenetrable. From 1772 outlaws and thugs became a hallmark of Bengal. Only in the 1890s could they be brought under control by the criminal justice system.

East India Company Responsibilities

As a trading organization, the company was primarily interested in maximizing its profits and tax revenues. In Bengal, the profits came from land taxes and customs duties . When land came under Company control, a land tax was levied five times higher - from 10% of the value of farm goods to 50%. In the first years of its rule, the British East India Company was able to double its land tax income. Most of the income flowed out of the country. When the famine peaked in April 1770, the company announced that the land tax would be increased by an additional ten percent next year.

Sushil Chaudhury writes that the destruction of the food crops in Bengal should serve the future cultivation of opium poppies for export. This decreased the availability of plant foods and contributed to the famine. The company has also been criticized for instructing farmers to plant indigo instead of rice and for banning rice " hoarding ". This prevented traders and sellers from creating reserves that would otherwise have brought the population through periods of drought.

At the time of the famine, the company and its agents had a monopoly in the grain trade. The company had no plans to deal with grain shortages. Measures were only taken as far as they concerned the merchant and commercial classes. Land incomes fell 14% in the year of need, but they recovered quickly. The first Governor General of British India , Warren Hastings , admitted the "brute" tax collection in the period after 1771: the income was higher in 1771 than in 1768. Overall, the company's profit increased from 15 million rupees in 1765 to 30 million im Year 1777. Nonetheless, the company was not doing well financially. She urged Parliament in 1773 to approve the Tea Act, which allowed tea to be shipped directly to the American colonies. This led to the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 and ultimately to the American Revolutionary War .

The great famine of 1770 was one of several famines in India under British colonial rule. Until the late 19th century and beyond, this resulted in the deaths of Indians in the high double-digit millions.

See also

literature

  • HV Bowen: Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics 1757–1773 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York / Melbourne 2002, ISBN 0-521-89081-0 ( books.google.com ).
  • Lawrence James: Raj. The Making and Unmaking of British India . St. Martin's Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-312-26382-1 ( books.google.com - No side view).
  • Will Heaven: The history of British India will serve David Cameron well - as long as he doesn't go on about it . In: The Telegraph . July 28, 2010 ( co.uk ).
  • Brooks Adams : The law of civilization and decay. An essay on history . Macmillan & co., New York / London 1897 ( archive.org - first edition: 1895).
  • Kumkum Chatterjee: Merchants, politics, and society in early modern India. Bihar, 1733-1820 (=  Brill's Indological library . Volume 10 ). Brill, Leiden / New York 1996, ISBN 90-04-10303-1 .
  • Sushil Chaudhury: From prosperity to decline. Eighteenth century Bengal . Manohar Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi 1999, ISBN 81-7304-105-9 .
  • Romesh Chunder Dutt: The economic history of India under early British rule. From the rise of the British power in 1757 to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 (=  Trübner's oriental series. India: history, economy and society . Band 11 ). Routledge, London 2001, ISBN 0-415-24493-5 .
  • John Fiske: Chapter IX: The famine of 1770 in Bengal . In: The Unseen World, and other essays. JR Osgood and company, 1876, p. 190 ff . ( archive.org ).
  • John R. McLane: Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal (=  Cambridge South Asian studies . No. 53 ). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-521-52654-X , doi : 10.1017 / CBO9780511563348 .

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Imperial Illusions. In: The New Republic. December 31, 2007 ( newrepublic.com ).
  2. ^ The East India Company's Seizure of Bengal and how This led to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770. (Video) In: Brick Lane Circle. youtube.com, January 3, 2015, accessed June 6, 2015 .
  3. ^ William Dalrymple: The East India Company. The original corporate raiders . In: The Guardian . March 4, 2015 ( theguardian.com ).
  4. ↑ Kedarnath Mazumder: Moymonshingher Itihash O Moymonsingher Biboron . Anandadhara, 34/8, Dhaka 2005, ISBN   984-802-05-X  ( defective ) , p. 46-53 (Bengali).
  5. ^ John Fiske: The Unseen World and other essays . Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 1942, ISBN 0-7661-0424-9 ( ebooks.adelaide.edu.au ).
  6. ^ A b Romesh Chunder Dutt: The economic history of India under early British rule . Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1908 ( books.google.com - no side view).
  7. ^ Romesh Chunder Dutt: The economic history of India. 2 volumes. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1906, OCLC 25290232 .
  8. ^ Sushil Chaudhury: From prosperity to decline. Eighteenth century Bengal . Manohar Publishers, New Delhi 1999, ISBN 81-7304-105-9 .
  9. ↑ Atiur Rahman: Famine . In: Sirajul Islam, Ahmed A. Jamal (Ed.): Banglapedia. National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh . 2nd Edition. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2012 ( en.banglapedia.org ).
  10. ↑ Mike Davies: Late Victorian Holocausts. El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World . 2nd Edition. Verso, London / New York 2000, ISBN 1-85984-739-0 .