A FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST :

THE BENGAL FAMINE

OF 1770

Monideepa Chatterjee
Third Year, Roll No.216
Department of History
Presidency University
 ABSTRACT

This study analyses the argument that the Bengal Famine of 1770 was a

disaster in which the most significant role was played by ‘nature’. Obviously,

there were other causes too but it was the natural condition of Bengal, which

set the stage for the catastrophe. The main culprits were the bad crops of 1768-

69 and the lack of rains for a prolonged period. This had culminated into a

severe drought, which brought about the disaster. It has been pointed out by

many historians that the famine took away one-third of Bengal’s population. It

also had a severe effect on the economy of Bengal. This study briefly traces the

horrors of the famine along with the weather and crops of 1769-70 and

concludes that it was nature, which played the key role behind the unfolding

of the Great Bengal Famine of 1770.

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 A FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST:
THE BENGAL FAMINE OF 1770

Still fresh in memory’s eye, the scene I view

The shriveled limbs, sunken eyes and lifeless hue
Hear the mother’s shriek and infant’s moan
Cries of despair and agonizing groans
In wild confusion, dead and dying lie
Hark to the jackal’s yell and vulture’s cry
The dog’s fell howl, as midst the glare of the day
They riot unmolested on their prey
Dire scenes of horror! Which no pen can trace
Nor rolling years from memory’s page efface.

The above lines were written by John Shore, later Lord Teignmouth, a British official
of the East India Company and a young civilian destined to reach the highest post, a
British subject can aspire in the east1. He was also an eyewitness to the disaster of
1770. The horrid scenes of 1770 left an impression in his mind that neither a
successful career nor an unusually prolonged period of active life could efface. Yes,
such was truly the magnitude of one of the greatest disasters in the times of the East
India Company. The Bengal Famine of 1770, also known as the ‘Chiyattorer
Monnontor’ in Bengali, was a catastrophic famine that completely changed the
scenario of rural Bengal. Coming in the wake of the Maratha invasions and the
unparalleled revenue exactions of Siraj-ud-Daula, Mir Qasim & East India Company,
the famine must have had many Bengalis wondering whether a darker yuga (age)

1
Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal,1868, P-27.

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could come or the wrath of the deities had descended upon their society1. The famine
is estimated to have caused death to ten million people reducing the population to
one third in Bengal, which included Bihar and parts of Orissa. The present study tries
to trace and emphasize the ecological condition of 1770 and its preceding years, to
trace the natural cause of the catastrophe. Chiyattorer Monnontor, which is derived
from its origins in the Bengali calendar year 1776, was preceded by the Deccan
Famine of 1630-32 and succeeded by the Challis Famine.

In an agricultural country like India, the occurrence of famine was not an unusual
phenomenon. The statement of Megasthenes that famine never visited India can
hardly be described as accurate. The Famine of 1770, which occurred during the
governorship of Cartier, was an unprecedented calamity that befell on Bengal. There
was partial failure of crops in Bengal in December 1768 owing to scarcity of rains. In
the early months of 1769, the price of grain rocketed. There was not a drop of rain for
six months. There was complete failure of the December crops of 1769. Rice was sold
in and around Murshidabad at only 3 seers per rupee and sometimes grain could not
be purchased. Pestilence raged in almost every part of the country. There was an
outbreak of smallpox in Murshidabad2.

The Great Famine, which raged in great severity throughout 1770 affected most
districts of Bengal-Purnea, Nadia, Rajshahi, Birbhum, Panchet, northern & western
parts of Burdwan, Bhagalpore, Rajmahal, Hoogly, Jessore, Malda and 24 Parganas.
Purnea district was the worst sufferer. Ducarel, the supervisor of Purnea reported that
two lakh people perished in that district alone. He reported “the famine continued for
about twelve months in a severity, hardly to be paralleled in the history of any age of
the country’’3. A contemporary gives a graphic description of the distress in the
following language, “The husbandmen sold their cattle, they sold their implements of
agriculture, they devoured their seed grain and they sold their sons and daughters till
at length no buyer of children could be found. They ate the leaves of the trees and the

1
John R McLane, Land and Local Kingship in the 18th Century Bengal, 2002, P-194.
2
Shailendranath Sen, A History of Modern India, 2010, P-43.
3
Ibid, P-43.

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grass of the field and in June 1770, the Resident at the Durbar confirmed that the
living were feeding on the dead1.”

Like many other great catastrophes, detailed research has been done by various
historians regarding the causes of the famine. Many have come up with different
interpretations. The economic critics of the British rule, the early nationalist writers
and economic historians of Modern India support the “Drain Theory” in the context
of the increasing frequency of famines and death toll taken by the famines
throughout the nineteenth century, starting with the Bengal Famine of 1770. R.P. Dutt
has analysed the causes of the famine and successfully brought out the relation
between the famine and the economic drain2. Before the 1770 famine there was a
British consensus that Bengal’s economy was deteriorating. The signs were evident in
the severe shortage of coins, shrinking of Bengal’s internal trade and the decline in
the net land revenue collections. The Calcutta Council had warned in 1768 of the
“danger of complete breakdown of the commercial life of Bengal”. Richard Becher,
Resident at Murshidabad lamented in 1769 on the economic decline of the Diwani
territories. The 1770 famine only confirmed and deepened the crisis, it did not create
it3. Various other interpretations regarding the failure of British policies have also
come up in due course of research. Fault for the famine is now often ascribed to the
British East India Company policies in Bengal. As a trading body, its first priority was
to maximize its profit, which came from land tax and trade tariffs. In the April of 1770,
the Company announced that the land tax of the following year was to be raised by
10%. The Company is also criticized for forbidding the ‘hoarding of rice’. This
prevented the traders and dealers from holding in reserves, that in other times would
have helped the population to tide over the crisis period. By the time of the famine,
the Company and its agents had established monopoly in grain trading. The
Company had no plans for dealing with the grain shortage. Actions were only taken
so far they affected the mercantile and trading classes. Warren Hastings has been
acknowledged for “violent” tax collection after 1771. It has been seen that the
revenues earned by the Company in 1771 were higher than in 1708.

1
Shailendranath Sen, A History of Modern India, 2010, P-43.
2
Shreedhar Narayan Pandey, Economic History of Modern India, 2008, P-203.
3
John R McLane, Land and Local Kingship in the 18th Century Bengal, 2002, P-194-195.

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Nevertheless, when the subject of discussion is a natural calamity, like the present
one, then it is obviously the natural or ecological cause, which becomes more
significant than other causes.

It certainly seems strange that a province like Bengal, which had three harvests a year,
should ever have been afflicted by famine. The failure of one harvest may lead to
sufferings, but under ordinary circumstances, there could not be a famine unless there
were at least two successive crops failures. The great harvest of the year is the rice
crop in December, then follows the spring harvest with its pulse crop in April and
lastly, the autumn harvest in September, producing a coarse rice upon which the
lower classes of the community mainly subsist. In the discussed famine, the winter
harvest was occasioned by premature cessation of rains. In the usual years, the rains
commence in the latter part of June and cease in the middle of October. If they stop
before the middle of September, the great rice crop, which should ripen in December,
withers up and dies. It was to this cause to which the Great Bengal Famine of 1770
could be ascribed to1.

In order to analyse this cause thoroughly, a clear picture of the weather and crops of
1769-1770 is needed. ‘The Annals Of Rural Bengal’ by Sir William Wilson Hunter is
one of the most important primary sources throwing light on the subject. Hunter
writes in his book that in the cold weather of 1769, Bengal was visited by a famine
whose ravages two generations failed to repair. He says, in the early part of 1769, high
prices had ruled owing to the partial failure of crops in1768, but the scarcity had not
been so severe as to materially affect the Government revenues. The rains in 1769,
although deficient in northern districts, seemed for a time to promise relief. In the
Delta, they had been so abundant as to cause temporary loss from inundation and
during the succeeding year of general famine, the whole of southeast Bengal uttered
no complaint. The September harvest indeed was sufficient. But, in that month, the
periodical rains prematurely ceased and the crop, which depended on them for

1
Fraser’s Magazine, Volume- 90, 1874, P-293-294.

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existence, withered. ‘The fields of rice’ wrote the native superintendent of Bishenpore
at a later period, “have become like fields of dried straw” 1. Calamitous predictions
however, were so common of local officers that the governor failed to transmit the
alarm. Letters from the President and the Council to the Court of Directors on 23rd
November 1769 shows that Mr. John Cartier, who was succeeded by Mr. Verelst,
signed the only serious intimation of the approaching famine. On 24th December, Mr.
Verelst laid down his office and charge was taken over by Mr. Cartier. In the fourth
week of the same month, one district was suffering so badly that little remissions in
land tax had to be made. Ten days later, he informed that the distress was
undoubtedly very great. New hopes had also arisen for the spring crop now covered
the fields and promised a speedy, although a scanty relief. Moreover, it was
ascertained that both the banks of the Ganges in the north of the province had
yielded abundant barley and wheat harvests. In spite of that, people suffered
intensely. The distress continued to increase at such a rate that baffled official
calculations. Pathetic & deafening silence under suffering, which usually
characterizes Bengalis was broken. In the second week of May, the Central
Government woke up to find itself in the midst of universal and irremediable
starvation. “The mortality, the beggary,” they then wrote, “exceeds all descriptions”2.
About one third of the inhabitants perished in the once bountiful province of Purnea,
and in other parts, the misery is equal. Althrough in the stifling summer of 1770, the
people went on dying, day and night torrents of famishes poured into the great cities.
At an early period of the year, a pestilence had broken out. In March, smallpox
ravaged Murshidabad. The streets were blocked up with promiscuous heaps of the
dying and the dead. The multitude of the mangled and the festering corpses at length,
threatened the existence of citizens. In 1770, the rainy season brought relief and
before the end of September, the province reaped an abundant harvest. But, the relief
came too late to avert the depopulation. Starving and shelterless crowds crawled
despairingly in vain from one deserted village to another in search of food and shelter
from the rain. The endemics incident to the season were thus spread over the whole
country. Millions of famished wretches died in struggle to live through the few

1
Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal,1868, Volume – 1, P-20-21.
2
Ibid, P-21-24.

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intervening weeks that separated them from their harvest. Their last gaze was
probably fixed upon the densely covered fields that would ripen, only a little too late
for them. “It is scarcely possible,” writes the Council, at the beginning of the
September reaping, “that any description could be an exaggeration”1.

Another detailed account of the season preceding 1770 and that of 1770 is found in the
“Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the famine of Bengal”. Sir
George Campbell who led a Famine Commission known as Sir George Campbell
Commission of 1867 compiled them. He was the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal
from1871-1874. Campbell writes,” The only occasion in which Bengal Proper has
suffered very wide spreading and extreme calamity from drought since the
establishment of British rule, is the Great Famine of 1770”2. Far as Bengal was then
removed from its present state of wealth and prosperity, it does not appear that the
great misfortune of the last century was occasioned or very materially aggravated by
anything other than natural causes. For some years under the British Rule, the
province had enjoyed peace and security. It was mentioned in a report of Government
of Bengal to the Court of Directors on 9th May 1770 that “not a drop of rain had fallen
in most of the districts for six months”3. The particular district of Purnea is also said
to have suffered badly. Sir Campbell paints a barren picture of destruction in his
account saying, “Bihar suffered to an extreme degree. Northern Bengal especially
suffered. Even from the usually moist districts of Rungpore and Dinajpore, the
accounts are particularly distressing. Rajshahee, Murshidabad, Rajmahal, Jessore,
Hoogly, Birbhum, Burdwan and Calcutta were all sooner or later involved in the
calamity”. He says that, the only parts of Bengal, which seemed to have escaped were
the districts of Buckergunge and Chittagong. With the exception of this small
southeastern tract, the famine involved in greater or lesser degree the whole of Bengal
and Bihar. Sir Campbell writes “ In tracing the course of the famine, I find that the
first alarm came from Bihar”4. As early as 1st February 1769, the Resident in Bihar
reported, very great distress among the Ryots in consequence of long continued

1
Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, Volume – 1, 1868, P-26-30.
2
George Campbell, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine of
Bengal and Orissa, P-21.
3
Ibid, P-21.
4
Ibid, P-22

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drought. From the middle of August there was no rain till the middle of January and
then it lasted only a few hours and came too late for general benefit”. The following
season commenced very badly. On 28th July, the Resident in Bihar reported that up to
the time, “we have only had in some parts a few showers and those so very trifling
that little benefit has been received from them. The grain sown sometimes ago is
entirely spoilt”1. On 1st August, he repeated the same tale.” Grain has within few days
risen to a prodigious price and continues to rise, as there is not only the greatest
probability of losing the entire harvest, but a general famine to be dreaded” he says.
It has been found that, in North Bengal, the season was especially bad. From
September onwards, the march of the calamity seems to have been without
abatement. In October, no rain fell. On 23rd November 1769, the Bengal Government
formally reported to the Court of Directors, the prevailing distress.

Meanwhile, in North Bengal and other districts also, the evil was becoming very
great, especially in Purnea. On 25th January, the Government reported home that their
apprehensions were confirmed, and the calamity severely fell on all provinces2. In
early February 1770, a little rain seems to have fallen in some districts but it was too
insufficient for any material good. From that time to the end of May, the drought was
universal. Not a drop of rain fell and the country became more and more parched and
distressed. On 16th March, the Resident at Bihar submitted a report with enclosures
giving the result of enquiries in various districts. “They exhibited” he says, “ a most
affecting sense of poverty and distress, much beyond what I myself should gave
credited from report”3. In the end of April, the Resident in Bihar reports that the
hopes of getting something from the spring harvest have been greatly disappointed,
that the price of grain continues to rise and the famine continues to increase. On 2nd
May, Captain Harper reports from Fyazabad that “prices there have risen greatly in
the last few days and the difficulty of procuring grain increases”. After June and July,
things reached their climax. All through August, the famine in Bengal continued with
unabated severity. In September, there seemed to be some symptoms of abatement of

1
George Campbell, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine of
Bengal and Orissa, P-22.
2
Ibid, P-25.
3
Ibid, P-25.

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the calamity and the dispatches dwell more on all that the country has suffered than
the gloomy anticipations. In October, things are decidedly better as grain is much
cheaper. On 14th December, the Government informs the Court of Directors that the
famine has entirely ceased. This was the detailed account of the course of the famine
as provided by Sir George Campbell. This resonates in accord with the account given
by Sir William Hunter in The Annals of Rural Bengal. Fortunately enough,
abundance returned to Bengal as suddenly as famine had swooped down upon it. On
the Christmas Eve, the Council in Calcutta wrote home to the Court of Directors that
the famine had entirely ceased. In 1771, the harvests again proved plentiful. It was as
if, nature exerted herself to the utmost to repair the damage she had done. Thus
Bengal was partly back on its way to glory.

There were obviously various reactions on the part of the British as well as Indians.
The reports of enormous mortality and needless misery in Bengal fueled criticism of
the Company’s rapacious revenue collection, corruption, extortion and monopolistic
trading practices of its servants. To many it seemed the height of infamy that the
Company, even when the famine was at its height, showed more concern for its
revenues than for the people’s distress. The outcry in England over the famine
merged with more general criticism of the Company’s conduct and administration1.
English historians have naturally little to say regarding an occurrence that involved
neither a battle nor a Parliamentary debate. Mill, with all his accuracy and
minuteness, could spare barely five lines for the subject. Comments from district
officials in 1770 and the succeeding decades leave no doubt that the famine was a
major disaster. The recent famine commissioners confessed themselves of being
unable to fill in the details2.

In the minds of many European commentators, the Bengal Famine of 1770 was a
‘natural disaster’ but in more senses than are usually intended by them. For those
who served or defended the East India Company, it was convenient to believe that the
famine had been caused by a natural phenomenon. The famine helped to transform

1
Alessa Johns, Dreadful Visitations: Confronting a Natural Catastrophe in the Age of
Enlightenment, 2013,
2
Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, Volume – 1, 1868, P-19

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European ideas of Bengal from a garden of seemingly inexhaustible tropical
abundance into a land blighted by droughts, floods, smallpox, famines etc. The
Bengal Famine was perhaps the first ‘Asian disaster’ to have an impact on Europe. But
the famine did little to stimulate a more genuine understanding of the country and its
people1.

Historians regarding the consequences of the famine have done various estimates.
These estimates include the assertion that one third of Bengal’s population perished,
that one third of the cultivated area was abandoned, that two thirds of Bengal’s
aristocracy was ruined by the famine. Estimates of both pre-famine population and
famine mortality were matters of wild guesses, stabs in the dark. James Rennel
estimated in 1781 that Bengal, Bihar and Orissa had 10 million inhabitants. Harry
Verelst stated in the same year that the population was at least 7 million. James Grant
in 1786 estimated that this area contained 10 million people. Subsequent historians
have raised their estimates of population. Both N.K.Sinha and Paul Greenough
estimated that close to 10 million people perished, implying a pre-famine population
of at least 30 million2.

The Bengal famine of 1770 thus formed a benchmark of destruction, tearing away the
province of Bengal into fragments. In my opinion, the unparalleled catastrophe was
of course brought about by the wrath of nature while other external policies and
causes definitely aggravated the situation. Nature, malevolent or merely
opportunistic, was a register of the precipitous decline from prosperity and order.
On a concluding note, the famine of 1770 was a one-year famine caused by the general
failure of the December harvest and the lack of rains traced by the present study. It
was intensified by the partial failure of crops of the previous year and the following
spring. The Bengal Famine of 1770 thus places in a new light those broad tracks of
desolation found by the English conquerors throughout the lower valley. The disaster
that from a distance floats like a faint speck in the horizon of the British rule, forms

1
Alessa Johns, Dreadful Visitations: Confronting a Natural Catastrophe in the Age of
Enlightenment,2013, Page - 23
2
John R McLane, Land and Local Kingship in the 18th Century Bengal, 2002, P-200.

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the key to the history of Bengal during the succeeding years. It unfolds the sufferings
caused to an ancient rural society. Then finally, it shows how out of the disorganized
and fragmentary elements, a new order of things evolved. The Bengal Famine of 1770
is thus, a melancholy tale of how the bountiful rich province of Bengal raced on
towards becoming a destitute, a land of desolation and disaster, caused mainly by the
wrath of nature.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Campbell George, Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the famine of

Bengal and Orissa, M Lawlor at the Chief Commissioner’s office Press.

2. Fraser’s Magazine, Volume- 90, Longman’s Green and Company, 1874.

3. Johns Alessa, Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of

Enlightenment, Routledge Publications, New York, 2013.

4. Mc Lane .R. John, Land and Local kingship in 18th Century Bengal, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 2002.

5. Pandey Narayan Sreedhar, Economic history of Modern India, Readyworthy

Publications, New Delhi, 2008.

6. Sen Shailendranath, An Advanced History of Modern India, Macmillan Publications,

New Delhi, 2010.

7. Sir Hunter Wilson William, Annals of Rural Bengal, Volume -1, Smith Elder,

London,1868.

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