Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Great Bengal famine of 1770" in English language version.
The 1769-1770 famine in Bengal followed two years of erratic rainfall worsened by a smallpox epidemic.
Although the rains were lighter than normal in late 1768, the tragedy for many families in eastern Bihar, north-western and central Bengal, and the normally drier sections of far-western Bengal began when the summer rains of 1769 failed entirely through much of that area. The result was that the aman crop, which is harvested in November, December, and January, and provided roughly 70 percent of Bengal's rice, was negligible. Rains in February 1770 induced many cultivators to plough but the following dry spell withered the crops. The monsoon of June 1770 was good. However, by this time food supplies had long been exhausted and heavy mortality continued at least until the aus harvest in September.
In 1769 the rains failed over most of Bihar and Bengal. By the early months of 1770 mortality in western Bengal was very high. People died of starvation or in a debilitated state were mowed down by diseases which spread especially where the starving congregated to be fed.
Our evidence, however, indicates that depopulation was most severe in north Bengal and in Bihar, moderately severe in central Bengal, and slight in southwest and eastern Bengal.
it is not until 1776 that we start to have access to long runs of instrumental data for El Niño events in South Asia. Just prior to this, in 1766–1771, India, and particularly north-eastern India, experienced droughts that led to a mortality of up to 10 million people. Partial crop failure in Bengal and Bihar was experienced in 1768, while by September 1769 'the fields of rice [became] like fields of dried straw'. In Purnia, in Bihar, the district supervisor estimated that the famine of 1770 killed half the population of the district; many of the surviving peasants migrated to Nepal (where the state was less confiscatory than the East India Company). More than a third of the entire population of Bengal died between 1769 and 1770, while the loss in cultivation was estimated as 'closer to one-half'. Charles Blair, writing in 1874, estimated that the episode affected up to 30 million people in a 130,000 square mile region of the Indo-Gangetic plain and killed up to 10 million, perhaps the most serious economic blow to any region of India since the events of 1628–1631 in Gujarat.
Before the end of May 1770, one third of the population was calculated to have disappeared, in June the deaths were returned as six out of sixteen of the whole population, and it was estimated that 'one half of the cultivators and payers of revenue will perish with hunger'. During the rains (July–October) the depopulation became so evident that the government wrote to the court of directors in alarm about the number of 'industrious peasants and manufacturers destroyed by the famine'. It was not till cultivation commenced for the following year 1771 that the practical consequences began to be felt. It was then discovered that the remnant of the population would not suffice to till the land. The areas affected by the famine continued to fall and were put out of tillage. Warren Hastings' account, written in 1772, also stated the loss as one third of the inhabitants and this figure has often been cited by subsequent historians. The failure of a single crop, following a year of scarcity, had wiped out an estimated 10 million human beings according to some accounts. The monsoon was on time in the next few years but the economy of Bengal had been drastically transformed, as the records of the next thirty years attest.
Starvation is a normal feature in many parts of the world, but this phenomenon of 'regular' starvation has to be distinguished from violent outbursts of famines. It isn't just regular starvation that one sees ... in 1770 in India, when the best estimates point to ten million deaths.
The proportion of the population who perished can never be known. One-third of the inhabitants of Bengal were sometimes said to have died. Other conjectures were one-fifth.
In addition, deaths among the cultivating population were much lower than previous figures, which suggested a loss of one third of the population. Famine mortality in the Burdwan zamindari in central Bengal was not severe and agriculturists who left came back or were replaced.
The devastation that this episode caused, even if we discount the exaggerated mortality figures produced by contemporaries, owed not so much to the scale of one harvest failure as repeated harvest failures over a succession of seasons. The crop failed over four consecutive harvest seasons in 1769 and 1770. As it became clear in the subsequent history of Indian famines, sustained shortages caused disproportionately large damage to life. It threw traditional modes of insurance out of gear because of depletion of stocks and seeds. It increased vulnerability to epidemic disease because of acute malnutrition.
What seems to be certain is that the core areas of western and central Bengal were devastated: these included the districts of Murshidabad, Rajshahi, Birbhum, Hooghly, Nadia and parts of Burdwan.
One of the most harvest- and price-sensitive social groups in rural Bengal was the textile producer. Famine and dearth impacted upon them by hitting directly at their access to markets for their consumption requirements. The evidence from Malda and Purnea suggests that between half and one-third of those who died in the famine were spinners and weavers. The disruption caused by the drought to mulberries and cotton in 1769 and 1770 meant that those who reared silk-worms (chassars) and those who grew cotton (kappas) in these places were immediately affected. The cultivation of mulberries was an expensive enterprise: "under the most favourable circumstance mulberry will cost the Husbandman five or six, and often from ten to fifteen rupees per bigha", whereas the cultivation cost of rice was "not above one, two or at best three rupees a bigha" (WBSA, CCRM, vol. 6, 19 November 1771). This meant that once peasants entered this sector their survival depended on conducive precipitation and favourable food prices. The situation in 1769–70 was precisely the opposite on both counts, and therefore proved disastrous for such producers. There was an "incredible mortality" among the chassars of Rajshahi during the famine (ibid.: vol. 6, 11 November 1771). This was for two reasons. First, the high costs involved in the culture of silk-cocoons meant that the chassars had no reserves to buy food at famine-point prices. Second, the chassars belonged to "only two casts [sic] of the Gentoos [Hindus]" who followed this vocation as a specialized occupation (ibid.). (ibid.). For these reasons, they were perhaps the most harvest-sensitive of all the affected social strata and, not having enough food reserves to fall back upon, they died in large numbers.
One indication of the scale of mortality in the worst areas is an estimate that one-third of those who raised silk worms in the famous silk area around Murshidabad were dead. The low-lying delta areas, even in the west, suffered rather less. Everywhere the most vulnerable seem to have been 'the workmen, manufacturers and people employed in the river, who were without the same means of laying by stores of grain as the husbandmen'.
The 1768-1770 droughts and famines were a profound blow not only to the system of revenue but to the whole rationale of empire. As such they provided the impetus for the evolution of a famine policy. The immediate devastating circumstances formed part of the impetus for the removal of the 'dual system' of rule in Bengal, whereby the British East India Company had governed together with the Nawab of Bengal. This placed responsibility for the security, administration and economy of Bengal squarely on the Company's shoulders. In removing the dual system, the administrative overhaul of Bengal paved the way for the establishment of the British-run, district-level administration which would continue throughout British rule in India.
