The Great Bengal Famine of 1769 to 1770

The rains of 1769 failed across Bengal and Bihar, four years after the Company took the diwani. One report from 1770 says that in most districts not a drop had fallen for six months. The worst losses were in central and northern Bengal and in Tirhut, Champaran and Bettiah. The Company opened rice kitchens at Murshidabad, but relief was small against the need, and later writers accuse its servants of dealing in grain during the shortage. W. W. Hunter, working from the Company's records, says that less than five per cent of the land tax was remitted and that ten per cent was added to it for the following year.

The famine helped to turn Bengal's government into a question for Parliament, which passed the Regulating Act in 1773. Its most quoted line is from Warren Hastings, writing on 3 November 1772: "notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the Inhabitants of the Province, and the consequent decrease of the Cultivation, the nett collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of 1768".

The toll is a guess from thin evidence, since nobody counted the population before or after. The third that Hastings gives was the figure Hunter turned into ten million, and it has been repeated since. Rajat Datta and Tim Dyson think that far too high, and a floor of about one million is now common. The drought caused the famine; how far the Company's revenue demand and grain dealing deepened it is the argument that continues.