As Brexiteers attempt to restore Great Britain to what they perceive as its previous imperial glory and the rest of the world watches on in horror, it is a useful exercise for us to dispel some of the myths of imperial glory. For this, we need not look further than the Bengal Famine in 1943. Nearly two hundred years after the Battle of Plassey (1757) and East India Company consolidation of power in Bengal, the British ruled over India during one of the worst famines in human history. Despite the death of 1-3 million people, the Bengal Famine seems to only be a side note in many global histories.

Take for example Niall Ferguson’s, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World in which Ferguson only references famine under empire in passing while going to great lengths to explain economic achievements. In his book, Ferguson explains that the Bengal famine of 1770, a botched imperial experiment resulted in the death of about one third of the population, or ten million people. As if that weren’t enough, additional famines decimated Bengal in the 19th and 20th centuries as well, but Ferguson spends little time explaining those catastrophes. One of the biggest famines of the 20th century, the Bengal famine of 1943, doesn’t even earn passing mention in his text.

How is it that scholars have missed this famine? Well, they haven’t, which makes any omission of the famine in discussion of the British Empire’s successes inexcusable. Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for his work, Poverty and Famines, which explains that the Bengal Famine was not a result of food availability decline, but rather poor administration. Similarly, Madhushree Mukerjee’s Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II explains how British and American politics influenced decisions to limit the sale of grains in Bengal, ultimately leading to the famine. Janam Mukherjee’s Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire is perhaps the most complete analysis of the disaster in Bengal. Finally, Thomas Keneally’s Three Famines: Starvation and Politics compares three massive famines: The Bengal Famine, the Irish Potato Famine, and The Ethiopian Famines in the late twentieth century.

It is not easy to read about famine 75 years later. Brutal suffering, en masse, in situations almost certainly avoidable with good administration is difficult to understand. In my master’s thesis at Brooklyn College I looked at the ways in which the American Friends Service Committee and Friends Ambulance Unit worked with local organizations as well as the imperial government to provide famine relief. Ironically, it is the non-governmental organizations such as the Friends Ambulance Unit who were busy distributing food to starving imperial subjects, while the British military was eating well in what were two starkly different Bengals.

The cover image for this post are fishing boats that are integral to the fishing industry in what was once British India. During the famine, the imperial government confiscated boats under the guise that Japanese invasion by sea was imminent, as Japan had recently conquered British Burma. While Bengali people starved for lack of grains, the government stopped them from finding food in the sea as well.

The Bengal Famine is a glaringly obvious example of the dangers of imperial hubris and an event that we must not forget. It is also an ever relevant reminder that a government need not be authoritarian to carry out acts of extreme human violence.

The Best Books about the Bengal Famine: