The Bengal Famine of 1770 and State Formation in Two Spaces

The famine of 1770 marked the beginning of colonial control of Bengal as the famine of 1943 signaled its end. The former claimed roughly a third of the population, inspired the descent of the state into civil war and its citizens into cannibalism, and ruined the once-prosperous region for decades to come. With some exceptions, scholars observing this period are broadly satisfied that the East India Company, which held near-total administrative control over the region, neither directly caused the famine nor did much to address it. In contrast, I argue that the British not only caused the famine but their response to it stimulated state formation in multiple spaces—the liberal, constitutional state in England and the colonial state in India. The British East India Company’s rule over pre-famine Bengal was defined by neglect, rapaciousness, indifference, and ignorance. For observers around Europe and the United States, the famine reflected a moral crisis around political corruption within English society. The British interpreted the famine as a moment of reckoning with the moral ambivalence and logistical enormity of their colonial endeavors — a bridge they crossed by interpreting the calamity as a reflection of nature’s hold over the landscape of Bengal and the character of its people. If the famine was but a symptom of the natural risk of moral corruption endemic in Indian society, then native corruption was the real crisis that needed managing. Through the self-involved gaze of colonialism, in Bengal’s darkest hour, it was British society that was deemed vulnerable. By narrating the disaster along these lines, the East India Company, the British elite, and media construed the finale of countless lives as an occasion for affirming the English state; for refining, not questioning, their imperial, state-like ambitions abroad.