Historical Memory Journey
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Overview of the 1770 famine in Bengal, including mortality scale and structural causes under early Company rule.
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1770
The famine of 1770 devastated Bengal, producing catastrophic mortality across agrarian and urban communities. Crop failure, grain-market distortions, and rigid revenue collection under East India Company authority combined to turn environmental stress into a social collapse. The crisis became an early warning of how colonial political economy could magnify human vulnerability.