Bengal Famine of 1770

The Great Bengal Famine of 1770 struck Bengal and Bihar between 1769 and 1770, affecting an estimated 30 million people and killing as many as 10 million, roughly a third of the region' s population. Crop failures in the autumn of 1768 and summer of 1769, compounded by a smallpox epidemic, were the immediate triggers, but drought and the economic and administrative policies of the East India Company, which had recently acquired the right to collect revenue in Bengal without yet controlling civil administration, are widely held to have deepened the catastrophe. Accounts of the famine reaching Europe sparked early public debate over the conduct and consequences of British rule on the Indian subcontinent.