10 of History's Worst Colonial Disasters

The Bengal Famine of 1943

Britain’s greatest wartime leader, Winston Churchill was one of the giants of the 20th century, and a hero of the modern era. He is rightly celebrated for his tenacity and steadfastness in the early years of World War II, when he rallied a reeling Britain and kept it in the fight against Nazi Germany – the first step in the Third Reich’s defeat. However, Churchill was a complex man, and there was far more to him than the year or so when he and Britain held the line against the Nazis, until joined by the USSR and USA. During a public career that lasted more than half a century, Churchill had no shortage of missteps, or outright villainous misdeeds, that contrast jarringly with the nobility of his heroics against Hitler. One such misdeed was the decisions he took during WWII regarding food distribution in India, which led directly to the deaths of roughly 3 million Indians in Bengal.

The British Empire had long justified itself by claiming to govern for the benefit of its colonized subjects, but its conduct during the Bengal Famine of 1943 gave the lie to such pretenses. In the years leading up to the famine, many Bengalis had barely eked out a subsistence from their lands, supplemented by imported rice, mainly from Burma. When the Japanese conquered Burma in 1942, Bengal was cut off from those imports, and the precarious existence of millions of Bengalis was tipped over into famine.

It was made worse by the British colonial authorities’ decision in 1942 to adopt a preemptive scorched earth policy in parts of Bengal that they feared the Japanese would overrun after conquering Burma. That entailed a “Denial of Rice” policy, which came down to the British removing or destroying rice and other foodstuffs in Bengali districts that had a surplus.

With traditional rice imports from Burma cut off, and home grown surpluses destroyed by the British, famine roared through Bengal. Relief efforts were hampered by Churchill’s decision to divert food shipments intended for the starving Bengalis to already well-supplied British soldiers in the Mediterranean. Ships loaded with wheat sailed past Indian cities whose streets were littered with the corpses of those starved to death, in order to add to the stockpiles of food in Britain.

Simultaneously, offers of Canadian and American food aid to the starving Indians were turned down by Churchill’s government, even as it prohibited India from using its own sterling reserves or its own ships to import food. Indeed, India was made to export over 70,000 tons of rice in the first half of 1943, while millions of Indians were starving to death. When the government in Delhi sent the Prime Minister a telegram informing him of the devastation and that millions of Indians were dying, Churchill churlishly replied: “Then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”

The Viceroy of India described Churchill’s attitude towards India as “negligent, hostile, and contemptuous“. Churchill was unrepentant, however. In addition to being shockingly callous about the millions of deaths sure to result from his orders, he seemed viciously gleeful about the predictable consequences when they actually occurred. As he put it, referring to the deaths of millions of Bengalis under his watch: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits“.

That was colonialism in a nutshell: an imbalance of power between colonists and colonized. It created dynamics whereby respected figures such as Winston Churchill, widely praised for their moral virtues, could engage in morally reprehensible conduct without any qualms. It allowed the government that ruled both Indians and Britons to callously tolerate famine in India, yet remain sensitive to British views that bread rationing in wartime Britain was an intolerable imposition.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources & Further Reading

All That is Interesting – Why Isn’t Belgium’s King Leopold II As Reviled As Hitler or Stalin?

American Historical Association – The Conquest of Mexico

Ancient History Encyclopedia – Pizarro & the Fall of the Inca Empire

BBC – How Churchill Starved India

Encyclopedia Britannica – Great Famine

Encyclopedia Britannica – Massacre of Amritsar

Guardian, The, December 9th, 2001 – ‘Spin’ on Boer Atrocities

History Place – Irish Potato Famine

Imperial War Museum – What Was the Mau Mau Uprising?

Irish Times, May 8th, 2015 – Post War Massacre Sparked Algerian Independence