I think the “exported food during a famine” part deserves some examination. Because doing this in itself may or may not be justified.
For the Soviet Union, I have heard this as an anti-communist talking point for both the famine that occurred during the civil war in the 20s and the famine of the early 30s. In both cases the Soviet Union was totally justified in exporting food during a famine. Why? Because having food in itself doesn’t necessarily solve a famine. You need inputs (like fertilizer) and capital (like farming equipment). For the Soviet Union, agriculture was essentially still pre-modern. They were seriously lacking both in both famines. The decision to export was not “let’s make some side cash by starving our people”. Rather it was recognizing that selling X units of food today would yield X+Y units in the future by using the proceeds to improve your agricultural situation. Food was swapped for inputs and capital. It’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it’s the rational one and in the end saves more lives.
But the British in Ireland in the late 1848? That was just allowing the invisible hand of the free market to do its thing. Produce sold for more in England so they shipped it off, because England was significantly richer than Ireland. You can say the famine wasn’t the intentional result of the British government perhaps, but you can’t say it’s not the expected and natural outcome of free market capitalism.
And then the British in Bengal? I’m not quite as familiar I’ll admit but IIRC that was just the Brits needing more food for themselves so they took it from India, consequences for Indians be damned.
British policy resulted in the death of 100 million people during the Raj. The Bengal famine is just one example and was not even the most deadly.
In Bengal:
Fearing a Japanese invasion through Burma, the British enacted a scorched-earth policy in coastal Bengal. They confiscated or destroyed tens of thousands of boats, bicycles, and carts (the lifeblood of the local transport and fishing economy) and seized rice stocks so the Japanese couldn’t use them. This completely destroyed the rural economy.
Stockpiled food strictly to feed military troops, civil servants, and industrial defense workers in Calcutta. Rural peasants were entirely abandoned to the market.
To pay for the war, the British printed massive amounts of paper currency in India. This caused the price of rice to skyrocket by up to 600%, completely pricing out rural laborers.
When the scale of the famine became global news, other countries offered to help. Canada offered to send ships loaded with 100,000 tons of emergency wheat. The United States also offered food aid. Churchill’s government turned them down, refusing to provide or allow the shipping vessels required to transport the grain to India.
To protect Britain’s international reputation during World War II, the British colonial government heavily censored the Indian press. They banned newspapers from using the word “famine” or publishing photographs of the skeletal bodies lining the streets. It wasn’t until a British editor of an English-language newspaper in Calcutta broke ranks and published gruesome photographs that the British public—and the world—realized the scale of the horror.
When British officials in Bengal like Leo Amery petitioned Churchill for aid he responded with:
Stating it was the fault of Bengalis for breeding like rabbits.
Asking why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.
Stating that he “hated Indians” as they are a “beastly people with a beastly religion”
To which Amery replied: “I am by no means sure whether on this subject [India] Winston is really quite sane… I told him that I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”
I don’t fault you for a second for not knowing. Most people don’t know this history because they didn’t want you to know. But it’s all available in the public record if anyone wants to learn more.
England was richer than Ireland? That implies Irish people had some level of choice… Ireland was a colony of the British empire and as such were responsible for it’s citizens and the Irish people had no say in where the crops were sold to. Irish people, by and large, couldn’t afford those crops anyway and so relied the potatoes they grew. When that failed for consecutive harvests, they starved because the landowners continued to sell the other food sources abroad rather than helping. The invisible hand of the market has little or nothing to do with it because they could never have bought the crops anyway, it was just greed and cruelty.
I think the “exported food during a famine” part deserves some examination. Because doing this in itself may or may not be justified.
For the Soviet Union, I have heard this as an anti-communist talking point for both the famine that occurred during the civil war in the 20s and the famine of the early 30s. In both cases the Soviet Union was totally justified in exporting food during a famine. Why? Because having food in itself doesn’t necessarily solve a famine. You need inputs (like fertilizer) and capital (like farming equipment). For the Soviet Union, agriculture was essentially still pre-modern. They were seriously lacking both in both famines. The decision to export was not “let’s make some side cash by starving our people”. Rather it was recognizing that selling X units of food today would yield X+Y units in the future by using the proceeds to improve your agricultural situation. Food was swapped for inputs and capital. It’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it’s the rational one and in the end saves more lives.
But the British in Ireland in the late 1848? That was just allowing the invisible hand of the free market to do its thing. Produce sold for more in England so they shipped it off, because England was significantly richer than Ireland. You can say the famine wasn’t the intentional result of the British government perhaps, but you can’t say it’s not the expected and natural outcome of free market capitalism.
And then the British in Bengal? I’m not quite as familiar I’ll admit but IIRC that was just the Brits needing more food for themselves so they took it from India, consequences for Indians be damned.
With regard to Bengal and India as a whole:
British policy resulted in the death of 100 million people during the Raj. The Bengal famine is just one example and was not even the most deadly.
In Bengal:
Fearing a Japanese invasion through Burma, the British enacted a scorched-earth policy in coastal Bengal. They confiscated or destroyed tens of thousands of boats, bicycles, and carts (the lifeblood of the local transport and fishing economy) and seized rice stocks so the Japanese couldn’t use them. This completely destroyed the rural economy.
Stockpiled food strictly to feed military troops, civil servants, and industrial defense workers in Calcutta. Rural peasants were entirely abandoned to the market.
To pay for the war, the British printed massive amounts of paper currency in India. This caused the price of rice to skyrocket by up to 600%, completely pricing out rural laborers.
When the scale of the famine became global news, other countries offered to help. Canada offered to send ships loaded with 100,000 tons of emergency wheat. The United States also offered food aid. Churchill’s government turned them down, refusing to provide or allow the shipping vessels required to transport the grain to India.
To protect Britain’s international reputation during World War II, the British colonial government heavily censored the Indian press. They banned newspapers from using the word “famine” or publishing photographs of the skeletal bodies lining the streets. It wasn’t until a British editor of an English-language newspaper in Calcutta broke ranks and published gruesome photographs that the British public—and the world—realized the scale of the horror.
When British officials in Bengal like Leo Amery petitioned Churchill for aid he responded with:
Stating it was the fault of Bengalis for breeding like rabbits.
Asking why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.
Stating that he “hated Indians” as they are a “beastly people with a beastly religion”
To which Amery replied: “I am by no means sure whether on this subject [India] Winston is really quite sane… I told him that I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”
I don’t fault you for a second for not knowing. Most people don’t know this history because they didn’t want you to know. But it’s all available in the public record if anyone wants to learn more.
England was richer than Ireland? That implies Irish people had some level of choice… Ireland was a colony of the British empire and as such were responsible for it’s citizens and the Irish people had no say in where the crops were sold to. Irish people, by and large, couldn’t afford those crops anyway and so relied the potatoes they grew. When that failed for consecutive harvests, they starved because the landowners continued to sell the other food sources abroad rather than helping. The invisible hand of the market has little or nothing to do with it because they could never have bought the crops anyway, it was just greed and cruelty.
To be fair, greed and cruelty is what the invisible hand of the market is when push comes to shove.
The push that comes to shove? Also the invisible hand.