INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

26 TRADITIONAL AND
the fact that other authors besides natives are
apt to deal too exclusively with the powers that
be, I here quote the five lines: "The first year
of his (l\Ir Carter's) administration was distinguished
by one of those dreadful famines
which so often afflict the provinces of India; a
calamity by which more than a third of the
inhabitants of Bengal were computed to have
been destroyed." Marshman's' History of
Bengal' allows five and a half lines to the same
subject; and for the matter of information, an
exact repetition of :Mill would have equally
answered the purpose.
Sir G. Campbell says: "A minute search of
the records of the India Office has not led to
the discovery of any special reports, in our
modern sense, recounting the whole history of
the great Bengal famine. It has only been
possible, by completely sifting the general
records, to pick out here and there the passages
which bear on the calamity. The result is, not
to give us its history in any great detail, but
I trust that enough has been gathered to put
us in possession of its general character."
Bengal,previous to 1769, had been prosperous