Talk:Great Bengal famine of 1770

message: There are several claims about the Honourable East India Trading Company which are sourced and unsourced, but seem contrary to this famine.
"Sushil Chaudhury writes that the destruction of food crops in Bengal to make way for opium poppy cultivation for export reduced food availability and contributed to the famine"
Opium cultivation wouldn't be a major enterprise until the early 19th century, precipitating the Opium wars. At best this famine is caused by cotton plantations.
Either the Opium wars article is wrong, or this one is. Smalltime0 (talk) 06:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: East India Company Responsibility

message: there are some images on the bengal famine at . but copyright status is uncertain. 
barma 14:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: It is critical that scholarship not mitigate the shocking crimes of the British in India.  There was not a weather pattern that lasted only during British colonialism and improved upon their removal. Aggressive attempts to shift blame for these atrocities to nature or to Indians themselves (see comments above) are nothing short of holocaust denial. Critical review of the facts makes such attempts obvious, as in the quote below, where the writer tries to describe a strange weather phenomena that existed for only 60 years and then resolved: 'Although all scholars will admit that the famine was exacerbated by British policy using words like "fault" implies that the famine was man-made when there are multiple sources that indicate that shortages in rainfall led to food shortages for as long as 60 years (starting from 1752 in Murshidabad, when the East India Company was not in power). Also the fact that the rains failed in 1769 needs to be reiterated instead of putting absolute blame on the Company.' 
c.f. The New Cambridge History of India, Bengal:The British Bridgehead (Eastern India 1740-1828). Marshall, P.J. 1988. Cambridge University Press pp 18-19. --Antorjal 15:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality issues 

message: The lead paragraph says "... the deaths of 10 million people (one out of three, reducing the population to thirty million in Bengal..." Something's wrong — reducing from 40 million to 30 million is one out of four not three. Or is the thirty million figure incorrect? I don't know enough about the subject work out which needs correcting.--A bit iffy (talk) 13:36, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Incorrect calculation?

message: *McLane, Land and Local Kingship in 18th century Bengal
:Suggests that the one third mortality rate was exaggerated, at least in Barddhaman. Based on land revenues which plunged 1.52cr to 1.31cr between  1768 and 1769, then rose to 1.53cr by 1772. States however that Warren Hastings acknowledged 'violent' tax collecting after 1771.
*Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment. ed. Alessa Johns. 
:Article on the subject. 
*Merchants, Politics and Society in Early Modern India: Bihar: 1733-1820. Kumkum Chatterjee
:Discusses the grain trade, monopolies, 
*Agrarian Environments edited by Arun Agrawal, K Sivaramakrishnan
:Suggests that the historical importance of the famine dated from a century later, when it became a useful stick to beat the British with. 
*Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History by Gideon Polya
*Mostly the 1943 famine.  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s19040.htm 
Found the above included as hidden-comments at the end of the article. Don't know when or by whom they were added. Moving here, in case there is something worth following up. Abecedare (talk) 21:28, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible sources and expansion ideas 

message: The statement that "The Great Bengal famine of 1770 was one of a series of famines in India under British colonial rule that would continue killing tens of millions of Indians into the late 19th century and beyond" suggests that these famines were due to British rule. That is incorrect and biased.Royalcourtier (talk) 06:54, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Dalrymple writes popular histories, which are typically published by trade presses. As far as I know, he has no academic expertise in any branch of famine history. No serious famine historian considers him as one of their fraternity, either. 
Why is his view so prominently mentioned in lead? TrangaBellam (talk) 05:57, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I couldn't agree more.  I haven't really paid attention to this article in years, but I notice that it seems to be plagued now with a kind of WP:RECENTISM applied to sourcing (not events, obviously).  The sources cited in the lead to make the case for revised mortality estimates are somewhat obscure, not the kind of WP:TERTIARY sources, mainly widely used undergraduate history textbooks which are vetted for WP:DUE.  Those as far as I'm aware still consider the famine to have depopulated by (death or migration) a large proportion of Bengal's population.  I don't have much time right now, but I will attempt to do this for the lead now.  Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:36, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to run now.  I've whittled down the lead to what is commonly considered WP:Due.  There is really no need to stuff references titled Scottish Environmentalism in the lead, but I've let them stand for now because they are used later. The main problem with the article is that the main body is in very poor shape.  That is where the work needs to be done.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:55, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. This is a very understudied topic, fwiw. I will attempt to rewrite the article prim. depending on CEH, Rajat Dutta and Vinita Damodaran. Tertiary sources hardly cover the topic in a significant way but I will be glad to know otherwise. TrangaBellam (talk) 15:06, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I meant tertiary sources only for the lead.  In other words, it is better for them to summarize the literature at a higher level than for us.  I usually start with a lead cited to tertiary sources as a template, then expand the article using secondary and tertiary sources, and then rewrite the lead in summary style, but not veering too far from the template.  A semi-tertiary source from which I will summarize later (in the lead) is Tim Dyson's A Population History of India, Oxford, 2019, which has a couple of pages on the famine. It considers 10 million to be exaggerated (this was before the first census of Bengal), even though he is agnostic about Rajat Datta's lowered estimate of between one and two million.  Dyson makes some insightful comments on the depopulation numbers (a third), which he states are hard to believe. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:38, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  William Dalrymple 

message: Impact on demographics Population of Bengal declined by 33% or 4% which was it. 70.31.166.89 (talk) 21:35, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  error requires attention