The Bengal Famine of 1943

Re. The Bengal Famine of 1943

Bengal famine of 1943 - Wikipedia

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BBC Sounds - Three Million - Available Episodes

The forgotten story of World War II: the Bengal famine in British India, where at least three million people died, told for the first time by the eyewitnesses to it.

Three Million - Introducing Three Million: The Bengal Famine, WWII's Forgotten Story - BBC Sounds

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This topic has appeared before. See: http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/has-indias-contribution-to-ww2-been-ignored.57993/#post-910558 Idler in Post 11 linked the official report.

 

The granddaughter of Sir John Herbert, Governor of Bengal at the time of the famine.

Bengal famine: Susannah's grandad ran Bengal as famine killed millions

As per Ramiles post above; sombre reading.

Jim.

 

James Holland enters the fray: Stop Blaming Churchill

I had read about shipping logistics before, but not the flooding before and the obstacles in India created by Indian-run provinces to move grain supplies.

 

That’s in relation to this isn’t it:

https://news.sky.com/story/artwork-...-down-from-national-portrait-gallery-13557072

 

Wobbler,

Yes, it is and I tried to avoid mentioning that here.

 

I’ll get my coat.

 

I thought that I would add my tuppence worth to this thread. I have not wanted to do so earlier because of the political slant that has been given to the cause of the Bengal Famine to besmirch Churchill's reputation.

I have read a great deal about the famine recently and whilst one side blames Churchill, the other blames flooding and crop failure. However, I have not heard anyone mention the actual cause of the famine which is easily found with an understanding of what happened in 1942 to create a famine in 1943.

Andrew Roberts stated in an article in the Daily Telegraph that, "The facts about the appalling circumstances of the Bengal Famine of 1942-42, an act of God that was made worse by bureaucratic dithering in Calcutta and Delhi, local government incompetence and commercial greed, are very well known, and have been since the publication in May 1945 of Sir John Woodhead's comprehensive Commission Inquiry Report." However, since I have not read the report, and because Andrew Roberts didn't mention it, the actual cause was not "an act of God", unless of course, you go along with the Japanese mindset that the Emperor Hirohito was a god.

I have a book called, British Rule in Burma 1824-1942 by G.E. Harvey, which unsurprisingly is about British Rule in Burma, it gives a lot of facts and figures regard trade and the export of various goods. Burma had been the world's biggest exporter of rice sending an average of £17.4 millions worth a year between 1935-1940.

"The 1941 Indo-Burma Trade Agreement.
Lancashire once had a monopoly of supplying Burma, like the rest of the east, with cotton cloth, the everyday clothes the people wear; but after 1918 she had to get what share she could of the market, for the east now has its own cotton mills. India and Japan supplied Burma with much of her needs. And not only in cotton: until Japan began to use her factories solely for war she was flooding the world with cheap manufactures, and Burma was glad of them. In return Japan took some of the raw cotton Burma grows and some of the rice.
But Burma's real trade was with India. A glance at an atlas shows why. India is the size of all Europe, with an even larger population, next door to Burma with barely twice the population of London. India took 60 percent of Burma's exports, practically all her oil and teak, and more than half her rice, which meant much to Burma but not so very much to India as they constituted only 7 per cent of her imports. Of course Burma could always have sold them elsewhere, but not so conveniently. And after all, India needed them, the 1943 Bengal famine was partly due to the loss of the Burma rice crop in Japanese hands."

I would argue that it was more than partly due to the loss of the Burma rice crop. Bengal could not feed itself without its main supply of rice coming from Burma. The Japanese army took most of the 1942 crop to feed its army and that year's crop may have been considerably less than usual because of the fighting in Burma and the exodus of British rice brokers and Indian labourers.
To remove the main source of food for millions of Bengalis whose land was so overpopulated that there wasn't enough land to grow food to feed its own population, must have been a major cause of the famine.

In another book that I have, the exact figures in tons of rice exported from Burma between 1930 and 1942 are given. I will try and locate the book.

 

Anyone here fully buying into the 'But Churchill cared' narrative (or indeed Holland's convenient excuse, which did not matter when the argument was to maintain rations in Britain, and which was anyways already dismissed long ago by Wavell) should pick up Allport's 'Advance Britannia' which has a substantial and well-researched section that dissects the matter. The conclusion of the discussion below.

Yes it wasn't a genocide, but it also wasn't something in which the Imperial authorities were just innocent bystanders with no option to help. And yes, the root cause is of course Japan starting the war and invading Burma. That doesn't give carte blanche to failure to act decisively to prevent the death of millions to the Imperial government bodies who failed at all levels. The situation is as always more nuanced.

All the best

Andreas

 

Death rate from famines by year

Tabulated = Death rate from famines by year

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List of famines - Wikipedia

I'm surprised this one doesn't get more attention -
Iranian famine of 1942–1943 - Wikipedia

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Oxfam - Wikipedia

It began as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in Oxford, UK, in 1942, to alleviate World War Two-related hunger and continued in the aftermath of the war.

Talking about "Churchill" and "Imperial Guilt" - as a cause of a famine can hardly account for global phenomenon.

For every life saved from one famine there are later generations that go hungry in a cyclical nature that doesn't tend to care a great deal for "whose fault it was" once, in one instance, especially when there's more hunger later there or elsewhere. .

 

The discussion isn't really on whether Churchill/the Empire 'caused' the famine (neither did, obvs), it's what they did and did not do to alleviate it once it happened, and why they acted in the way they did.

In that context, Allport makes for very uncomfortable reading.

All the best

Andreas

 

I'm not myself in the camp that thinks Churchill could do no wrong and that Churchill was a saint or that Imperial Britain wasn't on the way out - anyone who wishes that the British Empire had survived conveniently never seems to wonder what would the British Empire have been like if everyone in it actually "got to vote" for who ruled it and what its actual global priorities were then to be if voted for by everyone in it.

Plenty of famines were caused by the Soviet Empire and many more modern famines can trace their roots to a wide variety of climatic as well as economic turmoil.

Churchill has / had broad shoulders. He eloquently could argue for himself and he did often admit when he got things wrong as well as try to pick whosoever was best for a job and make friends where he could and strike deals where he could and manage a great many things that lesser mortals could not. We can't change the past, but we can learn from it. If we were now to blame Churchill, what would / should be the consequence. Arguable he "lost the Empire" despite his best efforts to keep it as a "going concern". Perhaps that was Churchill's greatest regret.

The preservation of the British Empire was indeed one of Winston Churchill’s deepest lifelong passions. He famously lamented the dismantling of the Empire, but his overriding late-life regret was the larger realization that World War II severely diminished Britain's global standing.

The Central Failure - Towards the end of his life, Churchill expressed to his private secretary that he had worked tremendously hard all his life, achieved a great deal, and yet "in the end to achieve nothing". He believed the central theme of his career was maintaining the "enduring greatness of Britain and her Empire," and it distressed him that he had failed to preserve Britain as a dominant superpower.

His Views on the Loss - Churchill was a late-Victorian imperialist who saw the Empire as a civilizing force. The post-war decolonization process—especially Indian independence in 1947—caused him profound grief. He memorably stated: "It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire with all its glories".

Broader Historical Context - While he deeply grieved the loss of imperial territories, historians like Vernon Bogdanor note that his regrets were also compounded by the failure to reconcile Britain’s conflicting pulls toward Europe and toward the Empire. He felt powerless to stop the shifting geopolitical landscape where the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the new superpowers.

 

What could they do? From where do you source tens of thousands of tons of rice during a world war? Not from Burma, Thailand, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, China or Hong Kong for obvious reasons.

Where could they get grain from? Not from Soviet Ukraine or Soviet Russia, possibly from the U.S.A. or Canada but how do they get it to Bengal with the Battle of the Atlantic going on? Both British and American cargo vessels were being lost to U-boats faster than they could be replaced and, due to the loss of their cargos of both food stuffs and munitions, the people of the U.K. experienced severe food shortages on top of rationing. How much food could have been sent to Bengal from the United Kingdom?

How many convoys that could have taken grain to India were deployed getting arms to Stalin via the Artic route?

In India itself, from about May 1942, the Indian Government had to find food, medical treatment and housing for the hundreds of thousands of British, Indian and Burmese people who had trekked out of Burma following the Japanese invasion. This in itself must have put a huge strain on the already diminished food supply, particularly when the Government were totally unsure of Japanese military intentions, not knowing if they would stop at Burma or invade India.

After the loss of Hong Kong, Malaya and Burma do you concentrate on stopping a possible invasion of India by building up its military forces, or do you decrease the rations of fighting forces in order to alleviate famine?

None of these are excuses for the British failure to relieve the famine but they must be significant factors in why difficult decisions were made at the time.

It is easy to shout, "Churchill was a Fascist" as so many seem to do these days, but it was not his job to administer British India, his job, as a wartime prime minister, was to protect Great Britain and its Empire from both German and Japanese invasion. The task of dealing with the protection of India from both invasion by marauding Japanese imperialists and internal political unrest undermining the war effort was down to the Viceroy.

 

I suggest you read the relevant passage in 'Advance Britannia'.

Also, you are just making stuff up now. Nobody ever claimed there was a shortage of food globally and that is what caused the famine. So that's just straight up invention. The issue people claim there was is shortage of shipping to get food to Bengal. That was debunked as early as Wavell's diaries.

Engage with the actual argument, there's no need to invent things.

All the best

Andreas

 

I am not making things up, I simply gave a list of factors that might have had an influence on why it was difficult to obtain enough food supplies to offset the Bengal famine. I have not claimed that there was a shortage of food globally, I said that there were reasons why it may have been difficult to obtain and deliver food to Bengal, so stop putting words into my mouth. I also did not say that there was a shortage of shipping, I implied that shipping food to Bengal was not a strategic priority with the need to rearm the Soviet Union in order to halt the German advance taking first place.

Where did I claim that "a global shortage of food" was the cause of the Bengal famine? If you cannot understand that the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, Malaya and Burma dramatically reduced supplies of both raw materials and food to India in 1943 then you clearly have a problem with your narrative.

By the way, what is the "actual argument" that we are having? As I said earlier, Winston Churchill did not cause the Bengal famine as many left wing zealots will have us believe, along with the lie that he was responsible for the partition of India in 1947. Churchill was ousted by the electorate in 1945 and was not back in government until 1951 and therefore could not have partitioned India. It was done at the behest of Atlee's LABOUR government. But obviously, as we are now rewriting history it must have been Churchill's fault. And before you accuse me of being of the, "but Churchill cared" fraternity, I am not defending Churchill, but merely pointing out that most of the claims made by his detractors are easily debunked.

I notice that you did not attempt to answer any of my questions but dismissed them out of hand, a clear sign that you do not want to discuss anything that may contradict your narrative.

I respectfully suggest that your read more books rather than just Advance Britannia and perhaps take a few lessons in comprehension.

All the best,

Simon.

 

I think it's pretty clear that 'the argument' that Andreas is interested in discussing is the point that Allport made. I don't think you've actually responded to that.

Maybe we could take a step back and calm down before further discussion? Please?

 

Perfectly calm here, what ever Andreas is interested in discussing doesn't prevent others from asking questions particularly when he suggests that I am "making things up". You may have noticed that this thread was started by Ramiles, and not by Andreas so perhaps he could start his own thread if he wants to control the narrative.

I have not read Allport so I cannot possibly comment on what point he has made so yes, you are right, I haven't actually responded to his argument. I have made a few suggestions as to why the Bengal Famine might not have been easy to solve or a major priority in the middle of a world war and have been accused of making things up. Not exactly a sign of critical thinking. Perhaps an apology might be in order and constitute a step back.

 

Yeah, this isn't going anywhere good. I'm out.

 

That's great that you acknowledge that.

No point discussing further with you then as far as I am concerned, as Allport comprehensively addresses and dismisses the point on shipping shortage, as well as the prioritisation point.

People may think that 'we couldn't spare a few ships (Wavell estimated seven according to Allport) to prevent millions of brown-skinned people from starving because that would have meant reducing rations in Britain' is a point that gets the UK government off the hook. It is not, it's the opposite.

That's the point Allport makes based on my understanding, which I am in agreement with.

The technical point is to dismiss Holland's apologia that it was the shipping.

All the best

Andreas

 

Another quote from G E Harvey's book, British rule in Burma 1824-1942. Page 60.

"Rice.
Despite the growth of a mining industry, rice remained the staple, annually accounting for £17 million out of Burma's £38 million exports. The Indo-Chinese peninsula was the world's export rice granary, and Burma grew more than all the rest, Siam and French Indo-China, put together. She grew 7 million tons of paddy a year, and exported nearly two-thirds (reduced to rice, three & one third million tons). And of this export again nearly two-thirds went to India, where population is always outstripping food production.
Indian firms had a large share in the trade to India, Chinese firms in the trade to Malaya and China. But the largest single group consisted of a few British firms which not only handled much of the above trade and all of the trade to Europe but also acted as agents for the main shipping lines (which helped them to arrange freight), and they milled a third of the whole export crop (which helped them to influence the price paid in the interior). They had nothing like a monopoly, as the Burmese themselves, with Chinese and Indians, milled the other two-thirds, building hundreds of little steam mills in the interior. But Burmese firms had no capital, they were small, disunited, and though they managed internal distribution they had no export business, still less a ship. When the world slump hit Burma in 1931, they did not realise it was world wide, and some of them openly accused the British firms of engineering the collapse of the rice market in order to get their export rice at a cheap rate."

As yet, nobody has given an explanation as to where the replacement of the three and a third million tons of rice needed to feed Bengal was going to come from, certainly not from Burma, Siam or Indo-China. So the question of how many ships could have been set aside to carry cargos of non-existent rice is rather pointless.

It was food, (particularly meat), from South America that kept Britain from near starvation during the war. Food that had to cross the Atlantic in convoys which suffered significant losses from the German U-Boats.