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1770 Great Bengal famine vs. 1931 China Flood -...
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1770 Great Bengal famine vs 1931 China Flood

1770 Great Bengal famine
1931 China Flood
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1770 Great Bengal famine

Total costsN/A
Deaths 10000000

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The Bengal Famine of 1770 (Bengali: Chiẏāttôrer mônnôntôr, lit. The Famine of 76) was a famine that struck the Bengal region between 1769 and 1770 (1176 to 1177 in the Bengali calendar) and affected some 30 million people. It occurred during a period of dual governance in Bengal. This existed after the East India Company had been granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue in Bengal by the Mughal emperor in Delhi, but before it had wrested the nizamat, or control of civil administration, which continued to lie with the Mughal governor, the Nawab of Bengal.Crop failure in autumn 1768 and summer 1769 and an accompanying smallpox epidemic were thought to be the manifest reasons for the famine. The Company had farmed out tax collection on account of a shortage of trained administrators, and the prevailing uncertainty may have worsened the famine's impact. Other factors adding to the pressure were: grain merchants ceased offering grain advances to peasants, but the market mechanism for exporting the merchants' grain to other regions remained in place; the Company purchased a large portion of rice for its army; and the Company's private servants and their Indian Gomasthas created local monopolies of grain. By the end of 1769 rice prices had risen two-fold, and in 1770 they rose a further three-fold. In Bihar, the continual passage of armies in the already drought-stricken countryside worsened the conditions. The Company provided little mitigation through direct relief efforts; nor did it reduce taxes, though its options to do so may have been limited.By the summer of 1770 people were dying everywhere. Although the monsoon immediately after did bring plentiful rains, it also brought diseases to which many among the enfeebled fell victim. For several years thereafter piracy increased on the Hooghly river delta. Deserted and overgrown villages were a common sight. Depopulation, however, was uneven, affecting north Bengal and Bihar severely, central Bengal moderately, and eastern only slightly. The recovery was also quicker in the well-watered Bengal delta in the east.Between seven and ten million people—or between a quarter and third of the presidency's population—were thought to have died. The loss to cultivation was estimated to be a third of the total cultivation. Some scholars consider these numbers to be exaggerated in large part because reliable demographic information had been lacking in 1770. Even so, the famine devastated traditional ways of life in the affected regions. It proved disastrous to the mulberries and cotton grown in Bengal; as a result, a large proportion of the dead were spinners and weavers who had no reserves of food. The famine hastened the end of dual governance in Bengal, the Company becoming the sole administrator soon after. Its cultural impact was felt long afterwards, becoming the subject a century later of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's influential novel Anandamath.

Source: Wikipedia
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1931 China Flood

Total costsN/A
Deaths 4000000

Informations

The 1931 China floods, or the 1931 Yangtze–Huai River floods, occurred from June to August 1931 in China, hitting major cities such as Wuhan, Nanjing and beyond, which eventually culminated into a dike breach along Lake Gaoyou on 25 August 1931. Fatality estimates vary widely. A field survey by the University of Nanking led by John Lossing Buck immediately after the flood found '150,000 people had drowned, and that this number represented less than a quarter of all fatalities during the first 100 days of the flood.' The official report found 140,000 drowned and claims that '2 million people died during the flood, having drowned or died from lack of food'. A cholera epidemic in the subsequent year, from May 1932, was officially reported to have 31,974 deaths and 100,666 cases. A popular high-end estimate of 3.7 to 4.0 million fatalities 'enjoys great currency online, helping the 1931 flood to secure its position on sensationalist lists of the world’s deadliest disasters.'

Source: Wikipedia

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