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A thread with excerpts from Madhusree Mukerjee's devastating book, "Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II" https://amzn.to/3dLP1at
"By 1769, Bengal had no gold, silver, or other valuables left. "
(Battle of Plassey - 1757)
"Then the rains failed. “The fields of rice are become like fields of dried straw,” wrote a superintendent. "
(Battle of Plassey - 1757)
"Then the rains failed. “The fields of rice are become like fields of dried straw,” wrote a superintendent. "
"Recognizing that the cost of rice would go up, British officers and their Indian agents, who enjoyed a monopoly on trading rice, bought up all that they could, often forcing peasants to part with the grain they had kept for planting."
"The British East India Company dispatched a shipload of grain for its forces in Madras, stocked up 5,000 tons for local troops, and, fearing that revenues would fall short, urged “rigor” in tax collection. By then the famine was in full force."
""All through the stifling summer of 1770 the people went on dying,” Hunter recounted.
The husbandmen sold their cattle; they sold their implements of agriculture; they devoured their seed-grain; they sold their sons and daughters, till ..no buyer of children could be found;..."
The husbandmen sold their cattle; they sold their implements of agriculture; they devoured their seed-grain; they sold their sons and daughters, till ..no buyer of children could be found;..."
"they ate the leaves of trees and the grass of the field; and in June 1770 the Resident at [Murshidabad] affirmed that the living were feeding on the dead." A third of the people of Bengal, numbering about 10 million, perished."
"Virtually every employee of the Company reaped huge profits in rice speculation. One Company clerk in Murshidabad, who could ordinarily scrape together no more than £200 a year in savings, allegedly sent £60,000 to England that year."
"The East India Company did spend £9,000 on famine relief, mainly by buying rice in the districts and distributing it in the cities of Murshidabad and Calcutta—even as it collected from Bengal that fiscal year a substantial rent of £1.4 million."
"With no hands to tend them, a third of Bengal’s fields returned to jungle.
Communications broke down throughout Bengal because the postmen began to get carried off by wild animals.
Many of the surviving villagers deserted their lands and... "
Communications broke down throughout Bengal because the postmen began to get carried off by wild animals.
Many of the surviving villagers deserted their lands and... "
"...led by Hindu sadhus or Muslim fakirs, took to waylaying British consignments for grain or cash & looting any fields of rice they could find.
The rebellion was the first of innumerable peasant and tribal uprisings that would harass the British Raj for the rest of its reign."
The rebellion was the first of innumerable peasant and tribal uprisings that would harass the British Raj for the rest of its reign."
Go read this book: "Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II" https://amzn.to/3xkByOU
Or read my review: http://blog.abhinavagarwal.net/2011/04/churchills-secret-war.html
Because you won't read about it our textbooks.
Because you won't read about it our textbooks.
"For centuries, gold and silver had poured into Bengal; they now poured out. The East India Company no longer had to transport bullion to India to purchase goods for selling abroad. Instead, the tax revenues from Bengal supplied all the capital it had previously imported..."
"“If a district yielded, as in the case of [Birbhum], £90,000 of revenue, the Council took care that not more than £5000 or £6000 were spent in governing it,” explained a nineteenth-century historian, William Hunter"
"Often the Company’s officials diverted the tax surplus to finance wars in Madras and to purchase tea in China; ...
Between 1766 and 1768, Bengal imported £624,375 worth of goods and cash and exported £6,311,250—the amount going out ten times greater than what came in."
Between 1766 and 1768, Bengal imported £624,375 worth of goods and cash and exported £6,311,250—the amount going out ten times greater than what came in."
"General Robert Clive came to the rescue of Calcutta and defeated Siraj-ud-daula at the Battle of Plassey on June 23, 1757."
"As arranged, Mir Jafar paid the East India Company £2.2 million and its officers and troops £1.2 million, of which Clive took a lion’s share. Two hundred barges carrying the first installment of the Company’s booty set off from the capital city of Murshidabad on July 3, 1757"
"the East India Company became de facto ruler of India’s richest province.
Within five years, Bengal became India’s poorest province."
Within five years, Bengal became India’s poorest province."
"the annual revenue from Bihar, which previously hovered around £200,000, shot up to £680,000.
The tax collectors were so oppressive, wrote cloth merchant William Bolts, that farmers were often "necessitated to sell their children in order to pay their rents""
The tax collectors were so oppressive, wrote cloth merchant William Bolts, that farmers were often "necessitated to sell their children in order to pay their rents""
"The Madras region.. suffered famine in 1783,1792,1807,1813,1823,1834, & 1854.
...
the 19th-century calamities excited little comment in England, where influential scholars such as James Mill argued that poverty rather than wealth was India’s intrinsic and unvarying condition."
...
the 19th-century calamities excited little comment in England, where influential scholars such as James Mill argued that poverty rather than wealth was India’s intrinsic and unvarying condition."
These are excerpts from Madhusree Mukerjee's book, "Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II"
Read it, for your children's textbooks don't say anything. https://amzn.to/3awh5wH
Read it, for your children's textbooks don't say anything. https://amzn.to/3awh5wH
On 1857:
"The rebels killed several hundred white men, women, and children; the 50,000 British soldiers imported to put down the uprising avenged these murders a thousand times over (5 crore). Such at least was the claim of General Hugh Rose, who sacked the city of Jhansi."
"The rebels killed several hundred white men, women, and children; the 50,000 British soldiers imported to put down the uprising avenged these murders a thousand times over (5 crore). Such at least was the claim of General Hugh Rose, who sacked the city of Jhansi."
"A “mutiny charge” of £50 million, the cost of importing British soldiers to put down the uprising, was deducted from the colony’s account."
"because sepoys of diverse regions and religions had united in attacking their superiors, the generals segregated such groups and trained the regiments so that “Sikh might fire into Hindu, Gurkha into either, without any scruple in case of need.”"
"the British rulers of India came to perceive an even more potent threat: the educated Hindu male, or babu.
...
English men and women, many of them based in Calcutta, penned furious attacks on the babu (often spelling it baboo to suggest a link with the primate)."
...
English men and women, many of them based in Calcutta, penned furious attacks on the babu (often spelling it baboo to suggest a link with the primate)."
"Mill had declared that “the Hindu,like the eunuch,excels in the qualities of a slave,” & the popular historian Thomas Babington Macaulay had dwelt on the emasculation of Bengalis, who’d “found the little finger of the Company thicker than the loins” of the prince Siraj-ud-daula"
"The writer Rudyard Kipling repeatedly portrayed the Bengali civil servant as a nincompoop who in a crisis fled the scene and left the real men to pick up the pieces."
"It was the Bengali male’s “extraordinary effeminacy,” as evinced by his diminutive physique, his flowing clothes, and his worship of goddesses, that best illustrated why he, and by extension India, had to be guided by the firm, benevolent hand of a supremely masculine race."
On the partition of Bengal:
"[O]ne of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule,” explained a British civil servant. Curzon, who regarded Muslims as potential allies against the largely Hindu nationalists"
"[O]ne of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule,” explained a British civil servant. Curzon, who regarded Muslims as potential allies against the largely Hindu nationalists"
"In 1906 the All India Muslim League came into being in Dacca and declared its support for the viceroy’s partition plan."
""It will be a very good idea to move the Government offices away from the Bengali Babus, who now swarm in every office,” noted a visitor to the city."
" “No Englishman has a good word for them: they are said to have less character and backbone than any other Indians, and to be intolerably conceited, besides being seditious.”"
" In 1912, when the viceroy ceremonially entered the newly built capital city on a caparisoned elephant, some revolutionaries lobbed a bomb that seriously injured him. The chief conspirator, who escaped to Japan, turned out to be a Bengali babu."
“Bengal is the seat of bitterest political unrest—the producer of India’s main crop of anarchists, bomb-throwers and assassins,” observed American writer Katherine Mayo in Mother India, a 1927 travelogue that described Hindu males as pedophiles enervated by excessive sex. "
"This book, the outcome of a tour organized by British intelligence, would so captivate Winston Churchill that he would pass it around among friends."
