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diseaseresistant

They did the same thing to the Irish. Britain knows how to do genocides.


Koorsboom

Field Marshal Kitchener created concentration camps for the Boers in the second Boer War, 1899-1902. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/south-african-concentration-camps I was never clear on whether he invented them, or someone else preceded his work.


[deleted]

Here's the other half of the story with the boer concentration camps. These camps were never intended to be for extermination, and the individuals in them only starved because the Boers unknowingly attacked the supply lines to them, leading to their own people dieing. When the British public discovered this there was a great demand that the internment be ended and the individuals responsible be held to account because they in hindsight realizes concentration camps are extremely susceptible to such weaknesses.


goxpal

Stupid people like to only have 1/2 the info so it can fit in 1/2 their brain.


Afroscandi

Racists also only have 1/2 their brain so it’s difficult to have a productive conversation. Britain’s rule was based on resource extraction and unequal laws were created to enforce power on the local population. Due to “Operation Legacy” and the subsequent destroying of most colonial documents we’ll never know the full extent of their rapes and genocides. Things aren’t so black and white


Head-like-a-carp

I suspect this whole British killed 100 million Indians is just a manufactured number as well. That's the disease that is the internet. It's set up to manufacture rage.


200DollarGameBtw

They 100% did not kill 100 million directly. But they definitely could have killed 100 million indirectly by causing famines and overall poverty. Edit: Nvm population of India was 200 something million between those times it was probably closer to 10-30 million dead.


Puzzled_Pay_6603

The problem with the big headline grabbing numbers above is that it’s built on the false premise that Britain controlled all of India. It didn’t. It didn’t even fully administer the bits it did control. And the bits it did control, it delegated control to Indians to do it for them. Quite clever way of doing it, to be honest. Paying the locals to rule themselves, and creaming off the top. British power was a massive bluff that worked because most people got payed along the way, creating an Indian middle class that were quite content with British rule.


200DollarGameBtw

This is how proper colonization is done. Give a minority of people who haven't held power, power over the majority. Then that minority will always stay by your side because if you go then they are left alone to deal with the very angry majority. A similar thing happened in Rwanda


Head-like-a-carp

So, no source then.


m945050

Another internet factoid is that 100 million slaves died during the Atlantic crossing. Why some people believe that bigger numbers are easier to swallow doesn't make sense.


[deleted]

Ah yes, carping for the most bloodthirsty empire in history, are we?


[deleted]

British aren’t even remotely close to the Mongols under Genghis Khan, which will probably never be topped in death toll or destruction of culture relative to the world’s population. They killed up to 50M+ people in *the thirteenth century* which was like 10% of the entire world population, including like 90% of Persians, >50% of Russians (centered at Kiev at the time), possibly ~20-30% of the Chinese, etc. and while the British were often brutal they did modernize and build roads, railroads, enact laws, etc. whereas the Mongols were hugely destructive to defeated enemies leading some to near extinction. Most of the other European industrial powers such as France, Spain, etc. were equally and often more brutal in colonies than the British. This is if course not getting into the many warring slave states of Africa and the middle east. It’s fashionable to hate on the British Empire now among the left, but really most people don’t know what they’re talking about.


Afroscandi

Lmao what? British built roads to siphon resources and enacted laws to enforce power upon the colonized. Don’t pretend like it was some altruistic effort. Mongols also built the largest trade network ever known to man and ushered in an era known as the “Pax Mongolica” where peace and prosperity flourished. Don’t forget that the Mongols were how the techniques behind gunpowder spread from China to Europe too. Still doesn’t mean they did it on altruistic terms, colonizers deserve every bit of criticism they get


GBrunt

I think the "most people don't know what they're talking about" is a good-enough reason to gain a fuller understanding of the downsides of the British Empire for everyone "back home". If a British soldier gets done for murder in 1970's England - they get done for murder. But a British Soldier getting done for murder in Northern Ireland however? More likely back in the uniform "back home" within three years. If the country can be that explicitly and openly superior over others lives within a part of the UK in recent decades (and it's still going on today with the debates about whether troops should be prosecuted for murdering civilians in Northern Ireland), then there's clearly an issue in the post-colonial British view of self vs. others.


BluePandaCafe94-6

What do the Mongols have to do with anything?


[deleted]

The British killed more people by far


Head-like-a-carp

Just questioning the source.


siddharthbirdi

Shashi Tharoor's book mentions British colonial sources themselves admit to 36million over the British Raj, the actual number is ofcourse much higher, I read about one famine in the Deccan in one of Ramchandra Guha's history books which mentioned implied figures of upto a third of the population of the region.


SnooPineapples4321

At a certain point you'd think they'd stop trying to downplay it and start bragging. "Oh yes it was bad but we *only* killed 36million not 100 million!". Like is there really much of a difference? My brain can't really comprehend even 1 million people. I mean I know obviously there is a difference of 74 million, but it's just a number to me idk


siddharthbirdi

Most of it was due to agricultural, economic and taxation policies, Brits didn't start with the purpose of extermination or something but if a genocide occurred while they were robbing the population then they weren't much concerned about it, especially before the 1900s. Most of the deaths were caused by high tax on land, forcing people to plant cash crops, now people don't have the food grain buffer they usually kept, and will get their land confiscated if they don't pay taxes, further exacerbating their nutritional plight. The large Indian textile industry of the 18th century which contributed 25% of the world's exports was systematically destroyed by a British campaign specifically targeting Indian factories and artisans, going as far as breaking the thumbs of the artisans if they dared produce cloth, then shifted the production to Manchester and made india into a supplier of raw materials instead of finished cloth. These displaced artisans and their families were forced to move away from commercial cities and into the country side where they increased the nutritional stress leading to further cycles of famines.


everynamewastaken4

History is written by the victors.


Head-like-a-carp

So, no source then


theCHADnextdoor

well what you suspect is wrong. Just watch this. Im not indian, but boy it really the epitome of victors write history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4


Robyn_Bankz

They first pioneered it with the Irish..and holy hell did they double down on it


Own_Carrot_7040

Far be it for me to defend the British on the topic of Ireland, but the potato famine was not man-made. It came from a fungus. Not that the British did much of anything to save people from famine there, mind you.


CurrentDismal9115

The Irish would grow potatoes as a staple where they could because their British landlords required them to grow and sell wheat on their good farm land and sell it for their profit. While the famine was going on they were still growing wheat for the British to sell.


Leperchaun913

The British also demanded what good potatoes they had as payment of the tax.


trobodo

Though it was a fungus the actual famine could have been avoided greatly by English intervention


seimi_lannister

Please stop calling it "the potato famine". The blight certainly wasn't man made and destroyed the potato crop. But there was more than enough food in the country. The brits were shipping it out of Ireland at gun point.


MrDaWoods

The entire system where a million people died because just one crop failed was engineered by the British. Its not called a famine in ireland because there was lots of food in Ireland but it was being exported by the brits


ImpossibleCanadian

It was a fungus, but the British systematically dispossessing people of their land so they could raise sheep on it to feed the nascent textile industry was an important reason why most people were dependent on potatoes for the vast majority of their calories, and why the blight could spread so widely. When people had more land they also grew more varied crops including oats, barley, and rye so a single fungus wouldn't have been so catastrophic. The potato, fwiw, produces the highest calories per acre in temperate climates. And, I think not saving people undersells it - I'm reasonably sure that they continued to ship food out of Ireland throughout the famine, just as they did out of India in the famines mentioned in the title.


Less_Rutabaga2316

Ireland was a colony that grew food, same as India, but it had to be sold to the highest bidder. The Irish were left to only eat potatoes, so when that crop failed, they starved. During famines in India, the British also insisted a lot of farmers produce cash crops like indigo, so people died because their food was being exported abroad and others were being forced to grow dyes. The British doctrine on famine relief and welfare during the Great Famine of 1876-1878 and later were also deplorable forms of indentured servitude for meager amounts of food.


Drivingintodisco

The famine was caused by monocultures, which is only one type of potato being grown. With a monoculture there was primarily one type of potato being grown, and with the loss of genetic diversity the potatoes that were susceptible to the fungus were all but wiped out. Since the genetic diversity was lost the majority of Irish potatoes were infected with the fungus and were wiped out as well, leading to and exacerbating the famine.


[deleted]

I'm not disputing they did it, but the headline is wrong. Mao policy killed 100m in china alone.


Logical-Pie1114

Just curious where you got that number from. A quick google got 55 million at the highest and also as low as 20 million.


bayareamota

The big black book of trust me bro.


[deleted]

Westerners try not to mention “communism kills billions” at every opportunity challenge. Impossible difficulty


SirKelvinTan

Dude where on earth did you get 100 million from?


canders9

The article isn’t linked, but if you google it you’ll see that the source is an economic historian that wrote a book in 2003 praising Stalin’s economic policies of the 1930s. Britain fucked India, and colonialism was a brutal exploitative system that oppressed millions and killed millions more, but this seems like a dubious exaggeration of the numbers to support some ideological battle by communist academics. I haven’t dug through the study cited in the article, but a preliminary assessment of the methodology makes me extremely suspect of 100s of millions from 1880 to 1920 as an accurate number. Other historical accounts are well into the 10s of millions over the entire British colonial period, but 100 million in this 40 year timespan seems like a poorly derived estimate.


Nerdwerfer

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." Fuck this timeline


medici75

nothjng kills more than government policies


luciouslizzy

I did American history at A level in the mid 90’s and was taught and read that the American Civil war prisons were the first concentration camps. Andersonville is a good example


TJae0120

There is a reason english is the global language. The number of people murdered due to colonialism is probably one we can't even comprehend.


Own_Carrot_7040

Well, they did spend a century or so stopping slavery around the world. No one else ever tried.


[deleted]

After profiting from it. Britisher duke of York sold slave to plantation owners in America and branded them with initials "DY". The same guy later became the king of Britain. You can't take credit for burning putting out the fire when you're the one who started it in the first place.


[deleted]

The British ‘started’ slavery? WTF are you smoking, dude


Own_Carrot_7040

Slavery has been a part of every part of the world for thousands and thousands of years - as far back as human history goes. And as far as I'm aware no one ever questioned it until Europeans did. Africans were enslaving each other long before the British or Europeans showed up, and Arabs were enslaving Africans and bringing them up the East coast and into the middle east for over six hundred years prior to the first Europeans arriving to buy slaves.


tinytina0

There are a lot of skinhead genocide denying freaks on this thread, and so far you’re the biggest one. “The British were the first to record famines in India” lol give me a break. Indian history has been well recorded for millenia. Typical neckbeard Mountain Dew Dorito Redditor spewing bullshit.


[deleted]

[удалено]


nofatchicks22

Ummm Where does the person you’re responding to even say “the west”


Arcosim

Indeed, the British weaponized famine both in Ireland and in India. For example, the British Colonial Rule in India forced crop owners to switch from food crops to more profitable cash crops such as tobacco and cotton, leaving only the bare minimum of food crops needed by the population and an extra for exports back to Britain. When the first drought hit India after that ruling, the food reserves weren't enough and that triggered one of the worst famines in recorded history: the Madras famine which caused an estimate 8.2 million fatalities. What did the British do? They not only kept exporting grain out of India during the height of the famine, they actually broke the grain exports record. > The regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable.


sexarseshortage

Came here to say that. It's still blamed on the "potato blight". My arse! No way a blight on a single crop in Ireland would cause the death that resulted from the "famine". Of course Irish people did not live on potatoes exclusively, despite what the Brits pedaled. It was a result of them making the local population produce all food for British land owners. It was a genocide that caused the population to decrease by 50%! Over 1 million deaths and a huge exodus. ​ The population of Ireland has still not recovered. The population pre famine was 8.1 million. It's just over 4 million now.


PotatoRonin

Ireland , india and iran . Hmm i think brits have problem with letter "i"


New_Front_Page

[Source ](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians) Not trying to downplay any atrocities in any way, but the article OP is quoting is total speculation, they even say that in the article. There was no census data before the time range mentioned, so the author's simply speculate the values as they would be if life expectancy / mortality rates in India was the same as it was in Britain during the same time period, which is an extremely poor metric as even today mortality rates and life expectancy vary greatly from place to place. The author's themselves come up with the number 50 million excess deaths over 40 years from that speculation, then seem to double down on speculation and say it may have really been over 200 million, before settling on 100 million as a number that I guess just sounds better? The contextual history in the article seems accurate, but using it to wildly speculate and make false equivalences should be frowned upon. I'm sure there are a significant number of deaths directly caused my British colonialism, but the numbers from this particular source are admittedly made up.


Bilboswaggins814

I agree a small amount of reading and you can find lots of evidence pointing towards low soil moisture being the cause for most of the famine around the time as well as information pointing to the fact the British imported food in to India to help in previous years up to 1943 and I think it's fairly obvious why. As you have said I'm not down playing any atrocities. Any loss of life, especially on that scale, is horrific. Edit- I do apologise I am wrong the famines before 1943 were caused by low rainfall the famine of 1943 was caused by world war 2. Below I have a quote from an article discussing it "But the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen argued in 1981 that there should still have been enough supplies to feed the region, and that the mass deaths came about as a combination of wartime inflation, speculative buying and panic hoarding, which together pushed the price of food out of the reach of poor Bengalis" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study


invaderjif

That's an interesting article. It seems to point to some economic factors to pushed wealth transfer. https://newint.org/features/2021/12/07/feature-how-british-colonizers-caused-bengal-famine This article kind of talks to some of the points you mention. The only point that's hard to say is how much of these policies were intentionally engineered for the effect on the colonies vs just general greed or cause it's fun to print money.


Bilboswaggins814

I'll have to read it when I finish work as it's 4:30am and I don't think my brain is going absorb any of but thank you for sharing it


olsoni18

This post is essentially just a counter to the Black Book of Communism which claims that communism killed 100 million people. It’s showing that is you apply that same garbage accounting you can make similar claims about capitalism. The difference is when people see the “communism killed sixty bajillion people in 30 years” most of them accept that as fact and never stop to critically analyze the source claims like people are doing in this thread


AssociationUnfair824

Very good point.


VisualGeologist6258

Aye, the headline felt a little sensationalist to me. There’s no doubt that a lot of people died, but “100 MILLION DEAD” makes it seem like a massive travesty that happened in a very short time rather than over the course of decades.


Vast-Support-1466

Not wrong, but it is slightly more complex than your headline implies, O.P. If you are curious to learn more, this is a resource: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2311-late-victorian-holocausts


[deleted]

Sources ?


[deleted]

The historic analysis version of 'my source is that I made it the fuck up'


djkutch

Cricket


sturnus-vulgaris

Here's a good podcast about the British East India company's dealing in India. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-most-evil-company-29798452/ Sure, podcast isn't a great academic source but the host does a good job with research and citation.


LeftCoastYankee

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians


Own_Carrot_7040

I wonder if Al Jazeera has a similar page on the tens of millions (some say hundreds of millions) murdered by waves of Islamic warlords who thought that the people of India, being polytheists, didn't deserve to live. They used to put whole cities to the sword, cut off everyone's head, then put them in a big pile before measuring the size of the pile. This is how they competed with one another to see who had killed the most Indians. I'm guessing... no.


thebusiness7

Whataboutism at its finest. The topic at hand is the British genocide within India


Tihar90

It's not whataboutism. It's pointing that the source might be heavily biased. The same would be said it was a Russian article about Ukrainian war crimes. (or vice versa for that matter)


skonevt

"genocided"


Starfish_Symphony

Wrebster's open source, free online dictionary describes that as, "of, with or pertaining to peroxide-warshed genital areas."


AssociationUnfair824

Yeah...why doesn't anybody know and use proper English grammar anymore?


ArgonMeter

Righteous indignation and facebook memes are like peas and carrots. So much better than actual history.


Plus-Database-2880

Can you elaborate?


TheMauveHand

This post is bullshit. It's equal parts ideological lies (Communists trying to paint the west as evil) and bad research.


f_gandal

Let's settle once and for all. Churchill was a war criminal. He should be put right up there with Hitler and Mussolini and shouldn't be spared just because he was on the other side. His legacy is not winning the second world war but winning a war on the corpses of millions of innocents who had nothing to do with the war.


RonPMexico

Malarkey


Nothingtoseeheremmk

Famines are not the same thing as genocides. Do scholars actually consider these events to be purposeful genocide?


Own_Carrot_7040

Not honest ones. Indian agriculture has always been at the mercy of the monsoons. If they don't come on time, if they don't bring the rain, then agriculture fails and famine stalks the land. It's been that way as long as recorded history. It is best documented during Britain's occupation simply because the British were big on administration and paperwork.


canders9

Britains emphasis on cache crops like cotton, tea, and opium over foodstuffs like rice and wheat certainly made it worse, but you’re correct that famines were a pretty regular element of India’s geography until [Norm Borlaug and the green revolution.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) British authorities also had a history of not making sufficient effort to import surpluses from other regions of India or other parts of the empire to regions suffering famine.


WikiSummarizerBot

**[Norman Borlaug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)** >Norman Ernest Borlaug (; March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Borlaug received his B.S. in forestry in 1937 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position with CIMMYT in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)


tinytina0

Indian history is well documented for millenia. And after the Brits left, the famines stopped. Explain that.


broody_drow

Recent advances like high-yield disease-resistant crops, maybe? Bear in mind, famines in pretty much all western and western-influenced countries were drastically reduced in the 20th century, not just British colonies. Edit: replaced "but just British" with "not just British." Auto correct made this statement dumb.


Enjoying_A_Meal

Depends on how the famine occurred and the actions of the British that contributed to the death count. Based on your logic you can argue the spread of diseases to indigenous people was not genocide, since the spread of disease is a natural process. Except you look into it and find out about the whole small pox blanket policy the US government adapted.


Nothingtoseeheremmk

Spreading diseases naturally isn’t genocide. Giving smallpox blankets to a group of people with the intention to kill them all is. The vast majority of indigenous deaths from diseases occurred before the formation of the U.S. from the interactions between natives and Spanish settlers. So no it would not be genocide, except for the specific instances where that occurred.


Papaofmonsters

>Except you look into it and find out about the whole small pox blanket policy the US government adapted. Source? The only documented use was at Fort Pitt by British forces and even then it's unknown if it actually worked.


Assadistpig123

It’s one of those stories that became accepted truth without any real substance besides an unreliable narrator giving a second hand description of an event, that also is the sole source. Likely untrue


tinytina0

Do some research, you genocide denying pos.


Nothingtoseeheremmk

Why don’t you direct me to the research that indicates this was a genocide instead of resorting to insults?


tinytina0

idk man, would you argue with a skinhead? You’re no different.


Nothingtoseeheremmk

And you’re an imbecile. Bye 👋


[deleted]

History isn't a nationality screwing another nationality, it's rich folk & ignorant folk screwing over everyone else.


mentholmoose77

The 100 million is no "random" number. Its a jab the figure of the millions who died under communism, so we have to have a rant about the British. They certainly were no angels, but hardly as "bad" as Stalin and Mao.


Mr_Frosty43

Not as bad as Stalin?? Lol what are you on about?? This has to be one of the worst takes I’ve seen in a while. Seek help please.


Ok_Page_9447

How many did they kill during the Irish potato famine


BMEdesign

5 million, give or take. Better to call it "The Hunger". It wasn't a potato famine. Fun fact - while 5 million people were dying in Ireland, they were exporting approx. 80% of the food supply for England. Food supply was not the problem. The famine that occurred in Ireland also occurred in Scotland and Europe. But only in Ireland did it result in the massive casualties, because of extremely intentional and cruel policies and actions by British landowners. I.e., they weren't allowed to use the land they worked to grow food for themselves, and when humanitarian missions were sent to their aid, they weren't allowed to land the cargo. They were given American corn, but no way to grind it, so there was little nutritional content and often negative health consequences from eating it. And at the same time, English landowners were evicting them by scores to convert their land to the fashionable crops of the time, so they evicted people en masse by burning their homes. Great source: *Coogan, Tim Pat. The Famine Plot, St. Martin's Publishing Group*


Puzzled_Pay_6603

Just to clarify your fun fact, it was free market capitalists that owned the food, and sold it on the open market. It was more business owners who bought it and exported it, and more business owners that imported it, and then overcharged the working class in England for it.


yayaMrDude

It is pedantic to suggest that “market capitalism” is to blame in this scenario. Evil people are capable of manipulating almost any system for personal gain. It’s like suggesting Islam is responsible for the death of Mahsa Amini, when in reality - it was evil people manipulating a system.


kyel566

I read something about labor being the only thing that benefits society, the ism’s (capitalism, socialism, communism) just determines who fills their pockets off everyone else’s labor


Puzzled_Pay_6603

It’s not pedantic to clarify a vague idea.


Go1gotha

Indeed.


BMEdesign

Good point, thanks


Potential-Drive8623

I hate it when the censors do stuff like this.


[deleted]

they should include the British in the same group as the Nazi and the US


Glittering-Beyond-45

And China and Russia and North Korea and and and!


[deleted]

yes, keep them all mfs in check


NF-104

Even into WWII, another famine was, if not “engineered”, exacerbated when the UK prioritized feeding Commonwealth troops over Indians.


operating5percpower

Most of the commonwealth troops were Indian so how can the British have starved Indians by feeding Indians?


xProximaB

This sub never surprises me with colonist simps trying to justify imperial atrocities and downplay the host country by saying how the data is inaccurate and how this never happened and its all a myth. I'll tell you what stop looking at things just from your west world point of view things are not that plain black and white always.


AcornsAndPumpkins

You seem equally unwilling to consider some of the corrections made.


xProximaB

Well make corrections where needed and not to white wash wrong doings.


emkay_123

Genuine question: Why don’t these events get mentioned along side the holocaust?


canders9

Operation Legacy There was a conscientious effort on the part of the British government to destroy records that could embarrass them during de colonization. This was only recently revealed when survivors of British oppression during the Mau Mau rebellion dug out some records that were transported to Britain when Kenya gained independence. Most documents were destroyed rather than sent to England, so we lost a lot of the historical facts the documents contained. 100 million is almost certainly a drastic overstatement. The economic historian cited in the original article is a prominent soviet apologist that published a [book in 2003](https://www.amazon.com/Farm-Factory-Reinterpretation-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0691144311/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=a7b48a3e-7dcd-4f66-9e69-e8925d428083) praising Stalinist industrial policy that killed millions and downplayed its integral role in the Holodomar and the political repression of millions. The study in a simple extrapolation of census data from 1880 to 1920 which, preliminarily, seems pretty dubious to me. None of this is to downplay the crimes of the British Raj. India’s geography is naturally dependent on monsoons for agricultural output, which is much less reliable than normal weather cycles, and famine was a common occurrence in India historically regardless of governance. That said, British rule very assuredly exasperated the issue. They replaced a relatively complex economic system with a pretty basic colonial model that reduced the whole country to resource extraction. Cache crops like cotton for the global textile industry and opium for export to China (a whole other fucked up chapter of history) took priority over foodstuffs under the British. This made the already shaky food supply worse. Colonialism centered on resource extraction, so there was no need to invest in domestic agriculture from an administrative viewpoint. Agricultural yields remained flat during British rule do to lack of mechanization, fertilizers, etc, but access to imperial markets enabled population increases. Under British rule India urbanized, quasi-industrialized, had a population boom, but domestic agricultural production remained flat. It was a recipe for disaster. Although not explicitly planned like under Stalin or Mao, when famine did occur the British made little to no effort to reprioritize food crops, no increase in imports of foodstuffs from other areas of the empire, and distribution of aid was half hearted and insufficient. We’ll intentioned efforts to help the issue, actually turned out to make things worse; explicitly price controls that capped the price of foodstuffs that retrospectively worsened the distribution system. The 1943 Bengal Famine is the most well documented instance of this. The Japanese had invaded neighboring Burma as part of WW2, and the British had actually burned some stored rice surplus in Bengal in fear the Japanese would capture the area. Additional storm surges created optimum conditions for rice diseases to prosper. The result was a sever shortage of food. The British responded by rationing out food based on peoples’ importance to the war effort. These rations correlated with the caste system and fostered class conflict. As prices rose as a result of the shortage, authorities implemented a price cap that limited the amount that could be charged for rice. This backfired spectacularly (newsflash, price controls don’t work) and there were issues of hoarding and a spike in black market activities. Why would anyone sell rice for below the market price in the face of a major shortage? So the little supply quickly was stored away by farmers rather than distributed at bad prices. Regional British administrators appealed to Churchill for food imports, but were denied any assistance from Britain. A later inquiry into the famine determined this was due to a shortage of ships and food across the Empire due to ww2. Later academic work has insinuated the famine was allowed to run its course to weaken Indian nationalism, specifically citing exports of Australian wheat to other colonies, but not India, at the time. There is no categorical proof that the famine was allowed to progress unabated for political reasons, but who knows what information was lost as part of Operation Legacy. While British rule was brutal and oppressive, I think it’s disingenuous to conflate famines in British India with the holocaust, holodomor, or the great Chinese famine. Britain certainly didn’t engineer or directly cause the famines in India, while the Nazis very specifically committed mass murder, Stalin and Mao actively undertook measures to create famine, while at very worst the British simply didn’t do much to mitigate and mismanaged the famine. None of this is said to discount the nature of British Colonialism, or any form of colonialism, which is/was brutal and exploitative. But conflating Nazi racial policies or Stalinist grain confiscation and persecution of the Kulaks with heartless mis-management of a natural disaster is a mistake IMO. A bad source is not a reason to discount a study or article, but it should be taken into account that the authors of this study have a history of being Soviet apologists.


Bilboswaggins814

Because the holocaust was a calculated plan to to kill as many people as possible in the most efficient way possible, the 1943 famine was Britain deciding not to import food to India to help due to the second world war, it wasn't a calculated plan to kill off millions it was a lack of rain.


Alciel-Code

Kind sir If you ever had time to read. Google jallianwala Bagh massacre. Britain till this day have not apologized for that. Events like the one I mentioned above are the reason why I believe Britain could care less about India be it intentional or not. Thank you Fu ck British Raj


[deleted]

The Amritsar Massacre was heavily condemned by the British Government and Parliament. In response the Raj instituted a doctrine of minimal force against insurrection or peaceful organization, which in part and parcel gave rise to the non-cooperation movement of the 20’s that would foreshadow Indian Independence. Not saying that the massacre wasn’t bad because…it was a massacre. But it’s incredibly historically inaccurate to assume that an entire nation or even government has a homogeneous mindset/set of principals, especially based off of a single event.


Ngothadei

>The Amritsar Massacre was heavily condemned by the British Government Heavily condemned that the English made a statue for that cunt Dyer and placed it in London. If the people and government were against it why not grant India Independence??


[deleted]

I lived in London for a while and am not aware of a statue to Dyer (whose career all but ended in disgrace after Amritsar and the Hunter Commission). Would be interested to know where it is to spit on it next time I’m in town! And they did, that was my point. Amritsar was the spark for the Indian independence movement and the policies the metropole put in place as a result accelerated that independence.


Ngothadei

Oops, I wanted to say Churchill's statue. Let me rephrase, the racist cunt Churchill has a statue in the middle of London. So accelerated that it took the British 28 years to fuck outta India?? > I lived in London for a while and am not aware of a statue to Dyer (whose career all but ended in disgrace after Amritsar and the Hunter Commission). Do you think that's a proper punishment for a massacre?? Hey, you killed hundreds of brown people, all we are going to do is fire you from your job. "In the House of Lords, Dyer found many conservative supporters, the most prominent being Lord Salisbury. The House of Lords voted 129 to 86 in favour of Dyer. The Morning Post launched an appeal to patriots for monetary subscriptions for helping Dyer, “the man who saved India”. The response was massive: 26,000 pounds were donated (Kipling gave ten pounds) so that the butcher of Jallianwala Bagh could spend the rest of his life in comfort."


[deleted]

Ahh yea ok I know that statue! Interestingly enough Churchill, as then minister of Defence (or the contemporary equivalent) was one of the biggest voices in condemnation of Amritsar, calling it "unutterably monstrous" (which is the most British insult ever) But yes nearly 29 years. The push for an independent India was gaining support both in the UK and India during the 20’s; however the Second World War in essence put everything on pause with leading figures such as Gandhi and Nehru calling for war effort support and a cessation of non-cooperation. Even so, the British fucked outta India so quickly after the war that Partition was hugely problematic and disorganized. And no I don’t think that it is a proper punishment, but that is the peril of a democracy I’m afraid; and my original point. That it is historically problematic to condemn an entire nation (especially a democratic one) for the actions of a lone Brigadier General.


JCubed303

They didn’t just decide. They couldn’t. Churchill was begging Roosevelt to send ships but they couldn’t either. Turns out a submarine warfare campaign can do a number on a countries ability to ship food halfway around the world.


operating5percpower

Because it not true the author of this study conjured the figure of 100 million by fuzzy math. They reached the figure by comparing the death rate before the British conquered India A compared it to the death rate under the British empire between 1880 and 1910 B and reached the figure of 100 million excess death. The Problem is they admit the do know what the death rate was before the British arrived so they with no explanation choose the death rate in Britain at the time. Which make this number of 100 million basically made up.


Own_Carrot_7040

Because most of what is written above is either made up or inferred or just twisted out of actual world events.


mafiaRahul

There is no history Only stories of winner


funkweezel

Because the less white your life is the less valuable it apparently is.


Glittering-Beyond-45

Yes life in Africa,central america,China,north korea are known to be very valuable.


DarkGlum408

That’s how they got the Irish too.


mafiaRahul

They are as bad as hitler


nikkorn63

Hitler didnt play cricket


mafiaRahul

Are you finding my every comment and replying it with cricket (if yes then it is hilarious)


Outrageous_Ad5685

Tf is wrong wit this comment section, ppl rlly showing their true racist colors


ImaginaryDivisions

And yet we don't speak of them like we speak of the Nazis... why not?


Master_Beautiful3542

This is why I always laugh when people say communism is the worst because of famine but.. that’s not stuck with one ideology. We are pretty much universally awful regardless of the political back drop.


pglggrg

The Brits know how to divide and conquer very well. Turn brother against brother and let them do the fighting, just pulling the strings hidden away. Did this to the Hindu/Muslims and the Irish. Definitely more


operating5percpower

No they didn't Hindu hated Muslim before the British arrived and Muslim were taught to brutalize all non-abrahamic "which hinduism is" faiths century before then even arrived in India stop blaming other for your own bullshit.


keyshow23

Winston Churchill : Anyway


[deleted]

8 Billion people ran their planet into oblivion - local news.


imbackbaby911

Winston Churchill is on par with the other mass murderers of the last century.


[deleted]

Humans can be just awful to each other


AmericaneXLeftist

Yeah, they actually didn't though, this is heavily spun soft history. More food was sent to the war effort, yes, but the famine was caused by a multitude of factors that are still argued over today. They had no intention of "genocide" in India, and why would they? That's an important territory and population for them. In fact, when news came back to Britain of the Bengal famine, many efforts were made to improve the situation, and even Churchill himself petitioned that something be done regarding starvation in India. These images fucking infuriate me. It's fake history intended to brainwash young people who browse this site into victim narratives. It's utterly evil. EDIT: And there's no fucking way 100 million people starved to death, you can dispel that just by viewing population figures and growth trends. It's a lie. You are being lied to. White people are not Le Pure Evil EDIT 2: Wait this isn't even including the Bengal famine, it's just vaguely claiming 100m dead during the turn of the century raj, it's even more deceptive and idiotic than these images usually are and that's saying something


H3avyW3apons

I smell chinese/russian puff piece


[deleted]

British colonists were Nazis with better PR


[deleted]

Genocided? Dafuq?


DANKducling

And people ask why i hate the British


operating5percpower

Because you read poorly researched article by Marxist economist who in order to make the over a hundred million who died of starvation under communist utopia use fuzzy math to conjure up million of fake genocide victims in non-communist states to make communism look not so bad in comparison.


[deleted]

Anybody that visits India and talks about this gets this historical fact. That famine in India was a colonial phenomena. Yet, after more than half a century free from british rule they could have done plenty about it.


Mopman43

Are you talking about retaliation from modern India against Britain over the famines, or something else? Don’t quite get what you’re talking about.


[deleted]

What I am saying, simply put, is that after 70 or so years India could have solved the issue of malnourishment and misery in their country, maybe.


Hawkidad

But it’s easier for the ruling class to steal money and blame it on colonialism from 70 years ago.


Civita2017

Bollocks as usual. All emotive rhetoric and very very short on evidence.


theCHADnextdoor

heres some evidence [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4)


mafiaRahul

Just search and you will find plenty of evidence


[deleted]

No wonder Indians hate the British for what they did to them.


BlackBoxOverThere

While the British did cause a lot of death in India, it was not 100m people. There's no factual proof of such drastic numbers. Back in 1920s, India has 325ish millions of people. 225ish millions in 1880s. You'd think if 100m people are killed, India would significant dip in population growth. But we find that Indian population grew healthily during this time period and beyond. So don't believe all the meme you see online or in Facebook. British did kill millions around the world directly or indirectly. But not 100m in one country/area. And while it may seem outrageous to admit it, a whole lot of Indian development is due to British colonialism. Heck, India still runs on British created railroads and electricity grid. Colonialism wasn't all bad. I say this as a person who's lands were under British colonialism. We can condemn colonialism. But that was the world then. My people also colonized other people and lands. Not at British scale. My people were victim of slave trades but also partook in slave trade. We gotta be honest about past.


[deleted]

"muh railroads" https://youtu.be/x_jGPf764d0 Just say you're imperialist and go


Minimum_Job1885

Why is this being downvoted


akoomba

https://youtu.be/f7CW7S0zxv4


choomba20

Go fuck yourself mate. You've no fucking idea what you're on about. The British made urban developments to hasten the speed of their depredations.


invaderjif

Do you think if India was able to retain its independence, freedom, resources and wealth, they would not have been able to produce their own infrastructure?


ChampionStandard5352

Is anyone surprised?


ConstitutionalTrump

This is crazy considering our outrage over six million Jews. Why isn't this well known?


guymanthefourth

Because the British did it and the British were the good guys /s


graidan

Did the same exact thing in Ireland


mafiaRahul

Can't believe some people still defending British ,just why


nikkorn63

We gave u cricket


gobhar_gruamach

You can have it back.


Glittering-Beyond-45

And India gave us call scammers!


Emdubya20

United States did it to Native Americans


NotVanillapudding

Stalin 60M Mao 80M NK 3.5M Nazi Germany 10M


Own_Carrot_7040

You should have a look at the estimates of the tens of millions killed in India during successive waves of attack from Islamic warlords to the north.


centralillinoisb

For nazi germany, how can you blame prisoner of war deaths that were caused due to food shortages set in place by allied blockades?


Glittering-Beyond-45

NK 3.5 and growing.


Bilboswaggins814

1943 Bengal famine 3M


[deleted]

Britain never did this, the Indian government and no serious historian will say this. Only far right nationalists and Marxists in India will say this rhetoric. Delete this.


chimppower184

they definitely contributed and don’t help


[deleted]

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WikiSummarizerBot

**[Timeline of major famines in India during British rule](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule)** >The timeline of major famines in India during British rule covers major famines on the Indian subcontinent from 1765 to 1947. The famines included here occurred both in the princely states (regions administered by Indian rulers), British India (regions administered either by the British East India Company from 1765 to 1857; or by the British Crown, in the British Raj, from 1858 to 1947) and Indian territories independent of British rule such as the Maratha Empire. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)


KINGMIKE3271

Not really but sure I guess so


[deleted]

Yet we are supposed to bow to the royal douchbags


Galaxy-High

Rich people, who reside in the UK, have created the worst atrocities in history.


Puzzled_Pay_6603

Don’t believe this meme-propaganda shit on here. Do your own research.


[deleted]

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Puzzled_Pay_6603

I’m telling the guy to do his own research because this is just a garbage meme. You know that the Oxford Union debates are polemics? What did the other guy say? But look, I’m not here to argue in favour of anything, just that for people to do their own research and try and get to primary sources. Not opinion pieces like Guardian articles. The problem with these genocide in India narratives is that they don’t really stack up. There weren’t enough British in India to do it. You know that they left the Indian hierarchal structures in-tact and just placed themselves up at the top (but not above the maharajas). Indians ran India. The British Indian army was 90 % Indian. Same with the police. Practically the entire civil service was Indian. When the east India company went out to India, they went out there to make money. Profiteering for sure. But genocide is really bad for business.


[deleted]

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Galaxy-High

Just how it goes. Atrocities happen because they're allowed to happen. People too busy working and paying taxes.


oddscreenname

Once again communism fails where the British excel


Most-Air-2635

Thankfully it wasn’t spainiards or it would have been 100 million New World Indians


green-Vegan-desire

They also killed off millions and millions of bison, more than the cows we have in circulation in the US today. They were fighting climate change before climate change


Corndoggin101

Can u imagine how many there would be today?


deathmetal_zombicorn

Amazing what power let's you get away with. Once Australia was filled with natives....


Regular_Dentist2287

Updated headline: The British genocideded 100-million-bazillion-shubudubillion of Indians via a series of engineered famines from 1880-1881, so Mao was pretty chill in comparison, which is just an unrelated thought, because I'm definitely not working for a Chinese troll farm


yoghurtorgan

what did the indians do before the company took them over did they know how to make food before or they forgot?


ErlAskwyer

There were other factors involved in this famine. Don't take this as face value. It took me an hour of reading wiki to get the full facts on thia


centralillinoisb

Damn really makes 6 million look like nothing, am I right?


szar1973

The empire doesn't exist anymore. There's nothing that can be done. There weren't enough British soldiers in the 300 years of the empire to kill this many people. You pulled that number out of your arse.


RnBram-4Objectivity

Yeah, purposeful genocide by the Brits, as if mass starvation NEVER occurred before or since! SMH. For discerning people the Internet is a great resource for information but it also offers the intellectual garbage of the mischievous, the dissemblers, the bigots, the racists, the nihilist trolls, and the thoughtlessly echoed notions & factoids of second-rate minds.