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The Greedy Company That Starved Millions Of People For Profit | Time Travels
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Apr 12, 2025
In the early 1800s, the East India Company caused a famine in Bengal that killed millions of people. This video tells the story of the famine and its effects on the people of Bengal. Subscribe to Time Travels Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTZNAGQxEW1NrZHtK6aAqw?sub_confirmation=1 In the late 18th century, the East India Company caused a devastating famine in Bengal, India. With its profits earned from trade in spices, the company was able to withhold food shipments from the region, provoking a food crisis that killed millions. Although the East India Company was founded with the intention of promoting commerce, it ultimately caused great harm to the people of Bengal. In this video, we explore the history of the East India Company and its role in causing the famine of 1770. We also discuss the implications of this tragedy on the people of Bengal today. More Time Travels With Michael Brady: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaMfiT0fYh94DmwcZIV8CYNT3gNuL37gn Journey through time to uncover amazing, dramatic and bizarre stories from the past - but also ask the questions, what does it look like now? And what if things had happened differently? From ancient Rome and colonial Australia, to Victorian era London, early-settler New Zealand and beyond - come with us as we uncover the the pivotal turning points in history that changed the destiny of empires and transformed our world. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/historytimetravels/ Snapchat: https://story.snapchat.com/p/cc960ce1-9281-4450-b815-654114302d99/827084423782400 #History #TimeTravels #MikeBrady #Historylesson
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0:00
The modern image of the British Empire is one of colonial governors loyal to their monarch
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ruling over foreign lands and spreading their culture, religion and people by force
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It's a brutal image, but the fact of the matter is that the early empire was in many ways far worse
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The first of the empire's colonies and its later control of the whole of India
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did not just stem from a sense of superiority or a perceived divine destiny to rule the world
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it was fuelled by private companies with far too much power protected by the state
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The largest and richest of these companies was the British East India Company
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that would, in the name of profit, destroy what had been the world's most prosperous region
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and rule over millions as a brutal corporate overlord. It was not guided by political or philosophical ideology
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Its goal was to make money and to make as much as possible as quickly as possible
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There was simply nothing except profit and those that stood in the way of it
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In the end, some 7 to 10 million people would die in a famine caused by the company
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It's a cautionary tale of unchecked corporate greed. Hello, time travellers. I'm your friend Mike Brady
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This is the story of the British East India Company and how millions of people died needlessly for it
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On the 24th of September 1599, a meeting was held at the Founders' Hall in London
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and petitioned Queen Elizabeth for the right to trade in the East
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One year later, the East India Company was granted a royal charter, giving the monopoly over the Eastern spice trade for 15 years
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In their founding document, they proudly proclaimed the company's goal was to further the honour of our native country
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and for the advancement of trade and merchandise within the realm of England
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It was a fairly benign beginning for a company that would go on to rule and ravage a subcontinent in the name of profit
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For centuries to come, the lives of millions and the wealth of a nation would be controlled by a handful of men in a small office
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only five windows wide in London. The East India Company was initially created to trade with the Indonesian islands
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but they had certain rights that would be alien to a modern company. Their royal charter granted them the right to wage war if it would ease trade, and also allowed piracy
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In fact, the first voyage undertaken was intended to bring back spice to England
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but they just ended up stealing spice from a Dutch vessel. There were some successful voyagers at first
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but the trouble for the company came in the form of Dutch control over the Spice Islands
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With the Netherlands in control of the region, the British soon found themselves mostly shut out of the spice trade
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Despite this, they quickly found out that there was real money available in India
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After defeating the Portuguese, the company was awarded the right to trade in Bengal in 1612 by the Mughal Emperor
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He had unknowingly just signed the death warrant of his own empire
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The company quickly took advantage of India's massive textile industry, transporting Indian goods back to Europe and selling them at a huge markup
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This made the East India Company a fixture of the English and later British economy and laid the foundation for its future conquests
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Meanwhile, India was prospering. Before the rule of the East India Company, it's estimated that India produced one quarter of the world's entire GDP, while Britain sat at around 2%
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The Mughal Empire ruled most of the subcontinent as a single state, with the majority of the
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world textiles and cottons being produced there and mostly exported through ports in Gujarat These were luxury products at the time and the East India Company was able to make a fortune from the trade between Britain and India by buying massive amounts of Indian textiles to
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resell. In 1600, the Mukhal Emperor was making around £100 million a year from trade, making him
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by far the richest monarch in the world. A missionary in India at the time, Antonio Montserrat
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declared that India's cities were second to none either in Asia or Europe
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with regards to size, population or wealth. It was clear that the company had no hope of taking Indian land or wealth by force
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and so for the first century or so of its existence, the company was simply another trading group operating in the region
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There were brief conflicts between the company and the Mukhal Empire, but the company found itself quickly outmatched in every engagement
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the Mughals were firmly in control of India, though the company was able to establish trading posts out on the coast
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Calcutta would become the most important of these, and it was from here that Bengal would fall under company control
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Though things were stable in India when the company had arrived in the 1600s
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by 1707 the Mughal Emperor was dead, and his unpopular son had just taken the throne
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Revolts across the empire sprung up, and regions declared their independence. The empire had a period of decline, and the company was not going to let such an opportunity go to waste
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The superiority that had once been enjoyed by the Indians was now gone
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and as always, there was money to be made. Private armies were soon recruited from the Indians and the employ of the company
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By 1800, the numbers of troops under the command of the East India Company
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was double the numbers that stood in the British Army itself. The European wars fought in the early 1700s led to the company taking control of French trading
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posts in India, furthering its own power and cementing the company as a military force in its
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own right. The company began selling its forces as mercenaries to the various Indian states
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each trying to secure independence and territory from the others. The company was usually paid in
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land for this assistance, and the territories that had once been small trading posts were now vast
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and wealthy swathes of land. By 1756, Calcutta had a population of over 200,000
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ruled over entirely by the East India Company. In 1757, with the help of the French
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the rulers of Bengal attempted to remove the British from the region. The British, however, under the leadership of Baron Robert Clive
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known as Clive of India, defeated the Bengali force through bribery and military might
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at the Battle of Plassey. Now this was the last real effort to remove the company from Bengal, and the entire region had fallen under its sway
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After the Battle of Plassey, the company had secured its position in the country
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However, they weren't there to rule over the land, they were there to make money
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Which is why the East India Company then stole the treasury of Bengal
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They loaded the entire wealth of the government into barges and floated it to Calcutta
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from where it was then listed as company profit. Clive himself took a large portion of the wealth and became the single richest self-made man in Europe
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Not a bad outcome for old Clive. In August 1765, the Mukhal Emperor Shah Alam was defeated in battle
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and forced to sign the Treaty of Allahabad by Clive. The treaty forced the emperor to dismiss the tax collectors in Bengal
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Bihar and Orissa and replaced them with East India Company officials. Clive had effectively forced the privatization of the Bengal tax office
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This was not the British government that was collecting taxes it was the company In exchange for the right to tax the wealthiest province in the world the company had to pay a small tribute to the Mukhal Emperor every year
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British merchants and tax collectors spread throughout Bengal and began to engage in practices that were little better than shakedowns
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One European traveller said that a European visiting the upper parts of the Ganges
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finds mere robbers in charge of company affairs who think nothing of committing the most atrocious acts of tyranny
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or subaltern thieves whose despicable villainy dishonours the British nation. So much wealth was taken from Bengal back to England
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that the word loot came to England from India and entered the English language as a description for the stolen goods
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One Mukhal government official said that Indians were tortured to disclose their treasures, cities, towns and villages ransacked
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their provinces purloined. These were the delights and religions of the directors and their servants
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Not only was the company looting Bengal for all it's worth, back home in London it was making liberal use of bribery
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to ensure that its position would never be threatened. When the Treaty of Allahabad was signed
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over a quarter of British MPs owned company stock and a great portion had accepted funding from the company
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This ensured that the interests of the company effectively became the interests of the British government
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even though the company itself remained a supposedly independent entity. Now, the situation in Bengal was tense, but was not quite catastrophic yet
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But then, things changed. Unfortunately, in 1769, the crucial monsoon season didn't come to Bengal
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Drought set in throughout the region, and rice crops failed in the land settled by the company
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By 1770, up to 70% of the rice crop had been lost, and famines set in across the region
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Even in Calcutta itself, up to 76,000 people died of starvation within the city
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with the streets across Bengal being blocked up by the promiscuous heaps of the dying and the dead
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While there were efforts from a few local administrators to help the people, there was no central policy to assist by importing food
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In that year alone, one in five Bengalis starved to death under the rule of the British East India Company
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Now, despite the obvious famine that was setting in throughout Bengal, the company was a for-profit entity
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and there was no reduction in the tax burden put upon the people of the region. In fact, the opposite occurred
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In response to this decline in productivity, the only way to maintain a healthy profit margin was to raise taxes
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So many of the officials of the company also used their personal wealth to buy up the little rice that was produced in order to sell it at a huge markup
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In the midst of the Bengal famine, over £1 million was sent home by the company executives
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as profits from wry speculation. All in all, the ruling council reported quite happily back to London in 1771
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that, quote, notwithstanding the great severity of the late famine and the great reduction of people thereby
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some increase in revenue has been made. Truly awful, awful stuff. A word of this sort of governance soon spread back to London, however
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and the response was one of horror. gentleman's magazine wrote in 1772 the east india company would inflict quote the same
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cruelties in this island which have disgraced humanity and deluged with native and innocent
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blood the plains of india down with that rump of unconstitutional power meanwhile writer horace
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walpole opined that quote we have outdone the spaniards in peru they were at least butchers
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on a religious principle alexander dow was a return company official who made a fortune in
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India only to condemn the company entirely upon his return to Britain He wrote that in the space of six years half the great cities of an opulent kingdom were rendered desolate the most fertile fields in the world laid waste
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and five millions of harmless and industrious people were either expelled or destroyed
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The Bengal carcass is now bleaching in the wind and is almost picked to the bone
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By the late 1780s, the British people and the government had had enough of this company
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had not only pillaged the people of Bengal, but had bribed its way through every level of British government
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to ensure that the company would not be bound by the same rules as other trading entities
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And the level of disgust that had radiated through Britain was now extreme
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Clive's successor, Warren Hastings, was put on trial in London on the 13th of February 1788
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for the crimes of looting and corruption. The prosecutor, Burke, declared that he had impeached Hastings
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in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he had dishonoured
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I impeach him, he said, in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights and liberties he has subverted
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whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid to waste
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I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice he has violated
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I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured and oppressed
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both sexes in every age, rank, situation and condition of life. Although Hastings himself was ultimately cleared of the charges
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the East India Company remained a national embarrassment until its nationalisation in 1857
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Nevertheless, it would continue to rule India for decades to come, expanding its control from Bengal to across virtually the entire subcontinent
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This would not be the end of Bengal's troubles, however. The systems that were put in place by the East India Company would remain even under the rule of the British government
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In 1943, another famine would come under much the same circumstances as the first
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Fields that had once grown food were shifted to cash crops, and a colonial regime ruled over the people as subjects
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When poor weather conditions arrived, food shortages ravaged the country, and the British government was unwilling to help
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Millions died. The centuries of suffering in Bengal might have begun with the British East India Company
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but unfortunately, they did not end with it. Today, the company has a peculiar sort of legacy
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It was mostly ignored in British history as simply a part of how the British came to rule India
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and its crimes had been overlooked. Clive became something of a national hero
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and his statue was built outside the British Foreign Office. Now, this is despite the fact that Clive of India was never even an employee of the British government
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Clive was always, first and foremost, a mercenary working for profit in the name of the East India Company
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Now, it's also worth bearing in mind that even to the people of the time, the company was seen as little more than a group of marauding thieves that ravaged the people it ruled over
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and corrupted the government of its own nation. It was a dreadful institution that committed atrocities in the name of money
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and serves as a valuable reminder of the dangers of unregulated corporate power
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In the end, the company was dissolved, but the market made on the Indian continent and its people could never truly be measured
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Hello time travellers, thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, leave a comment below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel
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Until next time, remember, history doesn't repeat, but it certainly echoes. Thank you
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