ABSTRACT
In 1783–1784 a famine of even greater dimensions afflicted India, but its worst effects were felt outside the Company’s jurisdiction. In Bengal the Company, conscious of its failure, was unduly nervous and placed an embargo on the export of grain. For another eighty years its famine policy was to be vacillating, unco-ordinated and sometimes doctrinaire, but no longer could it be accused of callousness. The Famine Commission, under General Sir William Strachey, laid down general principles of famine relief, and in 1883 these formed the basis of the Famine Code. The stern moralist theories which inspired the English Poor Law at that time necessarily governed policy in British India. The principal English accounts of this famine are collected in the Hakluyt edition of the Travels of Peter Mundy. In the fourteenth century Sultan Ala-ud-din of Delhi insisted on the payment of rent in kind in order to establish great granaries as a famine reserve.
