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orwintoday at 1:31 PM3 repliesview on HN

What's also interesting about the mongols and their inheritors (India's mughals especially) was how weird but effective their administration was. India knew around no global famines and very few local ones (none around the Bengal) in ~300 years of Mughal rule. In ~100 years of British rule, you had regular famines all around India, and some very harsh ones where millions of people died from hunger (which used to be more than extremely rare), including one in Bengal which never in its written history had ever suffered even a local one.


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mdanitoday at 3:53 PM

There were several great famines during the Mughal reign in India, for example, Peter Mundy, the English merchant and traveller, describes the great famine of Deccan and Gujrat. The Mughal rule was brutal. The European travellers have written about the plight of the farmers who rebelled due to excessive taxation despite the fear of punishment. The Mughals built towers of severed heads outside each village and even they were not able to quell the rebellion, such was the state of affairs. So I'd say the assumption you're making isn't true.

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ozgrakkurttoday at 1:41 PM

Western colonialism is a very high bar in terms of damage imo.

This subject really interesting to read, thank you for mentioning it!

Found this in case anyone is interested in reading about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India

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999900000999today at 5:12 PM

What's the saying, the Irish famine was caused by a parasite, known as the British.

Even if you can argue the British didn't deliberately cause famine over their subjects, they almost never took active steps to alleviate them.

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