Colonialists used starvation as a tool of oppression

Don’t Call Me Resilient

In today's episode, we're continuing the conversation we started last week about using forced famine as a tool to control land, resources and people. For centuries, starvation has been effectively used by colonial powers to control populations, to acquire land and the wealth that comes with that. Today, we’re looking at the decimation of Indigenous populations in the Plains of North America –. and the 1943 famine that took three million lives in Bengal, India, which was then under British rule. These are two vastly different populations that were devastated by a complex set of factors. But both populations had a few things in common: they were thriving with healthy and wealthy communities. And although disease and famine existed before the arrival of Europeans, it cannot be denied colonial powers accelerated and even capitalized on chronic famine and the loss of life due to disease and malnutrition. Through these two examples, Vinita looks at how starvation has been used as a tool in the colonial "playbook." She is joined by James Daschuk, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina and the author of Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. And Janam Mukherjee is an Associate Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan University, and the author of Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire.