[jmyeet]

You’re so close to the point but not quite there.

Famines are political. They happen because one population is happy to starve another. The Mughals ruled themselves. The British stole harvests for themselves and let the local population starve.

The potato famine in Ireland is treated as some kind of unavoidable, natural event. No, the British just stole the harvest. And this continued right up until Churchill in India.

So the Mughals might’ve been effective but the big difference is they weren’t being exploited as an imperial subject.

[phainopepla2]

> The Mughals ruled themselves

> So the Mughals might’ve been effective but the big difference is they weren’t being exploited as an imperial subject.

The Mughals were the imperium, ruling over their subjects. They came in to the subcontinent as outsiders, just like the British.