Singer situates his argument in a famine that began in 1971 in the former region of East Bengal, now a region of Bangladesh. The civil war that Singer refers to in the article as being one of the causes of the famine is the Bangladesh Liberation war, a revolution that was geared at liberating the Bengali people from the dominion of Pakistan. While the revolution was successful, in that it led to the formation of modern day Bangladesh, it caused the mass genocide of many Bengali civilians, leading to the starvation of many people. While Singer's seeks to alleviate world poverty in general, the circumstances occurring in Bengal spurred him to write "Famine, Affluence, and Morality".