Famine: A Short History

by Cormac Ó Gráda

Overview

Famine remains one of the worst calamities that can befall a society. Mass starvation--whether it is inflicted by drought or engineered by misguided or genocidal economic policies--devastates families, weakens the social fabric, and undermines political stability. Cormac Ó Gráda, the acclaimed author who chronicled the tragic Irish famine in books like Black '47 and Beyond, here traces the complete history of famine from the earliest records to today.

Combining powerful storytelling with the latest evidence from economics and history, Ó Gráda explores the causes and profound consequences of famine over the past five millennia, from ancient Egypt to the killing fields of 1970s Cambodia, from the Great Famine of fourteenth-century Europe to the famine in Niger in 2005. He enriches our understanding of the most crucial and far-reaching aspects of famine, including the roles that population pressure, public policy, and human agency play in causing famine; how food markets can mitigate famine or make it worse; famine's long-term demographic consequences; and the successes and failures of globalized disaster relief. Ó Gráda demonstrates the central role famine has played in the economic and political histories of places as different as Ukraine under Stalin, 1940s Bengal, and Mao's China. And he examines the prospects of a world free of famine.

This is the most comprehensive history of famine available, and is required reading for anyone concerned with issues of economic development and world poverty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400829897
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/08/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Cormac ÓGráda is professor of economics at University College Dublin. His books include Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce (Princeton), Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory (Princeton), and Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780-1939.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables xi Acknowledgments xv

Chapter I: The Third Horseman 1
The Ultimate Check 8
Time and Place 13
How Common Were Famines in the Past? 25
Remembering Famine 39

Chapter II: The Horrors of Famine 45
Crime 52
Slavery 56
Prostitution, Infanticide, and Child Abandonment 59
Cannibalism 63

Chapter III: Prevention and Coping 69
Famine Foods 73
Country Misers and Calculating Merchants 78
Migration 81

Chapter IV: Famine Demography 90
Hierarchies of Suffering 90
How Many Died? 92
Gender and Age 98
Missing Births 102
What Do People Die of during Famines? 108
Long-term Impacts 121

Chapter V: Markets and Famines 129
Profiteers 129
French Économistes and Adam Smith 137
Markets and Famines in Practice 143
Transport 155
Conclusion 157

Chapter VI: Entitlements: Bengal and Beyond 159
Bengal 159
Food Supply and Market Failure 166
Winners and Losers 178
Conclusion 184

Chapter VII: Public and Private Action 195
Feeding the Starving 195
Means of Relief 210
Corruption 216
NGOs and the Globalization of Relief 218
Famine Relief as State Aid 225

Chapter VIII: The "Violence of Government" 229
War by Another Means 229
The USSR 233
The Chinese Famine of 1959-61 241
Ethiopia and North Korea 254

Chapter IX: An End to Famine? 259
Agricultural Trends 262
Climate and Desertification 269
Where Backwardness Persists 274
A Stitch in Time 278

References 283
Index 319

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This is a really fine contribution and delivers what it claims: a short account of the long history of famines in the world. Ó Gráda tells a well-integrated story, with excellent analytical content and empirical richness. This is an impeccably chiseled product by one of the world's leading famine analysts."—Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize-winning economist

"Ó Gráda tells an important story of the history of famine from earliest times until the present, and offers prognostications for the future. There is very little to rival this book. Famine is the most comprehensive short treatment of the subject available."—William Chester Jordan, author of The Great Famine

"This is an important book. Cormac Ó Gráda lays out a history of famine around the world and uses this to extract common themes around the causes, morphology, and consequences of and reactions to famine. Famine makes fascinating reading."—Peter Walker, Tufts University

"Original and important. The history of famine has not ended. Famine is relevant and timely."—Joachim von Braun, coauthor of Famine in Africa

Editorial Reviews

Author and University College Dublin economics professor Ó Gráda (Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce, Black '47 and Beyond) examines the causes of famine, from Biblical times to the present, in order to refute Parson Malthus' still-influential 1798 contention that unchecked population growth leads to famine. In case after case, (the Great Irish famine of the late 1840s, the Nazi blockade of Leningrad, etc.), Ó Gráda finds price spikes, crop failures, climate change, floods, droughts, civil strife and other factors behind devastating food shortages. While the effects of famine are horrible-including not just mass sickness and death but infanticide and child abandonment-the corresponding population decrease reverses relatively quickly, as compared to the effects of chronic malnutrition (associated to higher long term death rates and reduced fertility). History shows that famines "have nearly always been a hallmark of economic backwardness" rather than overpopulation, and Ó Gráda expresses "tempered optimism" that famines will continue a pattern of decline. This persuasive argument for global development is intricate enough to satisfy policy wonks but written with a larger audience in mind.
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Publishers Weekly

"Famine . . . has a good mix of detail and overview. As an accessible multidisciplinary survey, it may be useful to specialists—historians, social scientists, development workers, economists—as well as lay readers."

Danny Reviews

"This is an excellent book for any student, researcher, or policy maker interested in famine, food scarcity, or hunger."

Choice

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009

From the Publisher

"And as Ó Gráda notes in a lengthy case study, even the people of a country prone to famine, Bengalis, were, in one of their worst famines, the 'unwitting, colonial casualties of a struggle not of their making—that against fascism.' And however distant that past may seem as markets grow ever more integrated and crisis response ever more rapid, Ó Gráda warns that without peace and good governance, we will never have a famine free world."

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