Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
The horrors of the Great Famine (1315-1322), one of the severest catastrophes ever to strike northern Europe, lived on for centuries in the minds of Europeans who recalled tales of widespread hunger, class warfare, epidemic disease, frighteningly high mortality, and unspeakable crimes. Until now, no one has offered a perspective of what daily life was actually like throughout the entire region devastated by this crisis, nor has anyone probed far into its causes. Here, the distinguished historian William Jordan provides the first comprehensive inquiry into the Famine from Ireland to western Poland, from Scandinavia to central France and western Germany. He produces a rich cultural history of medieval community life, drawing his evidence from such sources as meteorological and agricultural records, accounts kept by monasteries providing for the needy, and documentation of military campaigns. Whereas there has been a tendency to describe the food shortages as a result of simply bad weather or else poor economic planning, Jordan sets the stage so that we see the complex interplay of social and environmental factors that caused this particular disaster and allowed it to continue for so long.
Jordan begins with a description of medieval northern Europe at its demographic peak around 1300, by which time the region had achieved a sophisticated level of economic integration. He then looks at problems that, when combined with years of inundating rains and brutal winters, gnawed away at economic stability. From animal diseases and harvest failures to volatile prices, class antagonism, and distribution breakdowns brought on by constant war, northern Europeans felt helplessly besieged by acts of an angry God--although a cessation of war and a more equitable distribution of resources might have lessened the severity of the food shortages.
Throughout Jordan interweaves vivid historical detail with a sharp analysis of why certain responses to the famine failed. He ultimately shows that while the northern European economy did recover quickly, the Great Famine ushered in a period of social instability that had serious repercussions for generations to come.
1322), one of the severest catastrophes ever to strike northern Europe, lived on for centuries in the minds of Europeans who recalled tales of widespread hunger, class warfare, epidemic disease, frighteningly high mortality, and unspeakable crimes. Until now, no one has offered a perspective of what daily life was actually like throughout the entire region devastated by this crisis, nor has anyone probed far into its causes. Here, the distinguished historian William Jordan provides the first comprehensive inquiry into the Famine from Ireland to western Poland, from Scandinavia to central France and western Germany. He produces a rich cultural history of medieval community life, drawing his evidence from such sources as meteorological and agricultural records, accounts kept by monasteries providing for the needy, and documentation of military campaigns. Whereas there has been a tendency to describe the food shortages as a result of simply bad weather or else poor economic planning, Jordan sets the stage so that we see the complex interplay of social and environmental factors that caused this particular disaster and allowed it to continue for so long. Jordan begins with a description of medieval northern Europe at its demographic peak around 1300, by which time the region had achieved a sophisticated level of economic integration. He then looks at problems that, when combined with years of inundating rains and brutal winters, gnawed away at economic stability. From animal diseases and harvest failures to volatile prices, class antagonism, and distribution breakdowns brought on by constant war, northern Europeans felt helplessly besieged by acts of an angry God--although a cessation of war and a more equitable distribution of resources might have lessened the severity of the food shortages. Throughout Jordan interweaves vivid historical detail with a sharp analysis of why certain responses to the famine failed.
Customer Reviews:
The Great Famine.......2007-04-28
Read this for graduate history course in medieval history.
William Jordan Book is great as a source material book. Excellent scholar. One of the 1st Economic, environmental historicists. A Good multi disciplinary approach. His mortality numbers tend to be on the conservative side. A food shortage is when 1 staple is unavailable or food unavailable for 1 year. Those items people crave are more expensive but are attainable. Great Famine is a catastrophic failure of agriculture. All food groups fail items unavailable for any price. Because of famine, you get weir foods like acorn bread, awful taste. 1315-22, does not affect Spain, Italy, Greece, and Scotland. Bad in Germany N. France, Scandinavia England, Ireland. 400,000sq. miles, 30 million people. Famine follows big population explosion 1100-1300. 1250 agricultural productivity is declining. As population increases technology in food production can't keep up. 3 field crop rotation means 1/3 of field is fallow. Harness technology goes to animal shoulder to increase productivity, better plough blades thus soil gets better aeration. Green manure is bean plants rich in nitrogen get plowed into ground, brown manure is animal and human waste. Cattle graze on land leaving droppings. 14 century animals not producing enough manure as #'s dwindle, Increase in population means more marginal land is being farmed not working out well, also means more calories burned working marginal land than being produced. Also means livestock have less land to graze on.
Page 12-13 Looks at David Arnolds 4 scenarios for the inset of famine. 1. Population numbers are higher than productive means. 2. Sustained failure of appropriate weather. 3. Problems of food distribution, from transportation and war. 4. Peasants not changing their growing methods to meet the problem. Jordan thinks the most troubling scenario is the last one.
We have good skeletal remains to show that their was a lot of bone problems from people working hard in the fields. Biggest cost for medieval people is food, 70% of income; housing is only 10% of income. When food in Paris increases 800% you know you will have food riots. No good social systems to deal with the problem. They ate their seed corn, grains, and rye susceptible to molds, and fungi poisoning people. Can't store grain for long periods of time, rats eat allot of grain in storage. There is no fallback for people agriculturally. Seeds produce 4 or 5 to 1. You get 4 seeds for 1 planted. Less animals means less manure. Chicken eggs are used to pay rent, chickens are the size of today's game hen's chickens get eaten fast.
Jordan says this won't happen today because we have global agriculture and world wide distribution system. Only happen in regions as political tool, like Darfur, or what Stalin did using food as a weapon. Long term suffering and starvation was more routine to these people's lives, did not affect them psychologically as the Black Death when you look at manuscript records. City people even send pirates out to take grain ships. Women survive better than men because they have more body fat.
Food hoarders, Jews as money lenders do not fair well with starving people going after them. Government starts to control food production like standardizing weight and size of bread loafs, some still do this today. Bread is important to people because of Eucharist. High prices cause a slow down of consumption, but it doesn't solve the problem. People will eat what you put in front of them. Stomachs will shrink.
Pigs survive best, they eat anything, rain doesn't bother them, they don't get rinderpest hooves don't rot. Cattle sheep get disease, sheep susceptible to cold. Horses stolen by the army. Short term 50% in herds, 75% drop long term. Wool income in England goes down. Who profits? Salt producers, need salt to make dairy products like cheese and to salt meat to preserve it. They use a lot of forest wood to make salt because they steam seawater. Some Lords and Abbots make profits. Many church lands are sold off, peasants are able to buy it cheap for those that have money, and some do, this makes them landed gentry in next century. Charity fails. Church can't run soup kitchens any more, but they do make money running a form of nursing home. Beggars increase, people turn to strange diets, roots, dirt, bark, shoes, etc.
Grains are known as cereals, British historians call grains corn not the same as Maze which we call corn. Corn is New World crop.
Primary cereal grain is wheat, high in gluttons, protein 13% in white bread, very desirable, for aristocracy. Easier to chew, 35-50% grain milled out of it. Average monastic person gets 2500-3000 calories, one of the better diets of the time. Rich eat no fruits because of sin of fruit from Tree of Knowledge. Peasant 2000-2200 calories, subsistence living. They are living on the margins. Livestock of the time smaller by 40%, people are smaller average height 5' 6". Protein intake is reason for this. Rickets, scurvy all problems. Cabbage only source of vitamin C for most Europeans. Pigs last longest since they eat anything.
1320-1330 2nd worst cold period in middle ages, 1310-1320 2nd worst time for excessive rains. 1314 bad rains in Summer in Germany. 1315 Baltic salt sea freezes over. All Rivers in Europe freeze over. This persists until 1322 in Baltic of that year snow stays on the ground all year round. Wars make things worse for people. People psychologically spooked by increase in meteor and comet activity.
The Great Famine of 1315-1317 (or to 1322) was the first of a series of large-scale crises that struck Europe early in the 14th century, causing millions of deaths over an extended number of years and marking a clear end to an earlier period of growth and prosperity during the 11th through 13th centuries. Starting with bad weather in the spring of 1315, universal crop failures lasted through 1316 until the summer of 1317; Europe did not fully recover until 1322. It was a period marked by extreme levels of criminal activity, disease and mass death, infanticide, and cannibalism. It had consequences for Church, State, European society and future calamities to follow in the 14th century.
Famine in the Medieval European context meant that people died of starvation on a massive scale. As brutal as they were, famines were familiar occurrences in Medieval Europe. As an example, localized famines occurred in France during the 14th century in 1304, 1305, 1310, 1315-1317 (the Great Famine), 1330-1334, 1349-1351, 1358-1360, 1371, 1374-1375 and 1390. In England, the most prosperous kingdom affected by the Great Famine, there were famines in 1315-1317, 1321, 1351, 1369, and more. For most people there was usually never enough to eat and life was a relatively short and brutal struggle to survive to old age, which might mean as young as 30 years old. According to official records of the British Royal family, the best off in society, the average life expectancy in 1276 was 35.28 years. Between 1301 and 1325 during the Great Famine, it was 29.84 while between 1348-1375 during the Plague it went to 17.33.
The Great Famine was restricted to Northern Europe, from Russia in the east to Ireland in the west, from Scandinavia in the north and bounded in the south by the Alps and the Pyrenees. During the Medieval Warm Period (the period prior to 1350) the population of Europe had exploded, reaching levels that were not matched again in some places until the 19th century (parts of France today are less populous than at the beginning of the 14th century). However, the yield ratios of wheat (the number of seeds one could eat per seed planted) had been dropping since 1280 and food prices had been climbing. In good weather the ratio could be as high as 7:1, while during bad years as low as 2:1--that is, for every seed planted, two seeds were harvested, one for next year's seed, and one for food. By comparison, modern farming has ratios of 200:1 or more.
However, there was one catastrophic dip in the weather during the Medieval Warm Period that coincided with the onset of the Great Famine. Between 1310 and 1330 northern Europe saw some of the worst and most sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers. Changing weather patterns, the ineffectiveness of medieval governments in dealing with crises and a population level at a historical high water mark made it a time when there was little margin for error.
Great Famine
In the spring of 1315, unusually heavy rain began in much of Europe. Throughout the spring and summer, it continued to rain and the temperature remained cool. Under these conditions grain could not ripen. Grain was brought indoors in urns and pots. The straw and hay for the animals could not be cured and there was no fodder for the livestock. The price of food began to rise. In England, food that had sold for 20 shillings in the spring sold for 40 shillings by June, doubling in price. Salt, the only way to cure and preserve meat, was difficult to obtain because it could not be evaporated in the wet weather; it went from 30 shillings to 40 shillings. In Lorraine, wheat prices grew by 320 percent, making bread unaffordable to peasants. Stores of grain for long-term emergencies were limited to the lords and nobles. Because of the general increased population pressures, even lower-than-average harvests meant some people would go hungry; there was little margin for failure. People began to harvest wild edible roots, plants, grasses, nuts, and bark in the forests.
There are a number of documented incidents that show the extent of the famine. Edward II, King of England, stopped at Saint Albans on August 10, 1315 and no bread could be found for him or his entourage; it was a rare occasion in which the King of England, the most prosperous nation in Europe, was unable to eat. The French, under Louis X, tried to invade Flanders, but being in the low country of the Netherlands, the fields were soaked and the army became so bogged down they were forced to retreat, burning their provisions where they left them, unable to carry them out.
In the spring of 1316, it continued to rain on a European population deprived of energy and reserve to sustain itself. All segments of society from nobles to peasants were affected, most of all the peasants, who represented 95% of the population and who had no safety nets. To provide some measure of relief, the future was mortgaged by slaughtering the draft animals; eating the seed grain; abandoning children to fend for themselves (see "Hansel and Gretel"); and, among old people, voluntarily refusing food in hopes of the younger generation surviving. The chroniclers of the time wrote of many incidents of cannibalism. The height of the famine was reached in 1317 as the wet weather hung on. Finally, in the summer the weather returned to its normal patterns. By now, however, people were so weakened by diseases such as pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis, and other sicknesses, and much of the seed stock had been eaten, that it was not until 1325 that the food supply returned to relatively normal conditions and the population began to increase again. Historians debate the toll but it is estimated that between 10%-25% of the population of many cities and towns died. While the Black Death (1338-1375) would kill more, for many the Great Famine was worse. While the plague swept through an area in a matter of months, the Great Famine lingered for years, drawing out the suffering of those who would slowly starve to death, face cannibalism, child-murder, and rampant crime.
Consequences
The famine is called the Great Famine not only because of the number of people who died, or the vast geographic area that was affected, or the length of time it lasted, but also because of the lasting consequences. The first consequence was for the Church. No amount of prayer seemed effective against the causes of the famine. In a society where the final recourse to all problems had been religion, no amount of prayer was helping and the famine undermined the institutional authority of the Catholic Church. This helped lay the foundations for later movements that were deemed heretical by the Church because they opposed the Papacy. Second was the increase in criminal activity. Medieval Europe in the 13th century had already been a violent culture where rape and murder were demonstrably more common than in modern times. With the famine even those who were not normally inclined to criminal activity would resort to any means to feed themselves or their family. After the famine, Europe took on a tougher and more violent edge; it had become an even less amicable place than during the 12th and 13th centuries. The effects of this could be seen across all segments of society, perhaps the most striking in the way warfare was conducted in the 14th century during the bloody 100 Years War, versus the 12th and 13th centuries when nobles were more likely to die by accident in tournament games than on the field of battle. Third was the failure of the medieval governments to deal with the crisis. Just as God seemed unable or unwilling to answer prayers, the earthly powers were equally ineffective, eroding and undermining their power and authority. Fourthly, the Great Famine marked a clear end to an unprecedented period of population growth that had started around 1050; although some believe this had been slowing down for a few decades already, there is no doubt the Great Famine was a clear end of high population growth. Finally, the Great Famine would have consequences for future events in the 14th century such as the Black Death when an already weakened population would be struck again.
Recommended reading for those interested in medieval history.
Book Description
In the mid-1990s, as many as one million North Koreans died in one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. The socialist food distribution system collapsed primarily because of a misguided push for self-reliance, but was compounded by the regime's failure to formulate a quick response-including the blocking of desperately needed humanitarian relief.
As households, enterprises, local party organs, and military units tried to cope with the economic collapse, a grassroots process of marketization took root. However, rather than embracing these changes, the North Korean regime opted for tentative economic reforms with ambiguous benefits and a self-destructive foreign policy. As a result, a chronic food shortage continues to plague North Korea today.
In their carefully researched book, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland present the most comprehensive and penetrating account of the famine to date, examining not only the origins and aftermath of the crisis but also the regime's response to outside aid and the effect of its current policies on the country's economic future. Their study begins by considering the root causes of the famine, weighing the effects of the decline in the availability of food against its poor distribution. Then it takes a close look at the aid effort, addressing the difficulty of monitoring assistance within the country, and concludes with an analysis of current economic reforms and strategies of engagement.
North Korea's famine exemplified the depredations that can arise from tyrannical rule and the dilemmas such regimes pose for the humanitarian community, as well as the obstacles inherent in achieving economic and political reform. To reveal the state's culpability in this tragic event is a vital project of historical recovery, one that is especially critical in light of our current engagement with the "North Korean question."
Amazon.com
The Irish famine of 1847 and 1848, when harvests failed and more than 3 million Irish died or were forced to emigrate, is one of the signal events of Irish history. The famine that devastated the country, notes Cormac Ó Gráda, professor of economics at University College, Dublin, was exceptional in its severity. "The cost in deaths of many highly publicized Third World famines in the recent past is modest by comparison," he writes, adding that real comparisons come only on the scale of China's catastrophic Great Leap Forward famine of 1959 to 1962 (when, Walter Becker alleges in Hungry Ghosts, 30 million Chinese died). The reason the Irish famine struck so hard, " Gráda argues, is that the Irish food supply was already tenuous; dispossessed from their land and made to rely on a single crop, the potato, the tenant agriculturists of Ireland simply had no resources or stores on which to fall back.
Important though the famine was to Ireland's history, Gráda notes, historians began to study it closely only in the last decade; in that time, dozens of books and monographs have been issued, amplifying a hitherto sparse literature. His scholarly book, heavily documented and full of statistics drawn from censuses and other demographic surveys, is itself a major contribution to historical writing on the subject. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Here Ireland's premier economic historian and one of the leading authorities on the Great Irish Famine examines the most lethal natural disaster to strike Europe in the nineteenth century. Between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the food source that we still call the Irish potato had allowed the fastest population growth in the whole of Western Europe. As vividly described in Ó'Gráda's new work, the advent of the blight phytophthora infestans transformed the potato from an emblem of utility to a symbol of death by starvation. The Irish famine peaked in Black '47, but it brought misery and increased mortality to Ireland for several years.
Central to Irish and British history, European demography, the world history of famines, and the story of American immigration, the Great Irish Famine is presented here from a variety of new perspectives. Moving away from the traditional narrative historical approach to the catastrophe, Ó'Gráda concentrates instead on fresh insights available through interdisciplinary and comparative methods. He highlights several economic and sociological features of the famine previously neglected in the literature, such as the part played by traders and markets, by medical science, and by migration. Other topics include how the Irish climate, usually hospitable to the potato, exacerbated the failure of the crops in 1845-1847, and the controversial issue of Britain's failure to provide adequate relief to the dying Irish.
Ó'Gráda also examines the impact on urban Dublin of what was mainly a rural disaster and offers a critical analysis of the famine as represented in folk memory and tradition.
The broad scope of this book is matched by its remarkable range of sources, published and archival. The book will be the starting point for all future research into the Irish famine.
Customer Reviews:
Essential but not easy or pleasant reading........2001-02-19
Both the tragic subject and the density of documentation, with graphs and statistics, make this a hard book to read. The Famine killed over a million people, even on the most conservative estimates. It virtually wiped out the Gaeltacht. The question that resonates today is whether fewer people would have died if Ireland in 1840 had been an independent country, with its boundaries at the salt water. You'd have to read this book at least, and maybe some others as well, to get an answer to that question.
An leabhar is fearr ar an drochshaol - riamh!.......1999-05-14
This is a fraught subject, but O Grada handles it with both rigour and compassion.
Average customer rating:
- A Masterpiece
- This book shows how the famine cycle works.
- An opinion on merits and demerits of Entitlement Approach
- A deeply enlightening insight into the dark world of poverty
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Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation
Amartya Sen
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0198284632 |
Customer Reviews:
A Masterpiece.......2007-03-30
Sen is a great economist who understands that economics is about people and their welfare should be central to economic development. He brings life and compassion to a subject like economics which is today domianted by theoreticians and mathematicians who dabble in crazy mathematical equations. Thus Sen's ideas are refreshing, enlightening, ennobling and uplifting. If you want to understnad the Bengal famine mentioned in the book, try watching the movie - Asani Sanket by Satyajit Ray. Sen's comparison of India and China is also very good. China's progress has been brutal as seen in the Three Gorges Dam case. India may seem like a trutele but in more equitable place with remarkable freedoms of speech and democracy. True wisdom from a great and noble Nobel prize winner
This book shows how the famine cycle works........2000-03-12
A very persuasive acount of the famine problem is displayed by Nobel Laureate Dr. Sen. Contrary to all expectations, is a very readable book, because all the formulas and elaborate economic theories are confined to the appendix section.
Before the appendix, Dr. Sen displays the famine cycle in many parts of the world during this century and highligth the Bengala famine during World War II. Also, he explains the causes and effects of the famine cycle on each case presented.
So, if you want to know how a famine is "made" and "administrated" this is the book you must have.
An opinion on merits and demerits of Entitlement Approach.......1999-08-02
Poverty and Famines: An essay on Entitlement and Deprivation
The Nobel Laureate (1998) Amartya Sen needs no introduction. But poverty and starvation are better known than he is. Better still, the author is in full realisation of this fact. So, no self-elevating adjectives or poignant criticism can be found in the book. The book focuses on starvation in general and famines in particular. At the very outset, Amartya comes out to be a Keynesian in approach rather than a classicist. As his critics would put it - "This paper is not concerned with long-term food policy". This is true to some extent but the author here is trying to fit in a jigsaw puzzle with two or more puzzles thrown in at once. The book can be further divided into three parts for reading purposes: * For layman [Chapter 1-5,10] * Case Studies [Chapter 6-9] * For the erudite economist [Appendix A-D] This is what sets the book apart - a simple treatment of such a complex subject! For an issue as basic as hunger, you do require a simple treatment that masses can understand and not only a Master at some reputed economic school. The first and second section can be read by anyone slightly concerned with the word - Poverty while appendices are for the more learned. Chapter I introduces the elementary concepts of his approach to starvation - "The Entitlement Approach". He clearly distinguishes between the food availability and the relationships between a person and the food available. According to him, a person can get food to which he is legally or socially entitled. He can exchange his owned entitlements for other entitlements. Thus, even if plenty is available in author's words - "Starvation is seen as the result of his inability to establish entitlement to enough food". The second and the third chapter deal with concept of poverty, its identification and aggregation. He presents various methods of poverty evaluation and a critique of each- 1. The most usual head count method (i.e. relative number of poor) 2. Biological and nutritional approach (i.e. minimum amount of nutrition required). The aggregation is dealt with by advocating the axiom of "Ranked Relative Deprivation". This deals with the relative poverty amongst the 'poor'. Chapter III brings out the difference between starvation and famines. It sets a stage for discussion of famines in particular. He distinguishes both on - 1. Time Contrast (Long term and Short Term) 2. Group Contrast (Endemic and Specific Community) Chapter IV critically examines the entitlement approach with explanations of endowment and exchange. He examines the limitations of entitlement approach. The author seems to be very much aware of this e.g. '....some transfers that include violation of entitlement approach as looting'. The Case Studies cover the- * Bengal Famine of 1943 * Ethiopian famine of 1972-4 * Sahel Drought and Famine of 1968-73 * Famine of Bangladesh in 1974. The case studies chosen are of widely different nature and lend credit to his work. He goes about justifying the entitlement approach both in times of low food availability and adequate food availability. The Bengal famine case has been taken to illustrate the failure of FAD (Food Availability Decline). From the data of Famine Inquiry Commission of 1945, he proves that actually per capita availability rose about 9% form 1941-43. Since rural workers were as a community affected the most, exchange entitlement could have been a reason. The 'class-basis of destitution' further corroborates the food entitlement approach. The causes of sharp movements of exchange entitlements in this case can be briefed as- 1. Printing of currency leading to inflationary pressures 2. Speculation and Hoarding (A typical Keynesian!) 3. 'Indifferent' winter crop 4. Prohibition of cereal export 5. An uneven expansion of income and purchasing power 6. Impoverishment of groups not directly related to food production He further examines the bad policy of Bengal govt. at that time. The policy was largely FAD approach based and believed in merely creating supplies of food in the affected region, which, obviously, did not help much. The critics have strongly challenged the validity of Famine Commission report (Sen too is aware of that) and actually contend that crop availability was less than that reported (a large upward bias). This hits at the root of his analysis as he works on the initial analysis that there was actually a rise in food available. Also, the critics lay claim to inefficiency of PDS used to funnel the food into Bengal. To quote-"...and what was put on the market vanished without a ripple". They further proved that the inflation was pretty much the same throughout India. So why this should have only hit Bengal. Sen has neglected the infrastructural breakdown. The Ethiopian Famine, again, according to him proved the validity of entitlement approach, as there was little price rise of commodities. But in Sahel famine decrease in food availability was the causal factor. Sen analysed region wise food output to declare that the effect of famine was actually lower in food deprived areas. The approach of Sen seems to be of a short-term nature but does, indeed, subtly propose a long-term vision too. The focus of govt. should not only be to concentrate on food availability but as Sen points out towards ensuring no sudden changes in exchange entitlements. He advocates govt. intervention in these situations (Keynesian approach!). The critics who oppose the above may please note that that at no time does he propose to completely eliminate the FAD approach. Rather, in opening lines of Chapter I he says- "Starvation is characteristic of some people not having enough to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough to eat. While the latter can be a cause of the former, it is but one of many possible causes". In conclusion, the book is a must read for everyone. This is a simply written book with lots of conviction and healthy refute of the theories he disposes of.
A deeply enlightening insight into the dark world of poverty.......1998-10-19
Hunger and poverty are not regional or national issues any more. This book literally changed the way people thought about famines and hunger, according to Robert Solow. Human beings are deprived of food in many ways. Sen points out that food availability dedcline is only one possible cause of occurrence of a famine. Famines can occur even if the food output is sufficient in a region, for example in a situation when certain groups of people become richer and purchase more food leading to a steep rise in the prices, while the poor find the food increasingly unaffordable. Sen conceptualizes these issues in the framework of entitlement and ownership. Obviously, a person gets starved when his 'exchange entitlement set' is a null set, i.e., he owns nothing worth exchanging for bundles of food. A famine occurs when a large number of people in a country or a region suffer from such entitlement failures at a same time. In the second chapter, Sen discusses two alternative methods to measure poverty - the Income method and the Direct method. Both methods essentially represent two alternative conceptions of poverty analysis. The inequality approach to poverty is also found to be very common.
Can poverty analysis be put into a policy framework? Sen answers this question in the negative pointing out its difficulties. Sen says that a policy definition is based on a fundamental confusion. But at the same time, Sen fails to answer the question of how then the problem can be solved. Famine Enquiry Commission of 1945 had argued that the famine was due to cyclones, floods, fungus diseases, loss of Burma rice, etc., etc. The essence of these theses was that the famine was mainly an outcome of a food shortage. Sen in his analysis of the famine contests this. Point by point, with the use of statistics on food production and other parameters, he states that although there was a decline in food output in Bengal in 1943, it cannot be accepted as a prime cause as there was a still higher decline in food output during 1941 which did not cause any famine. The per capita food availability in 1943 was also higher than that in 1941. The major cause of the famine was the inability of the British government to forecast the shortfall in food. Sen uses his own 'entitlement theory' to describe the famine. The major cause of the famine was shrinkage of the E-mappings for individuals resulting from spiraling food prices and the prevailing inequalities among the population. The situation was not different in the case of the Ethiopian famine of 1972-74. There also there was not any evidence of a major shortfall in the food output; in fact Sen argues that there was indeed a slight increase in the food output vis-à-vis the preceding years during the famine years. The overall consumption of food at the peak famine period was actually normal. But the purchasing power of the people was low resulting in inability to command food from outside. As in the Bengal famine, the highest casualities were among the agricultural workers. But in contrast with Bengal famine, the food prices rose only very little in Ethiopia and were not very different from those prevailing during the pre-drought periods. Sen explains this phenomenon by understanding it in terms of the entitlement failures of various sections of the Ethiopian population.
The next case study is that of Sahel famine in Africa during 1968-73. This resulted in the decline of food availability that eventually led to the famine. An analysis of region wise food output revealed that in the regions where the output was low, the effect of the famine was actually lower comparatively. Firstly, it makes the farmer more dependent on the market forces for his basic food requirements. When one has an ability to command food in the market legally, then market approach may work.
Sen's major argument in the whole book is that against the popular feeling that famines are caused only due to the decline in availability of food (the FAD approach). He puts in a number of arguments against it citing specific case studies of the above famines. Arnold (1988) pointed out that there were a number of famines in history which were actually caused by food output decline and thus to project entitlement as the major cause of famines was incorrect. Patnaik says that the entitlement approach, while rejecting the FAD theory, takes an unduly short run view of food availability. While agreeing that during famine periods food availability is a major issue, she argues that the long term trend in per capita food availability is also of utmost importance, which Sen does not consider in his entitlement approach. These trends could set the stage for famines even though famines do not thereby become inevitable. There are arguments following Devereux's words that one can not discuss famines without constantly taking into account the aggregate supply of food (Bowbrick, 1986). There are some other major authors also who have come out against the entitlement approach of Sen for that there is nothing 'new' in Sen's approach (Srinivasan, 1983; Mitra, 1982).
Poverty and Famines have remained to haunt the dreams of many underdeveloped countries. The issues, as the book, still live on. As Castro lamented at Rome - "The bells that are presently tolling for those starving to death everyday will tomorrow be tolling for all mankind if it did not want, or did not know, or if it could not be sufficiently wise, to save itself".
References
Arnold, D., (1988) Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Bowbrick, P., (1986) "The Causes of Famines: A Refutation of Prof. Sen's Theory", Food Policy, 11. Mitra, Asok., (1982) "The Meaning of Meaning", Economic and Political Weekly (Reviews), 27 March. Patnaik, Utsa., (1991) "Food Availability Decline and Famines-A Longer View", Journal of Peasant Studies,19. Srinivasan, T.N., (1983) "Review of Sen", American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 65.
Book Description
The Sen and Dreze omnibus comprises three outstanding works by two of the world's finest economists. The volume is a trilogy on the causes of hunger, the role public action can play in its alleviation, and the Indian experience in this context. Together the three works provide a comprehensive
theoretical and empirical analysis of relevant developmental issues.
Book Description
At the current rate of increase, the world's population is likely to reach ten billion by the middle of the twenty-first century. What will be the challenges posed by feeding this population and how can they be addressed? Written to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Malthus' seminal Essay on the Principle of Population, this fascinating book looks at the intimate links between population growth and agricultural innovation over the past 10,000 years, illustrating how the evolution of agriculture has both shaped and been shaped by the course of world population growth. This historical context serves to illuminate our present position and to aid understanding of possible future paths to food security for the planet. This volume is a unique and accessible account that will be of interest to a wide audience concerned with global population, food supply, agricultural development, environmental degradation and resource depletion.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent history of population and agriculture........1999-09-10
This work is an efficient survey of agriculture and its relation to population growth through history. The chapters are designed to focus on population growth through time. For example chapter 2 is: Reaching for 5 million ( to 8000BC); chapter 3 is: Towards 50 million ( 8000-2000BC); chapter 4 is: The first half-billion ( 2000BC-1500AD); chapter 5 is: Towards the first billion (1500-1825) etc. Under each heading is a discussion of the critical agricultural developments during that time period. The last chapter focuses on the problems of feeding 10 billion people in the future.The research is detailed and knowledgable. The sources are modern and uptodate. The writing is precise. It is an excellent book that covers a lot of ground in a small compass. Highly recommended.
Customer Reviews:
"Low lie the fields of Athenry".......2007-09-18
"By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young girl calling
'Michael, they have taken you away
For you stole Trevelyan's corn
So the young might see the morn'
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay..."
THE GREAT HUNGER is the definitive history of the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1849. When the Englishwoman Cecil Woodham-Smith published this book in 1962 she was vilified and branded a Communist by the British establishment which had spent the previous 120 years explaining away what is undoubtedly the greatest European famine since antiquity. Estimates of the dead are difficult to quantify. Conservative historians put the number at 1-2 million; others place it closer to 6,000,000. At least another 1.5 million Irish fled their homeland.
Like most disasters, "An Gortha Mor" seems both inevitable and avoidable in retrospect. The Irish population exploded in the first half of the 19th century reaching an official 8.2 million (and an unofficial ten million) just before the Famine. But unlike Britain, which had become heavily industrialized and was moving confidently into the modern and scientific Victorian Era, Ireland was sunk in a morass of poverty and dejection. The average Irish countryman led a life no better than the poorest serfs of Imperial Russia of the day, and the Irish were subject to all manner of legal restrictions, mass unemployment, subsistence agriculture, exploitation by landlords, and eviction at whim from the land and their homes, often just a rude mud cabin. With no education, and few skills other than potato farming, eviction meant almost certain death for husbands, wives and children. Often, they were driven even from the bogs where they'd found shelter after being put out.
The Blight, too, meant certain death for far too many. Eating nothing but potatoes and buttermilk, these most wretched people literally had nothing at all to sustain them after the crop turned into a glutinous, stinking mass of black rot. They died in droves, particularly in the poor west of Ireland, bleak and rocky Connaught. The typhus which followed killed more.
As hideous as all this seems, Cecil Woodham-Smith tells us that the Blight was only one factor in the disaster that overtook the Irish. More insidious was the attitude of the British administration which largely stayed hardset in its laissez-faire attitude, refusing to step in and feed the Irish, refusing to interfere with the free market economy of the day, and worst of all, refusing to grasp that the market economy only works when people have money or skills to trade for products and services. In 1845, Ireland was still a pre-capitalist economy, and the mercantile approach of the British simply could not be applied there; still, the British tried, and blamed their own failure to address the Famine on their convenient perceptions of Irish intransigence and laziness.
Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan may be one of the most hated figures in Ireland even to this day. Effectively the head of British efforts at Famine Relief, Trevelyan was unenamored of the Irish, he was a rock-ribbed capitalist, and, though moral and moralistic to a fault, was also just as singleminded, blind to the suffering of the populace, but fixed on promoting Irish efforts at self-help. He bought a parsimonious 100,000 Pounds Sterling worth of unmilled American corn, and doled it out to provide for the eight million Irish. Amazingly, Trevelyan kept food EXPORTS flowing out of the country at pre-Famine levels throughout (!) Nothing could interfere with trade.
A disciple of the philosopher Thomas Malthus, Trevelyan cast a cold and dispassionate eye over Ireland's circumstances, seeing them as a form of natural population control. At the same time, the British placed the country under virtual martial law, decreeing "seven long years Transportation way on down to Van Diemen's Land" (Tasmania) for minor infractions and acts of desperation (such as stealing corn).
Was this, as many have posited, an organized genocide? Certainly, there were those among the British who despised the Irish to that extent. On the other hand, if this had been an organized killing field, then why did the British do anything at all to help the Irish, little as it was?
Woodham-Smith's tales of people living in bogs, of coffinless mass funerals, of fever patients being abandoned by their terrified relations, of Ireland starving to death, cannot help but touch the reader. The British are presented as less calculating than more stupid, unable to adjust their thought processes to meet the crisis. Conditions were so awful that when the Irish left Ireland (on rotten-bottomed Coffin Ships, like as not), their arrival in American and Canadian ports can be summed up shortly: NO IRISH NEED APPLY.
More than just a history of the Potato Famine, THE GREAT HUNGER is an indictment of the too-common human propensities of blaming the victim, making gestures instead of taking action, and that of ultimately doing nothing. The truth behind every human tragedy can be found in the pages of THE GREAT HUNGER.
This is an essential read.
A Masterpiece.......2007-05-24
I have read and reread this history several times and bought copies for
my sons.
I don't believe anyone can understand the Ireland of today without
this touching and tragic reference.
FACTUAL ACCOUNT OF THE FAMINE.......2006-03-16
In this account of the Famine,the author paints a picture of events which led up to ,and caused the Famine, the international poliics of the day, the weather patterns, the logistics of providing relief to so many destitute people.
Written factually and without blame it is a most interesting and informative read, I am glad I bought it.
Worthwhile Reminder.......2006-02-03
This history book reminds us that the Irish were mistreated in their homeland and in the USA when they first arrived. It tells of the heroic efforts to help the impoverished, illiterate populace and of the failed attempts by the British government to deal with a culture so foreign to their own.
It is a reminder of how far the Irish have come since the Celtic Tiger is rampant and people from Eastern Europe and the third world are going to Ireland for jobs and better lives.
Cecil Woodham-Smith is a British woman.
Had to read it for class.......2005-09-19
I had to read this novel for a college course on the British Empire. It is definitely not an easy read, but is extremely interesting if you can get through it (which I of course had to, to write a paper on it..). It is definitely one of the better assignments I have had to do.
Anyway, I just wanted to leave a comment, that I think its ridiculous that a handful of people that reviewed this book did not even realize that the book is written by a woman...
Book Description
In 2004, Darfur, Sudan was described as the "world's greatest humanitarian crisis." Twenty years previously, Darfur was also the site of a disastrous famine. Famine that Kills is a seminal account of that famine, and a social history of the region. In a new preface prepared for this revised edition, Alex de Waal analyzes the roots of the current conflict in land disputes, social disruption and impoverishment. Despite vast changes in the nature of famines and in the capacity of response, de Waal's original challenge to humanitarian theory and practice including a focus on the survival strategies of rural people has never been more relevant. Documenting the resilience of the people who suffered, it explains why many fewer died than had been predicted by outsiders. It is also a pathbreaking study of the causes of famine deaths, showing how outbreaks of infectious disease killed more people than starvation. Now a classic in the field, Famine that Kills provides critical background and lessons of past intervention for a region that finds itself in another moment of humanitarian tragedy.
Customer Reviews:
Major Study Of Famine & Crisis In Darfur.......2007-04-04
First published in 1989, this classic study is indispensible for understanding Darfur's current humanitarian disaster. The new edition places both famine and genocide in historical and regional context. Unlike instant books which often lack depth despite other merits, De Waal thoroughly grounded his research in detailed fieldwork and knowledge of this vast province. "Famine That Kills" brilliantly explores indigenous definitions of food deprivation and peoples' survival strategies, and substantively advances debates on famine beyond the entitlement thesis of A. Sen's seminal "Poverty & Famines." Alex de Waal is an uncompromising humanist; his work (notably "Famine Crimes") relentlessly scourges clumsy technocratic "fixes," government machinations, and the mythologies of aid and development. Not for the faint of heart, but well worth the effort.
Average customer rating:
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The New Famines: Why Famines Exist in an Era of Globalization (Routledge Studies in Development Economics)
Steph Devereux
Manufacturer: Routledge
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0415363470 |
Book Description
The recent occurrences of famine in Ethiopia and Southern Africa have propelled this key back into the public arena for the first time since 1984, as once again it becomes a priority not only for lesser developed countries but also for the international community.
Exploring the paradox that is the persistence of famine in the contemporary world, this book looks at the way the nature of famine is changing in the face of globalization and shifting geo-political forces.
The book challenges perceived wisdom about the causes of famine and analyzes the worst cases of recent years including close analysis of food scarcity in North Korea, Ethiopia, Sudan and Malawi and less well known cases in Madagascar, Iraq and Bosnia. With fresh conceptual frameworks and analytical tools, major theoretical constructs which have previously been applied to analyze famines (such as the "democracy ends famine" argument, Sens "entitlement approach" and the "complex political emergency" framework) are confronted.
This volume assembles an international team of contributors, including Marcus Noland, Alex de Waal and Dan Maxwell; an impressive roster which helps make this book an important resource for those in the fields of development studies and political economics.
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