Mass starvation's causes may seem simple and immediate: crop failure, poverty, outbreaks of violence, and poor governance. But famines are complex, and scholars cannot fully understand what causes them unless they look at their numerous social and environmental precursors over long arcs of history, and over long distances. Famine in the Remaking examines the relationship between the reorganisation of food systems and large-scale food crises through a comparative historical analysis of three famines: Hawaii in the 1820s, Madagascar in the 1920s, and Cambodia in the 1970s. This examination identifies the structural transformations - that is, changes to the relationships between producers and consumers - that make food systems more vulnerable to failure. Moving beyond the economic and political explanations for food crisis that have dominated the literature, Stian Rice emphasises important socioecological interactions, developing a framework for crisis evolution that identifies two distinct temporal phases and five different types of causal mechanisms involved in food systems failure. His framework contributes to current work in famine prevention and, animated by a commitment to social justice, offers the potential for early intervention in emerging food crises.

A comparative study of the famines of Ireland (1845-51) and Ukraine (1932-33), and how historical experiences of famine were translated into narratives that supported political claims for independent national statehood.

From 1932 to 1933, a catastrophic famine, known as the Holodomor ("extermination by hunger"), raged through Ukraine, killing millions of people. Although the Soviet government denied it, news about the tragedy got out and Canadians came to learn about the famine from many, though often contradictory, sources. Through an extensive analysis of newspapers, political speeches, and organized protests, Serge Cipko examines both the reporting of the famine and the Canadian response to it, highlighting the vital importance of journalism and the power of public demonstrations in shaping government action.

Deng Yunte was a respected academic and artist. He was also a propagandist and political commentator, before becoming one of the earliest victims of the Cultural Revolution. He committed suicide in 1966. This is the first English translation of his classic study of famine relief in Chinese history. Richly researched, Deng plots the history of famine from ancient times to the Republican period, and explores the impact of famine relief in China with a focus on social and economic forces. This is a unique and revealing text, not only as a study of famine in China, but as an example of historical scholarship from twentieth-century China.

This is an innovative new history of famine relief and humanitarianism. The authors apply a moral economy approach to shed new light on the forces and ideas that motivated and shaped humanitarian aid during the Great Irish Famine, the famine of 1921-1922 in Soviet Russia and the Ukraine, and the 1980s Ethiopian famine. They place these episodes within a distinctive periodisation of humanitarianism which emphasises the correlations with politico-economic regimes: the time of elitist laissez-faire liberalism in the nineteenth century as one of ad hoc humanitarianism; that of Taylorism and mass society from c.1900-1970 as one of organised humanitarianism; and the blend of individualised post-material lifestyles and neoliberal public management since 1970 as one of expressive humanitarianism. The book as a whole shifts the focus of the history of humanitarianism from the imperatives of crisis management to the pragmatic mechanisms of fundraising, relief efforts on the ground, and finance. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Surveying government and crowd responses ranging from the late Middle Ages through to the early modern era, Buchanan Sharp's illuminating study examines how the English government responded to one of the most intractable problems of the period: famine and scarcity. The book provides a comprehensive account of famine relief in the late Middle Ages and evaluates the extent to which traditional market regulations enforced by thirteenth-century kings helped shape future responses to famine and scarcity in the sixteenth century. Analysing some of the oldest surviving archival evidence of public response to famine, Sharp reveals that food riots in England occurred as early as 1347, almost two centuries earlier than was previously thought. Charting the policies, public reactions and royal regulations to grain shortage, Sharp provides a fascinating contribution to our understanding of the social, economic, cultural and political make-up of medieval and early modern England.

In the last decade, the world has grown richer and produced more food than ever before. Yet in that same period, hunger has increased and 925 million remain underfed and malnourished. Exploring this troubling paradox, The Feeding of Nations: Re-Defining Food Security for the 21st Century offers a glimpse into how the simple aspiration of global food security has evolved and unfolded-with sometimes contradictory and counterproductive policies, agendas, and ideologies. Providing a holistic analysis of the issues surrounding food security, this volume engages in a cross-disciplinary approach that makes the subject accessible to readers and academically rigorous in delivery. Topics discussed include: A brief overview of our current understanding of the prevalence of hunger and malnutrition Historical perspectives on the feeding of nations, to understand how we arrived at this point Contemporary motivations that led to the creation of the modern concept of food security The many different sectors related to food security, including agriculture, environment, and policy The goals that society has set regarding food security, the means by which these are to be achieved, and current thoughts on solutions The book contains a broad set of appendices that enable focused study on critical topics presented in the text. Uniquely amalgamating all the disparate elements of food security into one volume, it sets the record straight about the origins and evolution of the phenomenon while dispelling myths along the way.

Free World? is a major contribution to the transnational history of humanitarianism in the postwar world. Peter Gatrell shows how and why the UN, NGOs, governments and individuals embarked on a unique campaign, World Refugee Year (1959-60), in response to global refugee crises, particularly in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. Adopted by nearly one hundred countries, the campaign galvanised public opinion and raised money by enlisting celebrities, using the mass media, and recreating 'refugee camps' in the affluent West. Free World? assesses the causes and consequences of the refugee crises, locates the campaign in the broader geopolitical context of the Cold War and decolonisation and shows how it helped to inspire subsequent campaigns such as Amnesty International and Freedom from Hunger. Ultimately, the book asks how those who are in a more privileged position might better reflect on their responsibilities towards refugees in the modern world.

The book focuses on food security highlighting the role of indigenous knowledge and scientific research in addressing the plight of poor small-scale agricultural producers. Rapidly growing global population and global policies and management governing sustainability, hunger, food security and poverty alleviation are discussed. Additionally, impacts of probable climate change, research on land productivity and performance of dependable food crops i.e. cassava and pearl millet are discussed. Analyzed in great detail are roles of small stock, urban/peri-urban agriculture and advantages of climate-smart agriculture and participatory research in enhancing food security of the small-scale agricultural producers in Southern Africa.

Feeding Frenzy traces the history of the global food system and reveals the underlying causes of recent turmoil in food markets. Supplies are running short, prices keep spiking and the media is full of talk of a 'world food crisis'. Food-producing countries are banning exports even if this means starving their neighbours. Governments and corporations are scrambling to secure control over food supply chains. Powerful groups from the Middle East and Asia are grabbing farmland in poor countries to grow food for export. This raises some big questions. Can we feed a population that will grow to nine billion by 2050? Are we running out of land and water? Can we rely on free markets to provide? This book reveals trends that could lead to more hunger and conflict. But Paul McMahon also outlines actions that can be taken to shape a sustainable and just food system.

Free World? is a major contribution to the transnational history of humanitarianism in the postwar world. Peter Gatrell shows how and why the UN, NGOs, governments and individuals embarked on a unique campaign, World Refugee Year (1959-1960), in response to global refugee crises, particularly in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. Adopted by nearly one hundred countries, the campaign galvanised public opinion and raised money by enlisting celebrities, using the mass media, and recreating 'refugee camps' in the affluent West. Free World? assesses the causes and consequences of the refugee crises, locates the campaign in the broader geopolitical context of the Cold War and decolonisation and shows how it helped to inspire subsequent campaigns such as Amnesty International and Freedom from Hunger. Ultimately the book asks how those who are in a more privileged position might better reflect on their responsibilities towards refugees in the modern world.

Food Security is a primary concern for all countries. However the vulnerabilities which need addressing are dictated by the individual country according to the food control systems in place, the nature of the food industry and the culture of the country. This book summarises the presentations of a NATO Advanced Training Course addressing the issue of food security in Central Asia. The book is divided into two sections. The first provides an overview of the existing aspects of food security in participating Central Asian countries. The emphasis here is on food safety, control and access and includes background information on the relevant food industries. Participating countries include the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The second section explores particular aspects of food security in participating NATO countries. These provide some insight into the value, strengths and weaknesses of common food security systems. Chapters cover HACCP, ISO/IEC 17025 standards and associated pre-requisite systems, allergies and food intolerances, risk perception and communication, training, and ethics. A chapter on food defence in the USA is also included. This book is suitable for anyone with an interest in food control systems and food security.

This account of the 1949 famine in colonial Malawi employs a wide variety of historical sources, ranging from Colonial Office documentation to the songs of women who lived through the tragedy. The analysis of the causes and development of the famine takes the reader through a detailed agricultural and social history of Southern Malwai in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing in particular on the nature of social and economic stratification, changes in kinship systems and the position of women and placing all this within the wider context of the impact of colonial rule.

The depiction of historical humanitarian disasters in art exhibitions, news reports, monuments and heritage landscapes has framed the harrowing images we currently associate with dispossession. People across the world are driven out of their homes and countries on a wave of conflict, poverty and famine, and our main sites for engaging with their loss are visual news and social media. In a reappraisal of the viewer's role in representations of displacement, Niamh Ann Kelly examines a wide range of commemorative visual culture from the mid-nineteenth-century Great Irish Famine. Her analysis of memorial images, objects and locations from that period until the early 21st century shows how artefacts of historical trauma can affect understandings of enforced migrations as an ongoing form of political violence. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of museum and heritage studies, material culture, Irish history and contemporary visual cultures exploring dispossession.

This book examines the Soviet agricultural crisis of 1931-1933 which culminated in the major famine of 1933. It is the first volume in English to make extensive use of Russian and Ukrainian central and local archives to assess the extent and causes of the famine. It reaches new conclusions on how far the famine was 'organized' or 'artificial', and compares it with other Russian and Soviet famines and with major twentieth century famines elsewhere. Against this background, it discusses the emergence of collective farming as an economic and social system.

China's Great Leap Famine of 1959-61 resulted in 30 million deaths, making it easily the worst famine in human history. Yet unlike the Cultural Revolution - that other massive catastrophe of Mao's rule - the Great Leap Forward has received scant scholarly attention. This is partly because victims of the ensuing famine were inarticulate farmers and partly because many key players in that inglorious era are members of the current elite who tightly guard the archives. Despite these impediments, the author has marshalled an impressive array of historical documents to provide the first comprehensive treatment of the political causes and consequences of the Great Leap Famine. The Famine is important because it furnished the crucial historical motives for dismantling the rural collective institutional structure in post-Mao China two decades later and motivating tens of millions of ordinary Chinese to enact the reforms.

According to the FAO, one person in three in sub-Saharan Africa suffers from malnutrition, and one in seven is in danger of dying. Most African countries no longer seem capable of ensuring that their people have access to sufficient food. Given the failure of past efforts the objectives of food security policies and their effectiveness have to be reconsidered. This book shows that the debate on food security policies has changed with the passage of time. The entitlement debate triggered by A. Sen had a major influence on this change but, the bearing of socio-economic structures on the food security of African households and their individual members are still not fully recognised.

Development schemes are common throughout the third world. Many fail, but the reasons for failure or success are only too often not adequately studied. In this monograph two schemes started in Basutoland - now Lesotho - are intensively analysed and compared: the first, which was abandoned in 1961, primarily by means of documentary material; the second, which was and still is successful in at least part of the area, mainly through observation and field research. The analysis reveals the factors making for success or failure, particularly in the fields of politics, economics, and communication. The relevance of the study extends beyond Lesotho and even Africa, the analysis dealing with problems common to introduced social change and development in any part of the world.

The world almost conquered famine. Until the 1980s, this scourge killed ten million people every decade, but by the early 2000s mass starvation had all-but-disappeared. Today, famines are resurgent, driven by war, blockade, hostility to humanitarian principles, and a volatile global economy. In Mass Starvation, world-renowned expert on humanitarian crisis and response Alex de Waal provides an authoritative history of modern famines: their causes, dimensions, and why they ended. He analyzes starvation as a crime, and breaks new ground in examining forced starvation as an instrument of genocide and war. Refuting the enduring but erroneous view that attributes famine to overpopulation and natural disaster, he shows how political decision or political failing is an essential element in every famine, while the spread of democracy and human rights, and the ending of wars, were major factors in the near-ending of this devastating phenomenon. Hard-hitting and deeply informed, Mass Starvation explains why man-made famine and the political decisions that could end it for good must once again become a top priority for the international community.

Ireland's Great Famine of 1845-52 was among the most devastating food crises in modern history. A country of some eight-and-a-half-million people lost one million to hunger and disease and another million to emigration. According to land activist Michael Davitt, the starving made little or no effort to assert "the animal's right to existence," passively accepting their fate. But the poor did resist. In word and deed, they defied landlords, merchants and agents of the state: they rioted for food, opposed rent and rate collection, challenged the decisions of those controlling relief works, and scorned clergymen who attributed their suffering to the Almighty. The essays collected here examine the full range of resistance in the Great Famine, and illuminate how the crisis itself transformed popular politics. Contributors include distinguished scholars of modern Ireland and emerging historians and critics. This book is essential reading for students of modern Ireland, and the global history of collective action.

Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire presents the first analytical account in English of the history of subsistence crises and epidemic diseases in Late Antiquity. Based on a catalogue of all such events in the East Roman/Byzantine empire between 284 and 750, it gives an authoritative analysis of the causes, effects and internal mechanisms of these crises and incorporates modern medical and physiological data on epidemics and famines. Its interest is both in the history of medicine and the history of Late Antiquity, especially its social and demographic aspects. Stathakopoulos develops models of crises that apply not only to the society of the late Roman and early Byzantine world, but also to early modern and even contemporary societies in Africa or Asia. This study is therefore both a work of reference for information on particular events (e.g. the 6th-century Justinianic plague) and a comprehensive analysis of subsistence crises and epidemics as agents of historical causation. As such it makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate on Late Antiquity, bringing a fresh perspective to comment on the characteristic features that shaped this period and differentiate it from Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Winner of the Duff Cooper and Lionel Gelber prizes In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events. The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It includes accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly 'anti-revolutionary' elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering. The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine's cultural and political leadership - and then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified and memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, and were undermined and harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country's true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia and Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.

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.

The Great Famine is possibly the most pivotal event/experience in modern Irish history. Its global reach and implications cannot be underestimated. In terms of mortality, it is now widely accepted that over a million people perished between the years 1845-1852 and at least one million and a quarter fled the country, the great majority to North America, some to Australia and a significant minority ((0.3 million) to British cities. Ireland had been afflicted by famine before the events of the 1840s; however the Great Famine is marked by both its absolute scale and its longevity. It is also better remembered because it was the most recent and best documented famine. This atlas comprising over fifty individual chapters and case studies will provide readers with a broad range of perspectives and relevant insights into this tragic event. The atlas begins by acknowledging the impossibility of adequately representing the Great Famine or any major world famine. Yet by exploring a number of themes from a reconstruction of pre-Famine Ireland onwards to an exploration of present-day modes of remembering; by the use of over 150 highly original computer generated parish maps of population decline, social transformation and other key themes between the census years 1841 and 1851: and through the use of poetry, contemporary paintings and accounts, illustrations and modern photography, what this atlas seeks to a achieve is a greater understanding of the event and its impact and legacy. This atlas seeks to try and bear witness to the thousands and thousands of people who died and are buried in mass Famine pits or in fields and ditches, with little or nothing to remind us of their going. The centrality of the Famine workhouse as a place of destitution is also examined in depth. Likewise the atlas seeks to represent and understand the conditions and experiences of the many thousands who emigrated from Ireland in those desperate years. Included are case studies of famine emigrants in cities such as Liverpool, Glasgow, New York and Toronto. A central concern of the atlas is to seek to understand why a famine of this scale should occur in a nineteenth-century European country, albeit a country which was subject to imperial rule. In addition, it seeks to reveal in detail the working-out and varying consequences of the Famine across the island. To this end, apart from presenting an overall island-wide picture, Famine experiences and patterns will be presented separately for the four provinces. These provincial explorations will be accompanied by intimate case studies of conditions in particular localities across the provinces. The atlas also seeks to situate the Great Irish Famine in the context of a number of world famines. To achieve these goals and understandings, the atlas includes contributions from a wide range of scholars who are experts in their fields - from the arts, folklore, geography, history, archaeology, Irish and English languages and literatures.

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 O'Grada'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, O'Grada 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.

O'Grada 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."