How many died during the Potato Famine?
Great Famine (Ireland)
The Great Famine (, ), or the Great Hunger, was a period in Ireland between 1845 and 1849 of mass starvation, disease, and emigration. With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was primarily spoken, the period was contemporaneously known as , loosely translated as the "hard times" (or literally, "The Bad Life"). The worst year of the period, that of "Black 47", is known as . During the famine, about one million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.
Kanshō famine
The Kanshō famine (長禄・寛正の飢饉, Chōroku-kanshō no kikin), was a famine which affected mostly Western Japan during the reign of Emperor Go-Hanazono in Muromachi period. The number of deaths from the starvation was at least 82,000. The ruling shōgun during the famine was Ashikaga Yoshimasa.
Crossmolina
The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s devastated the greater Crossmolina area, slicing a population of 12,221 in 1841 down to 7,236 by 1851. The Famine also had drastic effects on the use of language in the area: It is estimated that over 80% of the Crossmolina area spoke the Irish Language previous to the famine.
European Potato Failure
The effect of the crisis on Ireland is incomparable to all other places, causing one million deaths, up to two million refugees, and spurring a century-long population decline. Excluding Ireland, the death toll from the crisis is estimated to be in the region of 100,000 people. Of this, Belgium and Prussia account for most of the deaths, with 40,000–50,000 estimated to have died in Belgium, with Flanders particularly affected, and about 42,000 estimated to have perished in Prussia. The remainder of deaths occurred mainly in France, where 10,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of famine-like conditions.
Kan'ei Great Famine
The Kan'ei Great Famine ( ""), was a famine which affected Japan during the reign of Empress Meishō in Edo period. The estimated number of deaths from the starvation is 50,000–100,000. It is considered to have begun in 1640, and lasted until 1643. It was named after the Kan'ei era (1624–1644). The ruling "shōgun" during the famine was Tokugawa Iemitsu.
Irish in Syracuse, New York
The potato famine of the late 1840s wiped out by fever and starvation about a fourth of Ireland's 8 million people. Many who could afford the $50 passage to America did so. Nearly 113,000 Irish came to America in 1848.
Great Famine (Ireland)
The famine was a watershed in the history of Ireland, which from 1801 to 1922 was ruled directly by Westminster as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Together with the Napoleonic Wars, the Great Famine in Ireland produced the greatest loss of life in 19th-century Europe. The famine and its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political, and cultural landscape, producing an estimated two million refugees and spurring a century-long population decline. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory. The already strained relations between many Irish and the British Crown soured further both during and after the famine, heightening ethnic and sectarian tensions, and boosting Irish nationalism and republicanism in Ireland and among Irish emigrants in the United States and elsewhere.
The Famine
Timeline
Ballygar
The population structure of Ballygar Parish (Killeroran and Killian) has been like most other parts of rural Ireland being in steady decline, since the Great Famine of 1845. The Great Famine or An Gorta Mór as it has become known, of 1845 had a devastating effect on Ireland, and Ballygar didn't escape the horror that resulted from the failure of the main food crop, the potato, throughout the years of 1845 to 1849. Few details survive of An Gorta Mór even though it is of relatively recent origin, one hundred and sixty years ago. For it would seem that the details were too horrific and painful for the local people to recall even in local folklore stories. The story of how hundreds of local people, mostly peasant rural dwellers, died of starvation, remain unrecorded. Probably the greatest tragedy of all surrounding An Gorta Mór was the sale by farming communities of large amounts of eggs and animals in order to pay rent to their local landlord, while they themselves, and their neighbours, were dying of starvation.
Skibbereen
The region around Skibbereen experienced a significant famine in the years 1845-52, a time referred to as The Great Hunger or Great Famine (Irish: "an Gorta Mór"). The Skibbereen Heritage Centre estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 victims of the Famine are buried in the famine burial pits of Abbeystrewery cemetery close to the town. While there is some question on the accuracy of census data from the famine era, records indicate a drop of population from 58,335 in 1841 to 32,412 in 1861.
"Skibbereen" is also the name of a song about the Famine, and the impact it and the British Government had on the people of Ireland. The song, known as "Dear Old Skibbereen", takes the form of a conversation between a father and a son, in which the son asks his father why he fled the land he loved so well.
Queen Victoria
Melbourne's support in the House of Commons weakened through the early years of Victoria's reign, and in the 1841 general election the Whigs were defeated. Peel became prime minister, and the ladies of the bedchamber most associated with the Whigs were replaced.
In 1845, Ireland was hit by a potato blight. In the next four years, over a million Irish people died and another million emigrated in what became known as the Great Famine. In Ireland, Victoria was labelled "The Famine Queen". In January 1847 she personally donated £2,000 (equivalent to between £178,000 and £6.5 million in 2016) to the British Relief Association, more than any other individual famine relief donor, and also supported the Maynooth Grant to a Roman Catholic seminary in Ireland, despite Protestant opposition. The story that she donated only £5 in aid to the Irish, and on the same day gave the same amount to Battersea Dogs Home, was a myth generated towards the end of the 19th century.
Famines in Czech lands
The next recorded famine in Czech lands was the Great Famine, which lasted from 1770 until 1771. The cause of the Great Famine was a disease of grain monoculture and heavy rains. The Great Famine killed twelve percent of the Czech lands’ population, up to 500,000 inhabitants, and radicalized countrysides, which led to peasant uprisings. This famine ended when Czech lands imported and increased potato production by 100 percent. The last famine in Czech lands was in Czech Silesia in 1847. This famine was caused by a potato disease and led to the deaths of over 20,000 people.
Great Famine (Ireland)
John Mitchel raised the issue of the "Potato Disease" in Ireland as early as 1844 in "The Nation Newspaper", noting how powerful an agent hunger had been in certain revolutions. On 14 February 1846, he wrote about "the wretched way in which the famine was being trifled with", and asked whether the Government still did not have any conception that there might be soon "millions of human beings in Ireland having nothing to eat".
Great Famine (Ireland)
S. H. Cousens' estimate of 800,000 deaths relied heavily on retrospective information contained in the 1851 census and elsewhere, and is now regarded as too low. Modern historian Joseph Lee says "at least 800,000", and R. F. Foster estimates that "at least 775,000 died, mostly through disease, including cholera in the latter stages of the holocaust". He further notes that "a recent sophisticated computation estimates excess deaths from 1846 to 1851 as between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 ... after a careful critique of this, other statisticians arrive at a figure of 1,000,000".
Great Chinese Famine
According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million. The officially reported death rates show much more dramatic increases in a number of provinces and counties. In Sichuan province, the most populous province in China, for example, the government reported 11 million deaths out of the total population of about 700 million during 1958–1961. In Huaibin County, Henan province, the government reported 102 thousand deaths out of a population of 378 thousand in 1960. On the national level, the official statistics imply about 15 million so-called "excess deaths" or "abnormal deaths", most of them resulting from starvation.
History of Ireland
The Great Irish Famine ("An Gorta Mór") was the second of Ireland's "Great Famines". It struck the country during 1845–49, with potato blight, exacerbated by the political factors of the time leading to mass starvation and emigration. The impact of emigration in Ireland was severe; the population dropped from over 8 million before the Famine to 4.4 million in 1911. Gaelic or Irish, once the island's spoken language, declined in use sharply in the nineteenth century as a result of the Famine and the creation of the National School education system, as well as hostility to the language from leading Irish politicians of the time; it was largely replaced by English.
History of Tibet (1950–present)
China suffered widespread famine between the years 1959 and 1961. The causes are disputed. Drought and poor weather played a part and the policies of the Great Leap Forward contributed to the famine, but the relative weights of each are in dispute. Estimates of deaths vary; according to official government statistics, there were 15 million deaths. Unofficial estimates by scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million.
On May 1962, the Tenth Panchen Lama sent Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai a confidential report detailing the suffering of the Tibetan people, which became known as the 70,000 Character Petition. "In many parts of Tibet people have starved to death.. . . In some places, whole families have perished and the death rate is very high. This is very abnormal, horrible and grave...In the past Tibet lived in a dark barbaric feudalism but there was never such a shortage of food, especially after Buddhism had spread...In Tibet from 1959 to 1961, for two years almost all animal husbandry and farming stopped. The nomads have no grain to eat and the farmers have no meat, butter or salt," the report continued. It was the opinion of the Panchen Lama that these deaths were a result of official policies, not of any natural disasters, which was the situation understood in Beijing by Chairman Mao and the Central People's Government. The Panchen Lama also described the uniqueness of the famine that Tibet suffered from: "There was never such an event in the history of Tibet. People could not even imagine such horrible starvation in their dreams. In some areas if one person catches a cold, then it spreads to hundreds and large numbers simply die." The destruction of most of Tibet's more than 6,000 monasteries happened between 1959 and 1961.
Chronology of the Great Famine
According to Cecil Woodham-Smith, the rising wrath of Tories and landlords ensured "all interest in Ireland was submerged." She writes that the Tory Mayor of Liverpool refused to call a meeting for the relief of Irish distress. She continues that the Mansion House Committee in Dublin was accused of 'deluding the public with a false alarm', and the blight itself 'was represented as the invention of agitators on the other side of the water'. The entanglement of the Irish famine with the repeal of the Corn Laws, she says, was a key misfortune for Ireland. The potato failure was eclipsed by the domestic issue of Corn Law repeal. The Irish famine, she writes, "slipped into the background."The first deaths from hunger took place in early 1846. In March Peel set up a programme of public works in Ireland but was forced to resign as Prime Minister on 29 June. The new Whig administration under Lord Russell, influenced by their laissez-faire belief that the market would provide the food needed then halted government food and relief works, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people without any work, money or food. Grain continued to be exported from the country. Private initiatives such as The Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends (Quakers) attempted to fill the gap caused by the end of government relief and eventually the government reinstated the relief works, although bureaucracy slowed the release of food supplies. The blight almost totally destroyed the 1846 crop and the Famine worsened considerably. By December a third of a million destitute people were employed in public works.
Late Victorian Holocausts
This book explores the impact of colonialism and the introduction of capitalism during the El Niño-Southern Oscillation related famines of 1876–1878, 1896–1897, and 1899–1902, in India, China, Brazil, Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and New Caledonia. It focuses on how colonialism and capitalism in British India and elsewhere increased rural poverty and hunger while economic policies exacerbated famine. The book's main conclusion is that the deaths of 30–60 million people killed in famines all over the world during the later part of the 19th century were caused by laissez faire and Malthusian economic ideology of the colonial governments. In addition to a preface and a short section on definitions, the book is broken into four parts: The Great Drought, 1876–1878; El Niño and the New Imperialism, 1888–1902; Decyphering ENSO; and The Political Ecology of Famine.
Nieder Kostenz
Thirty-seven men from Nieder Kostenz had to go to war. Two of them fell, and one went missing. The absence of so many men during the First World War made itself keenly felt in the constant labour shortage. Women, children and the elderly were pressed into service to help in the farm fields. The state required all agricultural produce to be handed over, but for the minimum needed for a farming family's personal consumption. This process was overseen by the police, who sometimes also searched houses or barns seeking hoards of food. A typical village meal at this time consisted of potatoes, bread, milk and vegetables. In 1916, though, the potato harvest was bad because of late blight (the same disease that caused the Potato Famine in Ireland). At the time, no way was known to fight the blight. Luckily there was enough food to avoid a famine.
Home front during World War II
The Dutch famine of 1944, known as the "Hongerwinter" ("Hunger winter") was a man-made famine imposed by Germany in the occupied western provinces during the winter of 1944–1945. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas. A total of 4.5 million people were affected, of whom 18,000 died, despite an elaborate system of emergency soup kitchens.
Irish issue in British politics
When potato blight hit the island in 1846, much of the peasant population lost their staple food as cash crops were reserved for export to Great Britain. While large sums for relief were raised by private individuals and charities, lack of adequate action by a Government that believed in "laissez-faire" policies alongside the protectionist Corn Laws that made wheat unaffordable, let the problem become a catastrophe. The class of cottiers or farm labourers was virtually wiped out though death and emigration, in what became known in Britain as 'The Irish Potato Famine' and in Ireland as the Great Hunger.
Famine
Some British citizens, such as William Digby, agitated for policy reforms and famine relief, but Lord Lytton, the governing British viceroy in India, opposed such changes in the belief that they would stimulate shirking by Indian workers. The first, the Bengal famine of 1770, is estimated to have taken around 10 million lives—one-third of Bengal's population at the time. Other notable famines include the Great Famine of 1876–78, in which 6.1 million to 10.3 million people died and the Indian famine of 1899–1900, in which 1.25 to 10 million people died. The famines were ended by the 20th century with the exception of the Bengal famine of 1943 killing an estimated 2.1 million Bengalis during World War II.
Food history
According to conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century, part of the Columbian exchange. The staple was subsequently conveyed by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world. The potato was slow to be adopted by distrustful European farmers, but soon enough it became an important food staple and field crop that played a major role in the European 19th century population boom. However, lack of genetic diversity, due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-like oomycete "Phytophthora infestans", spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland as well as parts of the Scottish Highlands, resulting in the crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine.
History of Scotland
In 1846 the Highland potato famine struck the crofting communities of the North and West Highlands. By 1850 the charitable relief effort was wound up, despite the continuing crop failure, and landlords, charities and the government resorted to encouraging emigration. The overall result was that almost 11,000 people were provided with "assisted passages" by their landlords between 1846 and 1856, with the greatest number travelling in 1851. A further 5,000 emigrated to Australia, through the Highland and Island Emigration Society. To this should be added an unknown, but significant number, who paid their own fares to emigrate, and a further unknown number assisted by the Colonial Land and Emigration commission. This was out of a famine-affected population of about 200,000 people. Many of those who remained became even more involved in temporary migration for work in the Lowlands, both out of necessity during the famine and having become accustomed to working away by the time the famine ceased. Much longer periods were spent out of the Highlands - often for much of the year or more. One illustration of this migrant working was the estimated 30,000 men and women from the far west of the Gaelic speaking area who travelled to the east coast fishing ports for the herring fishing season - providing labour in an industry that grew by 60% between 1854-1884.
Great Famine of Mount Lebanon
The Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (1915–1918) was a period of mass starvation during World War I, resulting in 200,000 deaths. The effects of the Allies' blockade was worsened by another introduced by Jamal Pasha, the commander of the Fourth Army of the Ottoman Empire in Syria region, which barred crops from the neighboring Syrian hinterland from entering Mount Lebanon, and by the arrival of a swarm of locusts to the region in 1915 that for three months devoured the remaining crops. The famine was thus caused by a convergence of political and environmental factors and led to the deaths of half of the population of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, a semi-autonomous subdivision of the Ottoman Empire and the precursor of modern-day Lebanon.
Famine
BBC newsreader Michael Buerk gave moving commentary of the tragedy on 23 October 1984, which he described as a "biblical famine". This prompted the Band Aid single, which was organized by Bob Geldof and featured more than 20 pop stars. The Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia raised even more funds for the cause. Hundreds of thousands of people died within one year as a result of the famine, but the publicity Live Aid generated encouraged Western nations to make available enough surplus grain to end the immediate hunger crisis in Africa.
Mao: The Unknown Story
China scholars agree that the famine during the Great Leap Forward caused tens of millions of deaths. Chang and Halliday argue that this period accounts for roughly half of the 70 million total. An official estimate by Hu Yaobang in 1980 put the death toll at 20 million, whereas Philip Short in his 2000 book "Mao: A Life" found 20 to 30 million to be the most credible number. Chang and Halliday's figure is 37.67 million, which historian Stuart Schram indicated that he believes "may well be the most accurate." Yang Jisheng, a Communist party member and former reporter for Xinhua, puts the number of famine deaths at 36 million. In his 2010 book , Hong Kong based historian Frank Dikötter, who has had access to newly opened local archives, places the death toll for the Great Leap Forward at 45 million, and describes it as "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history."
Aughanduff
Arguably the most important single event to occur during the 19th century, and the one with the most profound repercussions was the coming of the potato blight, and following famine. Immediately prior to the famine some 425 souls were recorded as inhabiting the townland in the 1841 census. On 6 September 1845 the first occurrence of blight was recorded in the County, and the district as well as surrounding areas were affected soon thereafter. By the 1851 census, the population was recorded as having declined to 346, and this reduced by almost half (on the 1841 figure) to 214 in 1901. The famine hit poor in the area hardest with stories circulating over a century later of the destitute starving with their mouths turned green, having resorted to eating grass. As well as bringing hunger and emigration, the famine brought about longstanding changes in the settlement patterns of the area, with the disappearance of stores and shibeens which had existed prior to the mid-1840s, but disappeared with population decline and the abandonment of marginal land for cultivation.
Great Famine of 1876–1878
The Great Famine of 1876–1878 (also the Southern India famine of 1876–1878 or the Madras famine of 1877) was a famine in India under Crown rule. It began in 1876 after an intense drought resulting in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau. It affected south and southwestern India (the British presidencies of Madras and Bombay, and the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad) for a period of two years. In its second year famine also spread northward to some regions of the Central Provinces and the North-Western Provinces, and to a small area in the Punjab. The famine ultimately covered an area of and caused distress to a population totalling 58,500,000. The death toll from this famine is estimated to be in the range of 4.5 million people.
Indian famine of 1899–1900
Other estimates are by nonfiction-ecology author Michael Allaby who states that 1.25 million starved and 2 million died of disease in the famine of 1899–1900; and by historian Martin Gilbert, who in his "Routledge Atlas of British History" puts the mortality for this famine in northern India to be 2 million. Among contemporaneous accounts, a 1901 estimate published in The Lancet, put the excess mortality, from "starvation or to the diseases arising therefrom," in India in the decade between 1891 and 1901 to be 19 million. The last estimate has been cited by scholar Mike Davis, who further interprets a number of sources, including "Lancet", to estimate the total famine mortality in India between 1876 and 1902 to be between 12.2 million and 29.3 million. However, historian Vasant Kaiwar, interprets many of the same sources, but not the "Lancet", to estimate the famine mortality for the period 1876–1900 to be between 11.2 million and 19.3 million. According to poverty and development scholar Dan Banic, it was felt after the famine that the Indian famine codes from the 1880s were inadequate, and a new famine commission, appointed after the famine, brought out a revised famine code in 1901. This code was used in one form or another for many decades of the 20th century.
Great Famine (Ireland)
The 1841 census showed a population of just over eight million. Two-thirds of those depended on agriculture for their survival, but they rarely received a working wage. They had to work for their landlords in return for the patch of land they needed to grow enough food for their own families. This was the system which forced Ireland and its peasantry into monoculture, since only the potato could be grown in sufficient quantity. The rights to a plot of land in Ireland could mean the difference between life and death in the early 19th century.
Soviet famine of 1946–47
The 1946-47 famine in Ukraine affected most of the country except for an areas in few western provinces where the resistance to the forced food requisitions helped to save the people from starvation. Information about the famine in 1946-47 was similarly concealed by the Soviet government as was the famine in 1932-33. Until 1988, it was forbidden for academics in the Soviet union to research those issues. In the post WW2 famine of 1946-47 there were approximately 400,000 - 500,000 children and teenagers that died, who made up a third of the victims. There were many recorded cases of cannibalism. It also resulted in a significant increase in various types of illnesses because of a lack of food. As in the 1930s there were groups of people who would be sent around to collect dead bodies that were put into mass graves. Similarly to 1932-33, it was mostly a rural famine.
Persecution of Muslims
The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan was a period of mass starvation and drought that took place in the Tatar ASSR as a result of war communism policy, in which 500,000 to 2,000,000 peasants died. The event was part of the greater Russian famine of 1921–22 that affected other parts of the USSR, in which up 5,000,000 people died in total. According to Roman Serbyn, a professor of Russian and East European history, the Tatarstan famine was the first man-made famine in the Soviet Union and systematically targeted ethnic minorities such as Volga Tatars and Volga Germans. The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan has been compared to Holodomor in Ukraine, and in 2008, the All-Russian Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) asked the United Nations to condemn the 1921–22 Tatarstan famine as genocide of Muslim Tatars.
Famine
The Great Persian famine of 1870–1872 is believed to have caused the death of 1.5 million persons (20–25 percent of the population) in Persia (present-day Iran).
United Kingdom census, 1851
Since the 1841 Census the population of Ireland had dropped by 1.7 million due to mass starvation caused by the potato famine, as well as emigration abroad.
Cultural diversity in Puerto Rico
Many economic and political changes occurred in Europe during the latter part of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Hundreds of farm workers abandoned their work in agriculture and moved to the larger cities with the advent of the Second Industrial Revolution in search of better paying jobs. Those who stayed behind and attended their farmlands suffered the consequences of the widespread crop failure brought upon as a result of long periods of drought and diseases such as the cholera epidemic and the potato fungus which caused the Great Irish Famine of 1840. Starvation was widespread in Europe. In Ireland, the Irish Potato Famine killed over one million Irish people and created nearly two million refugees.
Russia–Ukraine relations
In 1932–1933 Ukraine experienced the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор, "Extermination by hunger" or "Hunger-extermination"; derived from 'Морити голодом', "Killing by Starvation") which was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic that killed up to 7.5 million Ukrainians. During the famine, which is also known as the "Terror-Famine in Ukraine" and "Famine-Genocide in Ukraine", millions of citizens of Ukrainian SSR, the majority of whom were Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Scholars disagree on the relative importance of natural factors and bad economic policies as causes of the famine and the degree to which the destruction of the Ukrainian peasantry was premeditated on the part of Soviet leadership. The Holodomor famine extended to many Soviet republics, including Russia and Kazakhstan. In the absence of absolute documentary proof of intent, scholars have also made the argument that the Holodomor was ultimately a consequence of the economic problems associated with radical economic changes implemented during the period of liquidation of private property and Soviet industrialization, combined with the widespread drought of the early 1930s.
South Wales Railway
However, in 1845 there was a catastrophic failure of the potato crop on which a majority of Irish people depended for a living; this resulted in mass starvation and commercial depression, which deepened the following year. The catastrophe is known as the Great Famine, and also as the Irish Potato Famine. The economy in Ireland worsened considerably, at the same time as the general economic climate throughout the United Kingdom declined sharply.
Chronology of the Great Famine
By 1851 census figures showed that the population of Ireland had fallen to 6,575,000 – a drop of 1,600,000 in ten years. Cormac Ó Gráda and Joel Mokyr have described the 1851 census as a famous but flawed source. They contend that the combination of institutional and individuals figures gives "an incomplete and biased count" of fatalities during the famine. The famine left in its wake up to a million dead and another million emigrated. The famine caused a sense of lasting bitterness by the Irish towards the British government, whom many blamed — then and now — for the starvation of so many people. The fall-out of the famine continued for decades afterwards.
Famine
There were sixteen good harvests and 111 famine years in northern Italy from 1451 to 1767. According to Stephen L. Dyson and Robert J. Rowland, "The Jesuits of Cagliari [in Sardinia] recorded years during the late 1500s "of such hunger and so sterile that the majority of the people could sustain life only with wild ferns and other weeds"... During the terrible famine of 1680, some 80,000 persons, out of a total population of 250,000, are said to have died, and entire villages were devastated..."
Great Chinese Famine
The Great Chinese Famine (, "three years of famine") was a period in the People's Republic of China between the years 1959 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine. Drought, poor weather, and the policies of ruler Mao Zedong contributed to the famine, although the relative weights of the contributions are disputed. Estimates of deaths due to starvation range in the tens of millions.
History of the potato
The Lumper potato, widely cultivated in western and southern Ireland before and during the Great Famine, was bland, wet and poorly resistant to the potato blight, but yielded large crops and usually provided adequate calories for peasants and labourers. Heavy dependence on this potato led to disaster when the blight quickly turned harvest-ready and newly harvested potatoes into a putrid mush. The Irish Famine in the western and southern parts of Ireland between 1845 and 1849 was a catastrophic failure in the food supply that led to approximately a million deaths from famine and (especially) diseases that attacked weakened bodies, and to massive emigration to Britain, the U.S., Canada and elsewhere. During the famine years roughly one million Irish emigrated; this tide was not turned until the 20th century, when Ireland's population stood at less than half of the pre-famine level of 8 million.
Famine in India
The Tughlaq Dynasty under Muhammad bin Tughluq held power during the famine centered on Delhi in 1335–42. The sultanate offered no relief to the starving residents of Delhi during this famine. Pre-colonial famines in the Deccan included the Damajipant famine of 1460 and the famines starting in 1520 and 1629. The Damajipant famine is said to have caused ruin both in the northern and southern parts of the Deccan. The 1629-32 famine in the Deccan and Gujarat, was one of the greatest in India's history. In the first 10 months of 1631 an estimated 3 million perished in Gujarat and one million in the Deccan. Eventually the famine killed not only the poor but the rich as well. More famines hit the Deccan in 1655, 1682 and 1884. Another famine in 1702–1704 killed over two million people. The oldest famine in Deccan with local documentation sufficiently well-preserved for analytical study is the Doji bara famine of 1791-92. Relief was provided by the ruler, the Peshwa Sawai Madhavrao II, in the form of imposing restrictions on export of grain and importing rice in large quantities from Bengal via private trading, however the evidence is often too scanty to judge the 'real efficacy of relief efforts' in the Mughal period.
1921–22 famine in Tatarstan
The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan was a period of mass starvation and drought that took place in the Tatar ASSR as a result of war communism policy, in which 500,000 to 2,000,000 peasants died. The event was part of the greater Russian famine of 1921–22 that affected other parts of the USSR, in which up 5,000,000 people died in total. According to Roman Serbyn, a professor of Russian and East European history, the Tatarstan famine was the first man-made famine in the Soviet Union and systematically targeted ethnic minorities such as Volga Tatars and Volga Germans.
European Potato Failure
Emigration to escape the famine centred mainly on Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom and on the continent, conditions were not so harsh as to completely eradicate the basics of survival so as to require mass migration of the sort experienced in Ireland and Scotland. Over 16,500 emigrated from the Scottish Highlands (out of a population affected by famine of no more than 200,000), many assisted by landlords and the Highland and Island Emigration Society, mainly to North America and Australia, this forming part of the second phase of the Highland Clearances. Over one million left Ireland to the same locations, further fueling nationalist antagonism to Britain, and is sometimes perceived as an Irish holocaust. The global consequence of this was the creation of a substantial Irish diaspora.
László Ladány
In the August 10, 1962, issue of "China News Analysis, "Ladány accurately noted the existence of the massive famine resulting from Mao's Great Leap Forward and offered a "realistic estimate" of 50 million deaths. This was based on letters sent from the Chinese mainland and on refugee reports. Many years later Frank Dikötter was to estimate in his book "Mao's Great Famine" (2010) a death toll of "at least" 45 million, a close confirmation of Ladány's figure.
Food biodiversity
Conservation and management of broad-based genetic diversity within the domesticated species have been improving agricultural production for 10,000 years. However, diverse natural populations have been providing food and other products for much longer. High biodiversity can maximize production levels, which are sustained through beneficial impact of ecosystem services for agricultural, modified and natural ecosystems. Conversely, reliance on a narrow portfolio of crops or crop varieties can jeopardize food production systems. This is illustrated by the Great Irish Potato Famine. Potatoes were introduced into Ireland from the New World in about 1600 and they became the major food source of most Irish people. The wind-borne Potato blight fungus spread throughout the country In 1845-1847 and caused almost complete failure of the potato crop. It is estimated that 1 million people died of starvation, cholera and typhoid.
Famine
In the early 20th century an Ottoman blockade of food being exported to Lebanon caused a famine which killed up to 450,000 Lebanese (about one-third of the population). The famine killed more people than the Lebanese Civil War. The blockade was caused by uprisings in the Syrian region of the Empire including one which occurred in the 1860s which lead to the massacre of thousands of Lebanese and Syrian by Ottoman Turks and local Druze.The Great Famine of 1315–1317 (or to 1322) was the first major food crisis to strike Europe in the 14th century. Millions in northern Europe died over an extended number of years, marking a clear end to the earlier period of growth and prosperity during the 11th and 12th centuries. An unusually cold and wet spring of 1315 led to widespread crop failures, which lasted until at least the summer of 1317; some regions in Europe did not fully recover until 1322. Most nobles, cities, and states were slow to respond to the crisis and when they realized its severity, they had little success in securing food for their people. In 1315, in Norfolk England, the price of grain soared from 5 shillings/quarter to 20 shillings/quarter. 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. There were 95 famines in medieval Britain, and 75 or more in medieval France. More than 10% of England's population, or at least 500,000 people, may have died during the famine of 1315–1316.
European Potato Failure
Aside from death from starvation and famine diseases, suffering came in other forms. While the demographic impact of famines is immediately visible in mortality, longer-term declines of fertility and natality can also dramatically affect population. In Ireland births fell by a third, resulting in about 0.5 million "lost lives". Declines elsewhere were lower: Flanders lost 20–30%, the Netherlands about 10–20%, and Prussia about 12%.
Durrus and District History 1700-1900
In March 1741 Thomas Prior founder of the RDS said that Sir Thomas Cox of Dunmanway related that due to a failure of the potato crop 500 people had died in his area. Around 350,000 people died including one fifth of Munster's population. It was referred to as Bliain an Air, the year of the slaughter. This famine may have been even more severe than the great famine of 1847 in terms of mortality from starvation and disease.
Famine
Various famines have occurred in Vietnam. Japanese occupation during World War II caused the Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which caused 2 million deaths, or 10% of the population then. Following the unification of the country after the Vietnam War, Vietnam experienced a food shortage in the 1980s, which prompted many people to flee the country.
Great Famine (Ireland)
The potato blight would return to Ireland in 1879 though by then the rural cottier tenant farmers and labourers of Ireland had begun the "Land War", described as one of the largest agrarian movements to take place in nineteenth-century Europe. The movement, organized by the Land League, continued the political campaign for the Tenant Right League's 1850 issued Three Fs, that were penned during the Great Famine. Led by a child during the Great Famine, Michael Davitt, once the potato blight returned in 1879, the League, though it would soon be suppressed would begin and encourage the mass policy of the boycott of "notorious landlords" with some members also physically blocking evictions. Despite close to 1000 interned under the 1881 Coercion Act for suspected membership. With the reduction in the rate of homelessness and the increased physical and political networks eroding the landlordism system, the severity of the following shorter famine would be limited.
Soviet famine of 1946–47
In the summer of 1946 there was a famine in the provinces of Rostov, Voronezh, Orel, Kursk and Tambov which was made worse by a poor harvest caused by drought and excessively high grain collection targets. Those were based on quotas set on too high production expectations which Stalin was unwilling to reduce in many areas. This was also a repetition of the too high quotas and excessive grain collections which led to the 1932-33 Holodomor famine-genocide which is recognized as having been a deliberate policy. The autumn and winter of 1946-1947 was the worst part of the famine, in which at least 500,000 persons perished.
1840s
The Great Famine of the 1840s caused the deaths of one million Irish people and over a million more emigrated to escape it. It is sometimes referred to, mostly outside Ireland, as the "Irish Potato Famine" because one-third of the population was then solely reliant on this cheap crop for a number of historical reasons. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. A census taken in 1841 revealed a population of slightly over 8 million. A census immediately after the famine in 1851 counted 6,552,385, a drop of almost 1.5 million in 10 years.
Great Famine (Greece)
There are no accurate numbers of the famine deaths because civil registration records did not function during the occupation. In general, it is estimated that Greece suffered approximately 300,000 deaths during the Axis occupation as a result of famine and malnutrition. However, not all parts of Greece experienced equal levels of food scarcity. Although comprehensive data on regional famine severity does not exist, the available evidence indicates that the severe movement restrictions, the proximity to agricultural production and the level of urbanization were crucial factors of famine mortality.
John McNeill (diplomat)
In 1845, McNeill was appointed chairman of the Board of Supervision, entrusted with the working of the new Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845, a post he occupied for twenty-three years. During the Highland Potato Famine – nearly as disastrous as the Irish Potato Famine – he conducted a special inquiry into the condition of the western Scottish Highlands and Western Isles, during which he personally inspected twenty-seven of the most distressed parishes.
A. J. P. Taylor
In 1962, Taylor wrote in a review of "The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849" by Cecil Woodham-Smith that: "All Ireland was a Belsen...The English governing class ran true to form. They had killed two million Irish people." Taylor added that if the death rate from the Irish Potato Famine was not higher it "was not for want of trying" on the part of the British government, writing: "I have always felt a certain horror of political economists since I heard one of them say that the Famine in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good." Taylor later reprinted his book review under the stark title "Genocide" in his 1976 book "Essays in English History"."
Holodomor
On 10 November 2003 at the United Nations, 25 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, and United States signed a joint statement on the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor with the following preamble:
In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people. In this regard, we note activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine, in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine.
Famine in India
There was a threat of famine, but after 1902 there was no major famine in India until the Bengal famine of 1943. This famine was the most devastating; between 2.5 and 3 million people died during World War II. In India as a whole, the food supply was rarely inadequate, even in times of droughts. The Famine Commission of 1880 identified that the loss of wages from lack of employment of agricultural labourers and artisans were the cause of famines. The Famine Code applied a strategy of generating employment for these sections of the population and relied on open-ended public works to do so. The Indian Famine Code was used in India until more lessons were learnt from the Bihar famine of 1966–67. The Famine Code has been updated in independent India and it has been renamed "Scarcity Manuals." In some parts of the country, the Famine Code is no longer used, primarily because the rules embodied in them have become routine procedure in famine relief strategy.
Holodomor
Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. According to higher estimates, up to 12 million ethnic Ukrainians were said to have perished as a result of the famine. A U.N. joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished. Research has since narrowed the estimates to between 3.3 and 7.5 million. According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kiev in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficit.
Famine
Famine still occurred in Eastern Europe during the 20th century. Droughts and famines in Imperial Russia are known to have happened every 10 to 13 years, with average droughts happening every 5 to 7 years. Russia experienced eleven major famines between 1845 and 1922, one of the worst being the famine of 1891–92. The Russian famine of 1921–22 killed an estimated 5 million.
Famines continued in the Soviet era, the most notorious being the "Holodomor" in various parts of the country, especially the Volga, and the Ukrainian and northern Kazakh SSR's during the winter of 1932–1933. The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 is nowadays reckoned to have cost an estimated 6 million lives. The last major famine in the USSR happened in 1947 due to the severe drought and the mismanagement of grain reserves by the Soviet government.
Indian famine of 1899–1900
According to the "Imperial Gazetteer of India", published in 1907, by the British government's India Office, overall, in British areas only, approximately one million individuals died of starvation or accompanying disease; in addition, as a result of acute shortage of fodder, cattle in the millions perished in the famine. The devastation of livestock was more specifically recorded in regional official estimates. These, according to economic historian Neil Charlesworth, in western India, during the famine of 1899–1900, put cattle deaths at 2 million. As, in some parts of western India, it typically took eight to ten oxen to plough and harrow the hard ground, both cultivation capacity and agricultural income were drastically reduced for many years afterward. Consequently, unlike after the Great Famine of 1876–78, the population, both human and livestock, did not quickly bounce back after the famine of 1899–1900. In the description of Charlesworth, "In Dholka taluk of Ahmedabad, for example, the population in 1911 was lower than at any previous census since the middle of the nineteenth century, whilst, at the other end of the Presidency, in Belgaum taluk the population of 1911 was lower by over 8,000 than that of 1891. These falls, however, were typically matched, and even exceeded, in the worst hit areas of the Deccan, by heavy decline in numbers of agricultural stock. ... The consequences of this for cultivation may have been grave."
Irish cuisine
In 1845, the Potato Famine (otherwise known as the Great Famine) began when many potato crops in Ireland had been infected with a mold called Potato Blight. This had turned their potatoes diseased and useless, putting many who are already in poverty into deeper poverty . The crop had failed due to potato blight in 1845-46, had little success in 1847, and failed once again in 1848. The starving Irish tried eating the potatoes, and would get extremely sick from eating them. Irish people began eating a diet of eggs, birds, and plants like nettles and chickweeds. Many Farmers would bleed their cattle out and fry the blood, rather than eat their meat. If the cattle were as malnourished as the people, then the resulting meat wouldn't be fit for consumption, so they resorted to using the blood mixed with herbs, garlic, oats and butter, it could be used as good emergency meal. The extremely desperate and malnourished ate rats and worms found off the street.
Great Famine (Ireland)
In 1851, the Census of Ireland Commissioners recorded 24 failures of the potato crop going back to 1728, of varying severity. General crop failures, through disease or frost, were recorded in 1739, 1740, 1770, 1800, and 1807. In 1821 and 1822, the potato crop failed in Munster and Connaught. In 1830 and 1831, Mayo, Donegal, and Galway suffered likewise. In 1832, 1833, 1834, and 1836, dry rot and curl caused serious losses, and in 1835 the potato failed in Ulster. Widespread failures throughout Ireland occurred in 1836, 1837, 1839, 1841, and 1844. According to Woodham-Smith, "the unreliability of the potato was an accepted fact in Ireland".
Genetic diversity
The nineteenth-century Potato Famine in Ireland was in part caused by lack of biodiversity. Since new potato plants do not come as a result of reproduction, but rather from pieces of the parent plant, no genetic diversity is developed, and the entire crop is essentially a clone of one potato, it is especially susceptible to an epidemic. In the 1840s, much of Ireland's population depended on potatoes for food. They planted namely the "lumper" variety of potato, which was susceptible to a rot-causing oomycete called "Phytophthora infestans". The fungus destroyed the vast majority of the potato crop, and left one million people to starve to death.
Highland Potato Famine
Blight returned year after year, but never to the same extent as in 1846. As late as 1854, the complete loss of the potato crop was being reported for local blackspots such as the Hebridean communities of Barra and Harris (where the blight was said to be more prevalent than in 1846). In subsequent years blight was usually reported in various localities, but it was always only partial and never as bad as first feared: "There is some clamour about the potato blight but ... the fear is greater than the hurt". On Lewis, Sir James Matheson had spent £33,000 in three years to support his tenants; in six of the next thirty years he had to provide similar help, but on a much smaller scale and with a greater likelihood of being repaid: 
Most landlords worked to lessen the effects of the famine on their crofting tenants; forgoing rent, donating to the relief committees, running their own parallel relief operations, funding the introduction of new crops and industries or reviving old ones. However, as it became apparent that crofting at current population levels had long-term problems, they feared that the government would impose some system of permanent relief charged against their estates (either directly or through Poor Law reform). They instead sought to solve or remove the problems by inducing their poorer tenants to migrate to the Lowlands, or emigrate overseas.
Agriculture in the Middle Ages
The best known and most extensive famine of the Middle Ages was the Great Famine of 1315-1317 (which actually persisted to 1322) that impacted 30 million people in northern Europe of whom five to ten percent died. The famine came near the end of three centuries of growth in population and prosperity. The causes were "severe winters and rainy springs, summers and falls." Yields of crops fell by one-third or one-fourth and draft animals died in large numbers. The Black Death of 1347-1352 was more lethal, but the Great Famine was the worst natural catastrophe of the later Middle Ages.
North Korean famine
The exact number of deaths during the acute phase of the crisis, from 1994 to 1998, will probably never be fully determined, since the government has refused to release any of this information to the outside world. Independent analysis estimates that between 800,000 and 1,500,000 people died due to starvation, disease, or sickness caused by lack of food.
Islam in Tatarstan
The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan was a period of mass starvation and drought that took place in the Tatar ASSR as a result of war communism policy, in which 500,000 to 2,000,000 peasants died. The event was part of the greater Russian famine of 1921–22 that affected other parts of the USSR, in which up 5,000,000 people died in total. In 2008, the All-Russian Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) asked the United Nations to condemn the 1921-22 Tatarstan famine as genocide of Muslim Tatars.
Chronology of the Great Famine
Following earlier reports of incidences of the blight in England, on 13 September 1845 potato blight was first reported in Ireland. The crops at Dublin were suddenly perishing, it was reported in the "Gardeners' Chronicle", asking "where will Ireland be in the event of a universal potato rot?" The British Government were nevertheless optimistic through the next few weeks.The principle of the Corn Laws had been to keep the price of home-grown grain up. Duties on imported grain assured English farmers a minimum and profitable price. The burden of a higher price for bread was carried by the labouring classes, in particular factory workers and operatives. It was claimed that if the Corn Laws were repealed all those connected with the land would be ruined and the established social organisation of the country destroyed.
Famine
In 1958 in China, Mao Zedong's Communist Government launched the Great Leap Forward campaign, aimed at rapidly industrializing the country. The government forcibly took control of agriculture. Barely enough grain was left for the peasants, and starvation occurred in many rural areas. Exportation of grain continued despite the famine and the government attempted to conceal it. While the famine is attributed to unintended consequences, it is believed that the government refused to acknowledge the problem, thereby further contributing to the deaths. In many instances, peasants were persecuted. Between 20 and 45 million people perished in this famine, making it one of the deadliest famines to date.
Five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union
A major event during the first Five Year-Plan was the Great Famine. The famine peaked during the winter of 1932-1933 claiming the lives of an estimated five to seven million people, while millions more were permanently disabled. The famine was the direct result of the industrialization and collectivization implemented by the first Five Year-Plan. Many of the peasants who were suffering from the famine began to sabotage the fulfillment of their obligations to the state and would, as often as they could, stash away stores of food. Although Stalin was aware of this, he placed the blame of the hostility onto the peasants, saying that they had declared war against the Soviet government.
Great Famine (Ireland)
On 16 August 1845, "The Gardeners' Chronicle and Horticultural Gazette" reported "a blight of unusual character" on the Isle of Wight. A week later, on 23 August, it reported that "A fearful malady has broken out among the potato crop ... In Belgium the fields are said to be completely desolated. There is hardly a sound sample in Covent Garden market ... As for cure for this distemper, there is none." These reports were extensively covered in Irish newspapers. On 11 September, the "Freeman's Journal" reported on "the appearance of what is called 'cholera' in potatoes in Ireland, especially in the north". On 13 September, "The Gardeners' Chronicle" announced: "We stop the Press with very great regret to announce that the potato Murrain has unequivocally declared itself in Ireland."
Joseph Stalin
The Soviet Union experienced a major famine which peaked in the winter of 1932–33; between five and seven million people died. Worst affected were Ukraine and the North Caucuses, although the famine also impacted Kazakhstan and several Russian provinces. Historians have long debated whether Stalin's government had intended the famine to occur or not; there are no known documents in which Stalin or his government explicitly called for starvation to be used against the population. The 1931 and 1932 harvests had been poor ones due to weather conditions, and had followed several years in which lower productivity had resulted in a gradual decline in output. Government policies—including the focus on rapid industrialisation, the socialisation of livestock, and the emphasis on sown areas over crop rotation—exacerbated the problem; the state had also failed to build reserve grain stocks for such an emergency. Stalin blamed the famine on hostile elements and wreckers within the peasantry; his government provided small amounts of food to famine-struck rural areas, although this was wholly insufficient to deal with the levels of starvation. In keeping with their ideology, the Communists believed that food supplies should be prioritised for the urban workforce; for Stalin, the fate of Soviet industrialisation was far more important than the lives of the peasantry. Grain exports, which were a major means of Soviet payment for machinery, declined heavily. Stalin would not acknowledge that his policies had contributed to the famine, the existence of which was denied to foreign observers.
Great Famine of 1695–1697
In the Swedish province of Finland, the Great Famine of 1695–97 was also referred to as "The Years of Many Deaths" by some Finnish historians, because it killed about a third of the Finnish population in only two years, or about 150,000. It was Finland's worst demographic catastrophe.
Famine in India
The Bengal famine of 1943 reached its peak between July and November of that year, and the worst of the famine was over by early 1945. Famine fatality statistics were unreliable, and it is estimated up to two million died. Although one of the causes of the famine was the cutting off of the supply of rice to Bengal during the fall of Rangoon to the Japanese, this was only a fraction of the food needed for the region. According to the Irish economist and professor Cormac Ó Gráda, priority was given to military considerations, and the poor of Bengal were left unprovided for. Attempts were made by the Government of India to direct food from surplus regions such as Punjab to famine areas in Bengal but the provincial governments obstructed the movement of grain. The Famine Commission of 1948 and economist Amartya Sen found that there was enough rice in Bengal to feed all of Bengal for most of 1943. Sen claimed the famine was caused by inflation, with those benefiting from inflation eating more and leaving less for the rest of the population. These studies, however, did not account for possible inaccuracies in estimates or the impact of fungal disease on the rice. De Waal states that the British government did not enforce the Famine Codes during the Bengal famine of 1943 because they failed to detect a food shortage. The Bengal famine of 1943 was the last catastrophic famine in India, and it holds a special place in the historiography of famine due to Sen's classic work of 1981 titled "Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation".
Soviet famine of 1932–33
The Soviet famine of 1932–33 was a major famine that killed millions of people in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia. The Holodomor in Ukraine and Kazakh famine of 1932–33 have been seen as genocide committed by Joseph Stalin's government ; it is estimated between 3.3 and 7.5 million died in Ukraine and ~2,000,000 (40% of all Kazakhs) died in Kazakhstan.
Robert Traill (clergyman)
At the outbreak of the Great Famine in 1845 Traill believed that the ventilation of the traditional storage of potatoes in pits would save them from the blight and he worked on constructing these potato pit air shafts from October 1845. However he realised this would not be successful and by December was trying, in vain, to persuade the local landlords to let their tenants keep some grain so that they weren't forced to eat their seed potatoes. Traill established a relief committee for his parish and wrote widely to persuade people to subscribe to it. He was shown in the "Illustrated London News" visiting a dying man and his family, having been sketched by James Mahoney who said of Traill that "his humanity at the present moment is beyond praise".
Famine in India
Curzon stated that such philanthropy would be criticised, but not doing so would be a crime. He also cut back rations that he characterised as "dangerously high," and stiffened relief eligibility by reinstating the Temple tests. Between 1.25 and 10 million people died in the famine. The famine during World War II lead to the development of the Bengal Famine Mixture (based on rice with sugar). This would later save tens of thousands of lives at liberated concentration camps such as Belsen.
Irish immigration to Puerto Rico
Those who stayed behind and tended to their farmlands suffered the consequences of the widespread crop failures brought about as a result of long periods of drought and diseases such as the cholera epidemic and the potato fungus which caused the Great Irish Famine of 1840. Mass starvation was widespread in Europe. Specifically, in Ireland, the Irish Potato Famine killed over one million people and created nearly two million refugees. These refugees went to Great Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and, of course, the Caribbean. One of the islands that many Irish families emigrated in large numbers to throughout this period continued to be Irish-friendly Puerto Rico. Moreover, being a Spanish colony, the island had a primarily Roman Catholic population which appealed to the Irish immigrants, as opposed to the Protestant majorities of most of the colonies of the British Empire and the United States at the time that were openly hostile to Irish immigration.
Gulag
During the Great Patriotic War, Gulag populations declined sharply due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. In the winter of 1941 a quarter of the Gulag's population died of starvation. 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941–43, from a combination of their harsh working conditions and the famine caused by the German invasion. This period accounts for about half of all gulag deaths, according to Russian statistics.
Great Famine (Ireland)
In 1851, the census commissioners collected information on the number who died in each family since 1841, and the cause, season, and year of death. They recorded 21,770 total deaths from starvation in the previous decade, and 400,720 deaths from disease. Listed diseases were fever, diphtheria, dysentery, cholera, smallpox, and influenza, with the first two being the main killers (222,021 and 93,232). The commissioners acknowledged that their figures were incomplete and that the true number of deaths was probably higher:
Droughts and famines in Russia and the Soviet Union
In the 17th century, Russia experienced the famine of 1601–1603, believed to be its worst as it may have killed 2 million people (1/3 of the population). Major famines include the Great Famine of 1315–17, which affected much of Europe including part of Russia as well as the Baltic states. The Nikonian chronicle, written between 1127 and 1303, recorded no less than eleven famine years during that period. One of the most serious crises before 1900 was the famine of 1891–92, which killed between 375,000 and 500,000 people, mainly due to famine-related diseases. Causes included a large Autumn drought resulting in crop failures. Attempts by the government to alleviate the situation generally failed which may have contributed to a lack of faith in the Czarist regime and later political instability.
Haile Selassie
Famine—mostly in Wollo, north-eastern Ethiopia, as well as in some parts of Tigray—is estimated to have killed 40,000 to 80,000 Ethiopians between 1972 and 1974. A BBC News report has cited a 1973 estimate that 200,000 deaths occurred, based on a contemporaneous estimate from the Ethiopian Nutrition Institute. While this figure is still repeated in some texts and media sources, it was an estimate that was later found to be "over-pessimistic". Although the region is infamous for recurrent crop failures and continuous food shortage and starvation risk, this episode was remarkably severe. A 1973 production of the ITV programme "The Unknown Famine" by Jonathan Dimbleby relied on the unverified estimate of 200,000 dead, stimulating a massive influx of aid while at the same time destabilizing Haile Selassie's regime.
Some reports suggest that the emperor was unaware of the extent of the famine, while others assert that he was well aware of it. In addition to the exposure of attempts by corrupt local officials to cover up the famine from the imperial government, the Kremlin's depiction of Haile Selassie's Ethiopia as backwards and inept (relative to the purported utopia of Marxism-Leninism) contributed to the popular uprising that led to its downfall and the rise of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The famine and its image in the media undermined popular support of the government, and Haile Selassie's once unassailable personal popularity fell.
Human rights in North Korea
Estimates based on the North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the North Korean famine and that excess mortality during the whole period 1993 to 2008 was between 600,000 and 850,000. The famine has been described as the result of the economic policies of the North Korean government or as deliberate "terror-starvation". Co-author of "The Black Book of Communism" Pierre Rigoulot estimates 100,000 executions, 1.5 million deaths in concentration camps and 500,000 deaths from famine, reaching a total of 2.1 million victims (not counting 1.3 million Korean soldiers and civilians killed on both sides during the Korean War).
History of immigration to the United States
Between 1841 and 1850, immigration nearly tripled again, totaling 1,713,000 immigrants, including at least 781,000 Irish, 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British, and 77,000 French. The Irish, driven by the Potato Famine (1845–1849), emigrated directly from their homeland to escape poverty and death. The failed revolutions of 1848 brought many intellectuals and activists to exile in the U.S. Bad times and poor conditions in Europe drove people out, while land, relatives, freedom, opportunity, and jobs in the US lured them in.
Italo Scanga
The politics that concern Scanga here are not specific to Italy, in fact this particular source of inspiration is derived from a different peasant culture, the rural class of Ireland. Soon after his move to the West Coast in 1978, Scanga read detailed information on the infamous Irish Potato Famines of the late 1840s. As he almost always does, he began to research this sociopolitical tragedy and quickly realized the enormity of the facts and figures. Close to one million Irish dead, over a million emigrated caused by successive failures of the staple food crop the white potato. Waves of economic and social upheaval raced through the poor rural class as did epidemics of cholera, typhus, dysentery and scurvy. The population of a nation was decimated in a few decades from 7 million to well under 3 million.
Indian famine of 1899–1900
The resulting mortality was high. In the Deccan, an estimated 166,000 people died, and in the entire Bombay Presidency a total of 462,000. In the Presidency, the famine of 1899–1900 had the highest mortality—at 37.9 deaths per 1000—among all famines and scarcities there between 1876–77 and 1918–19. According to a 1908 estimate of the Imperial Gazetteer, in the British administered districts alone, approximately 1,000,000 individuals died of starvation or accompanying disease; in addition, as a result of acute shortage of fodder, cattle in the millions perished. Other estimates vary between 1 million and 4.5 million deaths.
Famine
Famine even struck in Western Europe during the Second World War. In the Netherlands, the "Hongerwinter" of 1944 killed approximately 30,000 people. Some other areas of Europe also experienced famine at the same time.
Highland Potato Famine
The Highland Potato Famine () was a period of 19th century Highland and Scottish history (1846 to roughly 1856) over which the agricultural communities of the Hebrides and the western Scottish Highlands () saw their potato crop (upon which they had become over-reliant) repeatedly devastated by potato blight. It was part of the wider food crisis facing Northern Europe caused by potato blight during the mid-1840s, whose most famous manifestation is the Great Irish Famine, but compared to its Irish counterpart it was much less extensive (the population seriously at risk was never more than 200,000 - and often much less) and took many fewer lives (prompt and major charitable efforts by the rest of the United Kingdom ensured relatively little starvation). The terms on which charitable relief was given, however, led to destitution and malnutrition amongst its recipients. A government enquiry could suggest no short-term solution other than reduction of the population of the area at risk by emigration to Canada or Australia. Highland landlords organised and paid for the emigration of more than 16,000 of their tenants and a significant but unknown number paid for their own passage. Evidence suggests that the majority of Highlanders who permanently left the famine-struck regions emigrated, rather than moving to other parts of Scotland. It is estimated that about a third of the population of the western Scottish Highlands emigrated between 1841 and 1861.
Great Famine (Greece)
The Great Famine () was a period of mass starvation during the Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II (1941–44). The local population suffered greatly during this period, while the Axis Powers initiated a policy of large scale plunder. Moreover, requisitions, together with the Allied blockade of Greece, the ruined state of the country's infrastructure, and the emergence of a powerful and well-connected black market, resulted in the Great Famine, with the mortality rate reaching a peak during the winter of 1941–42. The great suffering and the pressure of the Greek diaspora eventually forced the British to lift the blockade partially, and from the summer of 1942, the International Red Cross was able to distribute supplies in sufficient quantities; however, the situation remained grim until the end of the occupation.
Potato
According to conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century, part of the Columbian exchange. The staple was subsequently conveyed by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world. The potato was slow to be adopted by European farmers, but soon enough it became an important food staple and field crop that played a major role in the European 19th century population boom. However, lack of genetic diversity, due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-like oomycete "Phytophthora infestans", spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland as well as parts of the Scottish Highlands, resulting in the crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine. Thousands of varieties still persist in the Andes however, where over 100 cultivars might be found in a single valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household.
Irish Famine (1740–41)
The Irish Famine of 1740–1741 (, meaning the Year of Slaughter) in the Kingdom of Ireland, is estimated to have killed between 13% and 20% of the 1740 population of 2.4 million people, which was a proportionately greater loss than during the Great Famine of 1845–1852.
Famine
Until 2017, worldwide deaths from famine had been falling dramatically. The World Peace Foundation reported that from the 1870s to the 1970s, great famines killed an average of 928,000 people a year. Since 1980, annual deaths had dropped to an average of 75,000, less than 10% of what they had been until the 1970s. That reduction was achieved despite the approximately 150,000 lives lost in the 2011 Somalia famine. Yet in 2017, the UN officially declared famine had returned to Africa, with about 20 million people at risk of death from starvation in Nigeria, in South Sudan, in Yemen, and in Somalia.
Famine
During the 20th century, an estimated 70 million people died from famines across the world, of whom an estimated 30 million died during the famine of 1958–61 in China. The other most notable famines of the century included the Bengal famine of 1943 caused by the Japanese occupation of Burma and the policies of Churchill, famines in China in 1928 and 1942, and a sequence of famines in Russia and elsewhere in the Soviet Union, including the Russian famine of 1921–22 and Soviet famine of 1932–1933, caused by the policies of Lenin and Stalin.
A few of the great famines of the late 20th century were: the Biafran famine in the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge-caused famine in Cambodia in the 1970s, the North Korean famine of the 1990s and the Ethiopian famine of 1983–85.
Great Tenmei famine
The Great Tenmei famine (天明の大飢饉, "Tenmei no daikikin") was a famine which affected Japan during the Edo period. It is considered to have begun in 1782, and lasted until 1788. It was named after the Tenmei era (1781–1789), during the reign of Emperor Kōkaku. The ruling "shoguns" during the famine were Tokugawa Ieharu and Tokugawa Ienari. The famine was the deadliest one during the early modern period in Japan.
Chronology of the Great Famine
At the beginning of August, Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister, received news of a potato disease in the South of England. This was the first recorded evidence that the 'blight' which had ravaged the potato crop in North America in 1843-1844 had crossed the Atlantic. Cecil Woodham-Smith would write that a failure in England would be serious, but for Ireland, it would be a disaster.
Irish people
Known as An Górta Mór (The great hunger) in Gaeilge, millions of Irish people died and emigrated during Ireland's largest famine. The famine lasted from 1845 - 1849, it was worst during 1847 which was known as Black '47. The famine occurred due to the extremely impoverished Irish population's staple food the potato being infected with Blight. This meant the crop failed and turned black. Starving people who tried to eat them would only vomit it back up soon afterwards. Soup kitchens were set up but made little difference. The English government produced little aid, only sending raw corn known as 'Peel's Brimstone' to Ireland. It was known by this name after the British PM at the time and the fact that native Irish weren't aware on how to cook corn. This led to little or no improvement. The British government set up workhouses which were disease ridden (with cholera, TB and others) but they also failed as little food was available and many died on arrival as they were overworked. Some English political figures at the time saw the famine as a purge from God to exterminate the majority of the native Irish population.
Great Famine (Ireland)
The potato blight returned to Europe in 1879, but by that point the labourers of Ireland had, in the Legacy of the Great Irish Famine, begun the "Land War", described as one of the largest agrarian movements to take place in 19th-century Europe. The movement, organized by the Land League, continued the political campaign for the Three Fs, issued in 1850 by the Tenant Right League and initially developed during the Great Famine. When the potato blight returned in 1879, the League boycotted "notorious landlords" and its members physically blocked evictions of farmers. As a result, the consequent reduction in homelessness and house demolition resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of deaths.
Potato famine
Potato famine may refer to: