Famine: A Short History

Front Cover
Princeton University Press, 2009 - Business & Economics - 327 pages

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

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

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

 

Contents

III
1
IV
8
V
13
VI
25
VII
39
VIII
45
IX
52
X
56
XXVI
155
XXVII
157
XXVIII
159
XXIX
166
XXX
178
XXXI
184
XXXII
195
XXXIII
210

XI
59
XII
63
XIII
69
XIV
73
XV
78
XVI
81
XVII
90
XVIII
92
XIX
98
XX
102
XXI
108
XXII
121
XXIII
129
XXIV
137
XXV
143
XXXIV
216
XXXV
218
XXXVI
225
XXXVII
229
XXXVIII
233
XXXIX
241
XL
254
XLI
259
XLII
262
XLIII
269
XLIV
274
XLV
278
XLVI
283
XLVII
319
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About the author (2009)

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