GuidoAlfani and Cormac ÓGráda (eds.) Famine in European HistoryCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xi + 325 p. $89.99; $29.99 (pbk.).

Abstract

This impressive volume presents a series of quantitatively rich historical studies by leading scholars that together offer a broad picture of famine in Europe—scale, context, and cause and effect—from medieval times onward. Eight chapters cover specific countries or regions of Western Europe; another treats the European areas of the former Soviet Union. Only a north–south segment of the continent from Poland to the Balkans is not accorded this specialized attention. The main period is from the late Middle Ages (earlier for the Nordic countries) to the nineteenth century. A final chapter focuses on the famines of the two world wars. The definition of famine used by the contributors is Cormac Ó Gráda's: “a shortage of food or purchasing power that leads directly to excess mortality from starvation or hunger-induced diseases.” This formulation combines Amartya Sen's (and Adam Smith's) view of famine as largely an entitlement failure—a man-made event—with simpler notions of “natural” causes such as crop failure. In each chapter the basic data drawn on to statistically identify famine years are recorded time series of deaths or burials and food prices, especially wheat. These materials are supplemented from contemporary accounts and case studies. The consistent definition and roughly uniform approach of the regional studies allow the editors to present, in their introductory overview, “the first truly comparative chronology of European famines.” Their listing ranges from the famines of the mid-thirteenth century in Italy, Spain, and Britain to those of the 1860s in the Nordic countries, Ukraine, and Russia. The three most widespread European famines over this period occurred in 1315–17 (the so-called Great Famine, “the worst food crisis of the late Middle Ages”), 1590–98 (the trough of the Little Ice Age, though its link to the famine is contested), and 1693–97 (affecting Scandinavia, France, and Italy especially). More regionally limited famines, describing most of those identified, could be just as devastating. The Great Irish Famine of 1845–50, though it “hardly qualifies for inclusion in a shortlist of the main European famines of all times,” killed a million people and forced the emigration of even more. The discussions of the causes of famine in the volume emphasize the range of factors involved. Weather, of course, figures prominently, especially harvest failures due to heavy spring and summer rains, with distant volcanic eruptions, sunspot cycles, and climate trends contributing as well. Crop and cattle diseases also play a role: New World crops—maize in Italy, the potato in Ireland—proved particularly susceptible. Man-made famine has mostly been war-related. Recent research has not supported earlier charges of intentional British and Soviet policy, beyond mere callousness, behind the Great Irish Famine or the Ukrainian and Moldovan famines of the 1930s and 1940s. Revisionist interpretations point rather to ignorance and poor judgment. Contributors also explore the consequences of famine. Demographically, even massive famine death tolls seemingly left overall population trends little affected—the conclusion reached by Watkins and Menken in PDR, 11, no. 4. Ireland is the chief exception to this. (Epidemic disease for the most part is similarly hard to discern in the aggregate population record, though here the main exception is spectacular: the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century, which by a recent estimate killed over half of Europe's population.) Political instability is a surer famine outcome; indeed, by some accounts, food crises helped trigger the revolutionary events of 1789, 1848, and 1917. Famine in Europe had largely ended in the nineteenth century, only to return in strikingly man-made form in the disruptions of food supplies in World Wars I and II. The authors of this chapter, Stephen Wheatcroft and Ó Gráda, remark that in both situations, “the threat of massive continental mortality caused by food shortages was only narrowly averted by an unusually active international aid policy.” The volume's editors, noted experts in famine studies, are economic historians at Bocconi University, Milan and University College Dublin. Comprehensive bibliography, index.