Centuries of scarcity

François Jean, a leading figure in Doctors Without Borders and someone who had worked in Ethiopia for long, once wrote that famine was used by the government in Addis Ababa as “a trump card to weaken opposition movements and control populations”.

Like Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and like China in the Great Leap Forward, Ethiopia was a country where, as Jean put it, “a revolutionary rhetoric influenced the actual execution of a radical project of social restructuring.” And as in Russia and China before, what occurred was “the logical product of a system that seeks to lead an entire society on a forced march towards an absolute, compulsory good”. This is an argument that resonates through Cormac O’Grada’s book Famine: A Short History.

Grada who teaches economics at University College Dublin, quotes the Doctors Without Borders ideologue extensively while examining the complex relationship between famine, politics, and public action. The book derives strength from O’Grada’s mining of the historical record, uses extensive empirical data to explore causes and consequences of this fatal phenomenon.

He challenges the fundamental claim of Malthus, the father of modern demography, that famine “seems to be the last, most dreadful resource of nature”, and “the power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to provide subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race”.

As the Irish historian notes, “elementary demographic arithmetic argues against famines being as severe a demographic corrective as Malthus and others have suggested”. If famines had really been as frequent as Malthus and his inheritors, most notably French historian Fernand Braudel, argued, it would have been impossible to sustain populations, let alone for them to grow.

The author is cautious about how far the historical record before the 17th century can be trusted, yet is willing to bet that famines have been less common in the past than claimed by Malthus or Braudel. He goes with Amartya Sen in claiming that the “onward march of accountable government will rid the world’s last vulnerable regions of the scourge of famine”.

His gives a telling account of the famine-affected and ends by emphasising that an increase in global living standards since 1900 and globalisation of disaster relief would mean that poor but peaceful regions of the world are less at risk today than in the 1980s. It also helps that there are no Stalins, Hitlers, or Maos on the horizon.

Ashraf Zaidi is a historian in New York

Subscribe to Daily Newsletter :

SUPPORT US

We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.