Drought and Famine
How drought and famine affected humans
7 Withering Droughts
California's ongoing drought, which started in late 2011, has become so severe that the state is mandating water cuts for the first time ever. Crops are being devastated, wells are running dry, yards are turning brown, rare fish populations are plummeting, and desalination plants are being explored. Yet this is far from the only time humanity has faced scant rainfall. Below, explore seven other droughts that profoundly impacted the local populace.
Tropical Africa (133,000 B.C. to 88,000 B.C.)
By extracting sediment cores from Lake Malawi, one of the largest and deepest lakes on Earth, scientists determined in 2007 that sub-Saharan Africa experienced a series of mega-droughts from 135,000 to 90,000 years ago. Rainfall was so scarce, in fact, that the lake's water level dropped some 2,000 feet, and lush forests turned into arid scrubland. The return of wetter conditions, coinciding as they did with an expanded Nile corridor, may have then provided humans with an ideal window for leaving Africa and colonizing the world, scientists say.
Ancient Egypt (around 2200 B.C.)
Nile Delta sediments show that the amount of wetland pollen decreased about 4,200 years ago and that the amount of charcoal (a sign of fire) increased, leading scientists to believe that a drought must have occurred. They furthermore speculate that this lack of rain contributed to the demise of Egypt's Old Kingdom, best known for constructing the massive pyramids of Giza. Other civilizations to decline around that time, possibly as a result of the same drought, include the Harappa of present-day northwest India and Pakistan, the Subir of present-day Syria and the Minoan of Crete.
Mesoamerica (around A.D. 760 to 910)
During their so-called Classic Period from approximately A.D. 250 to the 9th century, the Maya built dozens of monumental stone cities while at the same time making impressive strides in mathematics, agriculture, astronomy, writing and art. Then it all fell apart, a collapse in which drought almost certainly played a role. Numerous recent studies illustrate that the Maya endured centuries of low rainfall from roughly the 600s to the 1100s, and that the main episodes of city abandonment from 760 to 910 appear to coincide with particularly dry years. Scientists contend that the drought's effects were then exacerbated by warfare, political instability and land degradation.
The Dust Bowl (1931-1939)
With the Great Depression already making life difficult, a drought struck the Great Plains in 1931 and essentially lasted for the rest of the decade. Combined with short-sighted agricultural practices, it induced huge clouds of dust that turned skies dark, lodged in residents' lungs, and precipitated a mass migration to greener pastures. The apex came in 1934, which NASA researchers recently called the worst drought year of the last millennium in North America. Not far behind was 1936, when, amid the dust storms, a devastating summer heat wave killed upwards of 5,000 Americans and 1,100 Canadians.
China (1941-1942)
Amid the chaos of World War II, one of China's worst droughts in decades hit Henan Province, part of the country's traditional breadbasket region. Winds, hailstorms and locusts compounded the situation, and in 1942 grain harvests in the portion of the province not occupied by Japan dropped to roughly a quarter of their normal output. To make matters worse, much of that food went to soldiers. Forced to eat roots and bark, as many as 3 million Chinese died of starvation by the end of the following year and millions more became refugees.
Northern Great Plains (1987-1989)
Following a 1950s dry spell, no widespread drought hit the United States until the late 1980s, when prime corn and soybean country in the Northern Great Plains began suffering from low rainfall. Spreading both east and west, the drought was then blamed for the many heat waves and forest fires that broke out in the summer of 1988. In and around Yellowstone National Park, for example, a blaze torched about 1.2 million acres, closing the entire park for the first time. Researchers later estimated the cost of this three-year drought at $39 billion, marking it as the most expensive U.S. natural disaster up to that point.
Syria (2006-2010)
Experts increasingly believe that Syria's worst drought on record last decade may have sparked the country's civil war, an ongoing, multi-sided affair that has already claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people. During the drought, roughly 1.5 million Syrians from farming villages fled to cities as their livestock died and their fields turned to desert. Rather than sympathy, however, they were met with alleged indifference from the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which, among other things, cut their food and energy subsidies. With sectarian tensions adding to their discontent, a number of these newly unemployed farmers joined peaceful protests against Assad in 2011 that quickly boiled over into violent conflict.
The Irish Famine
Catastrophe
The Great Famine in Ireland began as a natural catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude, but its effects were severely worsened by the actions and inactions of the Whig government, headed by Lord John Russell in the crucial years from 1846 to 1852.
The Irish famine was proportionally more destructive of human life than...the famines of modern times.
Altogether, about a million people in Ireland are reliably estimated to have died of starvation and epidemic disease between 1846 and 1851, and some two million emigrated in a period of a little more than a decade (1845-55). Comparison with other modern and contemporary famines establishes beyond any doubt that the Irish famine of the late 1840s, which killed nearly one-eighth of the entire population, was proportionally much more destructive of human life than the vast majority of famines in modern times.
In most famines in the contemporary world, only a small fraction of the population of a given country or region is exposed to the dangers of death from starvation or infectious diseases, and then typically for only one or two seasons. But in the Irish famine of the late 1840s, successive blasts of potato blight - or to give it its proper name, the fungus Phytophthora infestans - robbed more than one-third of the population of their usual means of subsistence for four or five years in a row.
An artificial famine?
This was not an artificial famine as the traditional Irish nationalist interpretation has long maintained - not at any rate at the start. The original gross deficiency of food was real. In 1846 and successive years blight destroyed the crop that had previously provided approximately 60 per cent of the nation's food needs. The food gap created by the loss of the potato in the late 1840s was so enormous that it could not have been filled, even if all the Irish grain exported in those years had been retained in the country. In fact, far more grain entered Ireland from abroad in the late 1840s than was exported-probably almost three times as much grain and meal came in as went out.
Why didn't the British government do much more to mitigate the effects of the ...food gap?
Thus there was an artificial famine in Ireland for a good portion of the late 1840s as grain imports steeply increased. There existed - after 1847, at least - an absolute sufficiency of food that could have prevented mass starvation, if it had been properly distributed so as to reach the smallholders and labourers of the west and the south of Ireland.
Why, then, was an artificial famine permitted to occur after 1847, and why didn't the British government do much more to mitigate the effects of the enormous initial food gap of 1846-47? In many contemporary famines a variety of adverse conditions make it difficult or impossible to deliver adequate supplies of food to those in greatest need. Such conditions include warfare and brigandage, remoteness from centres of wealth and relief, poor communications, and weak or corrupt administrative structures. Ireland, however, was not generally afflicted with such adversities.
Ideological resistance
Though it had a rich history of agrarian violence, the country was at peace. In addition, its system of communications (roads and canals) had vastly improved in the previous half-century, the Victorian state had a substantial and growing bureaucracy (it generated an army of 12,000 officials in Ireland for a short time in 1847), and Ireland lay at the doorstep of what was then the world's wealthiest nation. Why, then, was it not better able to deal with the problems caused by the failure of its potato crop?
Prevailing ideologies...militated against heavy and sustained relief.
In answering this question, it is instructive to contrast the role of ideology in the general response to famines today with the part played by ideology in response to the Great Famine in Ireland. Today, wealthier countries and international organisations provide disaster assistance (though, alas, often not nearly enough) as a matter of humanitarian conviction and perceived self-interest. But in Britain in the late 1840s, prevailing ideologies among the political élite and the middle classes strongly militated against heavy and sustained relief.
Political inertia
Before examining this issue of ideology in the 1840s and 1850s, however, we should review what the British government might have done to mitigate the natural catastrophe arising from repeated ravages of potato blight..
First, the government might have prohibited the export of grain from Ireland, especially during the winter of 1846-47 and early in the following spring, when there was little food in the country and before large supplies of foreign grain began to arrive. Once there was sufficient food in the country (imported Indian corn or maize), from perhaps the beginning of 1848, the government could have taken steps to ensure that this imported food was distributed to those in greatest need. Second, the government could have continued its so-called soup-kitchen scheme for a much longer time. It was in effect for only about six months, from March to September 1847. As many as three million people were fed daily at the peak of this scheme in July 1847. The scheme was remarkably inexpensive and effective. It should not have been dismantled after only six months and in spite of the enormous harvest deficiency of 1847.
Third, the wages that the government paid on its vast but short-lived public works in the winter of 1846-47 needed to be much higher if those toiling on the public works were going to be able to afford the greatly inflated price of food. Fourth, the poor-law system of providing relief, either within workhouses or outside them, a system that served as virtually the only form of public assistance from the autumn of 1847 onwards, needed to be much less restrictive. All sorts of obstacles were placed in the way, or allowed to stand in the way, of generous relief to those in need of food. This was done in a horribly misguided effort to keep expenses down and to promote greater self-reliance and self-exertion among the Irish poor.
Fifth, the government might have done something to restrain the ruthless mass eviction of families from their homes, as landlords sought to rid their estates of pauperized farmers and labourers. Altogether, perhaps as many as 500,000 people were evicted in the years from 1846 to 1854. The government might also have provided free passages and other assistance in support of emigration to North America - for those whose personal means made this kind of escape impossible.
Last, and above all, the British government should have been willing to treat the famine crisis in Ireland as an imperial responsibility and to bear the costs of relief after the summer of 1847. Instead, in an atmosphere of rising 'famine fatigue' in Britain, Ireland at that point and for the remainder of the famine was thrown back essentially on its own woefully inadequate resources.
Doctrines of inaction
What, then, were the ideologies that held the British political élite and the middle classes in their grip, and largely determined the decisions not to adopt the possible relief measures outlined above? There were three in particular-the economic doctrines of laissez-faire, the Protestant evangelical belief in divine Providence, and the deep-dyed ethnic prejudice against the Catholic Irish to which historians have recently given the name of 'moralism'.
The idea of feeding ...a large proportion of the Irish population violated ...the Whig's cherished notions.
Laissez-faire, the reigning economic orthodoxy of the day, held that there should be as little government interference with the economy as possible. Under this doctrine, stopping the export of Irish grain was an unacceptable policy alternative, and it was therefore firmly rejected in London, though there were some British relief officials in Ireland who gave contrary advice.
The influence of the doctrine of laissez-faire may also be seen in two other decisions. The first was the decision to terminate the soup-kitchen scheme in September 1847 after only six months of operation. The idea of feeding directly a large proportion of the Irish population violated all of the Whigs' cherished notions of how government and society should function. The other decision was the refusal of the government to undertake any large scheme of assisted emigration. The Irish viceroy actually proposed in this fashion to sweep the western province of Connacht clean of as many as 400,000 pauper smallholders too poor to emigrate on their own. But the majority of Whig cabinet ministers saw little need to spend public money accelerating a process that was already going on 'privately' at a great rate.
An act of Providence?
Recent historians of the famine, while not neglecting the baleful role of the doctrine of laissez-faire, have been inclined to stress the potent parts played by two other ideologies of the time: those of 'providentialism' and 'moralism'. There was a very widespread belief among members of the British upper and middle classes that the famine was a divine judgment-an act of Providence-against the kind of Irish agrarian regime that was believed to have given rise to the famine. The Irish system of agriculture was perceived in Britain to be riddled with inefficiency and abuse. According to British policy-makers at the time, the workings of divine Providence were disclosed in the unfettered operations of the market economy, and therefore it was positively evil to interfere with its proper functioning.
This mentality of Trevelyan's was influential in persuading the government to do nothing...
A leading exponent of this providentialist perspective was Sir Charles Trevelyan, the British civil servant chiefly responsible for administering Irish relief policy throughout the famine years. In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Trevelyan described the famine as 'a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence', one which laid bare 'the deep and inveterate root of social evil'. The famine, he declared, was 'the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected... God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part...' This mentality of Trevelyan's was influential in persuading the government to do nothing to restrain mass evictions - and this had the obvious effect of radically restructuring Irish rural society along the lines of the capitalistic model ardently preferred by British policy-makers.
Finally, we come to 'moralism'-the notion that the fundamental defects from which the Irish suffered were moral rather than financial. Educated Britons of this era saw serious defects in the Irish 'national character'-disorder or violence, filth, laziness, and worst of all, a lack of self-reliance. This amounted to a kind of racial or cultural stereotyping. The Irish had to be taught to stand on their own feet and to unlearn their dependence on government.
'Moralism' was strikingly evident in the various tests of destitution that were associated with the administration of the poor law. Thus labourers on the public works were widely required to perform task labour, with their wages measured by the amount of their work, rather than being paid a fixed daily wage. Similarly, there was the requirement that in order to be eligible for public assistance, those in distress must be willing to enter a workhouse and to submit to its harsh disciplines-such as endless eight-hour days of breaking stones or performing some other equally disagreeable labour. Such work was motivated by the notion that the perceived Irish national characteristic of sloth could be eradicated or at least reduced.
Famine fatigue
This set of ethnic prejudices, which have now been abundantly documented, had the general effect of prompting British ministers, civil servants, and politicians to view and to treat the Catholic Irish as something less than fully human. Such prejudices encouraged the spread of 'famine fatigue' in Britain at an early stage, and they dulled or even extinguished the active sympathies that might have sustained political will - the will to combat the gross oppression of mass evictions, to alleviate the immense suffering associated with reliance on the poor-law system, and to grapple with the moral indefensibility of mass death in the midst of an absolute sufficiency of food.
The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has rightly insisted that famine is almost always a preventable occurrence if only the government in question has the political will to prevent it. This dictum applies as much to Ireland in the late 1840s as Sen meant it to apply to India a century later. Just as in the case of the Bengali victims of famine in the early 1940s, so too with those of the Great Famine in Ireland, the mass death of enormous multitudes of people stemmed partly from their perceived status as the cultural and social inferiors of those who governed them. This status, imposed by British rulers on their colonial subjects, made their plight seem much less urgent in Britain and caused it to be misperceived.
It seems doubtful that the British governing classes learned much from their Irish experience in the late 1840s. In British India, during the years 1876-79, famine claimed the lives of between six and ten million people. And between 1896 and 1902, an almost certainly even higher toll from starvation and disease (the estimates range from six to nineteen million) was recorded there, just as the reign of Victoria, the Empress-Queen, came to its inglorious close.
It seems doubtful that the British governing classes learned much from their Irish experience.