Understanding global security - Peter Hough

ECONOMIC THREATS TO SECURITY
Table 4.2 The top ten famines in history
Deaths
Principal cause
1 China 1958–62 30 million a Political – forced urbanization and collectivization
of agriculture
2 N. China 1876–78 12 million b Natural – drought
3 Bengal 1770 10 million c Natural – drought
4 C. India 1876–78 6 million b Natural – drought
5 Ukraine 1932–33 5 million d Political – harsh USSR quotas on Ukrainian grain
collected centrally
6 N. Korea 1995– 2 million e Natural – drought and floods
7 Bengal 1943–44 1.9 million d Political – supply and price of rice negatively
affected by Second World War
8 Rajputana, India 1869 1.5 million f Natural – drought
=9 Orissa, India 1865–66 1 million f Natural – drought in 1865 followed by floods in
1866
=9 India 1897 1 million f Natural – drought
=9 Ireland 1845–47 1 million g Natural – potato blight
Sources: a Becker (2000), b Davis (2001), c Sen (1981), d Disaster Center (2002), e Natsios (1999), f Hazlitt
(1973), g O’Grada (1999).
drought and flooding, which are considered elsewhere in this book. Floods and
droughts wipe out crops and can cause famine but they can also kill directly, while
diseases are generally more virulent when infecting a malnourished population.
Hence, determining the precise cause of death for peoples beset by such natural
catastrophes is problematic and, as such, figures on famine fatalities are inexact.
Second, even allowing for the blurring of the causal factors of death, disaster mortality
statistics are notoriously unreliable. Governments tend to underestimate figures,
while anti-government voices often exaggerate them for opposing political purposes.
Most of the figures quoted in the table are contested and it is difficult to verify precise
totals even with painstaking research. This problem is not solely one of authenticating
historical records, modern-day statistics also tend to be arrived at through educated
guesswork. The highly secretive North Korean government denied any problem
of starvation for a number of years and have subsequently admitted to ‘only’ around
200,000 deaths due to this. Natsios’ estimate of 2–3 million is largely derived from
making extrapolations based on interviews with refugees. The true picture will
probably never be known.
The causes of famine
A further abstraction used in Table 4.2 is in indicating the principal cause of each
famine. There is usually a combination of factors which explain such humanitarian
disasters. As with the mortality figures, the causes of famines are frequently disputed
by analysts and politicians. Most famines are the result of a combination of both
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