The last, the most dreadful resource of nature: Economic-historical reflections on famine

For one of the founding fathers of economics, Thomas Malthus, famines were ‘the last, the most dreadful resource of nature’. They struck infrequently, when what he called his ‘principle of population’ was not working smoothly.  Like Adam Smith, Malthus believed that famines, as distinct from food shortages, were already things of the past in early modern Europe.  Not so, according to the historical record: moreover, the worst of those famines were not due to the causes proposed by Malthus and Smith. By ‘the violence of government’ Smith mean interference with free markets, but more sinister forms of ‘violent’ government—war, dictatorship, and ethnic cleansing—were responsible for several. And Europe’s last major famine occurred as recently as 1946-47.

The lecture will focus mainly on issues that remain contentious in famine studies.  First, it will review the link between food prices and the severity of famines as reflected in excess mortality.  Second, it will place the death tolls from several recent famines in sub-Saharan Africa in historical context.  Third, switching focus from deaths to births, it will review the impact of famines on fertility.  Famines are always associated with a reduction in births; but to what extent are those births lost or births postponed?

Fourth, famines have been invoked as natural experiments in testing the so-called fetal origins hypothesis since the 1970s when two South African-born scientists exploited data on military recruits generated by the Dutch Hongerwinter of 1944-45; I will ask how much the ensuing research has taught us. And finally, I will review the prospect of a near future in which famines have been consigned to history.