Member-only story
Famine Making a Comeback?
It used to be common before the Industrial Revolution
I provide links to all of my sources. They are underlined and in boldface. I want my readers to be able to check out all sources for themselves.
In the modern world, if you live in the industrialized world, famine is not something you’re familiar with. Don’t get me wrong, we have hungry people in America, in Europe, in Japan, and in other modern countries. We have malnutrition and food deserts even in wealthy nations.
But prior to the Industrial Revolution, which started around 1800 or so, the entire world was always on the edge of mass starvation. Hunger was a fact of life. When Hobbes said that life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, he wasn’t exaggerating.
The Industrial Revolution was powered by coal at first, and then by oil. It fueled the Green Revolution. Food suddenly became more abundant, and it also became cheaper than at prior times in history.
Which is not to say that famines didn’t still occur. The Irish Potato Famine and the famines that periodically ravaged Indians under the British Raj occurred after the Industrial Revolution, as did the mass deaths in China under Mao and the Ukraine under Stalin.
