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Abstract
Famines in the years immediately after World War II occurred during a period of global flux, as international famine response evolved from its ambitious, early twentieth century goals toward more modest, technocratic objectives during the second half of the century. For economists, social scientists and politicians immersed in the world of emergency food aid, these were uncertain, awkward years for famine relief. Herbert Hoover’s idealistic large-scale projects of famine relief that had dominated the first three decades of the century had been proven to be expensive and of limited efficacy, but Cold War loyalties had not yet taken over as the primary logic behind large-scale humanitarian assistance projects. Ultimately, when faced with famine conditions between 1944 and 1947, states and experts balanced a call to action against pragmatism that recognized famines were also politically expedient events that could weaken rural resistance to governance and simplify wartime and postwar administration. Ultimately, both science and humanitarian concerns learned to orient themselves toward economic expediency in these awkward years.
Notes
1. I do not dispute that earlier famines could not be primarily political and human induced events. Two of the largest famines in the first period were anthropogenic – those in Ukraine in 1932–1933 and Bengal, 1943–1944. Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, Sen Poverty and Famines.
2. Cf. Rabinach, The Human Motor.
3. Nash, Life of Herbert Hoover.
4. Patenaud, Big Show in Bololand.
5. Chernorutskii, Alimentariia Distrofiia; Brozek, et al., “Medical Aspects of Semistarvation in Leningrad.”
6. Hoover to Truman, December 3, 1946.
7. My understanding of famine in Vietnam is based on the following works: Marr, Vietnam 1945, Elliott, Sacred Willow, 200, 103–136; Long Before the Revolution, Buttinger, Vietnam; a Dragon Embattled.
8. Mitchell, Rule of Experts,118.
9. Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,” 337–364; Scott-Smith & Ruxin “The Protein Advisory Committee,” in Smith and Phillips (eds), Food, Science, Policy and Regulation in the Twentieth Century, 2000; Martorell, “Notes on the history of nutritional anthropometry”, 2572–2576.
10. Heim, Plant Breeding and Agrarian Research in the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes.
11. Rumors and reports of hoarding were especially influential in the Bengal famine of 1943. See Tauger, “Entitlement, Shortage, and The 1943 Bengal Famine,” and Sen, Poverty and Famines.
12. Maintaining large granary stores was popularized in the 1930s in the United States by Henry A. Wallace and Benjamin Graham as a way to control prices.
13. Dũng, “Japan’s Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944–45,” 573–618.
14. On arbitrary and conflicting scientific data, see Mitchell, Rule of Experts, 105–111.
15. “The Alimentation of the Rubber Workers” as quoted in Long, Before the Revolution, 123. Sufficiency was relative. Japanese soldiers had rations of 600 grams of rice per day during this same period. Collingham, The Taste of War.
16. Lan, “Insurrection days in Hanoi,” (trans.) as quoted in Dũng, 583.
17. Buttinger, Vietnam; a Dragon Embattled, 239.
18. Long, Before the Revolution, 131.
19. On the shifting allegiances between European and colonials, see Elliott, The Sacred Willow, 103–136.
20. I am grateful to Nick Cullather for pointing this out.
21. The success of this practice in China varied by dynasty. See Nourish the People: the States Civilian Granary System in China, 1650–1850. Pierre-Etienne Will, Roy Bin Wong & James Lee, eds. (1991).
22. A few scholars have charged that the ethanol plants keep grain out of Tonkin and made the famine worse. This seems unlikely. Mai, Who Committed this Crime? in Before the Revolution, 221. Long’s translation includes the editorial comment that he disagrees with this interpretation.
23. Tonesson, The Vietnamese Revolution, 289–295.
24. Gunn, “The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1944–45 Revisited.”
25. Ibid.
26. Huỳnh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945.
27. “Shortage of Food in Japan Stressed: U.S. Economic Chief Declares Nation Faces Starvation Unless Aid Is Received.” Lindesay Parrott, The New York Times, Sep. 30, 1945, 29.
28. Collingham, The Taste of War, 281.
29. ibid.
30. Collingham, The Taste of War, 56–62.
31. Bloch, “The Japanese War Economy,” 17–23.
32. Higuchi, “Pre-war Japanese Fisheries in Micronesia – Focusing on Bonito and Tuna Fishing in the Northern Mariana Island.”
33. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 90–93.
34. Collingham, The Taste of War.
35. Nishimura, “Promoting Health During the American Occupation of Japan The Public Health Section, Kyoto Military Government Team, 1945–1949,” 424–434.
36. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 93.
37. Brennan, “The Development of the Indian Famine Codes: Personalities, Politics and Policies,” 91–111.
38. Keys’ major work, The Biology of Human Starvation was not published until 1950. However, the US Army had originally sponsored the starvation experiment and received regular updates about his results. After VE Day, Keys sent a memorandum to the Army outlining the priorities of emergency feeding and nourishment for civilians and former prisoners of war. Russell, “The Hunger Experiment,” 66–82.
39. At its peak in 1949, Japan received about 500 million USD annually in direct aid from the United States. In 1946, the country received just under 200 million USD. Takagi, From Recipient to Donor.
40. Perhaps because his requests were not honored, MacArthur became more insistent over the course of 1946 that the country needed American dollars and American food in order to rebuild successfully. Fuchs, “Feeding the Japanese,” 32–33.
41. Davis, “The Economics of the Ever-Normal Granary,” 8–21.
42. Sen, “Food, Economics, and Entitlements,” See also Collett, “Storage and Starvation: Public Granaries as Agents of Food Security in Early Modern Europe,” 234–252.
43. Crane, The New York Times, April 5, 1946, 5.
44. Fuchs, “Feeding the Japanese,” 33.
45. Based on archival records, the famine had 300,000 victims. This number is contested.
46. Chernorutskii, op.cit.
47. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 282. As quoted in Taubman, Khrushchev, 199.
48. Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines,” 605. Ellman, 618–19, and Ganson, The Soviet Famine of 1946–47.
49. Ellman, “The 1947 Soviet Famine,” 613–14; “USSR: Crop Estimating 1949–1946,” Foreign Agricultural Service Narrative Reports 1946–1949.
50. Harriman to Secretary of State, telegram, 4 April, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945: Europe (1945).
51. Gardner, American Agriculture in the 20th Century, 220–225.