This volume, which is both comprehensive and ambitious in its nature, provides a useful survey of subsistence crises in Europe in a longue durée, from the later Middle Ages until the Second World War. The volume consists of 11 single- and multi-authored contributions by renowned economic historians of famine, which explains the strongly quantitative approach of the volume (all chapters, except chapter 5, are backed by robust statistical data). Although each chapter covers a different European region, there is an overarching narrative and, overall, the book adopts the classical dictum of Adam Smith and Amartya Sen that famines, broadly speaking, are a man-made phenomenon. Famine is caused by food shortage, which is, in turn, caused by bio-ecological factors. But it is anthropogenic and, to a certain extent (in some cases), demographic factors that exacerbate shortage and make it into famine. Inefficient and failing markets, warfare, political and social institutions, and population structure are all bound to influence the availability and distribution of the scarce food resources and determine whether shortage remains shortage or unfolds into famine. In this sense, the chapters build upon some existing theories and studies of historical famines, but they also bring to light hard-won statistical data, which strengthens the volume as a whole.
Despite the overarching narrative and similarity of contributing factors in each famine, there are some marked differences. Thus, in a chapter dealing with Italy, co-authored by Guido Alfani, Luca Mocarelli and Donatella Strangio, food shortages caused by failed harvests were aggravated by population pressure and ongoing warfare. For Pérez Moreda, the author of a chapter on Spain, apart from bad weather and warfare, epidemics and the ensuing fall in population leading to shortage in working hands should be counted among famine triggers. This is contrary to the perpetuated view that it is population pressure rather than population decrease that leads to famine. Conversely, according to Gérard Béaur and Jean-Michel Chevet, population did not play any significant factor in creating famines in France; instead, it was a combination of bad weather and fiscal policies of royal governments. The significance of governmental structure and policies was also a central factor accounting for famines in ‘Germanic’ lands (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), surveyed by Dominik Collet and Daniel Krämer. Here, local and decentralised governments, apart from waging wars, could also profoundly affect local grain markets, in terms of grain movements and market behaviour. An altogether different situation prevailed in the Low Countries (surveyed by Daniel Curtis, Jessica Dijkman, Thijs Lambrecht and Eric Vanhaute), where episodes of famine still occurred in the late sixteenth century, but these were caused by warfare, rather than by other anthropogenic factors or weather. After c. 1600, famine was, by and large, gone, thanks to the sophisticated system of grain trade, with Amsterdam at its centre; any subsequent crises (notably, the potato blight of the late 1840s) did not unfold beyond food shortages. Conversely, according to Richard Hoyle, weather was the determining trigger driving up grain prices and thus creating famine in Britain in the later Middle Ages and the early modern era. From the seventeenth century onwards this region was on its way to be set free of famine: England first, then Scotland. Conversely, Ireland was still prone to a series of famines, as outlined in Cormac Ó Gráda's chapter. Here he focuses on two major episodes: the famine of 1740–1741, caused by an extraordinary frost and ensuing grain and potato failure; and the Great Potato Famine of 1845–1852, initiated by cold and damp weather and devastating disease. Nordic Europe (with the exception of Finland) seems to have been luckier, as indicated in a chapter by Martin Dribe, Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson. Although crop failures occurred on a regular basis, these rarely unfolded into widespread famines – mainly thanks to diversified agriculture, efficient grain markets and well-balanced relationships between population densities and the available resources. Stephen Wheatcroft's chapter tackles famines in Russia and the USSR. Here the situation varied across space and time. The industrial North depended on the grain-producing South, and hence communication and trade between the two regions was crucial. Thus, the famine of 1918–1922 was caused by the Civil War; the famines of 1932–1933 (especially severe in the Ukraine) and 1946–1947 (especially devastating in Moldova) were initiated by abnormal drought; while the famine of 1941–1942, characteristic of northern urban centres (Leningrad, first and foremost), was caused by German hostilities and occupation. The final chapter, co-authored by Ó Gráda and Wheatcroft, deals with starvation during the First and Second World Wars. In both instances, the proportions of food supply disruption through military devastation were so great that even famine-free zones, such as Greece in 1941–1944 and the Netherlands in 1944–1945 were starving – let alone places that were still not free from hunger in war-free time (such as the Russian Empire and later the USSR).
Overall, the volume is both coherent and convincing. It may not offer new ideas as far as the historiography or theory of famine is concerned, but it surely outlines the main contours of historical famines in different parts of Europe in a fine manner. All the same, one may, perhaps, take an issue or two with some aspects. For instance, some chronology is inaccurate: thus, the French chapter talks about the famine of 1315–1316 (p. 92), while in reality the Great European Famine lasted from 1315 to 1317. Similarly, the chapter on the Germanic lands accepts uncritically Fritz Curschmann's very misleading catalogue of famines in that region (pp. 103–04). The volume does not always distinguish between shortage and famines: thus, can the shortages of 1727–1729, 1741–1742 and 1800–1801 in England really be classified as famines (p. 150)? For Spain it is suggested that epidemics and ensuing population fall contributed to some of its famines (and not the other way around). While this is an interesting hypothesis it can hardly be a convincing argument unless we are told why it was the case in Spain and not, say, in Italy (where, we are told in the preceding chapter, the situation was exactly the opposite). Perhaps it could open the floor for a new historiographical debate about the relationship between famines and epidemics. Finally, some figures are not clear. Thus the heading of Figure 11.7 dealing, as we are told on the previous page, with monthly birth weight in the western Netherlands, just has it as ‘Birth weight by month, 1944–46’. Figure 10.1, dealing with indexed rye prices in three Russian regions, specifies neither value-per-measure, nor what the actual figures on the Y-axis stand for.
Despite these minor issues, however, this is a very important book, illuminating for both established scholars of famine and those new to the field. It will surely be cited widely by a generation of famine scholars, and will most definitely appear on related course syllabi.
