Trade Tropical Agriculture Irrigation

TRADE ; TROPICAL AGRICULTURE ; IRRIGATION.) Great Famines.—Amongst the great famines of history may be named the following : B.C. 436 Famine at Rome, when thousands of starving people threw themselves into the Tiber.

A.D. 42

Great famine in Egypt.

65o Famine throughout India.

879 Universal famine.

941, 5022 Great famines in India, in which entire provinces and 1033 were depopulated and man was driven to balism.

1005 Famine in England.

1016 Famine throughout Europe.

1064-1072 Seven years' famine in Egypt.

1148-1159 Eleven years' famine in India.

1162 Universal famine.

Great famine in India, when the Mogul emperor was unable to obtain the necessaries for his household. The famine continued for years and thousands upon thousands of people perished of want.

1396-1407 The Durga Devi famine in India, lasting 12 years. 1586 Famine in England which gave rise to the Poor Law system.

1661 Famine in India, when not a drop of rain fell for two years.

1769-1770 Great famine in Bengal, when a third of the tion 00,000,00o persons) perished.

I 783 The Chalisa famine in India, which extended from the eastern edge of the Benares province to Lahore and Jammu.

1790-1792 The Doji Bara, or skull famine, in India, so called because the people died in such numbers that they could not be buried. According to tradition this was one of the severest famines ever known. It extended over the whole of Bombay into Hyderabad and affected the northern districts of Madras. Relief works were first opened during this famine in Madras.

1838 Intense famine in North-West Provinces (United Provinces) of India; 800,000 perished.

1846-1847 Famine in Ireland, due to the failure of the potato crop. Grants were made by parliament amounting to £ I o,000,000.

1861 Famine in North-West India.

1866 Famine in Bengal and Orissa ; 1,000,000 perished.

1869 Intense famine in Rajputana; 1,50o,000 perished. The government initiated the policy of saving life. 1874 Famine in Behar, India. Government relief in excess of the needs of the people.

1876-1878 Famine in Bombay, Madras, and Mysore; 5,000,000 perished. Relief insufficient.

1877-1878 Severe famine in north China; 9,500,00o said to have perished.

1887-1889 Famine in China.

1891-1892 Famine in Russia.

1897 Famine in India. Government policy of saving life successful. Mansion House fund £550,000.

1899-190I Famine in India; 1,000,000 people perished. Estimated loss to India L50,000,000. The government spent M0,000,000 on relief, and at one time there were 4,500,000 people on the relief works.

1905 Famine in Russia.

1916 Famine in China.

1921 Famine in Russia.

Famines in India.

Owing to its tropical situation and its almost entire dependence upon the monsoon rains, India is more liable than any other country in the world to crop failures, which upon occasion deepen into famine. Every year sufficient rain falls in India to secure an abundant harvest if it were evenly distributed over the whole country ; but as a matter of fact the distribution is so uneven and so uncertain that every year some district suffers from insufficient rainfall. In fact, famine is, to all intents and purposes, endemic in India, and is a problem to reckon with every year in some portion of that vast area. The people depend so entirely upon agriculture, and the harvest • is so entirely destroyed by a single monsoon failure, that wherever a total failure occurs the landless labourer is immediately thrown out of work, and remains out of work for the whole year. The question is thus one of lack of employment, rather than lack of food. The food is there, perhaps at a slightly enhanced price, but the unemployed labourer has no money to buy it. The problem is very much the same as that met by the British Poor Law system.

Famines seem to recur in India at periodical intervals, which have been held to be in some way dependent on the period. Every five or ten years the annual scarcity widens its area and becomes a recognized famine; every 5o or ioo years whole provinces are involved, loss of life becomes wide spread. In the famine of 1901, the worst of recent years, the loss of life in British districts was 3% of the population affected, as against 33% in the Bengal famine of 5770.

The native rulers of India seem to have made no effort to relieve the sufferings of their subjects in times of famine ; and even down to 1866 the British government had no settled famine policy. In that year the Orissa famine awakened the public conscience, and the commission presided over by Sir George Campbell laid down the lines upon which subsequent famine-relief was organized. In the Rajputana famine of 1869 the humane principle of saving every possible life was first enunciated.

Fighting Indian Famine.

The measures by which the government of India chiefly endeavours to reduce the liability of the country to famine are the promotion of railways; the exten sion of canal and well irrigation ; the reclamation of waste lands, with the establishment of fuel and fodder reserves ; the introduc tion of agricultural improvements; the multiplication of indus tries ; emigration ; and finally the improvement where necessary of the revenue and rent systems. In times of famine the function of the railways in distributing the grain is just as important as the function of the irrigation-canals in increasing the amount grown. There is always enough grain within the boundaries of India for the needs of the people; the only difficulty is to trans port it to the tract where it is required at a particular moment. Owing to the extension of railways, in the famines of 1898 and 1901 there was never any dearth of food in any famine-stricken tract; and the only difficulty was to find enough rolling-stock to cope with the demand. Irrigation protects large tracts against famine, and has immensely increased the wheat output of the Punjab; the Irrigation Commission of 1903 recommended the addition of million acres to the irrigated area of India, and that recommendation was carried out.

As five-sixths of the whole population of India are dependent upon the land, any failure of agriculture becomes a national calamity. If there were more industries and manufactures in India, the dependence on the land would not be so great and the liability to lack of occupation would not be so uniform in any particular district. The remedy for this is the extension of factories and home industries which is a work of time.

On the question of a possible famine in the world's natural resources, see NATURAL RESOURCES, CONSERVATION OF.

See Cornelius Walford, "On the Famines of the World, Past and Present" (Journal of the Statistical Society, 1878-1879) ; Romesh C. Dutt, Famines in India (1900) ; Robert Wallace, Famine in India (1900) ; George Campbell, Famines in India 0769-1788) ; Chrono logical List of Famines for all India (Madras Administration Report, 1885) ; J. C. Geddes, Administrative Experience in Former Famines (1874) ; Statistical Atlas of India (1895) ; F. H. S. Merewether, Through the Famine Districts of India (1898) ; G. W. Forrest, The Famine in India (1898) ; E. A. B. Hodgetts, In the Track of the Russian Famine (1892) ; W. B. Steveni, Through Famine-Stricken Russia (1892) ; Vaughan Nash, The Great Famine (1900) ; Lady Hope, Sir Arthur Cotton (5900) ; Lord Curzon in India 0905) ; T. W. Holderness, Narrative of the Famine of 1896-97 (c. 8812 of 1898) ; the Indian Famine Commission reports of 188o, 1898, and 1900; report of the Indian Irrigation Commission (19o1-1903) ; C. W. McMinn, Famine Truths, Half-Truths, Untruths (1902) ; Theodore Morison, Indian Industrial Organization (1906) ; W. B. Steveni, Europe's Great Calamity (5922); Die Hungersnot in der Ukraine, Veroffentlicht vom Zentral-komitee der Ukrainischen sozialdemokrat ischen Arbeiterpartee (Berlin, 1923) ; W. H. Mallory, China: Land of Famine (1926) ; A. Daude-Bancel, La reforme agraire en Russie (1926) ; H. H. Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia (5927); F. A. Golder, O.t the Trail of the Russian Famine (1927).