The History of Famines and the Governments That Caused Them
June 8, 2026 · Frisian News
Historians often call famines natural disasters. The facts tell a different story: government policies, from British colonial extraction to Soviet collectivization, directly caused or worsened every major famine in the past 200 years.
In 1943, Bengal had rice. The British colonial government diverted food to the military and blocked imports. Landlords hoarded grain. Three million people starved while warehouses held supplies.
The pattern repeats across the 20th century. Ireland exported food during the 1845-1852 famine while a million died. The Soviet Union seized grain in 1932-1933, knowing the harvest had failed, and killed six million. Mao's Great Leap Forward (1959-1961) created mass starvation through impossible production quotas that officials falsified to survive.
Control, not scarcity, causes famines. Governments take grain through taxes and levies, restrict trade, or destroy productive capacity through decree. The wealthy always eat. The poor starve. Colonial rulers, communist dictators, and feudal lords all weaponized hunger to hold power and suppress dissent.
North Korea starved hundreds of thousands in the 1990s while the regime spent on weapons and exported grain to pay debts. Ethiopia under Mengistu used drought as a weapon against rural areas. When food aid arrived, officials sent it only to cities loyal to the regime.
Experts today blame climate and crop failure. They are right. What they avoid: countries with full granaries and stable governments choose to let others starve. That choice is not nature's fault. It is theirs.
Published June 8, 2026 · Frisian News