The History of Famines and the Governments That Caused Them
June 15, 2026 · Frisian News
Governments caused the worst famines of history. Bengal under Churchill, Ireland under British rule, and Ukraine under Stalin were not natural disasters but deliberate policies that prioritized exports, power, and ideology over feeding their people.
The Bengal famine of 1943 killed roughly 3 million people. No natural disaster caused it. The British colonial government diverted grain exports, blocked imports, and denied the scale of the crisis for months. A viceroy in New Delhi chose starvation as the price of war.
Churchill's government knew. Internal memos showed officials reporting mass deaths in Bengal as early as autumn 1942. The viceroy requested permission to stop grain exports. Officials refused. Instead, the administration raised prices, tightened controls, and withheld stocks. Historians found no evidence of actual grain shortage; policy manufactured the crisis.
The pattern repeats. The Irish famine of 1845-1852 killed a million while Irish grain still left ports for British markets. British policy required Irish tenants to pay rents in full, forcing them to sell their food. Landowners profited. The poor starved.
Stalin's forced collectivization in 1932-1933 killed millions in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Caucasus. The regime seized grain from peasants and locked granaries while villages starved. The state used this as a deliberate tool of political control, not miscalculation. The regime needed grain for export to buy industrial equipment. The peasantry paid the price.
The lesson governments ignore is simple: famines are choices. They happen when officials prioritize exports, order, ideology, or war over food security. When farmers are crushed by bureaucrats, when officials lie about numbers, when aid is withheld for political reasons. Most famines in the modern world follow the same script.
Published June 15, 2026 · Frisian News