Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine, 1944–5†
This article is dedicated to Pierre Brocheux whose many works contribute seminally to Vietnam's economic history. I owe thanks for detailed and helpful comments to three anonymous referees, the editors and to Andrew Bain, Richard DuBoff, James Fenske, Agnes Grout, Francois Guillemot, Trung Hoang, and Avner Offer. I am particularly indebted for help and comments from John Ermisch and Cambell Leith and to Peter Robinson for comments and the model to test for spatial autocorrelation. Sarah Womack provided excellent and greatly appreciated research assistance. Pham Huyen and Petros Varthalitis carried out expert data analysis. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the 2015 Economic History Society Annual Conference, Wolverhampton, and at seminars at Gakushuin University, Tokyo, the Asia Research Institute, Singapore, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, the London School of Economics, All Souls College, Oxford, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Thanks go to participants in those seminars for numerous and stimulating observations and suggestions. I gratefully acknowledge support and funding from an Economic and Social Research Council grant (RES-062-23-1392), the Leverhulme Trust grant EM-2014-081, a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, and the Royal Economic Society Small Academic Expenses Scheme.
Abstract
This article analyses Vietnam's 1944–5 great famine, which, even beyond its sheer scale of a million deaths, is historically important as instrumental in the August 1945 Viet Minh and communist revolution. It is argued that typhoons which struck coastal areas resulted in a shortfall of available food and were the proximate cause of famine. The Japanese in occupation of Vietnam, the American government directing attacks on the transport system, or the country's French colonial administration could have acted to limit, or even reverse, the famine. However, under the pressure of war, no government or institution opted for an effective famine alleviation strategy. That was also true of Asia's other great Second World War famines in Bengal, Henan, and Java, which paralleled Vietnam's both in causation and in feasible avoidance strategies. In Vietnam, differences in endowments and entitlements largely explain who died in the famine.
