This book deals with the important subject of famine demography. It describes case studies of the demography of historical and more recent famines in locations as far apart as Ireland, Finland, India, Burundi, Russia, Greece, Madagascar, and Japan. The authors concern themselves with significant issues such as the role of famines in controlling population growth in the past, the nature of interactions between starvation and epidemic diseases during times of famine, and the detailed demographic consequences of famines. In the latter category issues such as the age and cause-specific profiles of excess famine mortality receive particular attention. This is the only comparative volume of its kind. It is wide-ranging in time and place, but at the same time focuses sharply on a particular subject. Consequently its contents provide a unique understanding of famine demography.

Tim Dyson is Professor of Population Studies at the London School of Economics. Educated in England and Canada, he has held Visiting Fellowships at the Australian National University in Canberra and the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai. In 1994-96 he was President of the British Society for Population Studies and in 1997 he addressed the Oxford Farming Conference. His main areas of research have been on the analysis of demographic time series, interactions between populations and their food supplies, and the past, present, and future population of the Indian subcontinent. He is currently working on an international project on the future of India, funded by the Wellcome Trust. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001.
Cormac Ó Gráda is Professor in the Department of Economics at University College, Dublin.

• 1: Tim Dyson and Cormac Ó Gráda: Introduction


• 2: Joel Mokyr and Cormac Ó Gráda: Famine disease and famine mortality: lessons from the Irish experience, 1845-50


• 3: Timothy W. Guinnane and Cormac Ó Gráda: The workhouses and Irish famine mortality


• 4: Kari Pitkänen: Famine mortality in nineteenth century Finland: is there a sex bias?


• 5: Tim Dyson: Famine in Berar, 1896-97 and 1899-1900: echoes and chain reactions


• 6: Arup Maharatna: Famines and epidemics: an Indian historical perspective


• 7: Christian Thibon: Famine yesterday and today in Burundi


• 8: Serguei Adamets: Famine in nineteenth and twentieth century Russia: mortality by age, cause and gender


• 9: Violetta Hionidou: 'Send us food or coffins': the 1942-42 famine on the Aegean island of Syros


• 10: Michel Garenne, Dominique Waltisperger, Pierre Cantrelle, and Osée Ralijoana: The demographic impact of a mild famine in an African city: the case of Antananarivo, 1985-87


• 11: Osamu Saito: The frequency of famines as demographic correctives in the Japanese past


• 12: Kate Macintyre: Famine and the female mortality advantage