The Starving Empire: A History of Famine in France's Colonies

The Starving Empire explores the history of famine in the modern French Empire, showing how hunger is locally and globally shaped by regional contexts and transnational interactions. It reveals how the French colonial state and international community took responsibility for subsistence but failed to fulfill it, leading to transformations in nutrition, scientific racism, and international humanitarianism.

Format: Unspecified
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 15 November 2023
Publisher: Cornell University Press

The Starving Empire delves into the intricate tapestry of famine throughout the modern French Empire, unveiling its profound local and global dimensions. It demonstrates how hunger is intricately shaped by regional contexts and the intricate interplay of ideas and policies on a transnational scale. Through the lens of food crises in Algeria, West and Equatorial Africa, and Vietnam, Yan Slobodkin unveils how the French colonial state and an emerging international community assumed increasing responsibility for subsistence, yet ultimately failed to fulfill this crucial obligation.

In the past, Europeans tended to attribute colonial famines to divine intervention, natural misfortunes, or the inherent limitations of backward races living in harsh environments. However, as Slobodkin reveals, the twentieth century witnessed significant transformations in nutrition, scientific racism, and international humanitarianism that reshaped the very notion of what colonialism could achieve. A newfound confidence in mitigating hunger, accompanied by emerging norms of moral responsibility, marked a pivotal moment in the French Empire's relationship with its colonial subjects and with nature itself.

The Starving Empire offers a poignant exploration of how the painful history of colonial famine continues to resonate in our contemporary understandings of public health, state sovereignty, and international aid. It sheds light on the untenable obligations that France faced as it grappled with increasingly sophisticated understandings of famine as a technical problem subject to state control. By reclaiming food as the cornerstone of human needs and the foundation of modern political obligation and humanitarian ethics, The Starving Empire seeks to restore its rightful place in shaping our collective consciousness and actions.

Weight: 907g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501772351