The Starving Empire : : A History of Famine in France's Colonies / / Yan Slobodkin.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Slobodkin, Yan,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.) :; 10 b&w halftones, 5 maps

The Starving Empire traces the history of famine in the modern French Empire, showing that hunger is intensely local and sweepingly global, shaped by regional contexts and the transnational interplay of ideas and policies all at once. By integrating food crises in Algeria, West and Equatorial Africa, and Vietnam into a broader story of imperial and transnational care, Yan Slobodkin reveals how the French colonial state and an emerging international community took increasing responsibility for subsistence, but ultimately failed to fulfill this responsibility. Europeans once dismissed colonial famines as acts of god, misfortunes of nature, and the inevitable consequences of backward races living in harsh environments. But as Slobodkin recounts, drawing on archival research from four continents, the twentieth century saw transformations in nutrition, scientific racism, and international humanitarianism that profoundly altered ideas of what colonialism could accomplish. A new confidence in the ability to mitigate hunger, coupled with new norms of moral responsibility, marked a turning point in the French Empire's relationship to colonial subjects—and to nature itself. Increasingly sophisticated understandings of famine as a technical problem subject to state control saddled France with untenable obligations. The Starving Empire not only illustrates how the painful history of colonial famine remains with us in our current understandings of public health, state sovereignty, and international aid, but also seeks to return food—this most basic of human needs—to its central place in the formation of modern political obligation and humanitarian ethics.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Maps -- Introduction: Who Is R esponsible for Famine? -- Part One: Studies in Neglect -- 1. Bodies and Souls in Algeria, 1867 -- 2. The Mandate of Heaven in Indochina, 1884–1930 -- 3. The Nature of Famine in the Sahel, 1913 -- Part Two: The Politics of the Belly -- 4. The Science of Hunger in the International Sphere, 1890–1939 -- 5. The Scandal of Starvation in Niger, 1931 -- 6. Taking Responsibility in the French Empire, 1931–1939 -- 7. Losing Control in Vietnam, 1945 -- Epilogue: Imperialism without Sovereignty? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index