Séminaire de l’IAO : Gregg Huff

“Vietnam’s 1944-1945 Famine : Explanations, Responsibility and Revolution”
Gregg Huff, Pembroke College, University of Oxford, EnglandMercredi 08 juin 2016, Salle de réunion de l’IAO (R66), de 14h à 15h30

Résumé : This paper provides the first quantitative analysis of Vietnam’s 1944-1945 great famine which claimed the lives of over a million people in Tonkin and North Annam and was instrumental in the August 1945 Viet Minh and communist revolution. Competing and hitherto unsatisfactory explanations have put the famine down to the weather, French or Japanese administrative failures, and US aerial bombardment. I show that famine, although made worse by wartime events, resulted from successive typhoons that struck coastal areas and was caused by a consequent food availability deficit. Econometric analysis reveals that differences in endowments and entitlements largely explain who died.