This book, a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Zürich in 1994, takes as its starting point the modern idea that hunger and famine are not fatalities determined by nature. Basing herself on the example of Northern Chad during the final pre-colonial decades and the first decades of French colonial rule, the author argues rather that famines, although partly caused by natural factors, reflect the political, economic and social conditions of the societies in which they take place. Famines, she claims, reflect power relations and the violence that sometimes flows from them.