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The Great Second World War Vietnam and Java Famines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2019

GREGG HUFF
GREGG HUFF*
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, University of Oxford Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article provides quantitative assessments of the great famines that occurred in Vietnam and Java in 1944–1945, which together claimed the lives of some 3.4 million people. It shows that in both Vietnam and Java, harvest shortfalls, in which weather figured prominently, were so large that insufficient food was available to feed everyone. Nevertheless, in both instances, even with the pressures of war and weather, governments could have acted differently and largely, perhaps even wholly, prevented famine. Although Java's famine had few political repercussions, Vietnam's was instrumental in the August 1945 Viet Minh and communist revolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 618 - 653
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

I owe thanks to the editor and two anonymous referees of Modern Asian Studies for a number of ideas and suggestions, and to Andrew Bain and Dick DuBoff for numerous suggestions on ways to improve earlier versions of this article. Pierre van der Eng offered numerous detailed and helpful comments. He both clarified my understanding of Indonesian agriculture and development, and warned me away from several errors. Appreciative thanks also to Robert Cribb and Ferjan Ormeling who were a great help with the Java maps. Tjitske Wijngaard and Sarah Womack provided excellent and greatly appreciated research assistance. Pham Huyen carried out expert data analysis. Mike Shand drew the maps. An earlier version of this article was presented at the East Asian Economic Association Conference, Bandung, 2016, and thanks go to the conference participants. I gratefully acknowledge support and funding from an ESRC grant (RES-062-23-1392), the Leverhulme Trust grant EM-2014-081, a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, and the Royal Economic Society Small Academic Expenses Scheme.

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73 AOM CP 226, ‘Mémoires Yokoyama’, p. 88.

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80 AOM INF 2740, ‘Situation en Indochine, situation economiques, 1944’, p. 3, and see AOM GF 34, ‘Raport au conseil de l'Indochine’, 3 Feb. 1945, which discusses the transport situation in some detail.

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101 Duiker, Communist Road, p. 104.