On the political economy of plant disease epidemics: Capita selecta in historical epidemiology

Food security has been and always will be a human concern. Food security has always been fragile, threatened by a variety of factors including plant disease epidemics. Several plant disease epidemics of the past lead to questions like: What happened? How did people deal with these epidemics? What were the social and political consequences? This volume deals with such questions in six selected chapters. Chapter 1 discusses black stem rust of wheat in antiquity, and how its epidemics were perceived by the ancients. Chapter 2 reconstructs a forgotten epidemic of yellow stripe rust, 1846, on rye, a staple food in Continental Europe. Chapter 3 describes the epidemics of potato late blight in Continental Europe, 1844-46, that caused the Continental Famine and - in the longer reach - contributed to the European revolutions of 1848. Chapter 4 studies the impact of plant disease on the food situation in the neutral Netherlands during World War I. Chapter 5 looks at belligerent Germany during World War I, ravaged by plant disease. Chapter 6 treats the problem of under-rating and over-estimating the effect of plant diseases on the course of history: the effects of ergot on political events in Russia, 1722, and in France, 1779, of black stem rust on wheat on the Russian Famine, 1932/3, and of rice brown spot on the Bengal Famine, 1943. This publication is of interest to plant pathologists, historians, economists and sociologists, interested in history, and with a focus on food.