The Persian famine of 1917-1919 was a period of widespread mass starvation and disease in Iran under the Qajar dynasty during the First World War. Despite declaring neutrality, Iran was occupied by British, Russian and Ottoman forces whose competing military operations disrupted food production and distribution across the country; mainstream scholarship places the death toll at approximately two million, caused by hunger and by diseases including cholera, plague, typhus and the 1918 influenza pandemic, though the famine remains an understudied episode of the war relative to its scale.
Facts
Classification
Type/ClassificationAgricultural Famine or Disaster 1 Milestone Year Connections
Associated With
Wheat, Crops Wartime requisitioning of the Persian wheat crop is named in accounts of the 1917-1919 famine.
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Sources
1. Persian famine of 1917-1919 (Wikipedia)
Lead paragraph, milestone kind
The Persian famine of 1917-1919 or the Iranian famine of 1917-1919 was a period of widespread mass starvation and disease in Iran under the rule of the Qajar dynasty during World War I. The famine took place in the territory of Iran, which, despite declaring neutrality, was occupied by the forces of the British, Russian, and Ottoman empires whose occupation contributed to the famine. According to mainstream scholarship, approximately 2 million people died between 1917 and 1919.
Lead paragraph, start year
The Persian famine of 1917-1919 or the Iranian famine of 1917-1919 was a period of widespread mass starvation and disease in Iran under the rule of the Qajar dynasty during World War I. The famine took place in the territory of Iran, which, despite declaring neutrality, was occupied by the forces of the British, Russian, and Ottoman empires whose occupation contributed to the famine. According to mainstream scholarship, approximately 2 million people died between 1917 and 1919.
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