Introduction

Abstract This introduction sets out the main argument of the book and introduces some key context concerning the grain trade and food insecurity in Europe in the eighteenth century. Here, I introduce the concepts ‘artificial famine’ and ‘natural famine’, and explore how the increased emphasis placed on discerning ‘real’ from ‘artificial’ food crises in the eighteenth century encouraged trust that quantitative methods to enumerate populations and measure food supplies could resolve doubts over the root causes of food insecurity. I explore the long history of this duality, up until the recent influence of Amartya Sen on the historiography of famine. Rather than seeking to offer revised or new explanations of historical famines, I set out the case for providing a history of how explanations of famine increasingly emphasised ‘real’ and ‘natural’ causal factors. Drawing on the work of Theodore Porter, I suggest that during these years (roughly from the 1770s to the early 1800s), the concept ‘famine’ became a statistical entity, a phenomenon that could be measured and understood through quantification and data, contrasting with older concepts of famine that emphasised eyewitness, testimony, and first-hand experience. The introduction explores the relative success and popularity of climactic, Malthusian, and economic explanations of historical famines and episodes of scarcity in Britain, and sets out the argument and structure of the book.