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The demography of a Greek famine: Mykonos, 1941–1942

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Violetta Hionidou
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Continuity and Change , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , August 1995 , pp. 279 - 299
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

ENDNOTES

1 A. de Waal recently, and others such as Sen, A. K. (Poverty and families: an essay on entitlement and deprivation (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar and Rangasami, A. (‘Famine of exchange entitlement theory: a response’, paper given at the International Workshop ‘Women's role in self-sufficiency and food strategies’, Paris, 1985)Google Scholar earlier, questioned the previously assumed links between scarcity of food and/or starvation on the one hand and increased mortality on the other; see de Waal, A., Famine that kills: Darfur, Sudan, 1984–1985 (Oxford, 1989), 9–20.Google Scholar

2 Notable exceptions are Jannetta, A. Bowman, ‘Famine mortality in nineteenth-century Japan: the evidence from a temple death register’, Population Studies 46 (1992), 427–43CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Dyson, T., ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part I’, Population Studies 45 (1) (1991), 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Part II’, Population Studies 45 (2) (1991), 279–97Google Scholar; Valaoras, V. G., ‘Some effects of the famine on the population of Greece’, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 24 (4) (1946), 215–34CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Watkins, S. C. and Menken, J., ‘Famines in historical perspective’, Population and Development Review 11 (4) (1985), 647–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pitkänen, K. and Mielke, J. H., ‘Age and sex differentials in mortality during two nineteenth-century population crises’, European Journal of Population 9 (1993), 1–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; de Waal, A., ‘Famine mortality: a case study of Darfur, Sudan 1984–5’, Population Studies 43 (1989), 5–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stein, Z., Susser, M., Saenger, G. and Marolla, F., Famine and human development (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

3 Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part I’, 21Google Scholar; ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part II’, 292.Google Scholar

4 Jannetta, , ‘Famine mortality in nineteenth-century Japan’, 435.Google Scholar

5 Valaoras, , ‘Some effects of the famine’, 218.Google Scholar

6 Dols, M. J. L. and van Arken, D. J. A. M., ‘Food supply and nutrition in the Netherlands during and immediately after the World War II’, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 24 (4) (1946), 352–3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

7 Pitkänen, and Mielke, , ‘Age and sex differentials in mortality’, 23.Google Scholar

8 For example Dyson, (‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part II’, 295Google Scholar) and Pitkänen, and Mielke, (‘Age and sex differentials in mortality’, 24).Google Scholar

9 See Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part I’, 18Google Scholar; Jannetta, , ‘Famine mortality in nineteenth-century Japan’, 434Google Scholar; and de Waal, , ‘Famine mortality: a case study of Darfur’, 6.Google Scholar

10 In the period 1935–1937 Greece imported 45 per cent of all consumed cereals; see Diamond, W., Agriculture and food in Greece (UNRRA, Operational Analysis Paper 19, 1947), 5–6.Google Scholar

11 Mazower, M., Greece and the inter-war economic crisis (Oxford, 1991), 79–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Mazower, M., Inside Hitler's Greece: the experience of occupation 1941–44 (New Haven and London, 1993), 50Google Scholar; and The Times, 7 05 1941, 4.Google Scholar

13 Hondros, J., Occupation and resistance: the Greek agony 1941–44 (New York, 1983), 52.Google Scholar

14 The Times, 8 05 1941, 3.Google Scholar

15 Doxiadis, K., The sacrifices of Greece in the Second World War (Athens, 1945)Google Scholar, Table 15 and comments.

16 Mazower, , Inside Hitler's Greece, 24–7.Google Scholar The requisitioned assets were either used to sustain the occupation forces or were shipped out of Greece for the Axis troops.

17 The seizure of the shipping by the Axis authorities is considered by The Times' correspondent as a reason for the extreme severity of the famine on the islands (The Times, 28 10 1941, 5).Google Scholar Mazower mentions that ‘[t]o travel from the capital to the Peloponnese required a permit from the carabinieri and a booking several days in advance’. Also, that ‘[t]he voyage by caique [small boat] from Piraeus to Chios took fifteen to twenty days, and could only be managed at a price beyond most people's reach’ (Mazower, , Inside Hitler's Greece, 33).Google Scholar Still, by January 1942, Bulgarians as well as Italians refused to recognize the passes provided by the Germans, further restricting the population movements (The Times, 10 01 1942, 3).Google Scholar

18 The Times, 15 05 1941, 4.Google Scholar

19 Argenti, P., The occupation of Chios by the Germans and their administration of the island, 1941–44 (Cambridge, 1966), 47.Google Scholar

20 The Times, 22 01 1942, 3Google Scholar; Mazower emphasizes the especially strict prohibition imposed by the Italians on the trade between the islands in the Aegean Sea and the ‘notoriously strict surveillance of fishing boats, which could carry information or even passengers as well as fish’ (Inside Hitler's Greece, 55).Google Scholar

21 Doxiadis, , The sacrifice of GreeceGoogle Scholar, Table 16 and comments. See also The Times, 22 01 1941, 3.Google Scholar

22 The 1941 harvest was especially poor, having produced less than half of the normal output (Hondros, , Occupation and resistance, 67).Google Scholar

23 The Times, 28 10 1941, 5.Google Scholar

24 The Times reported on 5 05 1941 that ‘The scarcity of food, which has always existed in Greece, now threatens to reach catastrophic proportions’ (p. 4).Google Scholar

25 Moreover, Germans arranged with the puppet Greek government and the Bank of Greece the payment of large sums of drachma to the Axis powers as occupation expenses. Thus, the Bank of Greece was forced to print excessive amounts of currency, which further accentuated inflation (Thomadakis, S., ‘Black markets, inflation, and force in the economy of occupied Greece’, in latrides, J. O. ed., Greece in the 1940s: a nation in crisis (oHanover, 1981), 66–7).Google Scholar The price of bread experienced a 23-fold increase between April 1941 and January 1942 and an 89-fold increase between April 1941 and July 1942 (Doxiadis, , The sacrifices of Greece, Table 63).Google Scholar

26 Even the fees of doctors were paid in food (Argenti, , The occupation of Chios, 36Google Scholar, and The Times, 7 09 1942, 3).Google Scholar

27 Valaoras, V. G., ‘Some effects of the famine on the population of Greece’, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 24 (4) (1946), 233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Thomadakis, , ‘Black markets, inflation, and force’, 72.Google Scholar

29 Mazower, Inside Hitler's Greece, 31Google Scholar, citing USA National Archives (Washington, DC), T-821/249/S29–32, ‘Situazione economica e organizzazione civile nei territori occupati’, 1 11 1941.Google Scholar

30 The Times, 16 08 1941, 3.Google Scholar

31 Kitsikis, D., ‘La famine en Gréce (1941–1942). Les conséquences politiques’, Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale 74 (1969), 30–1.Google Scholar

32 Black, M., A cause for our times: Oxfam, the first 50 years (Oxford, 1992), 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 League of Nations, Food rationing and supply 1943/44 (Geneva, 1944), 38.Google Scholar The author of this report emphasized that these averages of calorific intake were only indicative since there was no regular system of food distribution.

34 The Times, 28 02 1942, 4.Google Scholar

35 Kitsikis, , ‘La famine en Grèce (1941–42)’, 19.Google Scholar Fleischer indicates that the guarantee was given in June 1941 and was renewed to the International Red Cross in November 1941. Fleischer, H., Στέµµα kαl σβστlkα: H Eλλάδα τηζ kατoχήζ kαl τηζ αvτiστασηζ 1941–1944 (Athens, 1986), 204–6.Google Scholar

36 Kitsikis, , ‘La famine en Grèce (1941–1942)’, 30.Google Scholar

37 Diamond, , Agriculture and food in Greece, 22–3.Google Scholar

38 Laiou-Thomadakis, A., ‘The politics of hunger: economic aid to Greece, 1943–45’, Journal of Hellenic Diaspora VII (1980), 37–8.Google Scholar

39 Valaoras, , ‘Some effects of the famine’, 217.Google Scholar

40 The paper published by Valaoras, ‘Some effects of the famine’, is an exception. Still, it refers exclusively to Athens and Piraeus rather than the whole country.

41 On the vital registration system of Greece, see Valaoras, V. G., ‘National primary socio-economic data structures, V: Greece’, International Social Science Journal 32 (2) (1980), 343–58Google Scholar, and Hionidou, V., ‘The demography of a Greek island, Mykonos 1859–1959: a family reconstitution study’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1993), 21–5.Google Scholar

42 These problems mainly concern the delay of the registration of vital events in the 1870s and 1880s (Hionidou, , ‘The demography of a Greek island’, 29–31).Google Scholar

43 This linkage constitutes a part of the family reconstitution that has been undertaken for the period 1859–1959 for the civil registration records of Mykonos. For a detailed description of the linkage procedure, see Hionidou, , ‘The demography of a Greek island’, 110–12.Google Scholar

44 The age groups that have been used are: less than one year, 1–4, 5–9, 10–19, 20–29, 30–39, 40–49, 50–59 and over 60.

45 For the other age groups the net error varies between zero and 17 per cent.

46 Similarly, on the island of Chios the performance of burials, baptisms and weddings continued normally during the occupation (‘Report submitted by Leoni Calvocoressi, former Mayor of Chios, to Demosthenes Mavrogordato, Mayor of Chios. Chios, 14 November 1945’, in Argenti, , The occupation of Chios, 45).Google Scholar

47 Mazower, , Inside Hitler's Greece, 38.Google Scholar

48 According to oral accounts a rationing system was established on the island by the Germans, i.e. after the Italians surrendered in September 1943 (Stott, M., ‘The social and economic change of the Greek island of Mykonos 1860–1978: an anthropological perspective’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1982), 95–6).Google Scholar

49 Mazower, , Inside Hitler's Greece, 41.Google Scholar

50 The only drawback in such a study is the non-availability of an age structure of the population at, or around, the time of the famine. The non-availability of an age structure applies to the whole of Greece since the 1940 census returns were destroyed before the analysis was completed. Only the population figures by sex have been published for every community, town and prefecture. However, the total population by sex is available from the 1940 census.

51 Hionidou, , ‘The demography of a Greek island’, Table 6.8, Figure 2.6 and Table 6.2.Google Scholar

52 Stott, , ‘The social and economic change of the Greek island of Mykonos’, 95–6.Google Scholar

53 Valaoras observed a positive association between daily mean air temperature and daily number of deaths in Athens (‘Some effects of the famine’, 224).Google Scholar

54 In the case of the pre-famine rates, the base population figure used was calculated as: Population (1/1/1939) = Population (16/10/1940) + Deaths (1/1/1939 to 16/10/1940)—Births (1/1/1939 to 16/10/1940); and, in the case of the famine base population: Populations (15/2/1942) = Population (16/10/1940)—Deaths (16/10/1940 to 14/2/1942) + Births (16/10/1940 to 14/2/1942).

55 Hionidou, , ‘The demography of a Greek island’, 61–8.Google Scholar

56 Crude death rate is defined as the number of deaths that occurred within a year divided by the mid-year population, the result multiplied by 1,000. It expresses the number of deaths per 1,000 population.

57 Stott mentions that farmers did better than others during the famine (‘The social and economic change of the Greek island of Mykonos’, 99).Google Scholar The Mykoniati newspaper Nea Mykonos mentions in July 1948 that the urban population of the island, and among them especially the families of fishermen, experienced heavy losses during the famine. As mentioned earlier, boats over 50 tons had been confiscated by the occupying forces and fishing was severely restricted.

58 A similar differentiation of the impact of the famine has been described by Argenti for the island of Chios. There, the population of the town and the villages depending on fishing and sailing were the most affected (The occupation of Chios, 48).Google Scholar

59 Only males are examined since very few women (exceptions were the midwife and the school teacher) were reported as having an occupation.

60 During the famine there were 172 deaths of adult males. There were 234 deaths of adult males during the perioda 1930–1939.

61 Valaoras, , ‘Some effects of the famine’, 217.Google Scholar

62 Ibid. Unfortunately, the source for this observation is not made clear.

63 Keys, A., Brozek, J., Mickelsen, O. and Taylor, H. Longstreet, The biology of human starvation (Minneapolis, 1950), Vol. 1, 749–52.Google Scholar

64 Hart, N., ‘Famine, maternal nutrition and infant mortality: a re-examination of the Dutch hunger winter’, Population Studies 47 (1993), 37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

65 Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part I, 22.Google Scholar For a discussion of the ‘anticipated’ decline of fertility, see ‘Forum: on the demography of South Asian famines’, Health Transition Review 2 (1) (1992), 91–113.Google Scholar

66 Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part I’, 7Google Scholar; Pitkänen, and Mielke, , ‘Age and sex differentials in mortality’, 9Google Scholar; and Boyle, P. P. and O'Grada, C., ‘Fertility trends, excess mortality, and the Great Irish Famine’, Demography 23 (1986), 547.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

67 See for example, Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part I’, 294Google Scholar, and Dols, and Arken, van, ‘Food supply and nutrition in the Netherlands’, 352–3.Google Scholar Similar findings are cited in Jannetta, ‘Famine mortality in nineteenth-century Japan’, 435.Google Scholar

68 This piece of research will continue with interviews of the famine survivors. Their oral accounts will, we hope, expand our knowledge on this issue.

69 Hionidou, , ‘The demography of a Greek island’, Table 6.2.Google Scholar

70 Valaoras, , ‘Some effects of the famine’, 218.Google Scholar

71 Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part II’, 21Google Scholar; Jannetta, , ‘Famine mortality in nineteenth-century Japan’, 433–4Google Scholar; Pitkänen, and Mielke, , ‘Age and sex differentials in mortality’, 12–13.Google Scholar According to Pitkänen and Mielke's analysis for Finland, the pattern found in the second, and most acute, of the famines is similar to the one found in Mykonos.

72 Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part II‘, 294Google Scholar; Pitkänen, and Mielke, , ‘Age and sex differentials in mortality’, 24–6.Google Scholar

73 Valaoras, , ‘Some effects of the famine’, 220.Google Scholar

74 Keys, et al. , The biology of human starvation, 758–9.Google Scholar

75 In Athens and Piraeus malaria was the reported cause of death in 205 cases in the period July to December 1942 compared to 20 in the same months of 1941 (Valaoras, , ‘Some effects of the famine’, 221).Google Scholar

76 Anon., ‘Health in Europe: Greece’, Bulletin of the Health Organization, League of Nations X (1942–1944), 664.Google Scholar

77 Laiou-Thomadakis, , ‘The politics of hunger’, 29.Google Scholar

78 Argenti, , The occupation of Chios, 49.Google Scholar

79 Dols and Arcken point to an increase in deaths from tuberculosis during the famine in Netherlands (‘Food supply and nutrition in the Netherlands’, 351).Google Scholar Also, Post, J. D., citing Helweg-Larsen, et al. , indicates that the authors ‘found that starvation did not seem to provoke infectious disease other than tuberculosis’Google Scholar (‘Nutritional status and mortality in eighteenth-century Europe’, in Newman, L. F. ed., Hunger in history: food shortage, poverty, and deprivation (Oxford, 1990), 268Google Scholar, citing Helweg-Larsen, P. et al. , Famine disease in German concentration camps: complications and sequels (Copenhagen, 1952).Google ScholarPubMed

80 De Waal, , ‘Famine mortality: a case study of Darfur’, 21 and 24.Google Scholar

81 Post, , ‘Nutritional status and mortality’, 267.Google Scholar

82 Post, J. D., ‘Climatic variability and the European mortality wave of the early 1740s’, Journal of interdisciplinary History 15 (1984), 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83 Dyson, , ‘On the demography of South Asian famines, Part I’, 22.Google Scholar