The Persian famine of 1917–1919 was a period of widespread mass starvation and disease in Persia (
Qajar Iran
Qajar Iran (), also referred to as Qajar Persia, the Qajar Empire, '. Sublime State of Persia, officially the Sublime State of Iran ( fa, دولت علیّه ایران ') and also known then as the Guarded Domains of Iran ( fa, ممالک م ...
) during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. The famine took place in the territory of present-day
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, which despite declaring neutrality was
occupied
' (Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 October 2 ...
by the forces of the
British,
Russian and
Ottoman empires, whose occupations contributed to the famine.
About 2 million people died between 1917 and 1919 because of hunger and from hunger-related disease, including
cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...
,
plague
Plague or The Plague may refer to:
Agriculture, fauna, and medicine
*Plague (disease), a disease caused by ''Yersinia pestis''
* An epidemic of infectious disease (medical or agricultural)
* A pandemic caused by such a disease
* A swarm of pes ...
and
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
, as well as
influenza
Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...
during the
1918 flu pandemic
The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
. A variety of factors caused and contributed to the famine, including successive seasonal droughts, requisitioning and confiscation of foodstuffs by the occupying armies, speculation, hoarding, war profiteering, and poor harvests.
Background
In November 1915, the price of one ''kharvar'' (100 kilos) of wheat increased to twenty
tomans, "if there
asany to be found", after the total granary of the south-east province of
Sistan
Sistān ( fa, سیستان), known in ancient times as Sakastān ( fa, سَكاستان, "the land of the Saka"), is a historical and geographical region in present-day Eastern Iran ( Sistan and Baluchestan Province) and Southern Afghanistan (N ...
was sold off to the
British troops. Russian troops blockaded all the roads in the north-east province of
Khorasan
Khorasan may refer to:
* Greater Khorasan, a historical region which lies mostly in modern-day northern/northwestern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan
* Khorasan Province, a pre-2004 province of Ira ...
, prohibiting any transfers of grain, except those destined for the
Russian army
The Russian Ground Forces (russian: Сухопутные войска В Sukhoputnyye voyska V, also known as the Russian Army (, ), are the Army, land forces of the Russian Armed Forces.
The primary responsibilities of the Russian Gro ...
. The requisitioning of pack animals, mules and camels for the oil industry in
Khuzestan
Khuzestan Province (also spelled Xuzestan; fa, استان خوزستان ''Ostān-e Xūzestān'') is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the southwest of the country, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Its capital is Ahvaz and it covers ...
, and for the British and Russian armed forces, left the country's transport network in serious disarray, and disrupted the distribution of foodstuffs and other goods throughout the country – with disastrous consequences. During the war, it often cost more to transport grain than to grow it, in many parts of Iran. All this made the living conditions of the poor even more dreadful.
Spread
![Bijar in First World War (1914-1918) 7](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Bijar_in_First_World_War_%281914-1918%29_7.JPG)
A series of severe droughts from 1916 on further depleted agricultural supplies.
By early February 1918, the famine spread throughout the country, and panicked crowds in major cities began to loot bakeries and food stores. In the western city of
Kermanshah, confrontations between the hungry poor and the
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
ended in casualties. In
Tehran
Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
, the situation was "aggravated by hoarding and short-selling to the customers by bakers".
Adulteration of bread, as well as the exorbitant prices charged by some bakers, outraged Tehran's
working poor. Thus, for example, the printing-house workers, who had recently formed a union, staged a demonstration in Tehran in 1919, during which crowds attacked the bakeries and granaries, and called on the government to increase food rations, to standardize the price of bread, and to regulate the quality, supply and sales of foodstuffs. Nevertheless, in the turbulent post-war era neither the national government nor foreign powers were in a position to do much to alleviate the human crises. The devastation caused by famine and contagious diseases continued for many years.
Cases of
cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, b ...
were also reported.
Outbreak of diseases
Beyond deaths from starvation,
epidemics
An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time.
Epidemics of infectious d ...
also killed large numbers of people.
The colossal food crisis, plus large numbers of soldiers, refugees and destitute people constantly on the move in search of work and survival, facilitated a deadly combination of pandemics and contagious diseases.
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...
, the
plague
Plague or The Plague may refer to:
Agriculture, fauna, and medicine
*Plague (disease), a disease caused by ''Yersinia pestis''
* An epidemic of infectious disease (medical or agricultural)
* A pandemic caused by such a disease
* A swarm of pes ...
and
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
spread with terrifying speed across the country.
Influenza
The
1918 flu pandemic
The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
spread to the entire country via three main entry routes:
Transcaucasia
The South Caucasus, also known as Transcaucasia or the Transcaucasus, is a geographical region on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, straddling the southern Caucasus Mountains. The South Caucasus roughly corresponds to modern Arme ...
to
Tabriz
Tabriz ( fa, تبریز ; ) is a city in northwestern Iran, serving as the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. It is the List of largest cities of Iran, sixth-most-populous city in Iran. In the Quri Chay, Quru River valley in Iran's historic Aze ...
,
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
to
Kermanshah and India to the south Iran (the latter significantly
vected by the
British Indian Army
The British Indian Army, commonly referred to as the Indian Army, was the main military of the British Raj before its dissolution in 1947. It was responsible for the defence of the British Indian Empire, including the princely states, which co ...
soldiers stationed in
Bushehr
Bushehr, Booshehr or Bushire ( fa, بوشهر ; also romanised as ''Būshehr'', ''Bouchehr'', ''Buschir'' and ''Busehr''), also known as Bandar Bushehr ( fa, ; also romanised as ''Bandar Būshehr'' and ''Bandar-e Būshehr''), previously Antioc ...
). The rural areas were more affected than urban regions, in which as many as 20% of the people were reported to have died. Azizi ''et al'' comment that the figure is exaggerated, adding that the
mortality rate
Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of de ...
in
Kermanshah and
Tehran
Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
was about 1%. Afkhami states that the flu impact was enormous and estimates that between 902,400 and 2,431,000 or 8.0% and 21.7% of the total population died, making Iran one of the most devastated countries worldwide.
Floor
A floor is the bottom surface of a room or vehicle. Floors vary from simple dirt in a cave to many layered surfaces made with modern technology. Floors may be stone, wood, bamboo, metal or any other material that can support the expected load ...
assessed the figure estimated by Afkhami is much higher than the real casualties.
[: "Floor concludes that the figure of 900,000 to 2.4 million casualties given by Afkhami is too high. And he appropriately relegates Mohammad Gholi Majd's overblown, conspiracy-filled book on the epidemic and the number of 8-10 million (or almost the country’s entire population) given by him, to a footnote".]
Cholera
In 1916, cholera that hit
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...
in 1915, was widespread not only in all northern provinces, it also reached the south. In 1917, it appeared in
Mazandaran and
Khorasan
Khorasan may refer to:
* Greater Khorasan, a historical region which lies mostly in modern-day northern/northwestern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan
* Khorasan Province, a pre-2004 province of Ira ...
, killing 188 and 308 people in the two regions respectively, according to a 1924 government report. Ahmad Seyf states that the origin of cholera outbreak was Russia, and It was not severe.
Typhoid and Typhus
Typhoid
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
spread in many parts of the country, and caused enough deaths that, according to an eyewitness, "the high mortality in
Tehran
Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
was not due to famine, but rather because of typhoid and typhus".
Causes and contributing factors
According to
Touraj Atabaki
Touraj Atabaki ( fa, تورج اتابکی, born February 23, 1950) is Emeritus Professor by special appointment of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at the Leiden University. He was the Senior Research Fellow at the International ...
, "successive seasonal droughts caused widespread famine during 1917/1918. Requisition and confiscation of foodstuffs by occupying armies to feed their soldiers added to the famine". In ''
The Cambridge History of Iran'', it is stated that
speculation
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, good (economics), goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline i ...
and
hoarding made the situation worse.
Michael Axworthy
Michael George Andrew Axworthy (26 September 1962 – 16 March 2019) was a British academic, author, and commentator. He was the head of the Iran section at the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office between 1998 and 2000.
Personal life and fam ...
believes that the famine was "partly as a result of the dislocation of trade and agricultural production caused by
the war".
Tammy M. Proctor comments that the cause for food shortage was a combination of army requisitioning,
war profiteering
A war profiteer is any person or organization that derives profit (economics), profit from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term typically carries strong negative connotations. General profiteering (business), ...
, hoarding and poor harvests.
Nikki Keddie
Nikki R. Keddie (née Anita Ragozin, August 30, 1930) is an American scholar of Eastern, Iranian, and women's history. She is Professor Emerita of History at University of California, Los Angeles.
Biography
Keddie was born in Brooklyn, New York. ...
and
Yann Richard
Yann is a French language, French male given name, specifically, the Breton language, Breton form of "Jean (male given name), Jean" (French for "John (given name), John").
Notable persons with the name Yann include:
__NOTOC__
In arts and enterta ...
related the famine to almost all of the factors mentioned above.
[: "Reform movements were specially strong in Tehran, and in northern provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran and Azerbaijan. Adding to discontent was a severe famine in 1918–19, which may have killed as much as one-quarter of the population in the north. The famine was related to wartime Western incursions, a reduced crop area and small harvest, food needs of foreign troops and worsened distribution. Famine was aggravated by hoarding and speculation by landlords, dealers and officials."]
Charles P. Melville
Charles P. Melville (born 10 May 1951) is a British academic who has been Professor of Persian History at the University of Cambridge since 2008. He is the President of the British Institute of Persian Studies. He was one of the editors of ''The ...
maintains that the main reason of the famine were
the conditions caused by the War.
Mohammad Gholi Majd
Mohammad Gholi Majd ( fa, محمدقلی مجد), also known as M.G. Madjd, is an author whose primary field of work is modern history of Iran.
Majd obtained a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 1978, and was a visiting lectu ...
, holds the British occupation and its custom and finance regulations accountable for worsening the famine, and
Willem Floor
Willem Marius Floor (born 1942) is a Dutch historian, writer, and Iranologist. He was born in 1942 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. After finishing high school, he attended the University of Utrecht where he studied economics, non-Western sociology, an ...
suggests James L. Barton's account (occupation by armies, exceptionally light snowfall and disease), joint with hoarding by landowners and lack of purchasing power as other crucial causes of famine. According to him, two major grain producing areas, namely
Kermanshah–
Hamadan and
Azarbaijan were the battlefield between the Ottomans and the Russians.
Pat Walsh in a review of Majd's book written in Irish Foreign Affairs, a quarterly publication by
Irish Political Review
The ''Irish Political Review'' is a monthly Irish magazine dedicated to Irish politics and history. It is known for its criticisms of historians associated with the "revisionist" view of Irish history, especially Peter HartCillian McGrattan, ''M ...
blames the British occupation and comments on claims of hoarding as causes of famine, writing "British attitudes towards the starving Persians were uncannily similar to those expressed
against the Irish in a similar position half a century before", i.e. the British blamed Persians while suggesting that building roads for their military was a ‘relief measure’ motivated by benevolence.
Rob Johnson blames
bad governance
Bad governance is the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed as a consequence of decision-making. This unfavourable relationship is created as a consequence of external factors or decisions such as violation of central ...
and wartime shortages for the famine.
Death toll
Scholars such as
Ervand Abrahamian,
Homa Katouzian and
Barry Rubin
Barry M. Rubin (28 January 1950 – February 3, 2014) was an American-born Israeli writer and academic on terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs.
Career
Rubin was the director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor ...
maintain that the total death toll due to starvation and disease was around 2 million.
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
analysts Steven R. Ward and
Kenneth M. Pollack
Kenneth Michael Pollack (born 1966) is an American former CIA intelligence analyst and expert on Middle East politics and military affairs. He has served on the National Security Council staff and has written several articles and books on intern ...
state a similar number.
Nikki Keddie
Nikki R. Keddie (née Anita Ragozin, August 30, 1930) is an American scholar of Eastern, Iranian, and women's history. She is Professor Emerita of History at University of California, Los Angeles.
Biography
Keddie was born in Brooklyn, New York. ...
and
Yann Richard
Yann is a French language, French male given name, specifically, the Breton language, Breton form of "Jean (male given name), Jean" (French for "John (given name), John").
Notable persons with the name Yann include:
__NOTOC__
In arts and enterta ...
state that about one-quarter of the population of
northern Iran
Northern Iran consists of the southern border of the Caspian Sea and the Alborz mountains.
It includes the provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, and Golestan. (Ancient kingdom of Hyrcania, medieval region of Tabaristan). The major provinces, Gilan ...
were killed.
Mohammad Gholi Majd
Mohammad Gholi Majd ( fa, محمدقلی مجد), also known as M.G. Madjd, is an author whose primary field of work is modern history of Iran.
Majd obtained a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 1978, and was a visiting lectu ...
's book, ''The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917–1919'', identifies a number of allied sources that detail the proportion and scale of the deaths, and alleges that as many as 8–10 million died, across the whole nation, based on an alternate pre-famine Persian population estimate of 19 million.
Timothy C. Winegard and Pordeli ''et al.'' acknowledge the figures suggested by Majd. Several scholars have disputed Majd's account.
Ervand Abrahamian comments that the book includes an "exaggerated discussion" of losses during the famine, a view he shares with Mahmood Messkoub,
Abbas Milani
Abbas Malekzadeh Milani ( fa, عباس ملکزاده میلانی; born 1949) is an Iranian-American historian, educator, and author. Milani is a visiting professor of Political Science, and the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of the Ira ...
and Rudi Matthee.
Abrahamian describes calling the famine a genocide as "wild accusation" and attributes the vast majority of the 2 million deaths he estimates to cholera and typhus epidemics, as well as mostly
worldwide influenza pandemic.
[: "A contemporary Iranian historian recently made the wild accusation that British food exactions to feed its army of occupation during World War I resulted in 10 million dead—half the population. He accuses the British government of "covering up" this "genocide" by systematically destroying annual reports. In fact, no annual reports on Iran were written from 1913 until 1922; the British expeditionary force of some 15,000 would not have required that much grain; and although as many as 2 million may have lost their lives in these years, the vast majority died not because of food exactions but from cholera and typhus epidemics, from a series of bad harvests, and, most important of all, from the worldwide 1919–20 influenza pandemic."] While accepting that the total death toll could be several millions, Hormoz Ebrahimnejad says Majd's figure is an overestimation.
Cormac Ó Gráda, discussing the difficulty of verifying the death toll of historical famines, describes the claim of genocide as "not possible to take literally": "Such claims are usually rhetorical, and sure signs of major disasters, but poor guides to actual mortality." A similar view is expressed by Alidad Mafinezam and Aria Mehrabi, who state that Majd's work suffers from methodological defects, including lack of
triangulation
In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points.
Applications
In surveying
Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle me ...
.
Reaction
During the famine years, several politicians served as
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
and all adopted
interventionist policies.
In order to control the situation of food supply, the government in Persia appointed Abdollah Mostowfi as chief of the alimentation service (''raʾīs-e arzāq'') in October 1916, before his later boss
Mokhber al-Saltaneh took office as the minister for alimentation (''vazīr-e arzāq'') in October 1917.
Siham al-Dawlah became chief of the bakery bureau (''raʾīs-e nānvāʾī'') in 1918 and an alimentation committee (''komīté-ye arzāq'') was also formed out of seven or eight influential merchants. The committee met daily and assisted the government with advise, including a proposal to introduce
government incentive for bread.
In 1918, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
rejected the request of Persian government for a
$2 million loan dedicated to famine relief.
Members of the
Jungle movement sheltered refugees who came to
Gilan from other parts of the country and founded a charity to help them. They also sent several tons of rice to the capital. In
Tabriz
Tabriz ( fa, تبریز ; ) is a city in northwestern Iran, serving as the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. It is the List of largest cities of Iran, sixth-most-populous city in Iran. In the Quri Chay, Quru River valley in Iran's historic Aze ...
, the
Democrats who were armed suppressed hoarders and speculators while organizing the relief.
Congregational
prayers
Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified an ...
for rain were observed during the famine, including those of
Mashhad
Mashhad ( fa, مشهد, Mašhad ), also spelled Mashad, is the List of Iranian cities by population, second-most-populous city in Iran, located in the relatively remote north-east of the country about from Tehran. It serves as the capital of R ...
in 1917, where babies and animals were also brought.
In Tabriz, medical missionary
William Summerill Vanneman
William Summerill Vanneman (January 5, 1863 – October 29, 1933) was an American medical missionary.Ancestry Library Edition From the fall of 1890 until his death, he worked as a physician in Tabriz, Iran for the Presbyterian mission. Vanneman wa ...
was appointed by the U.S. consul to be chairman of the Tabriz relief committee.
In this role, he communicated with Secretary of State
Robert Lansing
Robert Lansing (; October 17, 1864 – October 30, 1928) was an American lawyer and diplomat who served as Counselor to the State Department at the outbreak of World War I, and then as United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wils ...
and U.S. Ambassador
Henry Morgenthau Henry Morgenthau may refer to:
* Henry Morgenthau Sr. (1856–1946), United States diplomat
* Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891–1967), United States Secretary of the Treasury
* Henry Morgenthau III (1917–2018), author and television producer of ''Screa ...
to manage funds sent by the
American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief
The Near East Foundation (NEF), founded in 1915 as the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities, later the American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE), and after that Near East Relief, is a Syracuse, New York-based American internation ...
, now known as the
Near East Foundation
The Near East Foundation (NEF), founded in 1915 as the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities, later the American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE), and after that Near East Relief, is a Syracuse, New York-based American internation ...
.
Contemporary perceptions
In recent years, the famine has been subject to
conspiracy theories,
polarization
Polarization or polarisation may refer to:
Mathematics
*Polarization of an Abelian variety, in the mathematics of complex manifolds
*Polarization of an algebraic form, a technique for expressing a homogeneous polynomial in a simpler fashion by ...
and
historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or times ...
in Iran.
Much of the controversy is about the death toll and root causes, and lack of sufficient data on this period has been described as the "principal driver" for it.
The official website of
Ali Khamenei
Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei ( fa, سید علی حسینی خامنهای, ; born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia ''marja and the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously the third president o ...
,
Iran's supreme leader
The Supreme Leader of Iran ( fa, رهبر ایران, rahbar-e irān) is the List of heads of state of Iran, head of state of the Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader directs the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, executiv ...
, published an article in 2015 asserting the view that the famine was a deliberate act of
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
committed by the British, whose documents have been intentionally wiped out in a
cover-up attempt.
The
British Broadcasting Corporation #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
(BBC) produced and aired a documentary on the famine, which was condemned by
conservatives in Iran as a ploy to minimise British role and underline the feebleness of Iran.
[. The author mentions the following ]op-ed
An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...
in the footnotes:
*
Depictions
* ''
The Orphanage of Iran
''The Orphanage of Iran'' ( fa, یتیمخانه ایران), subtitled "A Historical Account of a Genuine Holocaust in Iran", is a 2016 Iranian action drama film directed by Abolqasem Talebi and set during the Invasion of Iran in World War I a ...
'' (2016)
References
Footnotes
Sources
*
*
*
* – Open access material by the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Health Sciences Research Commons.
*
*
* – Open access material licensed under the CC by-NC-ND 3.0 Germany.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* – Open access material licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Persian famine of 1917-1918
Famines in Iran
1910s health disasters
1917 disasters in Iran
1918 disasters in Iran
1919 disasters in Iran
1917 in Iran
1918 in Iran
1919 in Iran
Spanish flu
Middle Eastern theatre of World War I
20th-century famines
Qajar Iran
1910s disasters in Iran