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I have never heard of this!! Please share some resources that you think are unbiased, would love to learn more.

dmix 3y ago
According to wikipedia > So far, few historians have researched the famine, making it an understudied subject of modern history. But otherwise there seems to be plenty of information there. It also mentions: > In recent years, the famine has been subject to conspiracy theories, polarization and historical revisionism in Iran. The official website of Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, published an article in 2015 asserting the view that the famine was a deliberate act of genocide committed by the British, whose documents have been intentionally wiped out in a cover-up attempt. So it's going to be full of online vitriol by competing nationalists, just like the Bengal one generates every time I've seen it brought up.
- ImAnAmateur 3y ago
  Glad you mentioned that Khamenei article by name. It came up in a search so I was reading it. It seems to be inspired by a work in 2013 that has much the same message. One book especially but three books total. Without paying for those I can't judge the claims fully. The gist of the article is that American sources differ from British ones when it comes to the period of 1917-1919. It spends a big chunk of its length making the case that the Irish famine was an intentional genocide and a cover up by Britain. The thesis of the article seems to be that Britian did the same thing to Iran. I can't come to a clear conclusion. The American sources aren't quoted or cited directly in the article, instead only indirectly through works that used them. At first I thought it was based off of a 2013 work but that is a 2nd edition of something originally written in 2003. I also can't tell how they increased the death count beyond an additional two million. I agree that this article is very likely to be biased. Modern Iranian politics could have an influence. However I can't say more without further research. Here is a quote of a Wikipedia citation of World War 1 deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_note-StevenWard-76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_no... >Ward, Steven R. (2014). Immortal, Updated Edition: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press. p. 123. ISBN 9781626160651. "As the Great War came to its close in the fall of 1918, Iran's plight was woeful. The war had created an economic catastrophe, invading armies had ruined farmland and irrigation works, crops and livestock were stolen or destroyed, and peasants had been taken from their fields and forced to serve as laborers in the various armies. Famine killed as many as two million Iranians out of a population of little more than ten million while an influenza pandemic killed additional tens of thousands." The core question isn't about if the famine happened, but how bad it was and how intentional it was.

dmix 3y ago

According to wikipedia > So far, few historians have researched the famine, making it an understudied subject of modern history. But otherwise there seems to be plenty of information there. It also mentions: > In recent years, the famine has been subject to conspiracy theories, polarization and historical revisionism in Iran. The official website of Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, published an article in 2015 asserting the view that the famine was a deliberate act of genocide committed by the British, whose documents have been intentionally wiped out in a cover-up attempt. So it's going to be full of online vitriol by competing nationalists, just like the Bengal one generates every time I've seen it brought up.

ImAnAmateur 3y ago
Glad you mentioned that Khamenei article by name. It came up in a search so I was reading it. It seems to be inspired by a work in 2013 that has much the same message. One book especially but three books total. Without paying for those I can't judge the claims fully. The gist of the article is that American sources differ from British ones when it comes to the period of 1917-1919. It spends a big chunk of its length making the case that the Irish famine was an intentional genocide and a cover up by Britain. The thesis of the article seems to be that Britian did the same thing to Iran. I can't come to a clear conclusion. The American sources aren't quoted or cited directly in the article, instead only indirectly through works that used them. At first I thought it was based off of a 2013 work but that is a 2nd edition of something originally written in 2003. I also can't tell how they increased the death count beyond an additional two million. I agree that this article is very likely to be biased. Modern Iranian politics could have an influence. However I can't say more without further research. Here is a quote of a Wikipedia citation of World War 1 deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_note-StevenWard-76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_no... >Ward, Steven R. (2014). Immortal, Updated Edition: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press. p. 123. ISBN 9781626160651. "As the Great War came to its close in the fall of 1918, Iran's plight was woeful. The war had created an economic catastrophe, invading armies had ruined farmland and irrigation works, crops and livestock were stolen or destroyed, and peasants had been taken from their fields and forced to serve as laborers in the various armies. Famine killed as many as two million Iranians out of a population of little more than ten million while an influenza pandemic killed additional tens of thousands." The core question isn't about if the famine happened, but how bad it was and how intentional it was.