Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How many died during the Potato Famine?
A small minority of historians regard the Irish Potato Famine (1845–1852) as an example of genocide. During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Irelandwhere one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for foodwas exacerbated by a host of political, social, and economic factors that remain the subject of historical debate.
While the famine was responsible for a significant increase in emigration from Ireland, of anywhere from 45% to nearly 85% depending on the year and the county, it was not the sole cause. The beginning of mass emigration from Ireland can be traced to the mid-18th century, when some 250,000 people left Ireland over a period of 50 years to settle in the New World. Irish economist Cormac Ó Gráda estimates that between 1 million and 1.5 million people emigrated during the 30 years between 1815 (when Napoleon was defeated in Waterloo) and 1845 (when the Great Famine began). However, during the worst of the famine, emigration reached somewhere around 250,000 in one year alone, with western Ireland seeing the most emigrants.
During the Famine, “the missing 1,490” starving tenants of Denis Mahon in Strokestown House, Roscommon, set out on foot from the estate in May 1847. Major Mahon had offered them the choice of emigration through “assisted passage”, starvation on their blighted potato patch farms or a place in the terrifying local workhouse. These families weakened by starvation walked for days along the tow paths of the Royal Canal to Dublin, where they were put on boats to Liverpool, and from there to Quebec aboard four “coffin ships” – cargo ships, ironically loaded with grain from Ireland, and unsuitable for passengers. It is estimated that half died before reaching Grosse Île in Canada. It was the largest single disposal of inconvenient tenants during the Famine. Major Mahon was shot dead that November, after news had got back to Roscommon about the fate of his former tenants. An annual walk on the canal banks commemorates the events.
Approximately six million Polish citizens perished during World War II: about one fifth of the pre-war population. Most were civilian victims of the war crimes and crimes against humanity during the occupation by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Statistics for Polish World War II casualties are divergent and contradictory. This article provides a summarization of these estimates of Poland's human losses in the war and their causes.
The worst of the 20th century influenza pandemics was the 1918 pandemic, where between 20-40 percent of the world’s population became ill between 40-100 million people died. More people died of the so-called Spanish flu (caused by the H1N1 viral strain) pandemic in the single year of 1918 than during all four-years of the Black Death. The pandemic had devastating effects as disease spread along trade and shipping routes and other corridors of human movement until it had circled the globe. InIndia, the mortality rate reached 50 per 1,000 population. Arriving during the closing phase of the World War I, the pandemic impacted mobilized national armies. Half of U.S. soldiers who died in the "Great War," for example, were victims of influenza. It is estimated that almost ¾ of a million Americans died during the pandemic. In part, the death toll during the pandemic was caused by viral pneumonia characterized by extensive bleeding in the lungs resulting in suffocation. Many victims died within 48 hours of the appearance of the first symptom. It was not uncommon for people who appeared to be quite healthy in the morning to have died by sunset. Among those who survived the first several days, however, many died of secondary bacterial pneumonia. It has been argued that countless numbers of those who expired quickly from the disease were co-infected with tuberculosis, which would explain the notable plummet in TB cases after 1918.
It is unknown how many Inca were killed or died during the Civil War. The estimated population of the Inca empire before an epidemic (probably of a European disease) and the Spanish conquest is estimated at between 6 and 14 million people. The civil war, an epidemic, probably of a European disease, and the Spanish conquest resulted in a population decline over several decades estimated as 20:1 or 25:1, meaning that the population declined by 95 percent.
In the early 21st century, historian Robert L. Scheina estimated that the slave rebellion resulted in the death of 350,000 Haitians and 50,000 European troops. According to the "Encyclopedia of African American Politics", "Between 1791 and independence in 1804 nearly 200,000 blacks died, as did thousands of mulattoes and as many as 100,000 French and British soldiers." Yellow fever caused the most deaths. Geggus points out that at least 3 of every 5 British troops sent there in 1791–1797 died of disease. There has been considerable debate over whether the number of deaths caused by disease was exaggerated.
Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones.
The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, including about 6 million due to war-related famine and disease. The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. This article lists the casualties of the belligerent powers based on official published sources.
Included with total war dead are victims of Japanese war crimes.The total war dead in the USSR includes about 1 million victims of Stalin's regime. The number of deaths in the Gulag labor camps increased as a result of wartime overcrowding and food shortages. The Stalin regime deported the entire populations of ethnic minorities considered to be potentially disloyal. Since 1990 Russian scholars have been given access to the Soviet-era archives and have published data on the numbers of people executed and those who died in Gulag labor camps and prisons. The Russian scholar Viktor Zemskov puts the death toll from 1941–1945 at about 1 million based on data from the Soviet archives. The Soviet-era archive figures on the Gulag labor camps has been the subject of a vigorous academic debate outside Russia since their publication in 1991. J. Arch Getty and Stephen G. Wheatcroft maintain that Soviet-era figures more accurately detail the victims of the Gulag labor camp system in the Stalin era. Robert Conquest and Steven Rosefielde have disputed the accuracy of the data from the Soviet archives, maintaining that the demographic data and testimonials by survivors of the Gulag labor camps indicate a higher death toll. Rosefielde posits that the release of the Soviet Archive figures is disinformation generated by the modern KGB. Rosefielde maintains that the data from the Soviet archives is incomplete; for example, he pointed out that the figures do not include the 22,000 victims of the Katyn massacre. Rosefielde's demographic analysis puts the number of excess deaths due to Soviet repression at 2,183,000 in 1939–40 and 5,458,000 from 1941–1945. Michael Haynes and Rumy Husun accept the figures from the Soviet archives as being an accurate tally of Stalin's victims, they maintain that the demographic data depicts an underdeveloped Soviet economy and the losses in World War Two rather than indicating a higher death toll in the Gulag labor camps.
Estimates of the death toll during the Cultural Revolution, including civilians and Red Guards, vary greatly. An estimate of around 400,000 deaths is a widely accepted minimum figure, according to Maurice Meisner. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals assert that in rural China alone some 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between 750,000 and 1.5 million were killed, with roughly the same number permanently injured. In "", Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim that as many as 3 million people died in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.
After the Soviet invasion of Poland following the corresponding German invasion that marked the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviet Union annexed eastern parts (known as "Kresy" to the Polish) of the Second Polish Republic. During 1939–1941, 1.45 million people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime, of whom 63.1% were Poles and 7.4% were Jews. Previously it was believed that about 1.0 million Polish citizens died at the hands of the Soviets, but recently Polish historians, based mostly on queries in Soviet archives, estimate the number of deaths at about 350,000 people deported in 1939–1945. From the newly conquered Eastern Poland, 1.5 million people were deported.
The following estimates of Hungarian deaths, within contemporary borders, during World War I were made by a Russian historian in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century. Total dead 385,000: including military losses 270,000 with the Austro-Hungarian forces and POW deaths in captivity of 70,000. Civilian dead due to famine and disease were 45,000.
Ireland was a part of the UK during World War I. Five-sixths of the island left to form the Irish Free State, now the Republic of Ireland, in 1922. A total of 206,000 Irishmen served in the British forces during the war. The number of Irish deaths in the British Army recorded by the registrar general was 27,405. A significant number of these casualties were from what, in 1920, became Northern Ireland. While 49,400 soldiers died serving in Irish divisions (the 10th, 16th and 36th), although not all of the men serving in these divisions were natives of Ireland and many Irish who died in non-Irish regiments are not listed. For example, 29% of the casualties in the 16th Division were not natives of Ireland. Neither does it include Irish emigrants in Britain who enlisted there and are not categorised as Irish. Australia lists 4,731 of its first World War soldiers as having been born in Ireland and more than 19,000 Irish-born soldiers served in the Canadian Corps. According to research done by John Horne of Trinity College Dublin, there are at least 30,986 soldiers who were born in Ireland that died; however, that's considered a "conservative" estimate and is very likely to raise.
The losses of Portuguese Mozambique were estimated by a Russian historian Vadim Erlikman in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century. Erlikman's estimates are based on sources published in the Soviet Union and Russia. 52,000
Poland was territory of Germany, Austria-Hungary and partially annexed by Russia, from 1795 to 1918. By late 1915, Germany had complete control over modern-day Poland. A 2005 Polish study estimated 3,376,800 Poles were conscripted into the armed forces of these countries during World War I, an additional 300,000 were conscripted for forced labor by the Germans. The Russians and Austrians forcibly resettled 1.6 to 1.8 million persons from the war zone in Poland. According to Michael Clodfelter, Polish war dead were 1,080,000, whilst 200,000 Polish civilians were killed in the fighting on the Eastern Front; 870,000 men served in the German, Austrian and Russian armies. Another estimate made by a Russian historian in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century, put total Polish war dead at 640,000, including military losses of 270,000 Poles conscripted, civilian losses of 120,000 due to military operations and 250,000 caused by famine and disease. The ethnic Polish Blue Army served with the French Army. The ethnic Polish Legions fought as part of the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Eastern Front.
The territory of Transylvania was part of Austria-Hungary during World War I. The following estimates of Romanian deaths, within contemporary borders, during World War I were made by a Russian historian in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century. Total dead: 748,000, including military losses of 220,000 with the Romanian forces, 150,000 with the Austro-Hungarian forces and POW deaths in captivity of 48,000. Civilian dead were as follows due to famine and disease: 200,000, killed in military operations 120,000 and 10,000 dead in Austrian prisons.
The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in the last part of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe. The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth, mass employment, and the rise of a new working class. Reforms in social and economic spheres followed, including the first laws on child labour, the legalisation of trade unions, and the abolition of slavery. In Britain, the Public Health Act of 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities. Europe's population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900. The last major famine recorded in Western Europe, the Irish Potato Famine, caused death and mass emigration of millions of Irish people. In the 19th century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States. Demographic growth meant that, by 1900, Europe's share of the world's population was 25%.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum believes that "The Nazi terror was, in scholar Norman Davies's words, "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe." Reliable statistics for the total number of Poles who died as a result of Nazi German policies do not exist. Many others were victims of the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and of deportations to Central Asia and Siberia. Records are incomplete, and the Soviet control of Poland for 50 years after the war impeded independent scholarship.The changing borders and ethnic composition of Poland as well as vast population movements during and after the war also complicated the task of calculating losses In the past, many estimates of losses were based on a Polish report of 1947 requesting reparations from the Germans; this often cited document tallied population losses of 6 million for all Polish "nationals" (Poles, Jews, and other minorities). Subtracting 3 million Polish Jewish victims, the report claimed 3 million non-Jewish victims of the Nazi terror, including civilian and military casualties of war.'Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war."
In general, humans can survive for two to eight weeks without food, depending on stored body fat. Survival without water is usually limited to three or four days. About 36 million humans die every year from causes directly or indirectly related to starvation. Childhood malnutrition is also common and contributes to the global burden of disease. However global food distribution is not even, and obesity among some human populations has increased rapidly, leading to health complications and increased mortality in some developed, and a few developing countries. Worldwide over one billion people are obese, while in the United States 35% of people are obese, leading to this being described as an "obesity epidemic." Obesity is caused by consuming more calories than are expended, so excessive weight gain is usually caused by an energy-dense diet.
Estimates for the total casualties of World War II vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. The largest number of civilian deaths in a single city was 1.2 million citizens dead during the 872-day Siege of Leningrad. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white American males aged 13 to 50 died in the American Civil War. Of the 60 million European soldiers who were mobilized in World War I, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured.
That year, cholera was transmitted along the California, Mormon and Oregon Trails as 6,000 to 12,000 are believed to have died on their way to the California Gold Rush, Utah and Oregon in the cholera years of 1849–1855. It is believed more than 150,000 Americans died during the two pandemics between 1832 and 1849.
Peasants made up the vast majority of population, who in many cases had well-established rights that the authorities had to respect. In 1484, about 97% of France's 13 million people lived in rural villages; in 1700, at least 80% of the 20 million people population were peasants.
Ontario has over 2 million people of Irish descent, who in greater numbers arrived in the 1820s and the decades that followed to work on colonial infrastructure and to settle land tracts in Upper Canada, the result today is a countryside speckled with the place names of Ireland. Ontario received a large number of those who landed in Quebec during the Famine years, many thousands died in Ontario's ports. Irish-born became the majority in Toronto by 1851.
The population of Ireland is about 6.3 million, but it is estimated that 50 to 80 million people around the world have Irish forebears, making the Irish diaspora one of the largest of any nation. Historically, emigration from Ireland has been the result of conflict, famine and economic issues. People of Irish descent are found mainly in English-speaking countries, especially Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia. There are also significant numbers in Argentina, Mexico and New Zealand. The United States has the most people of Irish descent, while in Australia those of Irish descent are a higher percentage of the population than in any other country outside Ireland. Many Icelanders have Irish and Scottish Gaelic forebears.
In the middle of the 19th century, the island was the landing point for thousands of refugees from the Irish Potato Famine, many sick and poverty-stricken. In 1847, a hospital was established to treat incoming immigrants, and during the following two years approximately 4,800 men, women, and children were admitted. Many recovered and went on to new lives, but more than 800 died. In 1850, an almshouse was built to house paupers. Opened in 1853, it was administered by the City of Boston.
In March 1741 Thomas Prior founder of the RDS said that Sir Thomas Cox of Dunmanway related that due to a failure of the potato crop 500 people had died in his area. Around 350,000 people died including one fifth of Munster's population. It was referred to as Bliain an Air, the year of the slaughter. This famine may have been even more severe than the great famine of 1847 in terms of mortality from starvation and disease.
The effect of the crisis on Ireland is incomparable to all other places, causing one million deaths, up to two million refugees, and spurring a century-long population decline. Excluding Ireland, the death toll from the crisis is estimated to be in the region of 100,000 people. Of this, Belgium and Prussia account for most of the deaths, with 40,000–50,000 estimated to have died in Belgium, with Flanders particularly affected, and about 42,000 estimated to have perished in Prussia. The remainder of deaths occurred mainly in France, where 10,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of famine-like conditions.
Estimates of the excess mortality during the famine vary widely. According to historian David Fieldhouse, over 1 million people may have died during the famine of 1899–1900. However, according to anthropologist Brian Fagan, "No one knows exactly how many perished in the great famine, but it could have been as many as four and a half million people." In her study of famines in the Bombay Presidency during the period 1860–1920, South Asianist, Michelle McAlpin estimated the famine of 1899–1900 to have had the highest mortality—at 37.9 deaths per 1000—among all famines and scarcities there between 1876–77 and 1918–19. Anthropologist Daniel W. Attwood asserts that in the Deccan an estimated 166,000 people may have died, and in the entire Presidency a total of 462,000. Historian Ronald E. Seavoy, in his 1986 study on famine in peasant societies, estimates the mortality in the famine to be 3.2 million, whereas historian Aroop Maharatna, in his historical retrospective of the demography of Indian famines, estimates the mortality to be between 3 million and 4.4 million. Archaeologist Daniel T. Chamberlain, citing Maharatna, points out that in Berar Province, the overall mortality rate in 1900 was 150% higher than the baseline rate, and further, also citing Maharatna, that the famine's effect can be seen in the sharp increase in crude death rate (to approximately 9%) in 1900, a sharp drop in the crude birth rate (down to 3%) in 1901, and a "compensating" increase in the birth rate (to approximately 5.5%) in 1902. Public health physician Mark E. Keim considers the mortality in India in the year 1900 to be 1.25 million, and the drought in India that year to be the fifth worst by mortality in the 20th century. Environment and development scholar Arun Agrawal argues that on account of the more liberal government relief in 1898 and 1899, "the number of people who died was far fewer" than in the famine of 1896–97 (whose mortality he puts at nearly 5 million). However anthropologist Fagan considers the famine in 1899–1900 to be the worst on record, suggesting that although the viceroy, Lord Curzon "led the public appeals for humanitarian aid, ... (t)he initiatives from his government ... were grossly inadequate."