Finland's famine, maternal mortality, Asian travel and Catholicism in Latin America
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Source: FINLAND'S "GREAT HUNGER YEARS" MEMORIALS
Finland’s famine of 1866-1868
Income inequality and famine mortality: Evidence from the Finnish famine of the 1860s, by Miikka Voutilainen Economic History Review May 2022
Finland has a long history of famines.13 Currently available Finnish population series document famines in 1675–9, in the 1690s (with a population decline of 20.6 per cent in 1696–7), in 1709–10, in the early 1740s, and more regionally delineated crises during the 1830s and 1850s, with continued food security crises related to harvest failure well into the twentieth century. 14 What makes the Finnish famine of the 1860s stand out was not only its relatively late occurrence (some 120 years after the previous large-scale domestic famine and some 90 years after the last substantial famine in neighbouring Sweden)15 but also its magnitude, with a loss of close to 10 per cent of the pre-famine population.
The Finnish famine of the 1860s, which was a ‘European outlier’,16 took place in a poor country that, in 1820, had a per capita income level that was only about 40 per cent of what it was in the UK and three-quarters of what it was in Sweden, with this disparity growing further by 1870. Even famine-stricken Ireland—the infamous ‘poor man of Europe’—had a higher per capita income level than Finland for the first half of the nineteenth century.17 The low average income level was an outcome of an overwhelmingly agrarian low-productivity economy. Only about 6 per cent of the population lived in urban centres, and about 90 per cent worked in agriculture. The structure of the economy, combined with the dietary dependency on volatile grain output (rye being the staple in the south, cold-resistant barley in the east and north), meant that the economy and society as a whole were highly vulnerable to harvest fluctuations.
Global Unicorns
Disney's never-built Persian Resort
Disney's Persian Resort was a themed hotel planned for Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Due to the 1973 oil crisis, the project was cancelled, along with Disney's Venetian Resort and Disney's Asian Resort. Forms from 1978 showed that the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi offered to fund the project's construction and operation but after the Iranian Revolution the project was permanently shelved. The resort was to be located on the shores of Bay Lake, not the Seven Seas Lagoon like the rest of the resorts. The early drawings would have had a monorail spur going to it and through Tomorrowland in Magic Kingdom.
Maternal mortality
Why is maternal mortality in the US so astonishingly high?
Source: Daily Shot
Asian travel
In an American airport it can seem that the pandemic is well and truly over. Not so in Asia.
Vincent Palumbo on Klein and Pettis
Mary in Mourning
Late-C15 Netherlandish statue of Mary, mourning, from the Bode Museum in Berlin
h/t @joshspero
Catholicism in Latin America
Latin America holds more 1/3 of world’s Catholics, but their numbers are shrinking. In 1995 80% of LatAm identifiedCatholic. Today just 56% do. Since 1995 evangelicals’ share of the regional population rose from 3.5% to 19%,
Source: Economist
History of Technology
The Melvin Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship of SHOT, the society for the history of technology is presented annually to a doctoral student engaged in the preparation of a dissertation on the history of technology, broadly defined. The stuff that previous recipients are involved in is really interesting. A lot here I would love to read!
Reversible Destiny Office
