The Great Famine of 1920
The Decade of Death
Introduction
The 19th century was largely defined by humanity as an era of progress, technological marvels, and a dramatic advance in the standard of living for most people. As industrialization matured and communication improved, the world seemed smaller than ever. With the discovery of the Jump Lanes, Earth became one amongst a set of inhabited worlds. It remained the mother planet of humanity, and certainly the most important and populous, but no longer alone. While there had been conflicts and strife, the general feeling of the world on the eve of the 20th century was that humanity was entering an even brighter era. The 1910s were notable as a period of dramatic and sustained cultural development, with the widespread use of broadcasting technology allowing even the poorest citizens of the Great Powers access to art like never before. Educational systems were strengthened, and the feelings of optimism grew. This was, as we now know, the calm before the storm. The ensuing tragedy has its roots in three separate, but related events. The first is the economic disaster known as the Panic of 1916, which triggered a rolling wave of recessions, culminating most dramatically in the Russian Civil War of 1917. The second is, of course, the titular Famine of 1920. The third is the Bengal Flu, a respiratory virus that, unlike the popular conception of this period, was responsible for over twice the loss of life that the famine was. These three events in combination led to the greatest loss of human life in history prior to the Great War.
The Panic of 1916
Since the discovery of Caeleum in 1886, the world had undergone what is now referred to as the “Third Industrial Revolution.” The revolution was fueled by oil and rare metals, often collected from the colonial worlds. The increasingly cheap costs of both fuel and cavorite led to a period of unrestrained growth and investment. Investors, seeing free land and limitless potential for growth, poured vast sums of money into new factories and equipment both in the aether and in the colonies. This led to the creation of a bubble, with new companies taking investment and promising returns that they could not possibly deliver on. In November of 1916, this bubble finally burst. Upon opening on November 20th, the London Stock Exchange saw a 12% loss of value. Due to a number of communication issues, this was not broadcast well, leading to the first instances of panic. Several major business leaders, as well as the Lord Protector of The British Empire, Joseph Chamberlain, contributed large sums in an effort to stabilize the market, which did work for a time. However, the event scared the public. Many new organizations reported on it extensively, and there was widespread speculation that a larger crash was coming. In response to this fear, the Protectorate ordered the markets closed until the start of the New Year. During this time, parliament was ordered to find a solution to the crisis. They failed, and the markets reopened on Tuesday, January 2nd, 1917. The resulting crash was dramatic, with the Exchange seeing a loss of over 30% in a single day. This day, dubbed “Black Tuesday” due to the magnitude of the loss, had an effect that rippled across the worlds. Over the following years, the markets continued to decline, eventually leading to an overall loss of value of around 89%.
Markets failed throughout the developed world, with New York, Vienna, and St. Petersburg having similarly catastrophic losses. This resulted in bank runs, mass unemployment, a dramatic increase in poverty and homelessness, as well as a series of strikes. In October of 1917, The Russian Empire erupted into a violent civil war that saw not only the death of the Tzar and his family but also many of its leading figures. Though The Russian Empire survived this near-fatal blow, it lost large portions of its territory and was embroiled in vicious conflict for years following the initial revolt. As the violence spilled out of the empire’s borders much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia were put on edge. Russia found itself drawn into conflict with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and zeppelin routes had to be redrawn as piracy grew over the Kazakh steppe.
Many of the companies most affected by the crashing markets were focused on aether or air travel and logistics. Thus, finding themselves without capital and with no chance of receiving loans, they began to pull back dramatically. Many went fully out of business, and their fleets were sold for scrap or left to rust in a stockyard. This caused an intense contraction of the supply chains for many other businesses, as well as a significant increase in the cost of moving goods and people to and from the colonies. These contractions are seen as the primary reason for a series of increasingly protectionist laws passed by the Great Powers of the world throughout the 1920s and 30s.
The Great Famine
As previously noted, the Great Famine of 1920 was not actually the primary cause of death during the period that is named after it; that ignoble honor belongs to the respiratory virus commonly known as the Bengal Flu that followed in the years after. This is not to say that the famine was not deadly, far from it, the famine was extremely deadly. It was a nearly unprecedented tragedy in its own right, with around 0.7% of Earth’s population in 1920, that is to say, 53 million people, losing their lives to the famine alone. How it ended up becoming the primary event of the period in the public imagination is up to interpretation, and has been extensively discussed. However, it is my personal opinion that the answer to that question lies in two parts. The first is that the famine is actually the first event in the series. By the time the Bengal Flu arrived, it was seen as just another disaster in a line of tragedies, with the famine being something different from the problems that had come before it. The second potential reason for the popularity of the name is that, unlike every other part of the world, the nations of Europe (with the exception of Britain) lost more people to the famine than to the flu. More developed medical systems, early warning, and quarantine measures resulted in the virus being largely mitigated. Therefore, being the center of the world’s information, Europe enforced its own bias onto the historical narrative. However, this article will hopefully be able to set an amount of the record straight.
The famine had its origins in an extraterrestrial fungi (though biologists debate whether or not to qualify the flora of Victoria II as fungi, it is most easily understood as one) that has since been named “Mors Frumenti.” In the modern day, it is commonly referred to as “The Blue Creep” due to its bioluminescent nature and propensity for growing up and along walls. Since the famine, the Blue Creep has become a common sight across Earth and the colonies. However, its initial introduction was an unmitigated disaster. The blight it caused was not the first instance of extraterrestrial flora and fauna coming to Earth and causing problems, there was most famously the Blight of 1892 which drove the Banana, Plum, Kiwi, and Avocado fruits extinct. However, this one was especially dangerous in that it primarily affected staple crops, such as wheat, barley, beets, potatoes, and corn. It first made its way to earth late in 1919 on a cargo aethership from the colony of Victoria II. Which specific ship is difficult to determine, but most agree that it was the EAS Waymouth, a cargo hauler owned by the Royal Gate Company. The ship made port at Johannesburg in South Africa, before traveling on further to Cairo, and then docking in Lisbon. At each of these locations, the spore managed to spread from the ship.
Mors Frumenti roots quickly, but does not grow large enough to be obvious for several months. This, along with the rate at which it spreads spores, which can be carried large distances through the air, caused it to infiltrate much of the world in a rapid amount of time. The first reports of blight came in October of 1919, though the reported cases were small, and were not taken as indication of a wider event. It was not understood that they were even connected until much later. The first more significant indication of what was to come arrived in the spring of 1920. Farmers began reporting abnormalities in the growth of the crops, with some already rotting in the ground. Additionally, animals that would normally feed on the fields seemingly had no interest in them. This was further compounded by a series of heat waves and droughts throughout much of the summer of 1920. A report given at the time from the Imperial Weather Service in Vienna found that from 1910 to 1920, each successive year had been the hottest on record. The report did not speculate on the reasons for this. The full horror of the situation would not be fully revealed until Autumn when harvest began.
Over 30% of all crops grown in 1920 failed either from blight or extreme conditions. Worse still, many of the grains that did not fail were infected by Mors Frumenti, which resulted in extreme sickness and sometimes death for those who consumed them. The extreme symptoms caused by this were featured heavily in the press at the time, which stoked fears to a further height. While only around 5% of the grain was infected, it would be months before a reliable method of determining whether or not a batch was tainted would be discovered, leading many farmers to burn their own crops out of fear that it had turned to poison. It has yet to be determined how much of a factor this response was in the deaths that followed, but 1921 saw mass death on a scale that had never been seen.
Response to the Crisis
The crisis was of such a magnitude that it overwhelmed all available aid. An emergency conference was held in Geneva Switzerland to discuss the situation and organize help, but while the politicians met, the people starved in their homes. The result was a collapse of government in large parts of the world that took years to repair, and a loss of confidence that still has not healed. The Geneva Conferences met three times over the course of the famine, resulting in a strengthening of the International Red Cross, as well as the creation of the World Health Organization, an independent agency funded by the various nations of the world. The WHO supervised the distribution of resources in the areas most affected. However, protectionist policies from the United States and The British Empire significantly impacted their ability to function and led to allegations of corruption. Additionally, a conspiracy theory spread that claimed that the grain supplied to Joseon was purposefully tainted in an effort to weaken them in preparation for a Western attack. This paranoia led to the destruction of many shipments, and rioting in several major cities where the WHO had set up distribution centers. Ironically, the disorder in Joseon helped justify an attack from the Japanese in a few years.
By mid-1921 several blight-resistant strains of wheat and barley had been isolated, and the seeds were distributed worldwide for that year’s planting. The devastation caused by the famine was enough to ensure that massive amounts of resources were spent shoring up the agricultural sector. President Calvin Coolidge passed the Curtis-Crisp Farm Recovery Act, a piece of legislation designed to allow decimated farms to rebuild by giving them generous loan terms and subsidizing the cost of labor. While the act proved somewhat effective, the Coolidge administration lived in the shadow of The Independence Day Massacre, which meant that many poor farmers did not trust the offered loans, and rejected the subsidies. In France, their solution was found in the increased authority of the Ministry of Agriculture, which began a process of nationalization, seizing “unproductive land” for use as new fields, as well as an aggressive deforestation campaign.
The Return
September 19th, 1922 the return gate from the (now named) Germinal System was finally finished, and the first colonists returned from their new world. Since the beginning of the famine the aether industry, which had taken a beating during the economic woes of the late 1910s, had begun a steep recovery. With the failures of governments and supply chains alike, and an increasingly unstable climate on Earth, the prospect of interplanetary immigration had become much more popular. Ships left daily from ports across the world for the stars. When the news of Étoile Chérie’s climate reached Earth, people were ecstatic. When the news of the famine reached the colonists, however, they were filled with fear. Fear for their families left behind on Earth, and also for their new home. They committed to the task of producing as much grain as possible in order to alleviate the crisis. When the gate opened, their few ships were loaded and waiting, and full silos waited on the planet for transportation. This event is often remembered as the breaking of the famine. The dramatic arrival of humanity’s best, sent to the stars, yet returning to their home as saviors. This is, unfortunately, a highly dramatized view of things. While the grain ships sent from Germinal were of course impactful, their effect was felt little outside of France itself.
The much larger effect of the gate’s opening was of course immigration. Millions of starving people sold their meager belongings for a ticket to the stars and a chance at a better future. Of those that left, the vast majority went to Germinal. The French Empire attempted to stem the flow of immigrants, but they proved to be too vast to contain. A system was instead set up wherein newly arrived immigrants took a pledge to uphold the values of the Empire, to learn the French language within five years, and to register for conscription. In return, they were given the right to claim up to 160 acres of land, so long as they could make it productive. The result was the largest movement of people in the history of the human race, with the population of Étoile Chérie swelling to over 300 million people before 1925. Immigration primarily came from Central and East Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America.
The Bengal Flu
In March of 1922, reports began circulating about an influenza outbreak in the central United States, however, the overstressed health systems of the nation, still reeling from the effects of the Famine and the rampant poverty of the time, paid little heed to these reports. By April the virus had spread across the United States, and by June had made its way from US ports to nations around the world. The severity of the situation was downplayed nearly uniformly, either out of fear or exhaustion, until August. That month the number of people infected rose dramatically, with particular attention from the press being paid to the megacity of Calcutta, where a mutated strain made the virus far more deadly than before. In September it was officially proclaimed a pandemic, but the response had come too late. Due to this being the city in which the Pandemic was first declared, it became known as the “Bengal Flu” in the press.
Efforts to quarantine proved ineffective at stopping the spread, and before the year ended, the virus could be found around the world. For people weakened by years of poverty and starvation, the mortality rate was elevated far above what it should have been. Work began on a vaccine, but little could be done in the immediate.
The virus had its most devastating effect not on the world as a whole, but on the British Isles. In December of 1922, the virus mutated once more into an even more deadly version. Originally found in the city of Manchester, the variant soon spread throughout Great Britain. On January 13th, the Lord Protector made a personal visit to the London Hospital in Whitechapel, where he witnessed the severity of the virus. Nearly an entire floor of patients had died the previous night. The horror of this visit prompted him to take drastic action. On the 15th, the British Isles were closed. All ports were shut, all passenger zeppelins were rerouted, and both quarantine and martial law were declared. The center of the world’s greatest empire ground to a halt. Limited communications were maintained through the lockdown, as aid was delivered from other nations via airdrops. The initial quarantine period was meant to last for six months. Instead, it lasted for nearly two years. During that time Britain experienced a level of death that had not been seen since the times of the Black Death. Entire villages and towns were cut down by the virus. Outside of the islands, the constituent parts of the Empire looked on in shock and horror.
By late 1924, a vaccine had been developed by a team of doctors in Austria. While it only provided limited protection in trials, this was seen as a major victory, and mass production began. The distribution proved difficult, but through the efforts of the Great Powers and the WHO, the pandemic slowly waned. Britain was able to come out of lockdown in early 1925. By the end of that year, the virus was downgraded to an epidemic, and life resumed. Through those three years, it is generally agreed that the Bengal Flu was responsible for roughly 97 million excess deaths, with the highest concentrations being in India and the British Isles, which alone counted for nearly 50% of all deaths from the virus.
Aftermath
From 1916 to 1925, between 130 and 150 million people lost their lives to a combination of poverty, starvation, unrest, and illness. This accounted for close to 2% or one in 50 of all people living on Earth. The period was marked by political extremism, as rolling waves of crisis pushed people to the edge, challenging their mental fortitude along with their ability to survive. It directly led to the collapse and reconstruction of The Russian Empire, a severe weakening of The British Empire, and the New Revolution in France. In the United States, the election of the Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs was seen as an indication of a new socially conscious age of American politics in reaction to the failures of the previous Laissez Faire oriented government, but in reality, was a false hope, and likely only contributed to a more dramatic division of the American people. The massive loss of life in East Asia, specifically in the Joseon-controlled territories, facilitated the prosecution of the First Joseon-Japanese War in 1928, both through resentment towards the Korean government, as well as through an underprepared military. The fear and devastation caused by this period led to massive immigration to the colonies, and the development of the Cheriers as a new culture in Germinal.
Most significantly, all of these events broke public trust in the safety and stability of their governments, and the world order. The optimism of the early 20th century had been crushed against the rocks of this new reality, and fear took its place. These tensions, which persisted over the following decades, likely contributed more than anything to the start of the Great War, and the continuingly apocalyptic destruction that followed it.
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