Famines of War: The Red Sea Grain Market and Famine in Eastern Sudan, 1889–1891

Abstract

During the first few months of 1890, thousands of destitute, starving Bija-speaking semi-pastoralists from Eastern Sudan made their way to Sawakin in search of food. Though the region was plagued by both drought and locust swarms during the 1889–1890 cultivation year, ecological hazards are insufficient to explain the famine that precipitated this refugee migration. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Eastern Sudanese semi-pastoralists produced less than half of the grain that they consumed. These communities depended on trading pastoral products for grain imported from India via Red Sea ports. The 1889–1890 famine was not caused by a reduction in grain imports; during this time Eastern Sudanese grain markets were kept well stocked and the price of durra (Sorghum bicolor) remained stable. Rather, at the end of 1889, semi-pastoral communities suddenly lacked the capital to purchase and the goods to trade for their sustenance, suggesting that a rinderpest epizootic depleted...