E168 | Although seldom presented as such, famine, hunger, and disease were major forces influencing and shaping life in the countryside of the Ottoman Empire from its beginning until its final years. In this episode, we discuss the global conversation surrounding famine, colonialism, and the world economy during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Özge Ertem weighs in with a discussion of her research on Anatolian famines of the 1870s, which claimed more than a quarter-million lives, and Graham Pitts talks about famine in Mount Lebanon during the First World War, which killed roughly a third of the population in that region.

Özge Ertem received her Ph.D. in 2012 from the Department of History and Civilization at European University Institute in Florence. She is currently Head Librarian at Koç University RCAC in Istanbul.

Graham Pitts is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the environmental history of Lebanon.

Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East.

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/08/famine-ottoman-empire-lebanon-anatolia.html