Famine in Lebanon during World War I with Tylor Brand
Episode 113 - July 18, 2023
Tylor Brand (Trinity College Dublin) comes on the podcast to talk about his recent book, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War. After the standard opening and welcome, the discussion begins with a survey of the Ottoman Middle East in the early 20th century, which quickly moves to examine the case of Lebanon during World War I. Tylor explains the reasons for the famine, then moves on to distinguish between different war and famine experiences within Lebanon, covering its effects on different groups during the war. Tylor also discusses the sources he used for the project, as well as the contemporaneous diseases that affected the country.
Further Reading
- Highly recommended: 1914-1918Online, a huge collection of material dealing with the war in the Middle East.
- Lindner, Christine B. "From George Tom in Cleveland, Ohio, to His Father Tannous Gergis, Mt. Lebanon, Syria: Remittances as Transnational Relief During World War One.” In Distant Fronts: An International Rediscovery of World War One, edited by Rob McCormick, Araceli Hernández-Laroche and Catherine Canino, (London: Routledge, 2021), 43-65.
- Pitts, Graham Auman. “Was Capitalism the Crisis? Mount Lebanon’s World War I Famine.” Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Spring 2021), no. 3. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.
- Qattan, Najwa al-. “When Mothers Ate Their Children: Wartime Memory and the Language of Food in Syria and Lebanon." International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, no. 4 (2014): 719–36.
- Tanielian, Melanie. “Disease and Public Health (Ottoman Empire/Middle East)” in 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. By Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2014-10-8.
Our Guest
Tylor Brand
Assistant Professor, Near & Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity Collage Dublin.