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Essay on Famine in Tibet

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Famine in Tibet

I. CONTEXT
Tibet knew its first famine during 1960-62, as a result of the Chinese invasion of 1950. The food shortage occurred because Chinese colonizers settled massively, increasing the population, and because of the changes imposed on Tibetan traditional agriculture by Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.”

Death Roll
Accurate estimations and data about Tibetan victims of the Chinese genocide are hard to find, given that China provides biased information. However, associations like “Friends of Tibet” estimate that out of the 1.2 million deaths, 343,151 were caused by famine. Unfortunately, no further information is available on the gender, age or/and class of the victims.

II. ECOLOGICAL CHANGES
Tibet was …show more content…

The land belonged to the state (30%), to monasteries (40%), and to nobility. It was then divided between big landowners and smaller ones whom had a strip of their own, but were obliged to provide the nobility with service. Thus, the traditional society was composed of a small group of noble families and a large and poor peasantry. Among these peasants were both nomadic herders and those who practiced a form of subsistence farming. Tenants held their lands on the estates of aristocrats and monasteries, and paid rent to the estate-holders, in kind or by sending a member of the family to work as a domestic servant or an agricultural laborer. In addition, a tenth of the harvest went to the government as a tax and the rest of the crops (except what was needed for individual subsistence) was then stored in silos made out of stones. These were used as reserves for the years of food shortage, since the dry and fresh climate allows a quasi eternal conservation. The serfs lived in family unit and worked the feudal lord’s land as such. They paid rent and taxes in the form of labor, as opposed to money. The main crop was barley, which requires only three months to produce given that the climate allows no more than one crop a year. Therefore the peasants were not (as said by the Chinese) overworked or exploited. The herders on the other hand, were not tight to a land since they were nomadic people. Traditionally they

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