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Belgium: The Potato Famine in Flanders
Description
Why did the potato blight begin in Belgium before it reached Ireland — and why has the Flemish famine of 1845, which killed tens of thousands and stunted a generation, been almost entirely forgotten while the Irish catastrophe became the defining tragedy of a nation? What destroyed the linen industry of Flanders before the blight even arrived, and how did that earlier catastrophe turn a regional food crisis into something far worse? And what does DNA sequencing of museum specimens from 1845 reveal about where the most consequential agricultural disaster in European history actually began?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Belgium and the last great peacetime famine in Western Europe — the linen crisis, the Arm Vlaanderen, and the tragedy that Belgium forgot...
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