CatastropheThe 1900s

Catastrophe in the 1900s

Every event in the Terralore archive tagged catastrophe — plague, famine, earthquake and other disasters, narrowed to the 1900s — 4 of them, drawn from 4 nations, running from 1900 to 1906. Each entry keeps the sources it was verified against and links back to the chronicle it came from.

Events
4
Nations
4
Earliest
1900
Latest
1906
Africa
3
Europe
1

Every entry below is the same record, with the same sources, as the one on its nation’s chronicle.

  1. Africa

    Cape Verde

    Famines kill at least 100,000

    Recurrent droughts produced a series of catastrophic famines; during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at least 100,000 people died of starvation and disease, amid an inadequate colonial response.

    Era: Creole culture, the coaling port, and the years of hunger

    Sources: Famine in Cape Verde · Wikipedia, History of Cape Verde · Wikipedia

  2. Europe

    Moldova

    Kishinev pogrom

    A violent anti-Jewish pogrom in the provincial capital Kishinev (Chisinau) drew international condemnation and became a notorious symbol of the persecution of Jews in the late Russian Empire.

    Era: Russian Bessarabia

    Sources: Bessarabia · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Moldova: History · Encyclopaedia Britannica

  3. Africa

    Namibia

    Shark Island and the concentration camps

    Herero and Nama survivors were imprisoned in concentration camps, most notoriously on Shark Island at Lüderitz, where up to 80 percent of prisoners died; by 1908 tens of thousands of Herero and Nama had perished in what is widely called the first genocide of the twentieth century.

    Era: German South West Africa and the genocide of the Herero and Nama

    Sources: Herero and Nama genocide · Wikipedia, Shark Island concentration camp · Wikipedia, Herero Genocide in Namibia · Montreal Holocaust Museum, Herero and Nama genocide · Encyclopaedia Britannica

  4. Africa

    Tanzania

    Scorched earth and the Great Hunger

    German forces suppress the rebellion by destroying crops and villages; the ensuing famine kills tens to hundreds of thousands of people, a catastrophe scholars term genocidal.

    Era: German East Africa and the British Mandate

    Sources: Maji Maji Rebellion · Wikipedia, Maji Maji Uprising (1905–1907) · BlackPast.org