Abstract
The natural and war related calamities that caused the famines that forced peasants in North Vietnam to abandon their native villages from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries are analyzed through an examination of some Vietnamese chronicles and geographies.
1) During Lê dynasty there were many droughts from spring to early summer that led to large-scale famine. This illustrates that fifth-month rice production was important in North Vietnamese agriculture, especially in the highland areas beyond the Red River Delta.
2) One of the major causes of instability in rice production during Lê dynasty was the difficulty of maintaining stable yields in fifth-month rice cultivation which depended entirely on rain from the unpredictable Northeast Monsoon. Furthermore, the fifth-month rice cultivated in the highland areas was frequently damaged by locusts, especially in the fifteenth century.
3) Tenth-month rice cultivated in the delta area suffered damage from inundation by the Red River. In the early years of Lê dynasty, the flooding effected mainly the Hà Nội district and later, with the agricultural development of the lower delta, the Hu'ng-Yên district too was subject to flooding. However, except in the Thanh-Hoá delta, only a few of these floods led to famine.
4) The littoral zones of the Red River Delta were frequently damaged by high tides, mostly caused by typhoons. However, although such damage had increased with reclamation, it rarely caused large-scale famine.
5) Civil war produced famine in certain strategic areas such as Hải-Du'o'ng, Nghẹ-An and Thanh-Hoá.
It appears that famines occurred mostly in the highland areas, the upper part of the middle delta provinces, and the Thanh-Hoá and Nghẹ-An provinces during Lê dynasty.
However, a geography written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, shows that most of the ghost villages have thôn or phu'ò'ng as part of their name, indicating that they were probably established in the later part of Lê dynasty. From this it appears necessary to research into the socio-economic factor linking natural or war related in calamities to the peasants, abandonment of their native villages. This will be considered in part (2).
