Product Description

Examining a series of El Nino-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history and to sow the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the third world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36099 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Review
"Davis has given us a book of substantial contemporary relevance as well as great historical interest." -- Amartya Sen, New York Times "A masterly account of climactic, economic and colonial history." - New Scientist "Generations of historians largely ignored the implications [of the great famines of the nineteenth century] and until recently dismissed them as 'climactic accidents'... Late Victorian Holocausts proves them wrong." - LA Times Best Books of 2001 "David, a brilliant, maverick scholar, sets the triumph of late-nineteenth-century Western imperialism in the context of the catastrophic El Nino weather patterns at that time ... This is groundbreaking, mind-stretching stuff." - The Independent "Wide Ranging and compelling ... a remarkable achievement." - Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover
Winner of the World History Association Book Award for 2002

Examining a series of El Nino-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the nineteenth century. Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history and to sow the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World.

Late Victorian Holocausts, focuses on the three zones of draught and subsequent famine: India, Northern China, and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of draught were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by differing ruling elites, policies that in effect were crimes against humanity.

In this his black book of liberal capitalism, Davis exposes the human costs of globalization; arguing that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World were sown in this era of high imperialism, as the price for capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions and millions of peasants' lives.

Late Victorian Holocausts is the first serious examination of El Nino's imprint on modern history. As globalization continues, seemingly unchecked, and we pass silently through the centenary of the 1899-1902 famines in India, Davis presents a shocking indictment of the costs of imperialism and ignorance, arrogance and sloth.

'Davis has given us a book of substantial contemporary relevance as well as great historical interest.' Amartya Sen

'A masterly account of climatic, economic and colonial history.' New Scientist

'Generations of historians largely ignored the implications [of the great famines of the late nineteenth century] and until recently dismissed them as 'climatic accidents' ... Late Victorian Holocausts proves them wrong.' LA Times Best Books of 2001

'Davis, a brilliant maverick scholar, sets the triumph of late-nineteenth-century Western imperialism in the context of the catastrophic El Nino weather patterns at that time ... This is groundbreaking, mind-stretching stuff.' The Independent

'Wide ranging and compelling ... a remarkable achievement.' Times Literary Supplement

About the Author
Mike Davis is the author of City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear and Magical Urbanism. He lives in Papa'aloa, Hawaii

Customer Reviews

History to make you think.
This is first-rate history. Meticulously researched and documented, with numerous illustrations and case studies, and wide-ranging citation sacross the relevant literature, LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS shows conclusively that the wealth of the "First World" is almost exclusively based on lopsided trading and imperialist conditions in the late 19th century, coupled with the devastating effects of El Ninyo famines - and at the same time points up the utter myth of "free trade" put about by the liberal establishment (why, for instance, do all the commodities from tropical countries drop in price in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while all those goods from temperate climates rise?)

Only 4-stars, though, because the criticism of the previous reviewer has some weight. The historical implications of the El Ninyo episodes could also have been considered with relation to the 1879 War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in which the war was triggered by the imposition of a port tax in the north by Bolivia on Chile following the economic slowdown of the early 1870s and the effect of the El ninyo on Peru (floods) and Bolivia (drought). Also, Davis could have expanded the thread of his argument with comparisons with French colonialism in Africa in the 1910s/1920s, when exactly the same movements of cash crops led to famine and desperate hunger (as in India/China in Davis' book).

Still, Davis' book is important, timely and excellent. If you want to understand why "economic migrants" have every right to come to the rich countries of the world, read this book.

Davis's own missing pages
This is a compelling and damning account in particular of the British rule in India, showing how they callously exploited Indian peasants and allowed them to die in huge numbers in famines through doctrinal adherence to 'laissez-faire' non-intervention. He sets up his stall by describing these terrible events as 'holocausts' and the 'missing pages' of British imperial history.

But there seems to be a number of missing pages in his own history. He suggests no major famines occurred under the Mughals or the Marathas. However, famines with high death rates did occur if you read other histories, in 1631, 1661, 1685 and 1702. When the British arrived, there was indeed the terrible Bengal famine of 1770, but this was followed by the two worst recorded famines in Indian history, the Chelisa famine (1783) and the Doji Bari famine, which combined to wipe out an estimated 22 million people - and took place almost entirely in non-British-influenced areas of India. The former gets a mention in passing, the latter is ignored by Davis.

In his account of the 1896/97 famine, he conjures up a death rate of 11 million, based on an uncited remark by the British viceroy Elgin. However, even the brilliant contemporary critic Romanesh Dutt accepted official estimates of one million. One million is bad enough, and clearly there was desperate incompetence in the setting up of relief works in the Central Provinces as Davis shows so effectively. However, why no mention of the successful amelioration of the same famine in the United Provinces, which led to its Irish Lieutenant-Governor Antony MacDonnell being given a baronetcy for saving a million lives? At the heart of Davis's argument is the British doctrinal `rules of iron' killing millions, but surely that should apply everywhere where the apparently lethal British policy of famine relief works was used? And while much, rightly, is made of the British `laissez-faire' refusal to interfere with the grain market or callously export grain from starving areas, he makes no connection between the creation of `relief works' to sustain and employ the destitute, and the same logic of public works by Roosevelt to revitalize America with his New Deal, or indeed any other Keynesian government work creation programme in history. Nor does he investigate the inconvenient provision of gratuitous relief to those registered unable to work - perhaps this was hopelessly inadequate, it certainly must have been in the terrible famine of 1876-78, but why is there no mention of it?

In another study, cited by Davis, Tim Dyson points out how most famine deaths in 1896/97 were actually caused by malaria when the rains finally arrived - Davis fails to mention that when famine struck three years later, those on relief works were sent home with quinine to try and prevent a repetition. Famines weren't merely shoved under the carpet - enquiries were set up, even by the reviled Lord Lytton, painstaking analysis was carried out, and famine codes revised to try and get it right next time. Davis argues that medical advances were ignored, that plague was tackled purely by violent evictions, yet overlooks the ground-breaking work of Haffkine in developing serums for cholera and plague and Robert Ross, the Nobel laureate who discovered the mosquito vector, all done in India in the 1890s. Deaths from one of the other great scourges of the age, small-pox, were halved in the same decade as the Indian medical services innoculated over 70 million Indians, despite much native suspicion. And then Lord Curzon, ridiculed as orchestrating over a `brilliantly organized famine' in 1899/01 - why no mention of his legacy, the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research which was set up in 1905, which would develop some of the first high-yielding tropical crop varieties in the world - this galvanized the Punjab in particular under later British rule. More notably, ICAR after independence would spearhead the `Green Revolution' which finally seems to have solved the problem of famine in India and in much of the wider developing world. None of this is to deny the magnitude of the famines which struck India or to deny that exploitative British policies very possibly exacerbated the problem. But the image of callous incompetence presented by Davis and his equating this to some of the most evil regimes in history, is seriously undermined by his own `blank pages'.

Excellent and ground breaking work
This new work by Mike Davis is an exemplary piece of scholarship and one that forces the reader to consider the world around them afresh. After his earlier ground breaking 'City of Quartz', where Davis challenged how we collectively view urban areas he has equally audaciously attempted to track the dividing point between the first and the third worlds. Few but the persistent readers of the Journal Capital, Nature, Socialism could have predicted that Davis would write such a book. His revisitation of urban themes in 'Ecology of Fear' did not signal this sudden change.

Quite simply Davis explains the divergence of the first and third world's as stemming from the Political Ecology of a series of 'El Nino' events at the end of the nineteenth century. A catastrophic collision of severe droughts with the aggressive imperialism of the Western powers, led to famine of the peoples of the South. Millions of lives were lost as the Western powers took the opportunity to tighten or extend their grip over the resources of countries such as India and China. Davis demonstrates how the previous pre-imperial arrangements warded off the worst of famine, the very arrangements that the new global market had undermined. Time and again, revolts of peasant peoples against the imperial tyranny were broken by the combined might of superior military technology and hunger. Davis does not just recount the statistics, these accounts are of a passion and moral force rarely found in academic writing. Instead of the faceless millions so typical of planetary histories Davis provides a feel for the millions of individual tragedies represent by such calamities.

Shifting from environmental history, to agricultural history and back again Davis is never dull, navigating complex terrain with aplomb. The height of his erudition is the account of the development of the science of El Nino events. Deftly he moves through the complex physics, the shifting paradigms and scientific projects that have formed the account of weather systems that are in use today. Only after this tour de force does he return to the topics in hand to illustrate how it was not the lack of rain but a militarised enforcement of the free market that divided humanity so starkly.

Davis is not only writing a compelling history, it is hard not to see an analogy behind such an example. The conjoining of rampant market forces with severe climate events robbed millions of their lives and their descendants of the chance of a better life. Davis is not issuing guarantees such events could not be repeated. This is a passionate, urgent book that hums with verve and indignation. It is what scholarly books should be informed, educated but profoundly accessible. Do not wait for the paperback.