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Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World Paperback – Illustrated, 17 January 2017

by Mike Davis (Author)

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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. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought 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 drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. Davis argues 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 of peasants' lives.

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Product details

Language : English
Paperback : 480 pages
ISBN-10 : 1784786624
ISBN-13 : 978-1784786625

Best Sellers Rank: 44,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 88 in Environmental Economics
- 103 in Agricultural Science
- 128 in Political Ideologies & Doctrines

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82 ratings

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"Wide ranging and compelling...a remarkable achievement." - Times Literary Supplement "Devastating." - The San Francisco Chronicle "A masterly account of climatic, economic and colonial history." - New Scientist "A hero of the Left, Davis is part polemicist, part historian, and all Marxist." - Dale Peck, Village Voice "Davis has given us a book of substantial contemporary relevance as well as great historical interest ... this highly informative book foes well beyond its immediate focus." - Amartya Sen, The New York Times "Davis's range is stunning... He combines political economy, meteorology, and ecology with vivid narratives to create a book that is both a gripping read and a major conceptual achievement. Lots of us talk about writing 'world history' and 'inter-disciplinary history': here is the genuine article." - Kenneth Pomeranz, author of The Great Divergence "The global climate meets a globalizing political economy, the fundamentals of one clashing with the fundamentalisms of the other. Mike Davis tells the story with zest, anger, and insight." - Stephen J. Pyne, author of World Fire

About the Author

Mike Davis is the author of many books including Planet of Slums, City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, and Magical Urbanism. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

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A J (mom,wife,Yoga aspirer etc)

Important book that captures effects of Imperial policies in creating famines in colonial states.

27 January 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

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Why is third world so under developed? Can we ever come out of the grips of our colonial past?
Is it enough that the colonizers left and sort of apologized?
What about those we lost? The generations of children that were not born and worse those that were killed?

I am impressed with authors such as Mike Davis and Roy Moxham who shed some important light on effects of colonialism.
Note that I am not at all a supporter of liberal policies (based on unending vicimization) but at the same time , being from a third world country, I think the effects of colonialism can 't be overstated.

Hope we have more such works.
I also recommend Churchill's Secret Wars by Madhusree Mukerjee
https://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Secret-War-British-Ravaging/dp/0465024815

14 people found this helpful

bossaboy

A stunning work!

11 June 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

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Ok, I'm only 120 pages in but I have to write at least a brief review. I've spent decades in some pretty serious self-education regarding Colonial and Neocolonial history and the attendant mayhem. This work has helped me realize that I've only so far scratched the surface of this in many respects little know "history" that has shaped, and is shaping, our world today. This is a book everyone should read in part to disabuse themselves of the notion that Adrendt's concept of the "banality of evil" somehow primarily applies to Nazi Germany when if fact it is the historical norm of 500+ years of Western colonization and barbarity.

4 people found this helpful

B. O. Reilly

This book is excellent. During the nineteenth centuries the great powers ruled ...

10 March 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

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This book is excellent. During the nineteenth centuries the great powers ruled colonies so as to serve their interests. The economies of the colonies were reorganised without regard to the interests of the peoples of those colonies. The interests of the 'mother countries' were not just the main consideration, they were the only consideration. This had profoundly harm consequences for the peoples of what was later to be known as the Third World. In particular, food was being exported to the mother countries instead of being grown to feed the peoples of the colonies. When El nino triggered crop failures colonial governments simply ignored its consequenced for people the colonies. The colonies were still expected to function normally. The resulting famines had effects which continue to the present day. This books explains all this with great clarity.

9 people found this helpful

LAVC2

Not neutral

3 May 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

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I really wanted to enjoy this book, but I also wanted a neutral, at least an attempt at objective, perspective. At least the author is open and honest about his agenda.

4 people found this helpful

mianfei

Really interesting and surprising

20 April 2008 - Published on Amazon.com

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As a resident of Australia and self-taught climate scientist, I am all too well aware of El Nino and La Nina - though its influence pales in comparison with the manner by which enhanced greenhouse gases have destroyed southern Australia's winter rainfall since 1997. (The fact that agriculture never developed in Australia before the Industrial Revolution, however, reflects more on its extraordinarily ancient and low-phosphorus soils than El Nino influence).

In "Late Victorian Holocausts", Mike Davis does an exceptionally original study of the impact during the nineteenth century of El Nino and La Nina upon more fertile regions of the world, including India, China, Brazil and East Africa. His focus is on three major waves of "drought famine" (i.e. drought followed directly by famine) that occurred between 1876 and 1902 in many regions of the world. Davis' description and picture of the famines are incredibly graphic, even gruesomely horrific: we frequently see pictures of people starved to the extent that their skeletons are easily visible. His descriptions of forest fires in Asia and Amazonia during earlier El Ninos are similarly explicit and it is a pity that no pictures from 1877/1878 or 1925/1926 were available to him.

Davis does a very impressive job of explaining how El Nino and La Nina work and why they cause major changes in rainfall across the globe through shifting the location of what he calls, quite figuratively, "planetary heat engines". His diagrams and descriptions of the magnitude of rainfall changes in some of the areas worst affected by famines during the late nineteenth century are done exceptionally well. Davis explains that droughts in North China, northwestern and central India and the Brazilian sertao are related to El Nino preventing the intertropical convergence zone moving as far poleward as it normally does. He also explains the origin of ENSO theory in the early meteorological work of Gilbert Walker, whose name I am extremely familiar with from studying Australia's climate.

What is surprising even to someone familiar with Trotskyist theory is how Davis suggests that these famines, which allowed Europe to gain in population compared to China and India for a long period centred around the Victorian age, and that in fact before European colonisation periodic droughts never led to the level of mortality experienced during the late nineteenth-century famines in which in many places death rates rose to several hundred per thousand per year. He shows that the Qing dynasty had an elaborate system of what we in Australia call "drought subsidies" to protect North China against a very erratic climate, and that the increasing power of the West destroyed the effectiveness of this system and led to catastrophes during powerful El Nino (e.g. 1877) and La Nina (e.g. 1898) phases. In the process, he explains some relatively little-known facts about the social structure of Qing China.

Linking these together in Davis' hypothesis that ENSO-related disasters were an important and overlooked factor in the hegemony of the West that evolved during the late nineteenth century. A large number of interesting movements that aimed to maintain local power in Africa, Asia and the Pacific collapsed under the sheer weight of pressure and by the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of these remind me of religious movements I have read via such authors as Susan Starr Sered and Bill Kauffmann and would certainly be worthy of more detailed study than Davis can give them. However, his ability to show that living standards in the West were actually lower than those in Asia until well into the eighteenth century is most surprising, though as a student of cultural studies I am extremely loathe to measure a society's health by its wealth and living standards and believe other more psychological factors are crucial. Davis shows skilfully that the areas most affected by the late nineteenth century famines were actually once quite rich and that the influence of rich British businessmen was what impoverished these regions through forced devaluation of their commodities.

Some have said "Late Victorian Holocausts" is too influenced by Marxist doctrine and that Davis whitewashes the famines of the Great Leap Forward under Mao Zedong. It is true that he could have done a better job than he has about these famines, but though drought famines they were unrelated any ENSO influence as weather in the Pacific Dry Zone conclusively demonstrates. Davis also might have looked at Mao's regime from a Marxist perspective like Tony Cliff did, but the book's length makes this a minor quibble.

All in all, "Late Victorian Holocausts" is a most original and unique synthesis of history and climate that far surpasses anything by more famous authors like Tim Flannery. Its illustration of how climate combined with other social factors to produce catastrophes both social and economic is most refreshing and the excellent sourcing gives plenty of opportunity for further research.

19 people found this helpful

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