Late Victorian Holocausts : El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

Winner of the World History Association Book Award Blending global environmental history with political history, this bestselling book explores “late-nineteenth-century Western imperialism in the context of catastrophic El Niño weather patterns at that time” ( Independent ) Examining a series of El Niño-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. "Bestselling, magisterial melding of global environmental history and global political history. Examining a series of El Niño-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"-- Provided by publisher Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements Preface A Note on Definitions Part I: The Great Drought, 1876-1878 1. Victoria’s Ghosts 2. ‘The Poor Eat Their Homes’ 3. Gunboats and Messiahs Part II: El Niño and the New Imperialism, 1888-1902 4. The Government of Hell 5. Skeletons at the Feast 6. Millenarian Revolutions Part III: Deciphering ENSO 7. The Mystery of the Monsoons 8. Climates of Hunger Part IV: The Political Ecology of Famine 9. The Origins of the Third World 10. India: The Modernization of Poverty 11. China: Mandates Revoked 12. Brazil: Race and Capital in the Nordeste Glossary Notes Index "Here's the northeast monsoon at last," said Hon. Robert Ellis, C.B., junior member of the Governor's Council, Madras, as a heavy shower of rain fell at Coonoor, on a day towards the end of October 1876, when the members of the Madras Government were returning from their summer sojourn on the hills. Examining a series of droughts and the famines that they spawned in the last third of the 19th century, this text analyses this human tragedy. It covers its global history and lasting impacts on world economic development