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Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
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From Publishers Weekly
While this book will not have the impact of Davis's City of Quartz--a scathing indictment of L.A.'s environmental ravagement, economic disparity and racial divides--in a perfect world, it would. Its subject is nothing less than the creation of what we now call "The Third World," through a complex series of seemingly disparate natural and market-related events beginning in the 1870s. Davis dives into the data and journalism of the period with a vengeance, showing that the seemingly unprecedented droughts across northern Africa, India and China in the 1870s and 1890s are consistent with what we now know to be El Ni¤o's effects, and that it was political and market forces (which are never impersonal, Davis insists), and not a lack of potential stores and transportation, that kept grain from the more than 50 million people who starved to death. Chapters brilliantly reconstruct the political, economic, ecological and racial climate of the time, as well as the horrific deaths by hunger and thirst that besieged the peasantries of the afflicted c0untries. As in City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear and Magical Urbanism, Davis's synthetic powers, rendering mountains of data into an accessible and cogent form, are matched by his acid castigations of the murders and moral failings that have attended the advance of capitalism, and by cogent detours into the work of journalists and theorists who have come before him, decrying injustice and rallying the opposition. (Feb.)Forecast: Although this book's historical subject seems vastly removed from contemporary American life, it may get some media attention for its El Ni¤o-based arguments. City of Quartz still guarantees review attention for any Davis project, which may draw history buffs who haven't heard of him. His substantial core readership will seek out the book either way, and the book's synthesis of hardcore data will also hold appeal for poli-sci syllabi and university libraries.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
edition.
Review
“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 )
“A hero of the Left, Davis is part polemicist, part historian, and all Marxist.” (Dale Peck - Village Voice )
“Davis, a brilliant maverick scholar, sets the triumph of the 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 )
“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 )
“Devastating.” (The San Francisco Chronicle )
“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 )
“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 )
03/01/2007
This book recounts in detailed, well documented ways how famines occured in various regions of the world because of El Nino and La Nina weather patterns. This part of the author's message is not difficult to believe, though the science and climatology is complex. The alarming assertion, also extrodinarily well documented, is that British (and other European nations") colonial rule in these areas disrupted the ways in which these cultures traditionally handled famine conditions by focusing the local economies on profit making enterprises benefitting the British, and responded with incredible callousness to the utter misery that resulted. Those who generally think of the British as a civilized, Christian people will be shaken by their deliberate actions which caused millions of deaths. My criticism of the book is the absence of a summary chapter, and the lack of editing for readability. This book is difficult to read, and should be widely read.
19/01/2001
People who enjoy books that are easy to read, as well as entertaining, will not enjoy this one. But everyone who can read English needs to read this book.
In a single stroke, it explodes all our myths about the origins and causes of the extreme poverty still found in what we know loosely as the Third World. Its thesis, as I get it, is that these areas were not always impoverished and, when impacted historical claims, they seem to reflect the state of current research, as the author is able to use several secondary sources for many of his assertions.
Those who might jump to any hasty conclusions about Davis' political biases should refer to Davis' excoriation of the communist regime in China during Mao's Great Leap Forward, which puts it in at least as bad a light as some of the astonishingly bad planning of the British colonial governments. The importance of a free press (p. 251) is here highlighted.
What this book desperately needs is an overall conclusion at the end that incorporates its major themes into a geared-down, layman -friendly statement of general inference. Even some normative comments about what should be done in the future with reference to the areas under consideration would be welcome, although I appreciate the difficulty of such a task. If he wrote some sequel to this book, I would certainly be interested in what he had to say.
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 Knight's Microsoft Business Intelligence 24-Hour Trainer Brian Knight, Mike Davis, Adam Jorgensen, Devin Knight, Patrick Leblanc |
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