Late Victorian Holocausts

Overview

Examining a series of El Nio-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.

Details

Publisher

Verso Books

Published

2002-06-17

Pages

480

Language

EN

Categories

History / Modern / 19th Century, Nature / Natural Disasters, Political Science / Imperialism, Social Science / Disasters & Disaster Relief, Nature / Ecology, Political Science / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism

ISBN-13

9781781683606