Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the third world

By - Davis, Mike

Floor - Floor 1

ISBN 10 - 1859843824

ISBN 13 - 9781859843826

Book Status - 1 Qnty Available with us.

Subject - Famines--India--History--19th century.

Shelf No - 19

Call Number - 363.8091 DAV

Physical Description - x, 464 p. : ill., maps ; 21 cm.

Notes - Includes bibliographical references and index.

Book Information

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.

Open Book