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.

If the history of British rule in India were to be condensed into a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in India's per capita income from 1757 to 1947.

This is a harrowing tome, one dense with statistics and cutting with testimonial. The first section details the effects of drought and famine on India, China and Brazil in the late 19C. Their are accounts from notables of the time. The second section examines the science of El Nino. The final section surveys the global economies of the period, citing all the requisite authorities, the conclusion is despairing. Economic and technological advances clearly set the table for despair and calamity. Racism and corruption maximized the effect. ( )

A bold interpretation of the interaction of nature and history that ties the impact of El Nino and climate conditions to the globalization of the economy in the late 19th century and how these factors helped create what we now call 'The Third World'. Don't miss this one.

Some books I've read have great messages and would be absolutely wonderful if they were distilled down to about half the number of pages that they actually are. This is one of those books. Not only does the author repeat himself endlessly, his language is nearly inaccessible and I found myself reading this like a textbook... getting through a paragraph and then realizing I was daydreaming, and then re-reading the paragraph, over and over again. Not exactly a fun read. I entirely skipped the third section on El Niño because it wasn't only not interesting but also didn't add anything useful to the book.

That said, this book had some really interesting messages in it and I wish it were more accessible. Davis really nails the issues of colonialism and famine, and outlines the droughts, floods and massive amount of needless death that occurred in the late 1800s. If there's any doubt that imperialism was terrible and directly lead to what we know now as the "third world," this book will probably help you discard those notions. It's sickening to think of how many lives could have been saved, how our environment could have been taken care of better, and how many lives today could be lived better off if European countries didn't take over and systematically rob countries of their land, labor and resources. ( )

A bold interpretation of the interaction of nature and history that ties the impact of El Nino and climate conditions to the globalization of the economy in the late 19th century and how these factors helped create what we now call "The Third World". Don't miss this one. ( )