Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World [Paperback]

 

 

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Marx wrote about capital's destruction of the old social organizations of the societies it enters into, either originally or by force, that "the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire". Mike Davis demonstrates that this is, indeed, the case, and not just for Western Europe either. Focusing on the case examples of Brazil, India and China, Davis shows irrefutably how weather fluctuations, known as El Ninő phenomena, combined with free traderism, colonialism and capitalist organization to create a series of harvest failures, famines, epidemics and regressions compared to which the Biblical plagues are child's play.

The first part of the book describes the various mass famines that occurred in northeastern Brazil, central and northern India, and central and northern China in the period of the apogee of colonialism, namely roughly 1870-1910. This matter is certainly not for the light of heart: the scale of the famines is such that they far exceed anything ever experienced under Mao or Stalin combined, and the indifference and repression of the the British and other colonialist elites in the face of so much suffering is staggering, evoking parallels with nazism. Of course Mike Davis' usual ill-chosen title attempts to make precisely this comparison, which rather weakens instead of reinforcing the effect of his book, but the facts speak for themselves regardless. Nothing can describe the effect it must have had on the Indian population to be forced to pay for British wars in Afghanistan and South Africa as well as a tremendously grand Jubilee for Queen Victoria, while in the meantime tens of millions of peasants were dying, in some district leading to reductions in population of almost two-thirds. Such is the effect of Whiggish history still that these facts are almost not known at all, and are never taught in high school history books. But everywhere capitalism goes, it leaves behind such corpses.

The second part of the book is a rather technical discussion of weather patterns, especially the oscillation known as ENSO, leading to the El Niño phenomena. Davis also delves into the scientific discussions of these phenomena both during the period of capitalist famines and in contemporary meteorology. This part of the book is furnished with strong statistical data, which will primarily be of interest to people engaged in studying weather patterns, as well as agriculturists because of the importance of these patterns for monsoons etc.

The third and final part of the book picks up where the first one left off, and goes into more detail about the social organizations of Brazil, India and China both before the colonialist period and during it. Davis produces interesting evidence to the account that not only was the average standard of living for the majority of the people quite higher in India and China than in Europe during the 18th Century, their degree of productivity in terms of manufacturing was higher as well. This to directly contradict the many Whiggish histories, like Landes and others, who posit the societies of India and China as stagnant and unproductive from the start. Instead, Mike Davis hypothesizes that the real reason for the sudden collapse in effectivity and productivity of India and China is the military involvement of (mainly) the British in these regions. Subjugating India entirely to a system of hyper-exploitation for the sole benefit of paying for the huge British military and for the interests of the factory manufacturers and traders in Manchester and London (whose direct influence over Indian Raj policy is shockingly large); and in China forcing the government into such large-scale wars and interventions against the British as to make the Qing dynasty go entirely bankrupt and unable to pay for the vast infrastructure and reserve funds, as well as destroying the most effective administation the world had ever seen, the Imperial magistrature system, from the inside via opium trade corruption. Davis makes plausible, if not quite proven, therefore that the downfall of India and China as powers in the 19th Century was exogenous rather than endogenous to these societies.

But what is most important about this book is the enormity of what it describes: the incredibly large-scale death of the subjugated and exploited peoples of what would later form the 'Third' or developing world. By even modest estimates the various preventable famines in China during 1850-1900 alone must have killed some 30-60 million people, and in India probably again anywhere between 30 and 85 million. Then if we add to that the deaths in Brazil (not exploited by foreign powers this time, but by their own capitalist plutocracy), of various African nations, as well as the costs of rebellion and civil war caused by the social disintegration resulting from invasion and colonialism, we get quite a pretty picture: indeed the 20th Century can hardly be considered bloodier than the 19th was. And this is called, by historians, the "Belle Époque"! One wonders if those who write so-called "Black Books of Communism" etc. are even aware of the lethality of capital.

This is first-rate history. Meticulously researched and documented, with numerous illustrations and case studies, and wide-ranging citation sacross the relevant literature, LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS shows conclusively that the wealth of the "First World" is almost exclusively based on lopsided trading and imperialist conditions in the late 19th century, coupled with the devastating effects of El Ninyo famines - and at the same time points up the utter myth of "free trade" put about by the liberal establishment (why, for instance, do all the commodities from tropical countries drop in price in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while all those goods from temperate climates rise?)

Only 4-stars, though, because the criticism of the previous reviewer has some weight. The historical implications of the El Ninyo episodes could also have been considered with relation to the 1879 War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in which the war was triggered by the imposition of a port tax in the north by Bolivia on Chile following the economic slowdown of the early 1870s and the effect of the El ninyo on Peru (floods) and Bolivia (drought). Also, Davis could have expanded the thread of his argument with comparisons with French colonialism in Africa in the 1910s/1920s, when exactly the same movements of cash crops led to famine and desperate hunger (as in India/China in Davis' book).

Still, Davis' book is important, timely and excellent. If you want to understand why "economic migrants" have every right to come to the rich countries of the world, read this book.

This is a compelling and damning account in particular of the British rule in India, showing how they callously exploited Indian peasants and allowed them to die in huge numbers in famines through doctrinal adherence to 'laissez-faire' non-intervention. He sets up his stall by describing these terrible events as 'holocausts' and the 'missing pages' of British imperial history.

But there seems to be a number of missing pages in his own history. He suggests no major famines occurred under the Mughals or the Marathas. However, famines with high death rates did occur if you read other histories, in 1631, 1661, 1685 and 1702. When the British arrived, there was indeed the terrible Bengal famine of 1770, but this was followed by the two worst recorded famines in Indian history, the Chelisa famine (1783) and the Doji Bari famine, which combined to wipe out an estimated 22 million people - and took place almost entirely in non-British-influenced areas of India. The former gets a mention in passing, the latter is ignored by Davis.

In his account of the 1896/97 famine, he conjures up a death rate of 11 million, based on an uncited remark by the British viceroy Elgin. However, even the brilliant contemporary critic Romanesh Dutt accepted official estimates of one million. One million is bad enough, and clearly there was desperate incompetence in the setting up of relief works in the Central Provinces as Davis shows so effectively. However, why no mention of the successful amelioration of the same famine in the United Provinces, which led to its Irish Lieutenant-Governor Antony MacDonnell being given a baronetcy for saving a million lives? At the heart of Davis's argument is the British doctrinal `rules of iron' killing millions, but surely that should apply everywhere where the apparently lethal British policy of famine relief works was used? And while much, rightly, is made of the British `laissez-faire' refusal to interfere with the grain market or callously export grain from starving areas, he makes no connection between the creation of `relief works' to sustain and employ the destitute, and the same logic of public works by Roosevelt to revitalize America with his New Deal, or indeed any other Keynesian government work creation programme in history. Nor does he investigate the inconvenient provision of gratuitous relief to those registered unable to work - perhaps this was hopelessly inadequate, it certainly must have been in the terrible famine of 1876-78, but why is there no mention of it?

In another study, cited by Davis, Tim Dyson points out how most famine deaths in 1896/97 were actually caused by malaria when the rains finally arrived - Davis fails to mention that when famine struck three years later, those on relief works were sent home with quinine to try and prevent a repetition. Famines weren't merely shoved under the carpet - enquiries were set up, even by the reviled Lord Lytton, painstaking analysis was carried out, and famine codes revised to try and get it right next time. Davis argues that medical advances were ignored, that plague was tackled purely by violent evictions, yet overlooks the ground-breaking work of Haffkine in developing serums for cholera and plague and Robert Ross, the Nobel laureate who discovered the mosquito vector, all done in India in the 1890s. Deaths from one of the other great scourges of the age, small-pox, were halved in the same decade as the Indian medical services innoculated over 70 million Indians, despite much native suspicion. And then Lord Curzon, ridiculed as orchestrating over a `brilliantly organized famine' in 1899/01 - why no mention of his legacy, the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research which was set up in 1905, which would develop some of the first high-yielding tropical crop varieties in the world - this galvanized the Punjab in particular under later British rule. More notably, ICAR after independence would spearhead the `Green Revolution' which finally seems to have solved the problem of famine in India and in much of the wider developing world. None of this is to deny the magnitude of the famines which struck India or to deny that exploitative British policies very possibly exacerbated the problem. But the image of callous incompetence presented by Davis and his equating this to some of the most evil regimes in history, is seriously undermined by his own `blank pages'.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Untold Imperial British History
Read this book to educate yourself,how famines were caused by a combination of adverse weather conditions and imperial policies,leading to the death of millions. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mr. S. Yousaf

5.0 out of 5 stars One long chilling revelation
I would regard this book as a must read for understanding the world we were born into. As an Englishman I also find it leaves a chilling problem; what effect can this rampant... Read more

Published on 21 Jun 2007 by mr cotton tattoo

5.0 out of 5 stars El Nino book
I thought it was a fantastic work. It is great to see somebody attacking colonialism, for oppressing, people rather, than the usual ignoring of colonial crimes. Read more

Published on 18 Feb 2005

3.0 out of 5 stars A relentlessly one-dimensional polemic
I've read and enjoyed Mike Davis' work before, but with this I'd lost sympathy way before the end. This is not to deny his main thesis, which is hardly new or even particularly... Read more

Published on 14 Aug 2001 by Mick H

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb narrative of revolutions
In this extraordinary book, Davis studies the effects of the 1876-79, 1889-91 and 1896-1902 famines on the southern hemisphere, particularly India, China and Brazil. Read more

Published on 11 Jun 2001 by William Podmore

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and ground breaking work
This new work by Mike Davis is an exemplary piece of scholarship and one that forces the reader to consider the world around them afresh. Read more

Published on 4 Feb 2001 by Recall

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