A compelling take on the role of environmental and political factors during the late nineteenth century. I was stunned to find that Qing China and the Mughal Empire had a large welfare state that ensured famines before the Victorian era did not result in a high death toll at all. In fact average quality of life and life expectancy in those regions even in the late eighteenth century was much larger than that of Europe. Thus a utopian socialist state predated Marx. And despite the introduction of railways and the condensed industrialization of India, from 1757 to 1947 there was no increase in India's per capita income and life expectancy actually decreased. A key flaw of the book is the effect of socioeconomic status on disaster outcomes. Did the rich flee the country/region or stay put while the rest of the city devolved into chaos and hunger? This disparity in disaster response in relation to wealth and social class is relevant today. While sudden natural disasters do not elicit as large a display of socioeconomic inequality, political turmoil does. For example in Syria and Venezuela, wealthy individuals fled the country before the respective domestic situations could unfurl. Unable to afford train/plane tickets and without foreign assets, the rest of the populace could only remain within their country. Though these exemplify more anthropogenic disasters, the economic distinctions in disaster response still remains. In a study of a century of natural disasters in the United States, economist Leah Platt Boustan of Princeton University concludes that “the rich may have the resources to move away from areas facing natural disasters, leaving behind a population that is disproportionately poor.” In summary, this book was a refreshing and insightful take on colonial history and compels us to reconsider our judgements of pre-colonial political systems.

Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the changes in global capitalism in the late 19th century that led to the new imperialist era. Don't just read Lenin and Luxemburg, read this too. You'll want to take breaks though, it's a pretty brutal read.

explains how the Victorian Empire created the Third World, using mass starvation as a tool

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 massively informed but quite boring book about an aspect of colonial history that has received little attention. The author documents how changing weather patterns combined with human incompetence, racism and indifference lead to the deaths of millions of people. The book drags quite a lot in those sections where the author goes into the technical details of how El Nino works and how it created famine conditions. The story of the famines and the suffering they engendered are horrifying and heartbreaking and the book is a grim account of the destruction wrought by imperial folly and triumph of profits over people.

An absolute must read in regards to the shaping of the modern world. After reading this and most notably Tropic of Chaos, I now believe history, and a Marxian perspective of it cannot be understood without the understanding of climate. Comprehending climate and weather as things that bring the tensions of class struggle to the fore- mostly on the side of the oppressive class, whether it be landlords or bourgeois, is absolutely essential.

What a volume!! Lots of data and lots of research, all of which comes together to paint a very persuasive and significant picture. This is the first Mike Davis book I’ve read and I’m certainly coming back for more.

"Late Victorian Holocausts" introduces an underexplored part of history: the famines of the late 19th century caused by El Niño. The book argues that even with cyclical drought common in tropical regions, famines were less lethal due to communal and structural safeguards. But because of the exploitative nature of the imperialist powers (UK, Japan, USA, etc.), many of the states now part of the third world were further impoverished by decades of policies prioritizing profit over the lives of hundreds of millions.

"As in Ireland thirty years before, those with the power to relieve famine convinced themselves that overly heroic exertions against implacable natural laws, whether of market prices or population growth, were worse than no effort at all."

The book covers a dark history of empires that justified their colonial exploitation as a civilizing force. A combination of Social Darwinism, entrenched racism and Malthusian philosophy led to tens of millions of unnecessary deaths.

Sometimes repetitive and editorialized, but offers a comprehensive study of the political ecology of famines.

An indictment of liberal colonialism as practiced by Britain and other European powers during the 19th century. When the right argues that all communism did was produce famine and oppression, the left should turn to this book to demonstrate that capitalism, too, can produce famine and misery rivaling anything Stalin or Mao did.

it was informative of the british rule in india and china, and how trading between india and britain was not fair trade at all

This book was well research and written, but the ending was bad.

Manages to somehow tie together a scientific history and meteorological explanation of El Nino with a heart-wrenching description of the El Nino famines of the 1870s and 1890s in India, China, and elsewhere which cost the lives of tens of millions.

Davis argues that these deaths were not historical inevitabilities, victims of nature alone: the societal mechanisms which safeguarded these regions from famine in the past had been eroded by the march of capitalism and imperialism. Staple crops were replaced by cash crops destined for export, local irrigation initiatives were curtailed by colonial overseers, and price controls were superseded by the cold dictates of the market. The indirection of the invisible hand makes it easy for those responsible
to deny culpability for these deaths.