Reddit reviews Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

Colonialism and Imperialism are the offsprings of capitalism, they are what happens when a country's native market becomes completely saturated and must spread outward in search of new forms of capital. If one is going to attribute any death under a communist-like system to communism, which is the only way to achieve a number like "100 million deaths," then it's only fair to attribute any deaths under capitalist-like systems to capitalism.

The point being, it's ridiculous to attribute every death under a system, to the system; However, Late Victorian Holocausts, by Make Davis, is a good introduction into just the horrors of colonialism enacted under British rule.

Edit I provided a source guys, you wanna argue this then provide your own peer-reviewed source. Otherwise I'll just say that your understanding of the history of the development of capitalism is lacking.

The British Empire was a slaughterhouse. Its administrators were the slavers and murderers of tens of millions. That this has all gone down the memory hole is a feat of 21st century marketing.

"yup. that was fucked."

as for retorts, ask them to own the deaths that capitalism caused. can they think of any? what about slavery in the new world? genocide of the natives?

edit: here's a great book you can start with: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

I find the methods for tallying body counts that can be blamed on leftists to be rather lacking. The millions of people that starved to death or died from preventable illness in capitalist countries aren't counted, while those that die from famines in communist countries are meticulously tallied. The policies of the capitalists are just as much to blame as the polices of the communists, yet only the commies are ever held responsible. When someone dies under capitalism it's "an act of god", while any death under the commies must be caused by their nefarious nature.

Why limit it to the 20th century? The commies weren't even around until then, so why not look at how the capitalists managed the world before them? In British India alone, there were an estimated 50 million deaths due to famine. That's just one in a long line of tragedies. Of course, that's never counted. Very little effort is put into counting the mountains of dead due to capitalist imperialism.

What do you all think of the book Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis? This is the book that has primarily informed my views on the nature of the British Raj, but its also obvious that the book is written from a Marxist/leftist perspective that is predisposed to cast British rule as highly destructive to South Asia. What do you all think of this book and its historiography? And would you recommend any other books that give a good, in-depth overview of the political economy of British rule?

Wow, a documentary! Hey, I think all monarchies are evil cause of King Leopold. I think parliamentary systems are evil because of Churchill and Bangladesh. Obviously, the U.S. caused millions and millions of civilan deaths in SE Asia during the Vietnam/Cambodian conflict (and led to the rise of the more radical pseudo-leftist, anti-intellectual madman Pol Pot due to the vacuum of despair left behind).

I mean, if political or economic ideologies are automatically tarred with the failures of their worst proponents, at any point in their history, then all systems are abject failures.

The history of capitalism and colonialism in the not too distant past is not more life affirming, by any stretch. https://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1859843824

Zinn's books tends to evoke something like methodological scorn tinged with some sympathy for the basic idea... followed by fisticuffs. It's basically AskHistorians' Book That Shall Not Be Named.

Try Stannard's American Holocaust or Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts if you're looking for ball-fryingly depressing and teeth-gnashingly controversial history books in the key of White People Ruin Everything. They're better sourced and more apropos to this comment thread.

There is ample evidence for numbers as high as, and even higher, than fifty million deaths as a result of European colonialism.

I won't get into arguments that see Nazi designs in Eastern Europe as a form of European colonialism/imperialism (but you can find some here, here, and here.)

It's been a while since I've read it, but Mike Davis makes a pretty compelling case for at least 30 million deaths as a result of the combination of el-nino famines and imposed capitalism in India and China in the late 19th century alone - Late Victorian Holocausts. It's a good read.

I can't speak for other professional historians, but I'm a historian modern Europe, and I didn't bat an eye at that number.

Upvoted for historical context, but I'm calling bullshit on optimistic and progressive.

See: http://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1859843824/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255824895&sr=1-1

Tell those 50 million dead Indians how progressive the Victorian Era was.

It's late and there are not enough hours in the day to give you a comprehensive list, so I hope you'll settle for some "greatest hits of Capitalism"

The British East India Trading Company gets the trophy on this one for the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, coming in at 10 million killed in the first 4 years making it the single biggest genocide event in human history, and that's not counting the other 23 million men women & children who would be killed over the next two decades. But they get double points on this one, since the famine in Bengal was because the British switched all production to poppies, so they could play drug dealer on top of mass-murderer. And that opium went right to China, until suddenly it didn't because the Emperor banned it, so the British East India Trading Company organized the Opium Wars. Ignoring deaths in combat, the artificial famine afterwards managed to earn Britain a solid 60 million more kills. Fine work, lads.

Oh, and I haven't even tallied in the Irish famines, perennial punchline of easy jokes and very much an actual ethnic cleansing.

Honestly, America is having trouble keeping up. Our big capitalist-engineered famine was the Great Depression and, let's face it, it's a bit of a bore. Only 7,000 dead in the dust bowl? What is that? That's nothing. We make so much goddamn food here that we couldn't fuck it up if we tried.

(I wrote the above when the ambien was starting to kick in, and it's a little disjointed. Let me recommend Late Victorian Holocausts:
El Niño Famines and
the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis)

> Then they killed off tens of millions of their own people,

Yes, because capitalism has never killed off millions of people. Oh wait, what was WWII, WWI, the slave trade, and the countless famines and genocides of imperialism?

Here's a book for you

I'm not gonna defend statist communism but it's a common capitalist canard to attribute ALL deaths under communism to communism, and few to no deaths under capitalism to capitalism.

I didn't even mention Africa. Or China. There were millions of Chinese that starved under British rule during that time. And that's not considering anywhere else the Brits occupied under Victoria. And then there was the Indian famine of 1896 with more food exported to England. And then there was the Indian famine of 1899. Maybe the millions are adding up for you now and the picture's getting clearer?

By the time Queen Victoria was done, she had operated on every continent for 40 years, longer than Stalin or Mao ever had. And there are a lot of people in the Empire back then. More than either ever ruled over. British introduction of capitalism and starvation policies under Queen Victoria probably took out well over 100 million. The way it worked was that things would happen right on the edge, very efficiently, until something went slightly wrong. Potato blight, el niño, whatever. Then, when yields shifted, prices didn't, because the English were always richer and could demand harder, so famine rolls through. Government could intervene but won't because it has to let the market work.

The Irish famine is just the most famous of a series of about 50 of these things. The other 49 just happened to far-away brown people.

Anyways, there's a lot more on it. Check out the book "Late Victorian Holocausts," for more.

Yeah. Check out Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World.

http://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1859843824/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280433948&sr=8-1

General historical geography books that are good:

Key Concepts in Historical Geography

Hodder Arnold Historical Geography (and in general I've found Hodder Arnold review texts to be useful.)

For books that are works of historical geography, broadly defined:

Late Victorian Holocausts (I actually found this book a bit disappointing, but a lot of people like it.)

The Hungry World (actually written by a historian so not very embedded in historical geography theoretically but very much in the same spirit which might be useful for you.)

American Commodities in an Age of Empire (Mona Domosh is currently president of the AAG.)

For the theory of/in geography:

For Space

This syllabus from Rutgers covers a lot of the most essential texts in human geography. I think you could skip the books and stick just to the articles and still have a really good understanding of the field.

I never suggested that the English did not commit atrocities as well. In fact, in another comment to this post, I mention their enslavement of the Irish and the British death camps during the Boer War.

Thanks for the link; I have read material by Indian writers who paint a far from benevolent picture of British rule in India, but I was unaware of the drought and famine in India in the late 1800's and the British response to it. Nor was I aware of some of the other events mentioned in the article to which you posted a link. I've added the book referenced in the article, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World to my book wish list.

Over the years, I've read a number of articles and postings by people who portray the British empire as essentially benevolent, an effort to civilize the world, etc. Subject peoples often viewed British rule quite diffrently, however.

Every nation has its apologists and whitewashers who may see atrocities committed by others, but see their own nation as virtuous and acting in the cause of high ideals. I was not trying to demonize the Spanish, but I don't think the abuses committed within the Spanish empire should be swept under the rug to be forgotten, either. I firmly believe in the validity of the quote by George Santayana that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Those who are unaware of the abuses of the past may easily overlook factors within their own society that can lead to new atrocities today. And they may fail to see how the people of other nations occupied by their forces may have a quite different view of those foreign forces.

Its hard to define Indian political economy during that time, beyond the fact that it was a colony. And "industrialization" is a bold word to use here, considering that there was hardly any economic growth and development that was actually accessible to the masses.

You'll find that they few industrial investments the British made (i.e., the railroads you mention) actually served to exacerbate famines by shipping food out of places where people had no income, to places where people did have income. A good analysis of this rather vicious dynamic can be seen in Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts. In addition, Amartya Sen has also done research on how famines in India during British rule (and in the 20th century in general) were more the result of a lack of purchasing power than a lack of actual food.

> because the myth of our capitalist system making others around the world poorer simply isn't the case.

Next you're going to tell me that we haven't raped and pillaged and plundered and murdered much of the world and overthrown their governments and instilled free market fundie propertarian dictators thereby inventing the notion of the "3rd world". We have. You're making the arguments because you serve to benefit by making them.

Please read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1859843824

I like capitalism, but it's not like blind application of capitalist ideology and the consequent economic dislocation has never caused similar disasters. All ideologies are prone to disaster when applied foolishly.

At least they never committed a mass genocide of 30 million Chinese people and 30 million Indian people like the British Christians:

https://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1859843824