As a resident of Australia and self-taught climate scientist, I am all too well aware of El Nino and La Nina - though its influence pales in comparison with the manner by which enhanced greenhouse gases have destroyed southern Australia's winter rainfall since 1997. (The fact that agriculture never developed in Australia before the Industrial Revolution, however, reflects more on its
extraordinarily ancient and low-phosphorus soils
than El Nino influence).
In "Late Victorian Holocausts", Mike Davis does an exceptionally original study of the impact during the nineteenth century of El Nino and La Nina upon more fertile regions of the world, including India, China, Brazil and East Africa. His focus is on three major waves of "drought famine" (i.e. drought followed directly by famine) that occurred between 1876 and 1902 in many regions of the world. Davis' description and picture of the famines are incredibly graphic, even gruesomely horrific: we frequently see pictures of people starved to the extent that their skeletons are easily visible. His descriptions of forest fires in Asia and Amazonia during earlier El Ninos are similarly explicit and it is a pity that no pictures from 1877/1878 or 1925/1926 were available to him.
Davis does a very impressive job of explaining how El Nino and La Nina work and why they cause major changes in rainfall across the globe through shifting the location of what he calls, quite figuratively, "planetary heat engines". His diagrams and descriptions of the magnitude of rainfall changes in some of the areas worst affected by famines during the late nineteenth century are done exceptionally well. Davis explains that droughts in North China, northwestern and central India and the Brazilian sertao are related to El Nino preventing the intertropical convergence zone moving as far poleward as it normally does. He also explains the origin of ENSO theory in the early meteorological work of Gilbert Walker, whose name I am extremely familiar with from studying Australia's climate.
What is surprising even to someone familiar with
Trotskyist theory
is how Davis suggests that these famines, which allowed Europe to gain in population compared to China and India for a long period centred around the Victorian age, and that in fact before European colonisation periodic droughts never led to the level of mortality experienced during the late nineteenth-century famines in which in many places death rates rose to several hundred per thousand per year. He shows that the Qing dynasty had an elaborate system of what we in Australia call "drought subsidies" to protect North China against a very erratic climate, and that the increasing power of the West destroyed the effectiveness of this system and led to catastrophes during powerful El Nino (e.g. 1877) and La Nina (e.g. 1898) phases. In the process, he explains some relatively little-known facts about the social structure of Qing China.
Linking these together in Davis' hypothesis that ENSO-related disasters were an important and overlooked factor in the hegemony of the West that evolved during the late nineteenth century. A large number of interesting movements that aimed to maintain local power in Africa, Asia and the Pacific collapsed under the sheer weight of pressure and by the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of these remind me of religious movements I have read via such authors as
Susan Starr Sered
and
Bill Kauffmann
and would certainly be worthy of more detailed study than Davis can give them. However, his ability to show that living standards in the West were actually lower than those in Asia until well into the eighteenth century is most surprising, though as a student of cultural studies I am extremely loathe to measure a society's health by its wealth and living standards and believe other more psychological factors are crucial. Davis shows skilfully that the areas most affected by the late nineteenth century famines were actually once quite rich and that the influence of rich British businessmen was what impoverished these regions through forced devaluation of their commodities.
Some have said "Late Victorian Holocausts" is too influenced by Marxist doctrine and that Davis whitewashes the famines of the Great Leap Forward under Mao Zedong. It is true that he could have done a better job than he has about these famines, but though drought famines they were unrelated any ENSO influence as weather in the Pacific Dry Zone conclusively demonstrates. Davis also might have looked at Mao's regime from a Marxist perspective like
Tony Cliff
did, but the book's length makes this a minor quibble.
All in all, "Late Victorian Holocausts" is a most original and unique synthesis of history and climate that far surpasses anything by more famous authors like Tim Flannery. Its illustration of how climate combined with other social factors to produce catastrophes both social and economic is most refreshing and the excellent sourcing gives plenty of opportunity for further research.
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Top reviews from other countries
Rickkky
Fascinating look at a hidden history
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Reviewed in Canada on October 1, 2014