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

Mike Davis

Apr 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by James Patrick Cronin

About this audiobook

Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the nineteenth 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.

Ratings and reviews

Mr. Davis did an exceptional work in bringing out the facts to the world and exposing the British Empire.

Biased, politically motivated socialist propaganda

Phenomenal Topic and incredibly well researched. Worth a listen.

About the author

Mike Davis is the author of several books, including City of Quartz, Buda's Wagon, Ecology of Fear, Planet of Slums, and (with Jon Wiener) Set the Night on Fire. He is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in San Diego.

James Patrick Cronin is an accomplished audiobook narrator with over 100 titles to his credit. A classically trained stage actor with an MFA from the University of Louisville, he has performed as an actor and a comedian on stages all over the world.