Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World represents a polemically rich work that fails to make the author’s main point: that “the ‘Third World’ is the outgrowth of income and wealth inequalities…shaped most decisively in the last quarter of the nineteenth century” with Asian, African and Latin American economic systems, particularly rural ones characterized by commercial commodity production, joining the larger global economy (15-16). Davis asserts the “Third World” grew out of the effects of the “forcible incorporation of smallholder production into commodity and financial circuits controlled from overseas,” a concurrent and “dramatic deterioration in the terms of trade,” and, “Victorian imperialism”
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He highlights the subordinate status of non-European peasantries in the global economy’s formative years, but he fails to combine them into a convincing whole. This leaves him falling short of his intended mark. He also fails to address issues of later development or post-colonial action by the countries he examined. He deserves credit for validating part of Wofford’s claims of environmental history as a sub-field of capitalism’s. If Davis had sought to write a book making the case that unbridled commitments to capitalism had the capacity to kill millions he would have succeeded. In asserting that today’s international system is a direct legacy of the decisions of the 1870s through 1890’s, Davis goes too far and thus fails to present a convincing argument. Where he comes closest is in parroting Robin Palmer’s study of African poverty claiming that “by 1939 virtually all vestiges of African economic independence have been shattered” (205). This citation is both insufficient and ignores years of post-colonial history of Asian and South American states providing dramatic exceptions to Davis’ claims, particularly of “household poverty and state decapacitation” as integral to the Third World’s emergence (310). He exacerbates this failure with his recurring polemics. Had he left the philosophical or editorial comments out and set the more realistic goal of documenting the human costs of capitalism’s early imposition in the colonial world he would have achieved a much more forceful and compelling result. In the same vein, getting the minor historical details correct would make Davis’ good writing—and there is some conveying a deep attachment to his subject--even more compelling. Unfortunately, getting them wrong only made his efforts seem more shrill and amplified his deepest failure: his failing to focus on the irrefutable facts and successfully argue his
He highlights the subordinate status of non-European peasantries in the global economy’s formative years, but he fails to combine them into a convincing whole. This leaves him falling short of his intended mark. He also fails to address issues of later development or post-colonial action by the countries he examined. He deserves credit for validating part of Wofford’s claims of environmental history as a sub-field of capitalism’s. If Davis had sought to write a book making the case that unbridled commitments to capitalism had the capacity to kill millions he would have succeeded. In asserting that today’s international system is a direct legacy of the decisions of the 1870s through 1890’s, Davis goes too far and thus fails to present a convincing argument. Where he comes closest is in parroting Robin Palmer’s study of African poverty claiming that “by 1939 virtually all vestiges of African economic independence have been shattered” (205). This citation is both insufficient and ignores years of post-colonial history of Asian and South American states providing dramatic exceptions to Davis’ claims, particularly of “household poverty and state decapacitation” as integral to the Third World’s emergence (310). He exacerbates this failure with his recurring polemics. Had he left the philosophical or editorial comments out and set the more realistic goal of documenting the human costs of capitalism’s early imposition in the colonial world he would have achieved a much more forceful and compelling result. In the same vein, getting the minor historical details correct would make Davis’ good writing—and there is some conveying a deep attachment to his subject--even more compelling. Unfortunately, getting them wrong only made his efforts seem more shrill and amplified his deepest failure: his failing to focus on the irrefutable facts and successfully argue his