Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis, Verso, £20, ISBN
1859847390
Globalisers everywhere take note. The last time the world dismantled trade
barriers and bowed before the god of free trade, it coincided with an epidemic
of famines from China to Ethiopia, India to Brazil. Famine came in the final
quarter of the 19th century, when the British Empire dominated world trade as
the US does today. Guess what the empire blamed for those famines, in which
upwards of 50 million people died? Climate—the whims of the weather in the
shape of what we call El Niño. It was, says…
