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

Under colonialism, imperial powers exercise social, political, and economic control over land, resources, people, and goods located far from the imperial center. This creation of global, oceanic empires (rather than the contiguous land empires of antiquity) began during the 1500s and continued into the 20th century, with colonial legacies persisting today. For example, Puerto Rico remains a US territory because of the treaty reached after Spanish-Cuban American War in 1898, while British territories today include islands like Bermuda and the Falklands.

Davis uses the term “New Imperialism” to refer to European imperial power during the late 19th century, after the American Revolution, the British defeat of French imperial rivals in North American and south Asia, and the decline of the Spanish Empire. The Industrial Revolution, new technologies, a Western “civilizing” mission, and a desire for wealth and capital drove the New Imperialism. European powers claimed and carved up the continent of Africa, and the English crown exercised direct control over India through the British Raj. The United States also developed a stronger imperialism in the aftermath of the Spanish-Cuban-American War (1898), which resulted in the US seizing control of the Philippines. Davis suggests that New Imperialism resulted in the creation of the “Third World” as colonial powers consciously deprived Indigenous peoples of resources while enriching centers of power in Europe. This environmental colonialism thus altered the natural environments of vast regions of the world, sometimes permanently. In his monograph, Ecological Imperialism (1986), historian Alfred Crosby asserts that Western colonization succeeded because imperial powers changed Indigenous environments. Following Crosby, Davis argues that the drought-famines Westerners exploited and worsened were holocausts that targeted Indigenous populations specifically to foster imperial power and enrich Europe: “The New Imperialism was the third gear of this catastrophic history […] colonial expansion uncannily syncopated the rhythms of natural disaster and epidemic disease” (13).

Imperialist policies not only failed to alleviate suffering but worsened these crises and generated anti-colonial movements that sometimes erupted into violent resistance. As destitute, starved Indians languished in work camps and plague spread, the British Raj planned extravagant celebrations for the Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. In 1897, Indian revolutionaries assassinated Walter Rand, head of the plague commission, in retaliation for his cruelty toward plague victims. Rand had jailed those suspected of carrying the disease and razed homes. The Boxer Rebellion in China likewise attacked Westerners: “[…] villagers began to attack well-fed Chinese Christians and ‘foreign devils’ at missions. Buddhist priests warned peasants that the drought would continue as long as Christians openly defiled Chinese traditions” (196). German imperial forces retaliated with great brutality, leaving bodies floating in the Pei-ho River, but in the process they generated nationalist resentment that led to subsequent revolution. New Imperialism’s dead hand cast a long shadow.