In his Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis teases out the mechanisms of famine in British-ruled 19th century India. When a drought would wipe out a grain harvest in one region of India, the price of grain would spike. People all over the subcontinent would suddenly find themselves priced out of grain markets--even in places where grain harvests went well. Grain would then flow out of India to the "mother country," where people could afford it, and literally millions of Indians would starve. That's one way relatively minor natural disasters become vast human catastrophes. Devastatingly, Davis details how the British Empire (wittingly or not) used these eminently avoidable famines to consolidate its grip over the Indian Raj. I got to thinking of Davis' dark masterpiece while reading Andrew Rice's excellent, nuanced report, "Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?," in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
In his Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis teases out the mechanisms of famine in British-ruled 19th century India.
When a drought would wipe out a grain harvest in one region of India, the price of grain would spike. People all over the subcontinent would suddenly find themselves priced out of grain markets--even in places where grain harvests went well. Grain would then flow out of India to the "mother country," where people could afford it, and literally millions of Indians would starve. That's one way relatively minor natural disasters become vast human catastrophes.
Devastatingly, Davis details how the British Empire (wittingly or not) used these eminently avoidable famines to consolidate its grip over the Indian Raj.
I got to thinking of Davis' dark masterpiece while reading Andrew Rice's excellent, nuanced report, "Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?," in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
