How Colonization And Capitalism Led To Economic Terror

Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts had been a whirlpool from the beginning. Through an economical and agricultural approach, Davis asks the questions that some of us are afraid to address: could the droughts, famines, and other disasters been prevented? Was the government not trying hard enough with relief projects? Could the millions of deaths been avoided? Had attributing factors, like colonial power and forms of capitalization, been the one to blame? There had been many affected areas in which Davis directed his focus. The areas that Davis had elaborated on which I knew little about were China and India. Through analysis, Davis attempted to provide specific examples on what exactly caused the conditions that had occurred, and how the reactions from those conditions had been mild (from the government) to severe (from the people).

Starting off with China, there actions had been in question based on second-hand events. Environmentally, there had been natural occurrences, like the failure of rain to the Yellow River which resulted in drought. There had also been locusts and flooding which hurt the economy. However, what was the case, for starters, for not enforcing the use of the railroad system? The simple answer was fear. As the text states, the Qing “refused to build railroads or telegraphs out of the rational fear that they would inevitably become weapons of foreign economic and ideological penetration”. They were a target for destruction and had the legitimate fear that introducing railroads into the economy would make the occurring state they were in worse. It wasn’t a matter of how they could improve the current economy, but a matter of who they were looking toward to tear them down even more so. In effect, they were unable to transport life-saving resources, such as grain, a necessity in times of famine, resulting in the deaths of millions.

Things got even worse in China when the Winter season rolled around. Occupants were forced to burn parts of their homes, sell their children, and migrate as a means of survival; some thought survival was nearly impossible and resorted to suicide. Chaos ensued and temporary government relief responses only held up for so long, since they had been limited in funds. Marginalization was evident when those that chose to migrate had not been able to return since “the Shandong-Kiangsu border in 1877, the Qing had no qualms about sending in troops to turn back or even massacre the refugees”. Because of the lack of resources, individuals didn’t have an option of where to go or where they would end up once they left. They were able to respond, but there responses had sometimes been poor, and there was no turning back because of the all-encompassing dearth. Next up had been India, which not only went through an economic crisis for all the wrong reasons. Unlike China, India did, in fact, have a working railroad. However, it was used at a disadvantage. Labeled a peculiarity, “the newly constructed railroads, lauded as institutional safeguards against famine, were instead used by merchants to ship grain inventories from outlying drought-stricken districts to central depots for hoarding”. Instead of taking the grain and feeding it to the people which was supposed to help during the famine, the railroads were used to transport grain in India to out of India. The “lack” which the people were suffering from had been from money rather than food, proven by India’s surplus in rice and wheat, both of which were exported to England. A country suffering from famine was able to provide to other parts of the world, and that had been the primary economic issue. Instead of government aid from the central government, its head, Lytton, took Adams’ Wealth of Nations approach saying governmental intervention would make matters worse, and natural solutions were the only way out. Other shifts in blame included Darwinism, overpopulation - none in relation to power or governmental control.

Indigenous groups had been segregated in terms of relief. For example, there was the idea of Indian Poor Law, which suggested that if the poor were to demand relief from harsh conditions that they will, in effect, feel entitled to demand it all the time. Most looked at India as a place to profit, not to provide through generous means of charity and such, and the economy continued to stagger.

Indian peasants sold all that they had. Similar to those in China, they sold parts of their homes - from roofs to door frames, as a desperate mean to by, a situation which became increasingly cumbersome when little rain did arrive. As a result, many died from diseases caused by famine. Officials tried to mitigate the appearance of such atrocities by misreporting the causes of death, another case of the government’s poor stance and power-based corruption. Like Davis coined it, India had literally modernized poverty. Some questions posed by Davis, along with others at the time, may have been “where were the fruits of modernization, of the thousands of miles of railroad track and canal? And where were the profits of the great export booms that transformed the subcontinent's agriculture in the second half of the nineteenth century?”. From an outsider’s perspective, it’s thought that because of economic and agricultural developments India that the problems would have been mitigated. However, they remained stagnant, if not worse.

Colonialism was largely to blame for the madness occuring. A portion of the chapter had stated that “It was the state itself, as Naoroji and Dutt had argued in their pioneering critiques, that ultimately ensured that no productivity-raising benefit could flow from export booms to direct producers. On the expenditure side, a colonial budget largely financed by taxes on farm land returned less than 2 percent to agriculture and education, and barely 4 percent to public works of all kinds, while devoting a full third to the army and police”. It had been an unequal distribution that largely affected the lives of those still surviving and played a role in India’s legacy. If the economy functioned as expected, with an emphasis on its prosperity and will for the success of the people, the economy could have transgressed and plumet through the hardship of famine. Poverty and hunger caused a dramatic shift from the people, similar to China, and resulted in the same marginalized sense.

Before reading about the situations in China and India, I came up with pretty naive responses to famine and drought, As an ignorant person would ask “why didn’t the government do more for the people? Why was it that a prosperous economy, with an ability to provide food and had advanced transportation systems, be suffering?” A question that many have asked had been “was it because of the control of the people that resulted in the past atrocities? Could it have been prevented?” The short answer is no, based on natural occurrences like drought and famine, but the long, historical background that I have been provided with has said otherwise. Reading Late Victorian Holocausts resulted in somewhat of a twisted viewpoint in terms of politics. I think politics and the policies followed is what doctored the entire economic and social collapse of India and China (as well other areas mentioned). In total, I believe it was based on procedures followed, colonialism, and most importantly, power held by all - power which has lead, and continues to lead continuous devastating economic periods.