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

Davis counters the Eurocentric, colonialist narratives of environmental determinism and Social Darwinism throughout Late Victorian Holocausts. Nineteenth-century intellectuals and political figures perpetuated these myths to absolve colonialism and imperialism of any blame for the drought-famines that Davis examines.

Environmental determinists suggest that natural phenomena, like climate and access (or lack of access) to natural resources, are responsible for shaping human behavior. Imperial powers, for example, suggested that the climates of the Global South created inferior and “uncivilized” peoples, adding a flimsy veneer of science to Eurocentrism and white supremacy. This determinist perspective ignores human agency in constructing social practices based on multiple factors and ignores social variation across environmentally similar regions and across time.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, first published in 1859, put forth the influential theory that evolution occurred through natural selection as life forms competed for survival and the chance to pass on their traits to the next generation.  19th-century imperial powers erroneously applied Darwin’s theories to human communities and individuals, justifying their domination of others as part of a natural order. Social Darwinism contends that various peoples of the world compete for survival and supremacy. Those who hold the most authority, they argued, prove themselves superior through their social, political, and economic hegemony.