Political Economy of Race, Class and Gender - Book Report/Review Example

Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts Critics of globalization assert that poor people all over the world suffer more impacts of global economic downturns compared to citizens of industrialized nations. Peasants find it hard to survive in times of increases in food prices or decreases in value of their farm produce. The epitome of this scenario was during the late nineteenth century hey-days of European imperialism. Trading activities coupled with military force subdued nations in Africa, Asia, and South America bringing these nations into a global trade system.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, the European countries and especially Great Britain led to the creation of the first global market economy. It is interesting how the economic power of the British Empire and the inner workings of global system had severe impacts on the fate of innumerable populace around the world.Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on the British economic system and its effects on indigenous populations in China, India, and South America. Davis posits a simple question, “Why is it that widespread hunger in Western Europe disappeared in the nineteenth century while famine and disease raged throughout multiple places in what today we call the third world”?

Davis responds to this question by asserting that European imperialism spearheaded by British Imperialism led to a global economic system where the powerful nations siphoned wealth and food from their colonies, whose population was left to starve and die. The impact of this process was mass deaths, what Davis describes as holocausts on record scale in Brazil, China, India, and other places. This “holocausts” were more intense during the El Nino drought years of 1888-1902 and 1876-77.It interests me how the European countries were able to stamp their power on other countries.

The result was a global economic system that was hardly a free market. In fact, the unfavorable trade relations and a series of tariffs bolstered the activities of the European countries. Colonies such as India and Brazil were subjected to economic pressures dictated by financial centers in Western Europe. It is interesting how Davis argues that these economic pressures in combination with gunboat diplomacy are what led to the creation of what we today know as Third World.Work CitedDavis, Mike.

 Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London: Verso, 2001. Print.