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

Two more global droughts followed the tragedy of the 1870s, but these were punctuated by periods of agricultural growth and economic recovery. The conclusion of the first drought, in 1879, was followed by a decade of bountiful harvests. British demand for grain imports encouraged the expansion of wheat fields around the globe, and railroad development fostered export. Peasants in India enjoyed rising prosperity, cultivating new land that had previously been unsuitable for grain. However, this growth “turned into one of the nineteenth century’s greatest follies […]” (129). The expansion of wheat farming worsened the effects of El Niño droughts in, for example, 1888-89 and 1891-92. The grain trade’s global reach meant that its collapse had worldwide effects.

North America experienced “the worst environmental crisis of the second half of the nineteenth century” (129). Towns in the United States faced depopulation as crops failed, while in Mexico a battle over water access erupted between plantations and small farmers. New legislation in India forbade foraging, worsening conditions for the poor. The British, moreover, exported available wheat, depleting stores. When Punjabis “attempted to hold on to their grain, fearing that famine prices would soon exceed the export merchants’ purchase price, they were in some cases beaten or coerced […]” (131).