Review Essay: Past the Pax

A review essay on books by (1) Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001); & (2) David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (New York: Oxford U Press, 2001). Recent writing on the cultural history of 19th-century British imperialism has tended to concentrate on questions of difference & identity. Cannadine's Ornamentalism, however, focuses less on difference than on commonality. Both his critique of the literature & his methodology are flawed. Ornamentalism also suggests the limitations of cultural history. Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts offers new possibilities for the study of imperialism, by combining a history of ideas with an analysis of famine & global environmental change. His romanticization of the state detracts from what is otherwise a provocative work. Both books point to the urgent need to revitalize the social history of empire. Adapted from the source document.