to expose the dependence of the economic mechanisms of capitalist expansion on the infliction of 'permanent violence' on the South. Davis argues, for example, that "Between 1875–1900—a period that included the worst famines in Indian history—annual grain exports increased from 3 to 10 million tons", equivalent to the annual nutrition of 25m people. "Indeed, by the turn of the century, India was supplying nearly a fifth of Britain's wheat consumption at the cost of its own food security." In addition, Already saddled with a huge public debt that included reimbursing the stockholders of the East India Company and paying the costs of the 1857 revolt, India also had to finance British military supremacy in Asia. In addition to incessant proxy warfare with Russia on the Afghan frontier, the subcontinent's masses also subsidized such far-flung adventures of the Indian Army as the occupation of Egypt, the invasion of Ethiopia, and the conquest of the Sudan. As a result, military expenditures never comprised less than 25 percent (34 percent including police) of India's annual budget ... As an example of the effects of both this and of the restructuring of the local economy to suit imperial needs (in Victorian Berar, the acreage of cotton doubled 1875–1900), Davis notes that "During the famine of 1899–1900, when 143,000 Beraris died directly from starvation, the province exported not only thousands of bales of cotton but an incredible 747,000 bushels of grain." Publication history This book was first published in Illustrated Hardcover edition in December 2000. It was later issued in paperback format in May 2002. An extract was published in Antipode in 2000. Reception This book won the World History Association Book Prize in 2002. It was also featured in the Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2001 list. In his book Apocalypse Then, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, while generally approving the historical presentation of facts, argued that Davis' conclusions were overly reductive. In response to Davis' approval of Karl Polanyi's hypothesis that "Indian masses in the second half of the 19th century ... perished in large numbers because the Indian village community had been demolished", Sen retorts that "this is an enormous exaggeration. In exploding one myth, we have to be careful not to fall for another"; however,it is an illustrative book of the disastrous consequences of fierce economic inequality combined with a drastic imbalance of political voice and power. The late-Victorian tragedies exemplify