Author Biography
CORMAC O GRADA is Professor of Economics at University College Dublin and the author of Ireland: A New Economic History (Oxford, 1994); A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy since the 1920s (Manchester, 1997); Black '47 and Beyond (Princeton, 1999), and Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce: A Socio-Economic History (Princeton, 2006).
Description
These essays by Ireland's leading economic historian range widely over topics associated with the Ireland's Great Famine of 1846-52. The famine was the defining event of nineteenth-century Irish history, and nineteenth-century Europe's greatest natural disaster, killing about one million people and prompting many hundreds of thousands more to emigrate. The subjects covered here include: trends in living standards before the famine; the impact of the crisis on landlords; the characteristics of famine mortality; the market for potatoes during the 1840s; the role of migration as disaster relief; the New York Irish in the wake of the famine; the famine in folklore and memory, and in comparative perspective; and the historiography of the famine in Ireland. Ireland's Great Famine includes four previously unpublished essays, together with others assembled from a wide range of publications in different fields. Some have been co-authored by other leading scholars.Taken together, the essays give a full account of the famine, its effects, what was and was not done to alleviate it, how it compares with other (especially modern third world) famines, and how successive scholars have tackled these matters. This will become a standard reference in both Irish history and the international field of famine studies. The essays include collaborations with Andres Eiriksson, Timothy Guinnane, Joel Mokyr and Kevin O'Rourke.
Introduction
Ireland's Great Famine
Poor and getting poorer? Living standards in Ireland before the famine, with Joel Mokyr
Bankrupt landlords and the Irish famine, with Andres Eiriksson
Famine disease and famine mortality, with Joel Mokyr
Mortality in the North Dublin Union during the Great Famine, with Timothy W. Guinnane
The market for potatoes in Dublin in the 1840s
Mass migration as disaster relief, with Kevin H. O'Rourke
The New York irish in the 1850s
The Famine, the New York Irish, and their bank
The Great Famine and other famines
Famine, trauma and memory
Making famine history in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s
Making famine history in Ireland in 1995
Notes
Bibliography
Index.
"Cormac O Grada, the leading economic historian of the Famine, has now collected some of his essays on the topic. Though aimed primarily at the academic audience, this book makes for fascinating, at times grim, reading for anyone wanting to learn more about the disaster."
BBC History 2006
"The core approach is that of the economist, all the essays also involving, as we have come to expect from Cormac O Grada, an excellent analysis (quantitative and qualitative) of contemporary newspaper material and official data, as well as considerable exploration of retrospective evidence, particularly that of the Irish Folklore Commission's collections ... The Great Famine considers both the limitations and the vision of mid-twentieth-century historical studies, while teasing out the difficulties of combining commemoration and academic history."
Irish Studies Review 15 (3) 2007
"O Grada's work is always both stimulating and thought provoking and consequently any new publication by this author is to be welcomed."
"Ireland's Great Famine is well worth seeking out. O Grada's is always refreshingly free from the political prejudices that mar much that has been written on this topic. For those who are acquainted with a basic understanding of the great Irish famine, this volume will prove rewarding reading. It provides many insights into how famine could occur in what was then part of the world's richest country and is a welcome addition to the burgeoning historiography of this sad period in Ireland's history."
Local Population Studies No 78
Spring 2007
"O Grada’s work … goes beyond the disciplines of history and economics. He takes advantage of his fluency in Gaelic to exploit folklore materials that document how the Famine was remembered by later generations. The fact that he can pose the hardnosed questions of the economist and also discern the meaning of bitter, even if inexact, popular recollections makes O Grada’s contribution to the highly charged debates about responsibility for the tragedy especially worthy of attention. He is also at pains to identify ways in which the Irish Famine can shed light on present-day famines as well as to point out problems in applying our understanding of modern famines to those in the past."
Peter Mandler, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Journal of Interdisciplinary History XXXIX (1) 2008
"Cormac O Grada, Professor of Economics at University College, Dublin, is one of the leading and most respected historians of the Famine. Even before 1995, which marked the sesquicentenary of the appearance of the potato blight in Ireland, and reinvigorated public, political and academic interest in this topic, his writings gave the Famine its rightful place in the development of nineteenth-century Irish history. … This book contains many tables and charts, reflecting the author’s interest in economics and econometrics, but they are presented in a lucid way, which complements, rather than complicates, the accompanying text. ...demonstrates that there is still much that we do not know about this pivotal decade in Irish history … and that there is plenty of scope for the next generation of researchers to build on the solid foundations laid."
Christine Kinealy Drew University, Madison New Jersey
Irish Economic and Social History
2008
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