The Great Irish Famine

The Great Irish Famine PDF Author: Enda Delaney
Publisher: Gill Books
ISBN: 9780717160105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The Great Irish Famine tells of the last great famine in European history. First-hand accounts and writings by four contemporary real people are used to give a complete and personal picture of the historic tragedy.

The Great Irish Famine

The Great Irish Famine PDF Author: Enda Delaney
Publisher: Gill Books
ISBN: 9780717160105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The Great Irish Famine tells of the last great famine in European history. First-hand accounts and writings by four contemporary real people are used to give a complete and personal picture of the historic tragedy.

Black '47 and Beyond

Black '47 and Beyond PDF Author: Cormac Ó Gráda
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691217920
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Here Ireland's premier economic historian and one of the leading authorities on the Great Irish Famine examines the most lethal natural disaster to strike Europe in the nineteenth century. Between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the food source that we still call the Irish potato had allowed the fastest population growth in the whole of Western Europe. As vividly described in Ó Gráda's new work, the advent of the blight phytophthora infestans transformed the potato from an emblem of utility to a symbol of death by starvation. The Irish famine peaked in Black '47, but it brought misery and increased mortality to Ireland for several years. Central to Irish and British history, European demography, the world history of famines, and the story of American immigration, the Great Irish Famine is presented here from a variety of new perspectives. Moving away from the traditional narrative historical approach to the catastrophe, Ó Gráda concentrates instead on fresh insights available through interdisciplinary and comparative methods. He highlights several economic and sociological features of the famine previously neglected in the literature, such as the part played by traders and markets, by medical science, and by migration. Other topics include how the Irish climate, usually hospitable to the potato, exacerbated the failure of the crops in 1845-1847, and the controversial issue of Britain's failure to provide adequate relief to the dying Irish. Ó Gráda also examines the impact on urban Dublin of what was mainly a rural disaster and offers a critical analysis of the famine as represented in folk memory and tradition. The broad scope of this book is matched by its remarkable range of sources, published and archival. The book will be the starting point for all future research into the Irish famine.

The Great Irish Famine

The Great Irish Famine PDF Author: Cormac Ó'Gráda
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521557870
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
The Irish Famine of 1846-50 was one of the great disasters of the nineteenth century, whose notoriety spreads as far as the mass emigration which followed it. Cormac O'Gráda's concise survey suggests that a proper understanding of the disaster requires an analysis of the Irish economy before the invasion of the potato-killing fungus, Phytophthora infestans, highlighting Irish poverty and the importance of the potato, but also finding signs of economic progress before the Famine. Despite the massive decline in availability of food, the huge death toll of one million (from a population of 8.5 million) was hardly inevitable; there are grounds for supporting the view that a less doctrinaire attitude to famine relief would have saved many lives. This book provides an up-to-date introduction by a leading expert to an event of major importance in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and Britain.

This Great Calamity: The Great Irish Famine

This Great Calamity: The Great Irish Famine PDF Author: Christime Kinealy
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd
ISBN: 0717155552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
The Great Famine of 1845-52 was the most decisive event in the history of modern Ireland. In a country of eight million people, the Famine caused the death of approximately one million, while a similar number were forced to emigrate. The Irish population fell to just over four million by the beginning of the twentieth century. Christine Kinealy's survey is long established as the most complete, scholarly survey of the Great Famine yet produced. First published in 1994, This Great Calamity remains an exhaustive and indefatigable look into the event that defined Ireland as we know it today.

The Coffin Ship

The Coffin Ship PDF Author: Cian T. McMahon
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479820539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Honorable Mention, Theodore Saloutos Book Award, given by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society A vivid, new portrait of Irish migration through the letters and diaries of those who fled their homeland during the Great Famine The standard story of the exodus during Ireland’s Great Famine is one of tired clichés, half-truths, and dry statistics. In The Coffin Ship, a groundbreaking work of transnational history, Cian T. McMahon offers a vibrant, fresh perspective on an oft-ignored but vital component of the migration experience: the journey itself. Between 1845 and 1855, over two million people fled Ireland to escape the Great Famine and begin new lives abroad. The so-called “coffin ships” they embarked on have since become infamous icons of nineteenth-century migration. The crews were brutal, the captains were heartless, and the weather was ferocious. Yet the personal experiences of the emigrants aboard these vessels offer us a much more complex understanding of this pivotal moment in modern history. Based on archival research on three continents and written in clear, crisp prose, The Coffin Ship analyzes the emigrants’ own letters and diaries to unpack the dynamic social networks that the Irish built while voyaging overseas. At every stage of the journey—including the treacherous weeks at sea—these migrants created new threads in the worldwide web of the Irish diaspora. Colored by the long-lost voices of the emigrants themselves, this is an original portrait of a process that left a lasting mark on Irish life at home and abroad. An indispensable read, The Coffin Ship makes an ambitious argument for placing the sailing ship alongside the tenement and the factory floor as a central, dynamic element of migration history.

The Graves Are Walking

The Graves Are Walking PDF Author: John Kelly
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0805095632
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
“Though the story of the potato famine has been told before, it’s never been as thoroughly reported or as hauntingly told.” —New York Post It started in 1845 and before it was over more than one million men, women, and children would die and another two million would flee the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was the worst disaster in the nineteenth century—it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe. But even more extraordinary than its scope were its political underpinnings, and The Graves Are Walking provides fresh material and analysis on the role that Britain’s nation-building policies played in exacerbating the devastation by attempting to use the famine to reshape Irish society and character. Religious dogma, anti-relief sentiment, and racial and political ideology combined to result in an almost inconceivable disaster of human suffering. This is ultimately a story of triumph over perceived destiny: for fifty million Americans of Irish heritage, the saga of a broken people fleeing crushing starvation and remaking themselves in a new land is an inspiring story of revival. Based on extensive research and written with novelistic flair, The Graves Are Walking draws a portrait that is both intimate and panoramic, that captures the drama of individual lives caught up in an unimaginable tragedy, while imparting a new understanding of the famine’s causes and consequences. “Magisterial . . . Kelly brings the horror vividly and importantly back to life with his meticulous research and muscular writing. The result is terrifying, edifying and empathetic.” —USA Today

Imaging the Great Irish Famine

Imaging the Great Irish Famine PDF Author: Niamh Ann Kelly
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838608729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The depiction of historical humanitarian disasters in art exhibitions, news reports, monuments and heritage landscapes has framed the harrowing images we currently associate with dispossession. People across the world are driven out of their homes and countries on a wave of conflict, poverty and famine, and our main sites for engaging with their loss are visual news and social media. In a reappraisal of the viewer's role in representations of displacement, Niamh Ann Kelly examines a wide range of commemorative visual culture from the mid-nineteenth-century Great Irish Famine. Her analysis of memorial images, objects and locations from that period until the early 21st century shows how artefacts of historical trauma can affect understandings of enforced migrations as an ongoing form of political violence. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of museum and heritage studies, material culture, Irish history and contemporary visual cultures exploring dispossession.

The Great Irish Famine – A History in Four Lives

The Great Irish Famine – A History in Four Lives PDF Author: Enda Delaney
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd
ISBN: 0717154173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
The Great Irish Famine of 1845–52 was the defining event in the history of modern Ireland. In proportional terms one of the most lethal famines in global history, the consequences were shocking: at least one million people died, and double that number fled the country within a decade. The Great Irish Famine surveys the history of this great tragedy through the testimonies of four key contemporaries, conveying the immediacy of the unfolding disaster as never before. They are: - John MacHale – the Catholic Archbishop of Tuam - John Mitchel – the radical nationalist - Elizabeth Smith – the Scottish-born wife of a Wicklow landlord - Charles E. Trevelyan – the assistant secretary to the Treasury Each brings a unique perspective, influenced by who they were, what they witnessed, and what they stood for. It is an intimate and compelling portrayal of these hungry years. The book shows how misguided policies inspired by slavish adherence to ideology worsened the effects of a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions. 'A significant and sophisticated addition to the historiography of the Famine.' Christopher Cusack, Times Literary Supplement 'Delaney's approach to the story is innovative ... (it will be found) in the hands of those who appreciate first-rate history ... a very impressive book.' Breandán Mac Suibhne, Dublin Review of Books '... a genuinely original and illuminating perspective on a subject too often dealt with by means of second-hand narrative and unexamined clichés.' Roy Foster, Professor of Irish History, Oxford University 'There are many books on this terrible event, but this is one of the most fluent and original. Although it is based on large amounts of primary research its style is accessible and engaging, and the result is a valuable study of a truly harrowing crisis.' The Times Higher Education Supplement '... an extraordinarily important subject ... focusing on four fascinating characters.' Ryan Tubridy 'Delaney offers an insightful, readable overview of this overwhelming disaster ... highly recommended.' Choice, America's Library Association publication The Great Irish Famine: Table of Contents PROLOGUE: THE LAND OF THE DEAD PART I. BEFORE THE FAMINE - Encounters - Land and people - Politics and power PART II. THAT COMING STORM - Spectre of famine - Peel's brimstone PART III. INTO THE ABYSS - A starving nation - The fearful reality - Property and poverty PART IV. LEGACIES - Victoria's subjects - Exiles EPILOGUE: THE DEATH OF MARTIN COLLINS

The Great Famine

The Great Famine PDF Author: Ciarán Ó Murchadha
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 144113977X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Over one million people died in the Great Famine, and more than one million more emigrated on the coffin ships to America and beyond. Drawing on contemporary eyewitness accounts and diaries, the book charts the arrival of the potato blight in 1845 and the total destruction of the harvests in 1846 which brought a sense of numbing shock to the populace. Far from meeting the relief needs of the poor, the Liberal public works programme was a first example of how relief policies would themselves lead to mortality. Workhouses were swamped with thousands who had subsisted on public works and soup kitchens earlier, and who now gathered in ragged crowds. Unable to cope, workhouse staff were forced to witness hundreds die where they lay, outside the walls. The next phase of degradation was the clearances, or exterminations in popular parlance which took place on a colossal scale. From late 1847 an exodus had begun. The Famine slowly came to an end from late 1849 but the longer term consequences were to reverberate through future decades.

The Great Irish Famine: A History in Documents

The Great Irish Famine: A History in Documents PDF Author: Karen Sonnelitter
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1770486887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
In the fall of 1845, a mysterious blight ravaged Ireland’s potato harvest, beginning a prolonged period of starvation, suffering, and emigration that reduced the Irish population by as much as twenty-five per cent in a mere six years. The Famine profoundly impacted Ireland’s social and political history and altered its relationships with the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. This document collection provides a broad selection of historical perspectives depicting the causes, the course, and the impact of the Famine. Letters, speeches, newspaper articles, and other works are collected within, carefully described and annotated for the reader. A substantial introduction, a chronology of events, and a useful glossary are also included to aid in the interpretation of the primary texts.