The Great Irish Famine (1846-1851)

A wide-ranging scholarly introduction to this watershed event integrating new research, methodologies and perspectives.

The Great Irish Famine is an accessible critical account to one of the deadliest humanitarian catastrophes of the nineteenth century and a defining episode in Irish and British history. Drawing on the latest international scholarship and newly unearthed primary sources, Fabrice Bensimon and Laurent Colantonio reassess the causes, course, and consequences of the Famine that, between 1846 and 1851, killed more than a million people and forced another million to leave the island. Incorporating innovative approaches – such as advanced spatial mapping, archaeology, visual and material culture, comparative famine history, and the study of international perceptions – the book establishes itself as an essential reference for scholars, students and general readers of Irish and British history, imperial studies and the history of humanitarian crises.Bensimon and Colantonio combine chronological narrative with thematic analysis to situate the Famine within Ireland’s contested status as a domestic colony of the United Kingdom and interrogate the ideological foundations of British policy, from laissez-faire political economy and Malthusianism to providentialist belief and entrenched anti-Irish prejudice. They foreground the lived experiences of famine victims while offering a critical evaluation of state responses, landlord–tenant relations, press representations, charitable initiatives, mass emigration and the Famine’s enduring political and cultural legacies.With a Foreword by Cormac Ó Gráda.