The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony 1845-1852
Ebook
Ebooks are designed for reading and have few connections to your library.
Overview
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.
Shortlisted for the Longman - History Today Book of the Year Award 2011.
Draws on contemporary accounts and personal diaries.
Brings recent scholarship to a wide audience.
Timely reassessment of this catastrophic event.
Includes contemporary illustrations.
Prologue / 1. An Emerging People - The Pre-Famine Irish / 2. A Long Farewell to the White Potatoes - The Coming of the Blight / 3. One Wide Waste of Putrefying Vegetation - The Second Failure of the Potato / 4. The Blessed Effects of Political Economy - Public Works and Soup Kitchens / 5. Emaciated Frames and Livid Countenances - From Fever Pandemic to Amended Poor Law / 6. Asylum by the Neighbouring Ditches - The Famine Clearances / 7. Leaving this Land of Plagues - The Famine Emigrations / 8. Exiled from Humanity - The Last Years of the Famine / 9. The Murdered Sleeping Silently - Aftermath and Explanations / Index
The time is ripe for a fresh, synthetic history of the Great Irish Famine that builds on the many excellent local histories of the famine written in the 1980s and 1990s. Ciarán Ó Murchadha’s lucid and moving account is exactly this: a work of great narrative and analytic power that is accessible, courageous, and ably written. It will be widely read, and deserves to be.
One of the tragedies of the famine is that so many of the dead remain invisible: their deaths were unrecorded and many of the dead were buried without coffin, headstone or traditional burial rites. In actually naming some of the victims of the famine - Dennis McKennedy who was owed over two weeks wages when he died; Jeremiah Hegarty, employed on the public works, who gave his meager supply of food to his grandchildren because they were ‘crying with hunger’ - O Murchadha gives to the famine dead a dignity and a recognition that has been denied to them for so long. This is a compelling read for both scholars of the Famine and those who are new to the topic. It is beautifully written, rich in detail and interspersed with contemporary images that enhance the text.
Ciarán Ó Murchadha has written an extraordinary book about the Great Famine that is full of fresh and penetrating insights into the causes of the catastrophe, the complex unfolding of the crisis, its profound consequences, and the much-debated question of responsibility. In this sweeping, powerfully evocative, and always probing account, Ó Murchadha combines his own original research and thinking with an impressive command of the extensive work done by other scholars over the last two decades. His book deserves the widest possible audience.
’Building on new research from the last 15 years, O Murchadha has created a fine overview of the famine... Dr O Murchadha’s book is a welcome addition to famine historiography and it demonstrates that there is still much that remains to be told about this catastrophe.’
’Murchadha paints a vivid portrait in words of the grim few years, supplemented by some equally harrowing pictures integrated with the text... Anybody wanting to understand some of the historical underlying resentment of the smaller nation towards the larger over the last two centuries could hardly do better than to start with this book.’
highly readable... the author makes good use of the works of many travel writers who left us vivid descriptions of the poverty of ordinary Irish people.
Article in the Clare Champion, including an interview with author.
Ciaran O Murchadha has for many years been publishing original and valuable accounts of the Great Famine in Clare... He has now produced a wider study, which in addition to presenting the fruits of his own extensive research also incorporates and sunthesises the work of other scholars on this subject in recent years. The result is a most impressive and extremely valuable contribution to the historiography of this tragic era in Irish history.
- Title: The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony 1845-1852
- Author: Ciarán Ó Murchadha
- Publisher: Continuum
- Print Publication Date: 2011
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 272
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781441187550, 9781472507785, 1472507789, 1441187553
- Resource ID: LLS:9781441187550
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T12:26:25Z
Dr Ciaran O Murchadha is based at the Department of History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His book about a single community in County Clare during the Great Famine - Sable Wings Over the Land - was published in 1998.