Ireland's Great Famine

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.

Cormac O Grada is Professor of Economics at University College Dublin