This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52 [Hardcover]

Christine Kinealy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1995

A new assessment of the Great Famine of 1845-1852--the most significant event in modern Irish history--thoroughly explores the complex economic, social, political, and cultural factors involved, and looks at the Famine's legacy in the modern world. IP.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An estimated 500,000 to 1,500,000 died during the Irish famine; the peak year, 1847, is known as "Black '47." Some 1,500,000 emigrated, with 2,000,000 more leaving during the subsequent 20 years. The potato was considered "the lazy crop" because it grew everywhere. The locution perhaps reflected the British attitude that the potato was eaten by a lazy people, a people who, according to a British economist, "propagate their species like brutes" and were "too indolent to give their dead a 'decent Christian burial,'" (a criticism made during the famine as Ireland's streets became strewn with the dead). Relief was finally enacted when British Prime Minister Robert Peel secretly imported Indian corn and cornmeal from the U.S. (in violation of the Corn Laws); his gesture was referred to by the Irish as "Peel's brimstone." Other forms of relief were the workhouse, the Poor Laws and the Temporary Relief and Soup Kitchen Acts. There are many villains in this story, such as the absentee landlords and the coldhearted British bureaucrats. But there are also such heroes as Church of Ireland minister Richard Townsend, who publicized the misery; the local Quakers, who imported food; and even Queen Victoria, who donated a not insignificant amount of her own money to the famine relief. Kinealy, a fellow of the University of Liverpool, has written a comprehensive if dry study packed with statistics that will be of interest primarily to scholars. History Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The Irish Famine of 1845-52 was a decisive event in the history of the country, causing mass death and migration. This is the first title to focus on the Famine in over thirty years, using new sources to explore different aspects, such as the government's response to the disaster and community reactions to the problems. -- Midwest Book Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 450 pages
• Publisher: Roberts Rinehart Pub (May 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570980349
• ISBN-13: 978-1570980343
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,126,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Academic Defense, February 2, 2001

By 

Eamon Z. Schamis "eamon_walsh_schamis" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52 (Paperback)

As a student of Irish history, and a person of strong nationalist sentiment, I feel somewhat obliged to come to the defense of a valuable historical work that is being ruthlessly slandered. "This Great Calamity," while certainly not alone in the now-expanding field of research Irish Famine, accomplishes its objectives with clarity, scholarship, and an attention to often dismissed or unrecognized primary source material that is truly admirable. There is no history of Ireland, whether by accident or intent, that is not in some way political. This is a simple truth of the field. Within the nationalist sensibility, Chris Fogarty's attention to Britain's role in the mass starvation of the Irish people is to be admired. However, his ill-mannered, poorly-cited, and quite hysterical reviews of several of Christine Kinealy's fine works undermine the very thrust of modern nationalism. As any Irish man or woman might tell you, for too many years the Famine has barely been discussed in Ireland. The pain, the shame, and the widespread loss left a noticeable hole in the scholastic world that has, if only by the grace of Ireland's growing economic prominence and the endevours of historian's such as Kinealy, begun to close. To find the truth of these dark, sad years we must, as a culture that values its past, put aside certain issues and embrace any delving, no matter its angle, into the depths of this period. The historical community aside, Christine Kinealy's work more than earns its place in the library of any open-minded Irish enthusiast or activist. Any Irishmen can tell you the tale as presented by the greats such as Cecil Woodham-Smith, or the epic works of Seamus MacManus, but in the work of Christine Kinealy, the reader is presented with a modern telling of the facts in simple and efficient academic prose. Her facts are correct, her wording unobtrusive (a skill I admittedly lack), and her approach respectfully subjective. She has involved herself in this material, in the lives of these people, both past and present, and she never for a moment shirks her responsibilty when it comes to the implication of wrong, and the attempts to make right, on both sides of the Irish Sea. "This Great Calamity," is as honest, neutral, and academically fulfilling examinations of the Irish Hunger, as one is likely to find anywhere. As a nationalist, I make history my own, ever-recalling and teaching the lesser remembered and often covered-up stories of the Irish past and its less than equal relationship with Britain. However, as a historian I must recognize facts for what they are and celebrate both this work, and its author, for an insightful and well-researched presentation of the darkest days of Irish history.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deafening Silence, April 9, 2001

By 

Michael Reardon (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52 (Paperback)

I came to Christine Kinealy's book with a need to understand the historical facts of the famine years. This work, clearly and without bias, sets out the events and provides considered commentary on the role and motivations of the principal participants be they individuals or goverment. I, unlike Chris Fogarty, have no crude or simplistic agenda.Born in Liverpool, of an Irish father and Liverpool/Irish mother who is descended entirely from survivers of the famine; my interest was to try to fill the shocking void this trauma left in my own city's folk memory as evidenced by the singular lack of stories in my family about those years.

I did not need another emotional polemic. I wanted, and found, an accurate well researched book.Presented with sensitivity, scrupulous attention to detail, and clearly informed by a determination to get to the historical bedrock ,it reveals this tragedy for what it was, and as for Kinealy being an apologist for the role of the British Establishment, read her concluding pragraph. She understands why the British government and its agents acted as they did but in measured tones damns their actions and exposes their self serving motives. After reading this book I understood better what had happened to the parents,wives, children and husbands of many of my forebearers who married in the late 1840's and 1850,s and registered their status as widow or widower. I also understood better why it happened and why Ireland must never again find herself in a position where the destiny of her people is beyond her sovereign control.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars BORING DISCUSSION OF GOVERNMENT POLICY, July 21, 2002

By 

Severin Olson (Hyattsville, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Great Calamity (Paperback)

Corn laws, poor law, treasury. Words like these pop up everywhere in this book. This may not seem noteworthy, as it is a book on the Irish famine, but it is reflective of the author's interest in British government policy to the exclusion of all else. We hear little about how the people suffered or about any cultural aspects of the famine. There are few eyewitness accounts from survivors or outsiders. Even the great emigration of the late 1840's reads like a travel office report. In the end I found this book to be among the most boring I ever picked up.

Kinealy's main argument is that while the British government did try to help ease the famine situation, their efforts were too little too late. Officials wanted Irish money to pay for Irish poverty and relief, and never grasped how serious the whole situation had become. So while they provided considerable aid, it wasn't nearly enough. I think this is a quite reasonable and level headed thesis. It is too bad that it took Kinealy over 300 pages to say it.