Abstract
In 1843 an unfamiliar blight was observed on the potato crop in America. Within two years it had spread to Europe, appearing in Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, England, and eventually Scotland and Ireland. The new disease was first noticed in Dublin at the end of August 1845 and within a few days isolated instances were being reported throughout the country, especially in the east. The high dependence of the Irish poor on potatoes meant that its appearance in the country was regarded with alarm. The September issue of the Gardener’s Chronicle posed the question: ‘Where will Ireland be in the event of a universal potato rot?’1
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Notes
R. Floud, K. Wachter and A. Gregory, Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
A. Young, Tour in Ireland (Dublin, 1780)
G. Kohl, Travels in Ireland (London, 1844).
David Dickson, Arctic Ireland. The Extraordinary Story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740–41 (Belfast, 1997).
William Wilde’s Table of Irish Famines, 900–1850, in E. M. Crawford (ed.), Famine. The Irish Experience (Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 3, 16
James Kelly, Famine and Harvest Crisis in Ireland before the Great Famine (paper delivered at the Parnell Summer School, 1995).
J. H. Andrews, A Paper Landscape: The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Belfast, 1975).
Eric Evans, Sir Robert Peel: Statesmanship, Power and Party (London, 1994), pp. 11–27.
Dr Lyon Playfair to Peel, 26 October 1845, Charles Stuart Parker (ed.), Sir Robert Peel from his Private Papers, vol. iii (London, 1899, 2nd edn) p. 225.
William Henry Smith, A Twelvemonth’s Residence in Ireland during the Famine and the Public Works, with Suggestions to meet the Coming Crisis, (London, 1848) p. 94.
For example, Charles Trevelyan, Irish Crisis (London, 1848).
George Nicholls, The Irish Poor Law (London, 1856), pp. 309, 357.
John Prest, Lord John Russell (London, 1972), p. 263.
Scrope had rejected the Malthusian approach to poverty and defended the old Poor Law in England whilst calling for a more liberal version to be introduced into Ireland. Redvers Opie, ‘A neglected English economist: George Poulett Scrope’, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, xliv (1929), pp. 101–37.
The best exponent of this view of emigration is Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (New York, 1985), although it has been challenged, most notably by Donald Akenson.
For more on the debate, see Andy Bielenberg (ed.), The Irish Diaspora (Essex, 2000).
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© 2002 Christine Kinealy
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Kinealy, C. (2002). The Government’s Response to the Crisis. In: The Great Irish Famine. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-80247-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-80247-6_2
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