Abstract
Clearly, this book is a valuable addition to Famine historiography. Placing the Irish Famine in a theoretical framework – primarily famine theory and postcolonial studies – is still rare and exciting. I also welcomed the fact that Nally places the tragedy in the context of colonization – ‘occupation, confiscation and displacement’ – a factor that had been denied by an early generation of Irish Famine historians – and within a comparative context. I particularly like the positioning of what Nally calls the ‘colonial experience’ as central to the responses to the Irish poor prior to and during the Famine. Perhaps, however, there could have been more discussion on the paradox of Ireland’s place within the British Empire. Many early nationalists were, after all, supporters of the Empire (one book by Richard Davis, 1998, on William Smith O’Brien is entitled Revolutionary Imperialist).
Nally’s comparative approach works well in showing that for centuries governments and rulers had been acting to prevent famines through food importation, the imposition of maximum prices and punishing those traders who sought to benefit from the shortages. What these actions had in common was the desire to supply food to the people, which was in stark contrast to some of the policies introduced in Ireland after 1845. In terms of the comparative dimension, I wonder if more attention could have been paid to what was happening in Scotland during the Highlands Famine of c. 1846–1848?
The response of the British government has been a central focus of much research on the Famine. Nally shows how prior to 1845 a major concern of British politicians was to make Ireland more governable and, more generally, to centralize state power. The 1838 Poor Law was an important part of this strategy to manage and regulate the poor (or ‘paupers’ in Poor Law parlance). In his words, ‘corrective legislation’ was vital to the British government’s policy of control. What Nally convincingly demonstrates is that the primary concern was with colonial governance, not the consequences of providing a system of poor relief. Nally makes some interesting comparisons between the Irish and English Poor Laws. Again, comparison with Scotland’s Poor Law (which was different from the English legislation) could have been usefully made, and poor relief legislation (or lack of) in other parts of the Empire would have been interesting and perhaps fruitful.
At various stages, Nally talks about the relative prosperity of the economy in the northeast of Ireland prior to the Famine. Recent research, however, has shown how badly the northeast was affected after 1845. How does he characterize what happened in the north in terms of the theory of political violence and the desire of the government to modernize Ireland and reduce the population?
Nally looks at contemporaries who protested at the various relief measures that were introduced by the British government, pointing out that it was not only Irish nationalists who criticized these policies. He also questions the argument that we should not judge retrospectively the actions of various administrators as they were acting in line with orthodoxies of the day. As Nally points out, being critical of government ministers and relief officials and their ideologies is not necessarily anachronistic but can be a useful tool for understanding what happened, on the grounds that ‘critical judgment is of great political importance’ (p. 5). Moreover, even leading religious figures of the period were skeptical of the providentialist interpretation favored by some contemporaries and later historians. Nally also shows the hollowness of suggesting that the British government was bound by laissez-faire orthodoxies. He demonstrates that the various relief policies were not immutable, but were contested, and were selected with predetermined outcomes in mind. Nally is not the first to offer these insights, but he makes them in a cogent and compelling way, and the examples he provides are powerful in showing the extent of opposition to government actions.
Throughout the text Nally characterizes the debate between revisionists and post-revisionists as being polarized. Would he locate himself on this spectrum? If not, how would he categorize his approach? Moreover, does he agree that in the last decade the revisionist/post-revisionist division has softened or moderated in regard to the Great Famine, possibly reflecting the changing political situation in Ireland?
Nally, whose primary discipline is geography, provides a new prism for studying the Irish Famine. Building on recent scholarship, he has extended the scope of the debate and of our knowledge of this tragedy. For both reasons, Nally’s contribution is both welcome and significant. Nally is not the first scholar to suggest that the relief measures chosen added to the distress of the Irish population by facilitating depopulation and dispossession in pursuit of an ultimate goal of modernization – I did so in my own work This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52 (Kinealy, 1994) and Richard Lebow (1976), a professor of politics, came to a similar conclusion in his powerful White Britain and Black Ireland: The Influence of Stereotypes on Colonial Policy. However, Nally’s contribution is important: by adopting a fresh theoretical approach and placing his research in a colonial framework he provides a valuable insight into the role, responses, responsibilities, and, ultimately, failures of the British imperial government.
Nally’s book is a useful contribution to our understanding of the Irish Famine. I hope that his research will encourage scholars from other disciplines, and from outside Irish academia, to re-examine the Great Famine. Nally describes his book as a starting point for new research: ‘[t]his book is an effort to open up this indispensable enquiry’ (p. 20). I would be interested to know if he has any suggestions for ways in which his own research findings and methodologies can be developed.
In the opening pages, Nally avers that ‘Disasters do not happen; they are designed’ (p. ix) and the final sentences of the book state ‘How are catastrophic famines to be prevented? … stop creating them’ (p. 231). In the light of current devastating famines in Somalia and Kenya, are there still any lessons to be learned from the Irish experience?