Flight From Famine

Winner of the 1991 QSPELL Prize for Non-fiction One of Canada’s founding peoples, the Irish arrived in the Newfoundland fishing stations as early as the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century they were establishing farms and settlements from Nova Scotia to the Great Lakes. Then, in the 1840s, came the failures of Ireland’s potato crop, which people in the west of Ireland had depended on for survival. "And that," wrote a Sligo countryman, "was the beginning of the great trouble and famine that destroyed Ireland." Flight from Famine is the moving account of a Victorian-era tragedy that has echoes in our own time but seems hardly credible in the light of Ireland’s modern prosperity. The famine survivors who helped build Canada in the years that followed Black ’47 provide a testament to courage, resilience, and perseverance. By the time of Confederation, the Irish population of Canada was second only to the French, and four million Canadians can claim proud Irish descent.

Examines the historiography of the Irish Famine and its relevance now, in the context of the longer-term relationship between England and Ireland.

Named for its mythical leader “Captain Rock,” avenger of agrarian wrongs, the Rockite movement of 1821–24 in Ireland was notorious for its extraordinary violence. In Captain Rock, James S. Donnelly, Jr., offers both a fine-grained analysis of the conflict and a broad exploration of Irish rural society after the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Originating in west Limerick, the Rockite movement spread quickly under the impact of a prolonged economic depression. Before long the insurgency embraced many of the better-off farmers. The intensity of the Rockites’ grievances, the frequency of their resort to sensational violence, and their appeal on such key issues as rents and tithes presented a nightmarish challenge to Dublin Castle—prompting in turn a major reorganization of the police, a purging of the local magistracy, the introduction of large military reinforcements, and a determined campaign of judicial repression. A great upsurge in sectarianism and millenarianism, Donnelly shows, added fuel to the conflagration. Inspired by prophecies of doom for the Anglo-Irish Protestants who ruled the country, the overwhelmingly Catholic Rockites strove to hasten the demise of the landed elite they viewed as oppressors. Drawing on a wealth of sources—including reports from policemen, military officers, magistrates, and landowners as well as from newspapers, pamphlets, parliamentary inquiries, depositions, rebel proclamations, and threatening missives sent by Rockites to their enemies—Captain Rock offers a detailed anatomy of a dangerous, widespread insurgency whose distinctive political contours will force historians to expand their notions of how agrarian militancy influenced Irish nationalism in the years before the Great Famine of 1845–51.

One of Canada's founding peoples, the Irish arrived in the Newfoundland fishing stations as early as the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century they were establishing farms and settlements from Nova Scotia to the Great Lakes. Then, in the 1840s, came the failures of Ireland's potato crop, which people in the west of Ireland had depended on for survival. "And that," wrote a Sligo countryman, "was the beginning of the great trouble and famine that destroyed Ireland." Flight from Famine is the moving account of a Victorian-era tragedy that has echoes in our own time but seems hardly credible in the light of Ireland's modern prosperity. The famine survivors who helped build Canada in the years that followed Black '47 provide a testament to courage, resilience, and perseverance. By the time of Confederation, the Irish population of Canada was second only to the French, and four million Canadians can claim proud Irish descent.

An engaging and moving account of this most destructive event in Irish history.

This comprehensive two-volume encyclopedia examines specific famines throughout history and contains entries on key topics related to food production, security and policies, and famine, giving readers an in-depth look at food crises and their causes, responses to them, and outcomes. Famines have claimed more lives across human history than all the wars ever fought. This two-volume set represents the most comprehensive study of food and famine currently available, providing the broadest analysis of hunger and famine causes as well as a detailed examination of the ramifications of cultural and natural hazards upon famine. Volume one focuses upon 50 topics and issues relating to the creation of hunger and famines in the world from 4000 BCE to 2100, including an overview of how agriculture has evolved from primitive hunting and gathering that supported limited numbers of people to a worldwide system that now feeds over seven billion people. Volume two, entitled Classic Famines, begins with famines of the past, from 4000 BCE to 2100 CE, includes ten classic famine case studies, and concludes with predictions of famines we could see in the 21st century and beyond.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

This is the most wide-ranging series of essays ever published on the Great Irish Famine, and will prove of lasting interest to the general reader. Leading historians, economists and geographers – from Ireland, Britain and the United States – have assembled the most up-to-date research from a wide spectrum of disciplines including medicine, folklore and literature, to give the fullest account yet of the background and consequences of the Famine. Contributors include Dr Kevin Whelan, Professor Mary Daly, Professor James Donnelly and Professor Cormac Ó Gráda. The Great Irish Famine was the first major series of essays on the Famine published in Ireland for almost fifty years.