Paddy S Lament Ireland 1846 1847

Ireland in the mid-1800s was primarily a population of peasants, forced to live on a single, moderately nutritious crop: potatoes. Suddenly, in 1846, an unknown and uncontrollable disease turned the potato crop to inedible slime, and all Ireland was threatened. Index.

Helping Humanity: American Policy and Genocide Rescue offers a scholarly examination of America's complicated reactions to genocide and genocide rescue. It provides a synthesis of humanitarian concerns within the broader narrative of American foreign policy that gives an underappreciated policy consideration the attention it is due. This book will serve as an approachable work both for those interested in genocide and specialists in foreign policy.

This is a collection of original essays by international scholars which focuses on Irish writing in English from the eighteenth century to the present. The essays explore the recurrent motif of exile and the subversive potential of Irish writing in political, cultural and literary terms. Case-studies of major writers such as Swift, Joyce, and Heaney are set alongside discussions of relatively unexplored writing such as radical pamphleteering in the age of the French Revolution and the contribution of women writers to Nationalistic journalism.

The Great Famine of 1845-52 was the most decisive event in the history of modern Ireland. In a country of eight million people, the Famine caused the death of approximately one million, while a similar number were forced to emigrate. The Irish population fell to just over four million by the beginning of the twentieth century. Christine Kinealy's survey is long established as the most complete, scholarly survey of the Great Famine yet produced. First published in 1994, This Great Calamity remains an exhaustive and indefatigable look into the event that defined Ireland as we know it today.

Over one million people died in the Great Famine, and more than one million more emigrated on the coffin ships to America and beyond. Drawing on contemporary eyewitness accounts and diaries, the book charts the arrival of the potato blight in 1845 and the total destruction of the harvests in 1846 which brought a sense of numbing shock to the populace. Far from meeting the relief needs of the poor, the Liberal public works programme was a first example of how relief policies would themselves lead to mortality. Workhouses were swamped with thousands who had subsisted on public works and soup kitchens earlier, and who now gathered in ragged crowds. Unable to cope, workhouse staff were forced to witness hundreds die where they lay, outside the walls. The next phase of degradation was the clearances, or exterminations in popular parlance which took place on a colossal scale. From late 1847 an exodus had begun. The Famine slowly came to an end from late 1849 but the longer term consequences were to reverberate through future decades.

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the British government was bitterly accused of not averting the disaster or offering enough aid. Some even believed that the Whig government's policies were tantamount to genocide against the Irish population. James Donnelly's account looks closely at the political and social consequences of the great Irish potato famine and explores the way that natural disasters and government responses to them can alter the destiny of nations.

An engaging yet objective look at the 350-year old history of "Southie," a neighborhood that has survived largely unchanged since the early days of immigrant Irish families and old-time political bosses.

Argues that there are fundamental social and economic similarities between the two groups; but that taboos against intermarriage, segregated schools and the nature of Protestant and Catholic religious beliefs keep the Irish at loggerheads.