Ireland Before and After the Famine: Explorations in Economic History, 1800-1925

This edition of Cormac O'Grada's study expands upon his central arguments about the agricultural and demographic developments surrounding the Great Irish Famine. It provides new statistical information, new appendices and integrated responses to the new research and writing on the subject that has appeared since the publication of the first edition in 1987. This updated edition aims to go even further in disputing whether this pivotal period in Irish history really was an inevitable disaster and whether Ireland was the classic "Malthusian country". The author stresses the Irish ability to cope with harvest failure before 1845 and looks at the very real advances in the economy before the Great Famine that suggest that had the potato famine been delayed for a few decades, the economy would have been in a stronger position to withstand the harvest failures. Without neglecting the poverty and injustice of the pre-Famine economic regime, this book points to positive developments such as demographic adjustment, economic integration, emigration and improvements in agriculture and communications. The author argues that these features were already changing Ireland and could have gradually lifted it out of the morass.