Rot (Hardcover)

Padraic X. Scanlan

ISBN 10: 1541601548 / ISBN 13: 9781541601543

Published by Basic Books, 2025

About this Item

Hardcover. A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland's most infamous disaster "Vigorous and engaging."--Fintan O'Toole, The New Yorker A New Yorker Best Book of the Year In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight's devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million people dead and forcing millions more to emigrate. In Rot, historian Padraic X. Scanlan offers the definitive account of the Great Famine, showing how Ireland's place in the United Kingdom and the British Empire made it uniquely vulnerable to starvation. Ireland's overreliance on the potato was a desperate adaptation to an unstable and unequal marketplace created by British colonialism. The empire's laissez-faire economic policies saw Ireland exporting livestock and grain even as its people starved. When famine struck, relief efforts were premised on the idea that only free markets and wage labor could save the Irish. Ireland's wretchedness, before and during the Great Famine, was often blamed on Irish backwardness, but in fact, it resulted from the British Empire's embrace of modern capitalism. Uncovering the disaster's roots in Britain's deep imperial faith in markets, commerce, and capitalism, Rot reshapes our understanding of the Great Famine and its tragic legacy. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781541601543

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rot (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1541601548
• ISBN 13: 9781541601543
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster.

“Vigorous and engaging.” ―Fintan O’Toole, The New Yorker

In 1845, European potato fields were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million dead and forcing millions more to emigrate. In Rot, historian Padraic X. Scanlan offers a new account of the Great Famine, showing how Ireland’s place in the British Empire made it uniquely vulnerable to starvation.

Ireland’s overreliance on the potato was a desperate adaptation to an unstable and unequal marketplace created by British colonialism. And when famine struck, relief efforts were premised on the idea that only free markets and wage labor could save the Irish.

Uncovering the disaster’s roots in Britain’s deep imperial faith in markets, commerce, and capitalism, Rot reshapes our understanding of the Great Famine and its tragic legacy.

About the Author

Padraic X. Scanlan is an associate professor at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources and the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New Inquiry. The author of two previous books, he lives in Toronto.