Irish Studies Resources - Prof. Christine Kinealy: The Great Famine

Contents
The collection -- Welcome to the museum -- Foreword / John L. Lahey, President, Quinnipiac University -- Message from the president / Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland -- Lines of sorrow: representing Ireland's Great Hunger / Niamh O'Sullivan, Curator, Inaugural Exhibition, Ireland's Great Hunger Museum -- Framing the Great Hunger / Christine Kinealy -- Ireland: a brief overview -- The potato blight -- The British response -- Exports in famine times -- Private relief efforts -- Letters to The Cork Examiner -- Emigration and "Coffin ships" -- Population and expenditures -- Two prime ministers -- Irish-American diaspora -- Memorials worldwide -- British Parliamentary Papers -- Permanent collection.

The potato famine of 1845-51 was a pivotal event in the development of modern Ireland. No aspect of Irish life was untouched by the crisis. Kinealy offers not just a general history of the famine, but an illuminating exploration of aspects which have received little attention, including the rise in crime, the food export controversy, the role of religion, the growth of the Orange order, and the impact of the uprising in 1848.

Between 1845 and 1852 Ireland was devastated by the 'Great Hunger' - the most severe famine in modern European history. The view widely held by historians is that the impact of the Famine on the northern province of Ulster, in particular the largely Protestant city of Belfast, was minimal. In the first book on the Famine to focus specifically on Belfast, Christine Kinealy, one of Ireland's leading historians of the period, and Gerard MacAtasney, challenge this view and offer a new interpretation.Drawing on a wealth of original research, Kinealy and MacAtasney begin with an examination of society and social behaviour in Belfast prior to 1845. They then assess the official response to the crisis by the British government, the response by the Church in both England and Ireland, and the part played by the local administration in Ulster. The authors examine the impact of the cholera epidemic on Belfast in 1849-50, the city's recovery after the Famine, and the beginnings of open sectarianism among the business and landed classes of the province.

The papers collected in this volume are a product of the second conference on Ireland's Great Hunger held at Quinnipiac University in 2005. That conference, focused on the themes of representation and preservation, brought together forty-five scholars from around the world to discuss various aspects of the Famine and its aftermath. Following the conference, the complete An Gorta M r collection of Quinnipiac's famine commemorative art was placed on display for the first time in the University's Alumni Hall. The An Gorta M r collection is on permanent display in the University's Arnold Bernhard Library and in other buildings across the University's Mount Carmel campus. This volume, focused on the theses of relief, representation, and remembrance, contains essays from a broad range of disciplines including works of history, literary criticism, anthropology, and art history.

A fascinating study of the relationships between landlords and tenants in Ireland during the Great Famine period of the 1840s is principally based on a large uncatalogued archive in private ownership.

Featuring new material on the Irish Famine which has never been published before, This is a comprehensive and accessible overview of one of the most significant periods of Irish history.