Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

A "vigorous and engaging" (Fintan O'Toole, New Yorker) new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how...
$32.00 USD
$32.00 USD
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Author: Padraic X. Scanlan
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: $32.00

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Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine by Scanlan, Padraic X.

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

$32.00

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

$32.00
Author: Padraic X. Scanlan
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
A "vigorous and engaging" (Fintan O'Toole, New Yorker) new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland's most infamous disaster

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.

Author: Padraic X. Scanlan
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 03/11/2025
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781541601543


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 02/01/2025 pg. 80
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2025

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.

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