The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain’s Financial Crisis

by Charles Read

Rich in archival detail and offering a ground-breaking analysis, this book presents a radically new interpretation of British politics and policy failings during the Great Famine.

The Irish famine of the 1840s is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the United Kingdom's history. Within six years of the arrival of the potato blight in Ireland in 1845, more than a quarter of its residents had unexpectedly died or emigrated. Its population has not yet fully recovered since.

Historians have struggled to explain why the British government decided to shut down its centrally organised relief efforts in 1847, long before the famine ended. Some have blamed the laissez-faire attitudes of the time for an inadequate response by the British government; others have alleged purposeful neglect and genocide. In contrast, The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain's Financial Crisis uncovers a hidden narrative of the crisis, which links policy failure in Ireland to financial and political instability in Great Britain. More important than a laissez-faire ideology in hindering relief efforts for Ireland were the British government's lack of a Parliamentary majority from 1846, the financial crises of 1847, and a battle of ideas over monetary policy between proponents and opponents of financial orthodoxy. The high death toll in Ireland resulted from the British government's plans for intervention going awry, rather than being prematurely cancelled because of laissez-faire.

This book is essential reading for scholars, students and anyone interested in Anglo-Irish relations, the history of financial crises and famines, and why humanitarian-relief efforts can go wrong even with good intentions.

Genres: History

366 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leaving aside the broad, sneering sweeps against nationalist historiography of the famine and the sins of Tim Pat Coogan - the seeming obligation of all British historians - there's a really interesting argument here which seems, to me, to have a lot going for it. To whit, Lord Trevelyan gets far too much blame for the famine - he was a civil servant undertaking decisions made by the political leadership (just following orders) - but Lord Overstone and the austere sound-money policies of the Currency school get far too little. The strict demand for convertibility at 100% reserve requirement instituted by Robert Peel and the Bank Charter Act of 1844 was always going to cause both domestic dislocation, as bullion outflows would inevitably lead to a sharp contraction in domestic credit and financial distress during periods of bank reserve drains. The sharp cut in funding for relief works at the beginning of 1847 was the direct result of the financial panic caused by the attempt to raise a loan to continue them. A failed tender of Treasury loans in April 1847 compounded government concern. Political instability and the vagaries of a narrow majority in Parliament would lead to this being transformed into a scheme to have the works paid for by Ireland itself, by transferring the burden onto Irish landowners, but the tax base of Ireland was far too narrow for this to ever work. The end of relief and difficulty tendering a larger loan following the financial panic fits the chronology as a more determinate, binding cause far better than a shift in sentiments to a more providential laissez faire ideology under the Whigs, even if anti-Irish racism was a broadly shared sentiment at the time.

This assessment of Lord Overstone, and the Peel Act, is not all that far removed from Karl Marx's at the time - frequently commentating in the New York Tribune he argued, following Thomas Tooke and the Banking school, that the Peel Act could neither abrogate economic crises nor control the supply of money and credit in the economy in a meaningful way. At best it was responsible for a series of wholly artificial, policy-induced recessions, or would simply make endogenous crises longer and deeper.

All cogent so far - but the sweeps at anti-revisionists, or nationalist historiography of the famine, never really amount to a coherent repudiation of the idea that colonialism as an analytic rubric has a lot going for it in explaining the compounding policy failures. If anything the financial argument presented here is one that could be entirely amenable to an anti-colonial reading of structural determination.

One to chew on.

[Mike Scialom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed this book for the Cambridge Independent here:
https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.u...
It's an incredible achievement.