Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The sources of financial and political instability
2. The economic policy reforms of Sir Robert Peel
3. Famine relief before the crises of 1847
4. Famine relief during and after the crises
5. The intentions and consequences of redistributive relief policy
6. Ireland and Mauritius: the British Empire's other famine in 1847
Conclusion: Britain's biggest economic-policy failure
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

CHARLES READ is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in History and an Affiliated Lecturer in Economics at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow and College Lecturer at Corpus Christi College.

Reviews

The Great Famine is based on the author's multi-award-winning PhD thesis. Well-researched and extensively footnoted ... The book nonetheless deserves a wide readership as a serious and balanced contribution to the Irish economic history canon.
*THE IRISH TIMES*

An extraordinarily wide-ranging, deeply researched and original critique of economic thinking, politics and policy making in mid-nineteenth Britain and Ireland. Read's work radically reshapes our understanding of the Great Irish Famine and of British politics more generally. It is the most holistic account yet of the catastrophic consequences of political and policy failure in a time of crisis, good intentions notwithstanding.
*Liam Kennedy, Emeritus Professor of Economic History, Queen’s University Belfast*

In this bold new interpretation of the biggest economic policy disaster in modern British history, Charles Read argues that the failure to provide sufficient relief spending during the Great Irish Famine was the result of a fiscal and financial crisis rather than a commitment to laissez faire ideology. This is essential reading for any serious scholar of modern Irish and British history.
*Stephen Broadberry, Professor of Economic History, University of Oxford*

Despite being written for a scholarly audience, the book's jolt to the senses resonates far beyond any solely academic setting. Great Famine injects a massive strand of fresh thinking into what had largely appeared to have been a dead end of history. It's challenging to describe what an incredible achievement this is. Parts of Great Famine go right against the grain of Britain's mythology about itself: it's almost heretical. It's hard not to be awestruck at the audacity of Dr Read's thesis and the way he unveils it.

https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/amp/cambridge-author-exhumes-irish-famine-and-details-a-financia-9287608/
*Cambridge Independent*

Recommended.
*CHOICE*