John Murphy with a review of Tim Pat Coogan's The Famine Plot. It initially featured on his own blog on 25th September 2012.




The subtitle plays into conspiracy theory, a melodramatic touch calculated to attract readers to what's a familiar saga for many who know Irish history. So, how justified is "England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy" by "Ireland's best-known historian" according to his byline?

I read this soon after John Kelly's "The Graves Are Walking" which places the "Great Hunger" of the late 1840s in contexts of Europe, North America, as well as Britain regarding its similarities and differences to other famines. Kelly expands the story to show how emigration, privation, and policy combined to bring a near-worst-case scenario to millions of Irish.

Tim Pat Coogan takes the side of the native against the imperialist. His preface compares the Famine with today's austerity imposed upon the Irish Republic, and notes the personal afflictions endured by his fellow citizens--at least where the Irish again have to depend on charity from abroad. Coogan advances the genocidal definition of what happened in the mid-19th century, and he shows in the first chapter about the conditions of his ancestors how his paternal townlands in Co Kilkenny reveal in the archived "Great Book" the appeals of the tenants to their absentee landlord. Throughout, I was impressed by how Coogan navigates between the big explanation and the local detail garnered from such records and scholarship. He has an eye for the detail, such as a Mayo priest's reticent acknowledgement of "a very interesting woman" given that sexual matters were not discussed.

The second main chapter looks at the background, full of "multilayered demonology" as faction fighting, sectarian rivalry, and the repression after the 1798 rebellion struck fear deeper in the minds of the natives. Poor law relief and the Victorian ameliorative attempts to fix what was wrong with the Irish according to the English show in chapter three the responses habitual and experimented by the British Crown to handle what it feared in Malthusian terms as overpopulation and as mass emigration (to England). Relief was seen as helping the poor to survive and so as to procreate even more peasants.

Coogan turns from the masterminds to the "chief actors in the drama. There were, of course, millions of bit players but their lines were not listened to and echoed only in graveyards." Daniel O'Connell, Sir Robert Peel, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Lord John Russell, Disraeli: well-known names who sought to solve the predicament as the potato crop failed. Tory and Whig debated, the Corn Law ironically passed even as another Coercion Bill was implemented for Ireland. Most MPs did not want to spend money on the ungrateful Irish peasants, the subterfuge of party politics aside.

How much money would be spent depended on grain sent over. Indian corn (hominy grits) was notoriously hard to digest. Crops kept failing, workhouses and public works projects meant to keep the poor fed by having them build roads to nowhere met with predictable despair by the natives. As chapters five with evictions and six with work schemes demonstrate, such conditions exacerbated the deteriorating state of millions in the latter part of the '40s. Peel and Trevelyan among others under Queen Victoria's direction attempted to assist the Irish while keeping down costs, and the corrupt and mismanaged whole as Coogan sums up "was a microcosm" of how the island was governed under the colonial power of the 19th century.

When these schemes ran aground, the workhouses (chapter eight) left an awful legacy in the Irish psyche and its landscape. As Coogan relates, in one of his typical asides bringing in current affairs, even in the past decade the reluctance or refusal of some political entities to commemorate the Famine shows the "{s}ensitivity regarding Anglo-Irish relationships." He pays attention to the plight of the young as well as old housed in appalling conditions, and reminds us of the inhumanity that marked many who survived to emigrate or return to poverty, perhaps shunned by neighbors now as unclean after their release from "the last places of resort" intended "for the destitute only."

The Quakers to their credit helped relieve with food and care, but sectarian rivalries poisoned Protestant efforts derided by Catholics as proselytizing. Chapter Nine documents the battle as Vincentian priests countered with parish missions the attempts of other Christians to establish rival denominations to overturn "Romanism" under the guise of a hidden agenda. This intricate feuding, of course, helped connect Catholicism with nationalism even more deeply, as converts from the rosary to the Bible, so to speak, were ostracized in the small towns and communities where most Irish Catholics survived.

Who paid for Irish poverty? The peasants, via the taxes due to landlords who had to fund by property the relief efforts? Or, the workhouses, where no "outdoor relief" outside their walls was permitted? This contention in chapter ten sets up a Poor Law Extension Act. Landlords understandably if not always fairly (some did help and tried to do what they could) were targeted by the natives as blameworthy for the awful conditions of the past few years. Coogan tips more blame to the Crown.

Divine Providence, some leaders argued, coupled with a disdain for the improvident, papist, and brutal Irish peasantry, meted a just punishment on behalf of Protestant Britain. Laissez-faire policies met another rebellion, attempted in 1848 by the Young Ireland movement, and in this year of change and threat over much of the Western world, it failed. "English benevolence" was at a low point.

By 1848, after hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions sought to escape. The landlords under the Poor Law had been charged with increased rates to care for their destitute tenants. So, landlords, emboldened by the Crown's own advice via the Whigs, encouraged emigration. Unrest grew, desperation deepened. Soon, Liverpool, Canada and the U.S. found their ports overloaded with the starving, the sick, the dying, and the dead. Chapter Eleven dips into the highlights of this dramatic event. It's sketchier than other sections as it's such a large topic, but it provides an overview for those new to this.

As a journalist, Coogan's well placed to judge publicity. Chapter Twelve takes on "The PR of Famine." Akin to the stage Irishmen always willing to be hired to grace a play in the West End, Coogan notes how the Irish contributed to their own stereotyping as yahoos and gorillas in the pages of "Punch." How the Whigs managed to control the spin on the Famine relief and keeping the Irish in their role as designated simians and as grateful servants of the Queen (depending on the article) reminds readers of the ease with which the press has manipulated public opinion on Irish affairs for a long time. Coogan in a rambling but justifiable aside looks at how historical revisionists, wishing to accommodate in the 1990s a Britain in the wake of the peace process not to be offended, also colluded in this enterprise as "a certain colonial cringe."

Finally, too brief an epilogue directs the reader to the aftermath. Land reform and more revolt followed, and emigration accelerated. Psychologically, "learned helplessness" may have worsened the prevalence of not only delayed marriages but mental illness and schizophrenia attributed to rural Ireland with its high rates of bachelors and spinsters. (I note that this topic is contested in academia and needs more context than the penultimate paragraph in the advance copy reviewed.) This study, while favoring a top-down approach as it looks at policy from the London perspective, balances it when the record exists by listening to the bit players. It's a helpful short overview of a complicated and still debated theme.

Appendices show some documents from the Crown. The photos in the final version to come were not present, although an index would be advisable. Endnotes show the sources drawn upon but no separate works cited. It remains, as often with Coogan's works, a slightly idiosyncratic approach as he likes to step into the proceedings and as this moves them now and then forward 170 or so years, this can be quirky. However, this also shows the relevance of the strands and threads he pursues, if more loosely than a conventional historical survey. All in all, to nearly cite a cliche, those not killed off by the potato blight and its impacts turned out stronger as a nation, in Coogan's conclusion.



The Famine Plot

John Murphy with a review of Tim Pat Coogan's The Famine Plot. It initially featured on his own blog on 25th September 2012.




The subtitle plays into conspiracy theory, a melodramatic touch calculated to attract readers to what's a familiar saga for many who know Irish history. So, how justified is "England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy" by "Ireland's best-known historian" according to his byline?

I read this soon after John Kelly's "The Graves Are Walking" which places the "Great Hunger" of the late 1840s in contexts of Europe, North America, as well as Britain regarding its similarities and differences to other famines. Kelly expands the story to show how emigration, privation, and policy combined to bring a near-worst-case scenario to millions of Irish.

Tim Pat Coogan takes the side of the native against the imperialist. His preface compares the Famine with today's austerity imposed upon the Irish Republic, and notes the personal afflictions endured by his fellow citizens--at least where the Irish again have to depend on charity from abroad. Coogan advances the genocidal definition of what happened in the mid-19th century, and he shows in the first chapter about the conditions of his ancestors how his paternal townlands in Co Kilkenny reveal in the archived "Great Book" the appeals of the tenants to their absentee landlord. Throughout, I was impressed by how Coogan navigates between the big explanation and the local detail garnered from such records and scholarship. He has an eye for the detail, such as a Mayo priest's reticent acknowledgement of "a very interesting woman" given that sexual matters were not discussed.

The second main chapter looks at the background, full of "multilayered demonology" as faction fighting, sectarian rivalry, and the repression after the 1798 rebellion struck fear deeper in the minds of the natives. Poor law relief and the Victorian ameliorative attempts to fix what was wrong with the Irish according to the English show in chapter three the responses habitual and experimented by the British Crown to handle what it feared in Malthusian terms as overpopulation and as mass emigration (to England). Relief was seen as helping the poor to survive and so as to procreate even more peasants.

Coogan turns from the masterminds to the "chief actors in the drama. There were, of course, millions of bit players but their lines were not listened to and echoed only in graveyards." Daniel O'Connell, Sir Robert Peel, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Lord John Russell, Disraeli: well-known names who sought to solve the predicament as the potato crop failed. Tory and Whig debated, the Corn Law ironically passed even as another Coercion Bill was implemented for Ireland. Most MPs did not want to spend money on the ungrateful Irish peasants, the subterfuge of party politics aside.

How much money would be spent depended on grain sent over. Indian corn (hominy grits) was notoriously hard to digest. Crops kept failing, workhouses and public works projects meant to keep the poor fed by having them build roads to nowhere met with predictable despair by the natives. As chapters five with evictions and six with work schemes demonstrate, such conditions exacerbated the deteriorating state of millions in the latter part of the '40s. Peel and Trevelyan among others under Queen Victoria's direction attempted to assist the Irish while keeping down costs, and the corrupt and mismanaged whole as Coogan sums up "was a microcosm" of how the island was governed under the colonial power of the 19th century.

When these schemes ran aground, the workhouses (chapter eight) left an awful legacy in the Irish psyche and its landscape. As Coogan relates, in one of his typical asides bringing in current affairs, even in the past decade the reluctance or refusal of some political entities to commemorate the Famine shows the "{s}ensitivity regarding Anglo-Irish relationships." He pays attention to the plight of the young as well as old housed in appalling conditions, and reminds us of the inhumanity that marked many who survived to emigrate or return to poverty, perhaps shunned by neighbors now as unclean after their release from "the last places of resort" intended "for the destitute only."

The Quakers to their credit helped relieve with food and care, but sectarian rivalries poisoned Protestant efforts derided by Catholics as proselytizing. Chapter Nine documents the battle as Vincentian priests countered with parish missions the attempts of other Christians to establish rival denominations to overturn "Romanism" under the guise of a hidden agenda. This intricate feuding, of course, helped connect Catholicism with nationalism even more deeply, as converts from the rosary to the Bible, so to speak, were ostracized in the small towns and communities where most Irish Catholics survived.

Who paid for Irish poverty? The peasants, via the taxes due to landlords who had to fund by property the relief efforts? Or, the workhouses, where no "outdoor relief" outside their walls was permitted? This contention in chapter ten sets up a Poor Law Extension Act. Landlords understandably if not always fairly (some did help and tried to do what they could) were targeted by the natives as blameworthy for the awful conditions of the past few years. Coogan tips more blame to the Crown.

Divine Providence, some leaders argued, coupled with a disdain for the improvident, papist, and brutal Irish peasantry, meted a just punishment on behalf of Protestant Britain. Laissez-faire policies met another rebellion, attempted in 1848 by the Young Ireland movement, and in this year of change and threat over much of the Western world, it failed. "English benevolence" was at a low point.

By 1848, after hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions sought to escape. The landlords under the Poor Law had been charged with increased rates to care for their destitute tenants. So, landlords, emboldened by the Crown's own advice via the Whigs, encouraged emigration. Unrest grew, desperation deepened. Soon, Liverpool, Canada and the U.S. found their ports overloaded with the starving, the sick, the dying, and the dead. Chapter Eleven dips into the highlights of this dramatic event. It's sketchier than other sections as it's such a large topic, but it provides an overview for those new to this.

As a journalist, Coogan's well placed to judge publicity. Chapter Twelve takes on "The PR of Famine." Akin to the stage Irishmen always willing to be hired to grace a play in the West End, Coogan notes how the Irish contributed to their own stereotyping as yahoos and gorillas in the pages of "Punch." How the Whigs managed to control the spin on the Famine relief and keeping the Irish in their role as designated simians and as grateful servants of the Queen (depending on the article) reminds readers of the ease with which the press has manipulated public opinion on Irish affairs for a long time. Coogan in a rambling but justifiable aside looks at how historical revisionists, wishing to accommodate in the 1990s a Britain in the wake of the peace process not to be offended, also colluded in this enterprise as "a certain colonial cringe."

Finally, too brief an epilogue directs the reader to the aftermath. Land reform and more revolt followed, and emigration accelerated. Psychologically, "learned helplessness" may have worsened the prevalence of not only delayed marriages but mental illness and schizophrenia attributed to rural Ireland with its high rates of bachelors and spinsters. (I note that this topic is contested in academia and needs more context than the penultimate paragraph in the advance copy reviewed.) This study, while favoring a top-down approach as it looks at policy from the London perspective, balances it when the record exists by listening to the bit players. It's a helpful short overview of a complicated and still debated theme.

Appendices show some documents from the Crown. The photos in the final version to come were not present, although an index would be advisable. Endnotes show the sources drawn upon but no separate works cited. It remains, as often with Coogan's works, a slightly idiosyncratic approach as he likes to step into the proceedings and as this moves them now and then forward 170 or so years, this can be quirky. However, this also shows the relevance of the strands and threads he pursues, if more loosely than a conventional historical survey. All in all, to nearly cite a cliche, those not killed off by the potato blight and its impacts turned out stronger as a nation, in Coogan's conclusion.



9 comments:

  1. This is a really good review. Ill probably buy this book based on it.

    The PR of famine chapter sounds quite interesting; manufacturing consent within the public to literally ethnically cleanse by starvation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a part of our history that has been written and sung about ad nauseum,which is no bad thing. I believe we need to remember that dreadful time as we do the period of the hunger strikes,to ensure that we as a nation do not allow our people every again to become pawns in the greedy ambitions of others where one mans misery is anothers opportunity,when we disregard the disgusting images and thuggish stories of our people portrayed by propaganda rags like punch at that time we can find acts of kindness and humanity and bravery in the face of such adversity,that would be hard to find anywhere else on this planet,maybe this is the possibly the seed that Tim Pat Coogans conclusion refers to as turning us into a stronger nation, I like Coogans previous works so I shall get my hands on this one and read it while out and about on the bóthar na ocras on the shores of Lough Melvin

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  3. Irelands mass graves r the saddest part of our history imo.
    @ BB agreed - this was brill review... definitely will get me claws on this book. I remember my mother getting all distressed reading one of the more insightful books first published aeons ago on the ‘famine’ (in a series of letters) the title of the book eludes me... Eating the bark off the trees they were and grass she told me – horror come on me.

    I also remember growing up with of plates of leftover food/endless bowls of vegetable water clogging up the old fridge as my mother could not bear to waste anything... Meals out of leftover meals out of meals etc I wore two sizes too big shoes to school for a year and a half – Dad carefully stuffed them with newspaper so they fitted me feet. I cursed him!

    Being poor is like a monkey on yer fukkin back 24/7 as the grotesque, bloated, greed infested, wealthy fart, burp and stomp their way thru this life.

    RE: Psychologically, "learned helplessness" may have worsened the prevalence of not only delayed marriages but mental illness and schizophrenia attributed to rural Ireland with its high rates of bachelors and spinsters. (I note that this topic is contested in academia and needs more context than the penultimate paragraph in the advance copy reviewed.)

    Nah screw academia – it is true and well known fact that rampant lonliness and mental illnesses esp. schizophrenia followed the devastations... All that fragmentation/ loss of clan continuity/socializing and cultural structures/embedded knowing of who one is could only end up in mental illnesses on ppl. Interestingly schizophrenia in itself is a radical fragmentation of a persons psyche. The whole fabric of a nation was torn to shreds really.

    In a modern context one only has to look at Ulster and mental health stats to see generational impact of the troubles– trickle down effect/ptsd/suicide etc.

    @ marty yes i don’t think it is a bad thing remembering in song, memorials and such because if they did it once they will do it again... just in different ways....

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  4. You think you were hard done by Mary hon ,our clothes were got from the charity shops I went to school dressed as a cross between a German soldier and a RAF man.but on a serious note hon there must have been a great degree of post traumatic stress by those who survived and the feelings of guilt that is associated with such a traumatic experience, which as you say carried on down the generations,our parents made frugal into an art form,like Bloody Sunday, the Hunger strikes and the great hunger these were all preventable deaths,the potato blight was a natural disaster but like Englands overall attitude to the Irish,human life meant little.so therefore as has already been said,much has been written about that period but even so works like this keeps it in our consciousness and like the brits say lest we forget.

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  5. Sounds a interesting book. I will give it a spin, it will be interesting to where the author lays the blame on the conditions of the poor Irish. Will it be simply be the british, the protestant, the Irish trading class, weather, or a mixture of them all. One thing is for cetain, History in Ireland is pretty much a nightmare for the poor. I definately got off light, in relation to previous generations and it aint no fairytale now, by any stretch of the imagination. I suppose that is one of the benefits of a debt society and the availability to push back our debt to future generations. I wonder will they curse us for our non sustainable consumerism and pursuit of "debt wealth". Back then is was simple survival, not many choices about it either, whereas today there seems to be too many consumer choices,limited time and the option to live on hire purchase. In ways it is a good thing, but it is certainly not sustainable. I hope he illustrates the role of starving the poor by the landlords, they carry equal contribution of the blame. Today, you see it, right through the property industry with high rents. Free Market rental value of property manufactured by landlords, the media, surveyors, estate agents and soon the housing associations in the private sector in the north. People are emigrating because there is little opportunity for people who played by the rules, got a trade, education and in debt to do so, only to be offered low wages, underemployment, unemployment while the poiical in crowd sit happy enough up in stormont. For example, why did Peter robinson son, steps down from political life to embark a career in communication. Maybe he has eyes on being a political advisor for Peter to the scale of up to £90K in communication and take care of all the publicity and advertising for the party. If the DUP and their stormount pro right allies got their way we would be back in these days again. Stormount has no answer to the economic situation, they are on the pigs back at the expense of us, maybe not a lot has changed really if you look at it..

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  6. Growing up in Boston in an Irish American enclave, I have always found the history of Ireland, the famine and as we call ourselves "The Boston Irish" to be fascinating. I have read books on all three topics.

    My Mother and Fathers side came from Ireland, they came over here during the 1800's. Thus We were products of the famine "An Gorta Mor"

    It was a mixture during my generation, 3/4 were 2nd generation and another quarter of my peers parents were "Off the boat" Our slang for having just come over.

    I find it odd that over in Ireland we are sometimes called perjoratives such as "plastic Paddy" while not understanding that we all come from somewhere.

    In America, though we are born in the US, none of us are generic blank slates. We all came from somewhere. Often the first thing we ask of another person when getting to know them is "What type of name is that"? "where is your family from"? "Is that Irish, polish, Italian"?

    It is through this dance, that we know from where a person s coming from and who they are.

    In 7 days we will have a large parade in South Boston and there will be open houses, food and drink will be shared and we will all share the same history of from whence we came.

    History is a powerful thing. We should never forget our shared history.

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  7. John,

    more good stuff from you. The religious excuse for any sort of atrocity or disaster seems to be ubiquitous: the gays have AIDS inflicted on them because of god's displeasure - the Irish punishment was starvation.

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  8. Anthony ya see what happens when you dont have Mac Donalds or KFC or Pizza Hut,the chinks the Indian or the kebab house,the chippie or old Barney Hughes hard baps!

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  9. Thanks, Anthony and commenters. I admit given the reputation of Tim Pat for his IRA and Troubles tomes I did not bring high expectations to this. But I found it (and John Kelly's "The Graves Are Walking" excellent Famine history last year published--also reviewed on my blog) enlightening. Coogan integrates newer research (the 150th anniversary sparked such) as does Kelly well. It gets beyond the old platitudes and patriotic cant, but it does not dismiss the "invisible hand" at work in mid-19th c. political philosophy and economics that saw Divine Providence and Malthus combining forces to clear the land for fewer tenants and more cattle. (Or was it vice versa?)

    ReplyDelete