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A review by librarianonparade
The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly
4.0
The Irish famine is one of the most tragic and contentious periods in the long and often tragic and contentious history of Anglo-Irish relations. Talk about the famine still causes controversy and outrage today, more than 150 years later; and the mass exodus of Irish citizens fleeing the desperate situation at home has had a lasting influence on the populations of Ireland, Britain, Canada and the United States. One could quite reasonably argue that the Irish famine went further towards creating the modern state of Ireland than almost anything else in its history.
'God sent the potato blight but England sent the famine' is the traditional, and most certainly the Irish, view of the great famine of the nineteenth century - and as John Kelly points out in this admirably even-handed book this view is not entirely without merit. The British government of the time was guilty of a mass of faults and failings when it came to Ireland - to quote, 'bureaucratic delays and incompetence, shipping shortages, legislative measures and tax policy, cowardice on the part of some officials and stupidity on the part of others' - but the Irish famine was never the result of any kind of intentional policy of genocide or even wilful and deliberate neglect. The government in fact did embark upon an unprecedented programme of emergency relief: government provision of food, an extension of the poorhouse and soup kitchen scheme, funding of public labour works to employ the poor, charity drives - but in too many cases it proved to be too little and too late, and therefore cannot excuse the disappearance of nearly a third of the Irish population through starvation, disease and emigration.
The famine was a perfect storm of circumstances: the potato blight; poor weather; a worldwide food shortage; an Irish peasantry almost entirely dependent on the potato crop and living in a barter economy with almost no access to ready cash; the lack of development of the Irish infrastructure which meant there were no rural shops to supplement the potato diet and few links between town and country to facilitate emergency distribution of relief; the greed and avarice of a home-grown Irish merchant class who were more concerned with protecting their profit margins than feeding their fellow citizens; an Anglo-Irish aristocracy with no qualms about evicting tenants in order to lower their poor rates; and yes, a British government who held the Irish in contempt and who in many cases looked on the famine as an opportunity to 'remake' Ireland in England's image.
It's a heart-rending period in history, and John Kelly tugs at all the heartstrings. He succeeds in presenting both views of the famine - the official government and bureaucratic records alongside the stories of a people barefoot and half-naked, diseased and desperate, greeting inevitable death with a resignation only seen in people beyond all hope. The need to blame someone, anyone, is all too understandable, reading this book, and the Victorian government deserves to shoulder the lion's share, it not entirely all, of the blame.
'God sent the potato blight but England sent the famine' is the traditional, and most certainly the Irish, view of the great famine of the nineteenth century - and as John Kelly points out in this admirably even-handed book this view is not entirely without merit. The British government of the time was guilty of a mass of faults and failings when it came to Ireland - to quote, 'bureaucratic delays and incompetence, shipping shortages, legislative measures and tax policy, cowardice on the part of some officials and stupidity on the part of others' - but the Irish famine was never the result of any kind of intentional policy of genocide or even wilful and deliberate neglect. The government in fact did embark upon an unprecedented programme of emergency relief: government provision of food, an extension of the poorhouse and soup kitchen scheme, funding of public labour works to employ the poor, charity drives - but in too many cases it proved to be too little and too late, and therefore cannot excuse the disappearance of nearly a third of the Irish population through starvation, disease and emigration.
The famine was a perfect storm of circumstances: the potato blight; poor weather; a worldwide food shortage; an Irish peasantry almost entirely dependent on the potato crop and living in a barter economy with almost no access to ready cash; the lack of development of the Irish infrastructure which meant there were no rural shops to supplement the potato diet and few links between town and country to facilitate emergency distribution of relief; the greed and avarice of a home-grown Irish merchant class who were more concerned with protecting their profit margins than feeding their fellow citizens; an Anglo-Irish aristocracy with no qualms about evicting tenants in order to lower their poor rates; and yes, a British government who held the Irish in contempt and who in many cases looked on the famine as an opportunity to 'remake' Ireland in England's image.
It's a heart-rending period in history, and John Kelly tugs at all the heartstrings. He succeeds in presenting both views of the famine - the official government and bureaucratic records alongside the stories of a people barefoot and half-naked, diseased and desperate, greeting inevitable death with a resignation only seen in people beyond all hope. The need to blame someone, anyone, is all too understandable, reading this book, and the Victorian government deserves to shoulder the lion's share, it not entirely all, of the blame.