Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
A revelatory 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.
1145933724
Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
A revelatory 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.
27.99 In Stock
Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

by Padraic X. Scanlan

Narrated by Stephen Hogan

Unabridged — 10 hours, 20 minutes

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

by Padraic X. Scanlan

Narrated by Stephen Hogan

Unabridged — 10 hours, 20 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

$27.99
FREE With a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
$0.00

Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime

START FREE TRIAL

Already Subscribed? 

Sign in to Your BN.com Account


Listen on the free Barnes & Noble NOOK app


Related collections and offers

FREE

with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription

Or Pay $27.99

Overview

A revelatory 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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Undoubtedly a history title of the year.”—Wall Street Journal

“A vigorous and engaging new study of the Irish Famine…Above all, Rot reminds us that the Great Hunger was a very modern event, and one shaped by a mindset that is now again in the ascendant.”—Fintan O'Toole, New Yorker

“Comprehensive, elegantly written, and heartbreaking.”—Nation

“A disturbing and insightful account of the Irish famine.”—Financial Times

“A brilliant and engaging analysis…There are valuable lessons here not just about the past but for the future as well…Rot is narrative history at its best.”—Air Mail

“Scanlan has crafted a vivid, colourful narrative that does full justice to the Famine's human horror.”—Irish Independent

“A provocative read.”—Irish Examiner

“An exceptional account of a crippling, long-ago blight… With its stunning wealth of argumentation, Rot delivers a knockout punch.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Lucidly written and well-paced.”—History Today

“A fine history.”—Kirkus

“[Rot] engagingly conveys and analyzes the harrowing history of an abused and colonized people during famine. Will resonate with a broad readership.”—Library Journal

Rot is a book I have longed to read. Framing the Irish Famine within the context of the British empire is revelatory. An incredibly important work.”—Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireworld

“Crisply written and based on an impressive range of contemporary sources, Padraic Scanlan’s Rot is the best kind of historical writing—the kind that makes you want to sit down for a long discussion with the author. British observers saw the Irish famine as a case of a premodern society paying the price of its backwardness. In reality, Scanlan argues, its vulnerability arose because it was a precocious forerunner of the sort of ruthlessly competitive, export-oriented market economy that today blights the lives of millions around the globe. Rot is essential reading for anyone wanting to see Ireland’s traumatic experience placed in an international context.”
 —Sean Connolly, author of On Every Tide

Rot is a moving modern history of the Great Potato Famine. With great insight and impeccable research, Padraic X. Scanlan vividly brings this terrible catastrophe and the stories of its heroes and villains back to life.”—Tyler Anbinder, author of City of Dreams

Rot brilliantly blends economic, social, and environmental history to deliver a stunning new account of one of nineteenth-century Europe’s most shameful tragedies. Padraic Scanlan joins clear-eyed, comprehensive research and analysis to deliver a persuasive indictment of faith in free markets. As illuminating as it is harrowing, Rot is a must-read for anybody interested in the histories of capitalism and empire.”—Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch

Kirkus Reviews

2024-12-24
What was the true cause of Ireland's deadly disaster?

Scanlan, author ofSlave Empire: How Slavery Made Modern Britain, turns his attention to Ireland’s infamous potato blight, or “apocalypse.” Between 1845 and 1851, at least a million people died and more than 1.5 million migrated. The famine, a “complex, ecological, economic, logistical, and political disaster,” he argues, “was a consequence of colonialism.” The newly formed United Kingdom’s press on the Irish economy and its people, which they looked down on, made the potato a precious subsistence staple along with pigs, which were usually sold, and peat. Ireland became a “casualty of modern capitalism at its most corrosive and destructive.” Scanlan neatly chronicles the history of England’s ever-growing Protestant financial exploitation over the “uncivilized” Catholic Ireland’s poor and their tenant farms. Grain, dairy, and meat were exported at very low U.K.-set prices. The country had been subjugated by conquest, colonialism, and capitalism even before the famine made it a nation of debtors and beggars susceptible to subsistence crises and epidemic disease. The potato blight—Phytophthora infestans—struck in 1845 in North America, Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands before striking Ireland in August due to excess moisture and quickly turning into a famine. Scanlan goes into detail discussing the famine’s effect on British politics and its relief measures for Ireland, including offering them maize to buy. By winter 1846-1847, “rural Ireland became a hellscape, shocking and incomprehensible.” The bonds of social life “dissolved.” England’s “public works were shambolic as well as bureaucratic.” The last years of the blight, 1848-1849, were the worst. Starvation and disease surged. Organizations around the world raised funds. Soup kitchens and workhouses proliferated while evictions soared. For England, the Great Famine proved that Ireland was still a “half-civilised colony.”

Shelve this fine history next to Tim Pat Coogan’sThe Famine Plot.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940193753629
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Publication date: 03/11/2025
Edition description: Unabridged
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews