Irish Famines before and after the Great Hunger ed. by Christine Kinealy and Gerard Moran (review)

Reviewed by: Irish Famines before and after the Great Hunger ed. by Christine Kinealy and Gerard Moran Michael de Nie (bio) Irish Famines before and after the Great Hunger, edited by Christine Kinealy and Gerard Moran; pp. xxxviii + 352. Hamden, Connecticut: Quinnipiac University Press, 2020, $25.00. Reviewing collected volumes can be tricky. At their best, such books offer a series of strong, interconnected essays that speak to one another and collectively move forward their field of inquiry. Weaker examples of the genre can be uneven in quality and tone, with chapters that offer relatively few connections to each other or even to the central theme of the book. The volume under review, edited by two well-established scholars of the Great Famine, falls somewhere in the middle of these poles. On the whole, Irish Famines before and after the Great Hunger makes a valuable contribution to the field of Irish famine studies, broadening our understanding and appreciation of subsistence crises in Ireland beyond the now much-studied Great Hunger. The book makes its strongest and most original contributions in regard to three topics in particular: the experiences of famine migrants in Canada, the subsistence crisis of 1879 to 1882 (the “Forgotten Famine”), and the role played by the transatlantic press in famine relief and migration schemes. At the same time, it also contains some essays that feel underdeveloped or loosely tied to the theme. The essays are grouped into five more or less chronological sections, exploring famine and related topics before the Great Hunger, famine migration to Canada, food shortage and emigration from 1879 to 1882, hunger-related topics after 1900, and interpreting and teaching the famine today. Taken together, the essays in the first section usefully illuminate some important continuities in the history of Irish subsistence crises and the contemporary responses, exploring themes such as harvest failure and Ireland’s economic relationship to Britain, debates over relieving immediate distress versus responding to famine with long-term development projects, crime and social relations in the midst of famine, and Irish migrants’ role in creating hybrid cultures in their new homeland. These are solid themes, if somewhat unevenly presented. The following section on Canada and famine migration is rather stronger. For example, Laura J. Smith’s essay on transporting indigent Irish emigrants to Canada traces the dispersal of newly arrived migrants from the ports to Canada’s interior before and during the famine, offering important context for better understanding Irish settlement in the nineteenth century. Essays by Mark McGowan and Jason King both offer new perspectives on the infamous migration experiences of Major Denis Mahon’s tenants from Strokestown, demonstrating through careful research that long-held assumptions about their voyage and Mahon’s behavior are due for revision. King’s essay also illuminates how key elements of the popular memory of these people were formed at the time via the transatlantic press. The essays together offer an excellent case study of how transatlantic flows of migrants and information operated and influenced each other. The next six essays are concerned with the “Forgotten Famine” from 1879 to 1882, focusing in particular on two topics: the American response to Irish distress and James Hack Tuke’s emigration scheme. Harvey Strum’s chapter on the campaign to send an American warship with humanitarian aid to Ireland in 1880 is, like Smith’s, a model of the ideal essay to include in these types of collections—a well-researched, detailed, and cohesive short case study that both speaks to the overall theme of the book and points a way forward for further study. Catherine Shannon’s essay is similarly notable, [End Page 140] examining Land League fundraising campaigns in New England between 1879 and 1882, especially in the context of tours by Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Davitt, and others. As Shannon demonstrates, while the bulk of the funds raised in this period were devoted to the League’s relief fund for suffering tenants, the tours also raised substantial revenue for the League’s political activities, helping to cement the critically important dynamic of Irish-American financial support for nationalist politicians in Ireland. This flow of funds deeply influenced Irish politics and Anglo-Irish relations...

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