Great Irish Famine

This outline of the theoretical and historical parameters of my recently published Famine Irish and the American Racial State synthesizes the work of Nicos Poulantzas, Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and David Theo Goldberg, among others. In so doing, it advances a model of the nineteenth-century US state-in-formation that demonstrates how the legal status of the transatlantic Famine Irish took on greater significance than any cultural differences with White Anglo Saxon Protestant America. Key concepts are explored, such as citizenship, nationality, race, ethnicity, the fractional state, the racial state, and the Black and Green Atlantic. Introduced, moreover, is one of the most important yet most overlooked American patriots of the nineteenth century, Irish-born Archbishop John Hughes of New York, whose efforts helped to mold the corporate Catholic Church into a major ideological apparatus of the US state.

Ireland has always occupied a unique status in Europe. Part colony of England, later Britain, and part collaborator in the Empire project. In this essay I show the many ways in which the population of Ireland participated in the expansion of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, and the roles they played in these newly conquered/settled lands.

This chapter is one of the few publications, which compare two food crises: the Irish famine of 1845-1851 and the Finnish famine of 1866- 1868. It examines their similarities and differences. Both we attributed to natural shocks, which were, however, quite different – potato blight and summer frost respectively.

Argues that archaeological survey and excavation has the potential to provide new images of conditions during the Great Famine that would complement the often over-used contemporary illustrations from The Illustrated London News and identifies, through a non-exhaustive survey of the historical literature, various types of site (including mass graves, workhouses, fever hospitals, soup kitchens, public or private relief schemes, and abandoned villages) that could be examined archaeologically.

The article was republished in 'Internet Journal of Archaeology in Ireland', 1 (2000), http://www.ijai.supanet.com/vol1/tgf/2.htm (Website now defunct). It was then blogged by Robert M. Chapple, archaeologist, at http://rmchapple.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/archaeology-of-great-famine-time-for.html (posted 23 June 2012). Uploaded document is of this version.

En los antiguos mitos históricos irlandeses se destaca la estrecha relación existente entre Eire (Irlanda) y España. En la Historiae Britonun, escrita por un monje irlandés llamado Nennius hacia el año (930), se afirma que los Brigantios, habitantes del sur de Irlanda, proceden de los tres hijos de Breogan, un guerrero llegado de España.
Desde la más remota antigüedad hasta el siglo XVII Irlanda fue un país de clanes (thuath), en los que se agrupaban las familias (Tyllu) de los descendientes (sliocht) de un antepasado común, más los incorporados por matrimonio y por cooptación, constituyendo la Fine o “los de la casa” que se conocían por adoptar todos como patronímico el nombre del clan.
Es de destacar que los escudos elaborados a partir de la Independencia, no siguen la rebuscada heráldica inglesa, habiendo abandonado las Crest (Crestas), Supporters  (Tenantes), Coronets (Coronas), Comportment (Terraza), Banners (Guiones) y Pennons (Pendones), todos ellos propios de la heráldica inglesa y por lo tanto rechazados por los modernos irlandeses. Su heráldica es más sobria y menos abigarrada que la británica. Muchas veces el dibujo de los escudos se limita al campo del mismo y otras llevan un yelmo adiestrado y cerrado, con sus correspondientes lambrequines.

Bu makale Sultan Abdülmecid'in İrlanda'nın Büyük Açlık döneminin zirvesinde (1847) İrlanda'ya yapmış olduğu yardımına dair üretilen tarih anlatıları örneği ve benzeri örneklerin eleştirel incelemesi üzerinden, profesyonel tarih yazma işinin ürünü tarih yazımında, tarihsel vukuat, kişi ve kurumlara "iyilik, cömertlik, yardımseverlik" vs. etik değerleri biçmenin olanaksızlığını tartışmaktadır.

Makalenin iddiası, iyilik ve benzeri evrensel değerlerin popüler ve profesyonel tarih anlatılarında kişi, kurum ve olaylara atfedilmesinin, güncel politik gayeler ve yayın kapitalizminin arz-talep dengesi doğrultusunda gerçekleştirildiği, şahıs, kurum ve olaylara biçilen iyilik vs. yargılamasının güncel politik ihtiyaçlar ve medya ve yayın kapitalizminin kâr motivasyonu sayesinde yaygınlaştırıldığı, popülerleştirildiği ve bu yapılırken de anlatıların sıklıkla belgeleri çarpıtma, efsane ve söylentilerle süsleme, bu efsaneleştirilmiş vukuatı politik ihtiyaçlara binaen tekrar tekrar yeni versiyonlarla  yeniden üretme yollarına başvurulduğudur.

Özetle, tarihten iyilik çıkmaz; çıkartılsa da o iyilikten bize bir hayır çıkmaz. Özellikle de "post-truth" dünyasının politik sonuçlarıyla sınandığımız günümüz dünyasında tarihçinin sorumluluğu belki her zamankinden daha fazla tarihsel gerçekliğin izini sürmek olmalıdır. Her ne kadar  gerçekliğe ulaşması imkansız bir hedef olsa da...

The postwar famine in the USSR has received scarce attention in both post‑Soviet and Western historiography. Based on newly disclosed archival materials from the former civil police and party in Chişinău and Moscow, this article focuses on the food riots from Soviet Moldavia on the eve of the 1946‑1947 famine. Out  of 30 food riots in the Spring 1946 registered in the Moldavian SSR, 18 were dominated by women (called bab’y bunty by Lynne Viola, 1996). The author tries to understand the agency and contingency in the outbreak of the food riots as well as the public and hidden transcript related to the way the Soviet regime tried to deal with earlier signals of the famine. The larger question to be raised is why people resist to food policies at certain moments of food crises and not at  all in some others. P.S: This is the pre-print version.

Paul McNulty is convinced that genealogy provides a gateway not only to local and family history but also to national history. He supports this assertion through the study of the Anglo-Norman Lynches who settled in Galway. It was an inspired choice because the Lynches left behind a legacy of involvement in Irish society from their arrival with Strongbow in 1169, their settlement in Galway and Mayo until their gradual withdrawal from Ireland in the 20th century. Their progress is charted by reference to their dominance of the Galway mayoralty until their expulsion from the city by Cromwell in 1652. Thereafter they settled in the countryside of Galway and Mayo with the support of the aristocratic de Burghs and buoyed by the status of their baronetcy dating from 1634 up to the current 17th Baronet. The author’s case is bolstered by reference to ethnicity charts based on genetic profiling, ancestral charts, a fragment of the 1821 Census, and by the rich legacy of epic stories celebrated in song, stage and screen throughout the course of Irish history.

In comparative perspective, these excerpts of my M.A. thesis show how Ukraine and Ireland have developed distinctive forms of representation to depict, describe, remember, explain or cover up their national famine catastrophe (newspaper articles, poems, novels, plays, paintings, films, famine memorials, witness statements, photographies, bodily practices). Furthermore, the thesis argues with the help of Adorno und Steiner that famine experiences cannot be compared to the Shoah experience or other forms of genocidal violence because the hunger death is, inter alia, (1) representable, (2) highly aestiticised and (3) repeated in Ukrainian and Irish culture; instead it suggests to recognise famine experiences as a unique form of suffering.

This paper presents evidence in favor of identifying a shipwreck off Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as Mountaineer, a British-built paddle steamer that sank in 1852. It discusses the history of Mountaineer from its launching in 1835, focusing on major trends and events in mid-19th-century European history in which Mountaineer played a part. It also reviews archaeological research on the shipwreck site. It concludes by noting correlations between the known details of the machinery and construction of Mountaineer with features of the wreck site, also discussing issues with the identification and aims for future research.

Here is the text of a talk that I presented at The American Conference for Irish Studies. This 2018 edition of the conference lasted a week with my own talk taking place on the 21st of June. "Environments of Irish Studies" was the theme, and ‘Seán na Cille Mac Criomhthain (1875-1955) and collective memory continuities with life beyond the Gaeltacht’ was the title of my talk. It involved a comparative discussion of a Gaeltacht storyteller's attitude to his immediate environment as well as to his perception of environments further afield. One should keep in mind that the term 'environment' in this context is understood as per its widest possible meaning.

An advanced draft of the article '‘”Tis hard to argue starvation into quiet”: Protest and Resistance, 1846-47’, published recently in Enda Delaney & Breandán Mac Suibhne (eds) Ireland’s Great Famine and Popular Politics (New York: Routledge), pp. 10-33.

It  is  a  testimony  to  the  power  and  importance  of  traditional  music  and  songs, and  remarkably  so  in  Ireland, that illiterate people on the threshold  of exile or death could  find  the  strength  to  express  their  misfortunes  in  a  poetic  and  elaborate  form.
This  article  proposes  to  examine  songs  dating  from  the  Great  Irish  Famine  in  order to  investigate  their  validity  as  faithful  representations  of  History  and  understand why  they  are so  elusive today, whether in  public  performances  or in private circles.

I exposed this paper at the Conference 'Current Issues of Social Sciences and Humanities', which took place at the Department of Ethics and Aesthetics of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the National University of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, on Friday, 29 April 2022. The paper has been published in the Proceedings of the Conference, pp. 8-20. My principal aim in this analysis is to describe Sen’s meditation as a teaching against fatalism, indifference, resignation and inaction: Sen’s criticism of these attitudes aims to uncover the deep roots of these attitudes themselves, since these attitudes conceal precise responsibilities. Sen fights both in economics and in ethics against every form of concealing, under the idea of the unavoidability of nature, failures due to human mistakes. Unavoidable destiny proves to be, actually, as not so unavoidable as someone would like to present it. For instance, Sen’s opinion that famines are not a natural, but a social phenomenon aims to uncover all the attempts to present famines as something unavoidable, in relation to which the only solution is resignation. Sen’s intention is clearly to say that famines have precise responsibilities, and that those who present famines as natural phenomenon want to conceal their own responsibilities for the insurgence of famines. Governments try to blame on nature the cause of catastrophes, whereas the causes of social catastrophes are to be connected to the inefficiency of governments. In particular, I would like to concentrate my exposition on the following themes:
• Sen’s criticism of the thesis of food shortages as the (only) cause of famines.
• Famines happening when there is no political will that want to fight against the factors bringing to the famines. Persons, and not nature, are responsible for the occurring of famines.
• Sen’s defense of democracy as a system which is compatible with economic growth against all those who considers democracy as an obstacle to economic growth.
Keywords Sen, famine, starvation, Ricardo, fatalism, entitlement, freedom, democracy, development

West Kerry storyteller Seán Mac Criomhthain (1873-1955) was born almost a quarter-century after the Great Irish Famine. Nevertheless, his upbringing occurred in a context which included both overt and covert references to the kinds of sectarian divisions which initially had contributed to the famine, and which later were entrenched by it. Sectarian division in the Irish context expressed itself primarily via denominational attachment, and to a lesser extent, along linguistic lines. Such divisions were explored across the country through traditional lore and through song; and in the specific repertoire of Seán Mac Criomhthain, through the medium of a mellifluous 'brand' of Munster Irish for which the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula has since become renowned. This article attempts to describe attitudes to sectarian division in the evidence of Mac Criomhthain's repertoire. With extensive reference to a composition translated for the first time to English, it will be argued that concerns of immediate social pragmatism are afforded much greater importance than those of denominational or linguistic attachments.
See the rest of the articles from this particular edition of the journal at this link: https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/scp/scp-overview.xml?tab_body=latestIssueToc-68822

The Choctaw Nation and the Irish people have a complex and nuanced relationship that began in the early settlement history of North America. However, it is their mutual histories of displacement and recovery that spurred a historical moment that is the focus of this paper.

In many of the best known depictions of An Gorta Mór in Irish poetry and drama, women appear as tropes: the mother, the virgin, Ireland herself. This paper aims to examine the ways these tropes serve to both depict and to silence the women of Ireland and their actual experiences during the Famine and the ways that women writers have worked to give voice to those silenced. Through examining the work of major women writers including Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and  Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin the issue of silence is shown to represent not only the silence of women but also the silence of women’s experiences of An Gorta Mór. In Irish women’s writing the female figure still serves to convey the suffering of the Irish people through colonial oppression but not as a static trope.

Instead women are given voice and agency; where they cannot have agency, their silence and their absence is acknowledged with the essential awareness that no present authoritative voice can truly “speak” for those silenced. Boland sees the intersection of traditional symbolic ideals of “woman” and women’s actual presence in history as essential paths that must be conjoined in order to form a more inclusive history, one that allows the voice of women to be heard. Instead of working in opposition, these traditional tropes can be reclaimed and come to serve a more powerful narrative: one that attempts to  allow the silenced to speak.

Proposal of Paper for hybrid conference "The Holodomor in Academic and Public Debates: Ukrainian and European Perspectives"; 17.-18.09.2021 in Berlin; Deutsch-Ukrainische Historikerkommission / Німецько-українська комісія істориків. The keynote speech, as well as the whole conference, will be streamed on the Commission’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk2Bag_lfzHdH8jm_3n3skw.

Analyse the socio-political background to the famine or the Celtic Tiger to show if things could have been done to prevent what happened subsequently. The Great Hunger – The effect of immoral and unethical standards and decisions of the British Government and social and political leaders in Ireland which led directly to the decimation of the population