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Rot

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What to expect

A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster.

“Vigorous and engaging.” —Fintan O’Toole, The New Yorker

In 1845, European potato fields were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million dead and forcing millions more to emigrate. In Rot, historian Padraic X. Scanlan offers a new account of the Great Famine, showing how Ireland’s place in 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. And when famine struck, relief efforts were premised on the idea that only free markets and wage labor could save the Irish.

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.

Critics Review

“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
Author Padraic X. Scanlan
Narrator Stephen Hogan
Duration 10 hours and 20 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781668651025
Format Audiobook
Publisher Hachette Audio
Genre Colonialism and imperialism, European history, Politics and government
Availability US

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