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Did the Great Irish Famine Matter?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Kevin O' Rourke
Kevin O' Rourke
Affiliation:
The author is Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.
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Abstract

This article tests the hypothesis that price shocks in international commodity markets would by themselves have led to a fall in agricultural labor demand in rural Ireland in the absence of the Famine. This hypothesis has been used by revisionist historians to argue that the Famine was not a structural break between two distinct eras in Irish economic history. In refuting the hypothesis, this article joins a more recent cliometric tradition that has sought to restore the Famine to its rightful place as a major watershed in nineteenth-century Ireland.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1991

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