Routledge
Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800-1850
Key Metrics
- Joel Mokyr
- Routledge
- Paperback
- 9780415607643
- 9.21 X 6.14 X 0.72 inches
- 1.07 pounds
- Business & Economics > Economic Conditions
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Technical changes in the first half of the nineteenth century led to unprecedented economic growth and capital formation throughout Western Europe; and yet Ireland hardly participated in this process at all. While the Northern Atlantic Economy prospered, the Great Irish Famine of 1845-50 killed a million and a half people and caused hundreds of thousands to flee the country. Why the Irish economy failed to grow, and 'why Ireland starved' remains an unresolved riddle of economic history.
Professor Mokyr maintains that the 'Hungry Forties' were caused by the overall underdevelopment of the economy during the decades which preceded the famine. In Why Ireland Starved he tests various hypotheses that have been put forward to account for this backwardness. He dismisses widespread arguments that Irish poverty can be explained in terms of over-population, an evil land system or malicious exploitation by the British. Instead, he argues that the causes have to be sought in the low productivity of labor and the insufficient formation of physical capital - results of the peculiar political and social structure of Ireland, continuous conflicts between landlords and tenants, and the rigidity of Irish economic institutions.
Mokyr's methodology is rigorous and quantitative, in the tradition of the New Economic History. It sets out to test hypotheses about the causal connections between economic and non-economic phenomena. Irish history is often heavily coloured by political convictions: of Dutch-Jewish origin, trained in Israel and working in the United States. Mokyr brings to this controversial field not only wide research experience but also impartiality and scientific objectivity.
The book is primarily aimed at numerate economic historians, historical demographers, economists specializing in agricultural economics and economic development and specialists in Irish and British nineteenth-century history. The text is, nonetheless, free of technical jargon, with the more complex material relegated to appendixes. Mokyr's line of reasoning is transparent and has been easily accessible and useful to readers without graduate training in economic theory and econometrics since ists first publication in 1983.
Author Bio
Joel Mokyr conducts research on the economic history of Europe, and specializes in the period 1750-1914. His current research is concerned with the understanding of the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies, as well as the impact that industrialization and economic progress have had on economic welfare.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Cliometric Society as well as the British Academy, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei and the Dutch Royal Academy. He has been the President of the Economic History Association, editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, and a co-editor of the Journal of Economic History.
He is currently co-editor of a book series, the Princeton University Press Economic History of the World. He was the 2006 winner of the biennial Heineken Award for History offered by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the winner of the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history.
His latest book is A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy, to be published by Princeton University Press in 2016. He has supervised over forty doctoral dissertations in the departments of Economics and History.
Research Interests
- Geographic Field(s): Modern European History: Britain and Its Empire; Global History
- Thematic Field(s): Economic and Labor History; History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
- Principal Research Interest(s): Economic History
Source: Northwestern University
Videos
No Videos
Community reviews
Write a ReviewNo Community reviews