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The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy

by Tim Pat Coogan


During a Biblical seven years in the middle of the nineteenth century, fully a quarter of Ireland's citizens either perished from starvation or emigrated in what came to be known as Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger. Waves of hungry peasants fled across the Atlantic to the United States, with so many dying en route that it was said, "you could walk dry shod to America on their bodies." In this sweeping history Ireland's best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, tackles the dark history of the Irish Famine and argues that it constituted one of the first acts of genocide. In what "The Boston Globe "calls "his greatest achievement," Coogan shows how the British government hid behind the smoke screen of laissez faire economics, the invocation of Divine Providence and a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign, allowing more than a million people to die agonizing deaths and driving a further million into emigration. Unflinching in depicting the evidence, Coogan presents a vivid and horrifying picture of a catastrophe that that shook the nineteenth century and finally calls to account those responsible.

Shortlisted for the Bord Gáis Irish Book Awards National Book Tokens Nonfiction Book of the Year Award for 2013.

ISBN: 9781137278838

€ 14.99 

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Date of Publication: 25/09/2013

  
Cover of The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy - Tim Pat Coogan - 9781137278838Paperback

The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy also appears in these Categories:

Irish History