Cohn on O Grada, Paping, and Vanhaute, eds., _When the Potato Failed: Causes and Effects of the Last European Subsistence Crisis, 1845-1850_

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Published by EH.NET (November 2007)

Cormac Ó Gráda, Richard Paping, and Eric Vanhaute, editors, _When the 
Potato Failed: Causes and Effects of the Last European Subsistence 
Crisis, 1845-1850_. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007. 342 pp. ¤66 
(paper), ISBN: 978-2-503-51985-2.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Raymond L. Cohn, Department of Economics, 
Illinois State University.


This book consists of fifteen essays, fourteen of which were 
originally given at a conference held in Dublin in December 2003. The 
final essay (actually the first in the volume) is written by the 
editors and provides a comparative perspective of the conference 
findings. The idea of the conference was to encourage research on the 
effects of the potato famine in other European countries, and to 
compare the results to the latest work on the famine in Ireland. The 
editors (located at University College (Dublin), Groningen, and 
Ghent, respectively) claim: "This book is the first to offer a truly 
comprehensive perspective on the causes and the effects of what is 
sometimes considered as the 'last' European subsistence crisis" (17). 
Three of the essays (by Ó Gráda, Mary Daly, and Peter Gray) examine 
aspects of the famine in Ireland and another (by Peter Solar) looks 
at prices throughout Europe at the time. The other ten essays examine 
the famine period in other parts of Europe.

The essays on Ireland and the one by Solar do not break much new 
ground, but they do present a handy review of the latest work by 
experts on the Irish famine. Ó Gráda's article provides an overview 
of the famine in Ireland, and briefly discusses public action, the 
demographic consequences, and post-famine adjustment. Daly's 
contribution examines the government's and landlords' roles and 
describes efforts at the local level in providing famine relief. Gray 
summarizes the (very interesting) debates that occurred in Britain 
concerning whether and how the government should respond. Solar 
presents series on yearly, monthly, and weekly prices and concludes, 
"high prices alone do not make a crisis" (90).

The real contribution of this book is the ten essays relating to the 
other parts of Europe. The famine period is investigated in Highland 
Scotland (by Tim Devine), Flanders (by Vanhaute), the Netherlands (by 
Paping and Vincent Tassenaar), Prussia (by Hans Bass), South Germany 
(by Gunter Mahlerwein), France (two essays, one by Nadine Vivier and 
the other by Jean-Michel Chevet and Ó Gráda), Spain (by Pedro Díaz 
Marín), Denmark (by Ingrid Henriksen), and Sweden (by Carl-Johan 
Gadd).

While one might expect the non-Irish essays to be of uneven quality, 
as usually results from such an endeavor, that is not the case here. 
According to the editors, all of the essays have been "significantly 
revised" since the conference (13). The result is that every paper 
generally addresses the same set of issues. Most importantly, the 
extent and type of crop failure is examined and done so at the 
regional level within each country or area. Thus, the reader is 
introduced to the wide variation in the onset and consequences of the 
crop failures not only between countries but also within each 
country. The papers also examine the demographic consequences, the 
government policy response, and connections to social unrest. In 
general, all of the former issues are more completely investigated 
than the final one. Though a few of the papers examine (and generally 
refute) possible connections between the crop failures and the unrest 
of 1848, the issue is not addressed in many of the other entries.

By the end of the set of essays, it is clear that events in Ireland 
followed a fundamentally different course than elsewhere in Europe. 
Outside of Ireland, extreme famine conditions existed in only a few 
local areas in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Though the 
famine caused about one million deaths in Ireland, only a few hundred 
thousand (at most) died in the much larger population in the rest of 
Europe. One gets the impression -- a point emphasized by a number of 
the authors -- that the period of the potato famine outside of 
Ireland was not very different from any number of other periods of 
bad harvests. Not pleasant by any means, but nowhere near as bad as 
in Ireland. So the issue becomes (with apologies to Joel Mokyr): "Why 
Ireland starved but not many other areas of Europe did."[1] The 
answer is not surprising -- the Irish consumed more potatoes, planted 
potatoes on a larger portion of their available agricultural land, 
suffered crop failures over a longer period of time, and received 
little assistance from the English government. However, the data 
presented in the essays on the other countries make very clear how 
large the differences were between Ireland and the rest of Europe in 
the 1840s.

One factor that will make the essays on the continental countries 
potentially useful for some readers is that each summarizes in 
English a large body of work that has only been published in the 
local language. Since few economic historians speak the language of 
every country covered, these essays provide an excellent summary of 
the current state of research on the period of the 1840s. In covering 
such a restricted time period, however, many of these essays will 
appeal mainly to specialists. For others, an overview of the ideas 
presented in the book can be obtained by reading the excellent 
summary essay by the editors. This essay deserves to read by anyone 
interested in the latest work on the period of the potato famine.

Note:
1. Joel Mokyr, _Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical 
History of the Irish Economy, 1780 1850_. London: George Allen and 
Unwin, paperback edition, 1985.


Raymond L. Cohn is Professor of Economics at Illinois State 
University. He has written extensively on immigration from Europe to 
the United States during the antebellum period and is currently 
finishing a book manuscript on the subject. rlcohn at ilstu.edu.

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