Ah, St. Patrick’s Day is upon us, when Chicago turns its river green for the day and New York closes down Fifth Avenue and parade-watchers wear Kiss Me, I’m Irish buttons. It is easy to forget the terrible tragedy that first brought so many Irish to America in the mid–19th century, when, in 1845, a fungus-like water mold devastated potato crops across Europe. But nowhere was the destruction so severe as it was in Ireland, where millions relied on potatoes both as the main staple of their diet and as a source of income. In a brilliant and engaging analysis, Padraic X. Scanlan places the Great Famine, which killed at least a million people and caused millions more to flee the country, firmly in the context of British imperialism and London’s badly conceived plan to use the crisis as a way to turn an agrarian society into a capitalist one.
There are valuable lessons here not just about the past but for the future as well, as the world copes with poorly treated farm laborers and ecological disasters. It is too strong to say that the United Kingdom treated some of their subjects as if they wore Starve Me, I’m Irish buttons, but it is undeniable that the shameful behavior by the English back then became a trauma that dramatically shaped the Irish. Rot is narrative history at its best.
