Famine and Land in Ireland and India, 1845–1880
James Caird and the Political Economy of Hunger
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8115714 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Gray (0000-0002-0738-8701, Queen's University Belfast, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 193-215 |
| Publication date | 2006-02-24 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x05005091 |
| OpenAlex | W2138300352 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
The perception of Ireland and India as ‘zones of famine’ led many nineteenth-century observers to draw analogies between these two troublesome parts of the British empire. This article investigates this parallel through the career of James Caird (1816–92), and specifically his interventions in the latter stages of both the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50, and the Indian famines of 1876–9. Caird is best remembered as the joint author of the controversial dissenting minute in the Indian famine commission report of 1880; this article locates the roots of his stance in his previous engagements with Irish policy. Caird's interventions are used to track the trajectory of an evolving ‘Peelite’ position on famine relief, agricultural reconstruction, and land reform between the 1840s and 1880s. Above all in both cases it involved a critique of a laissez-faire dogmatism – whether manifest in the ‘Trevelyanism’ of 1846–50 or the Lytton–Temple system of 1876–9
Development economics · Dissenting opinion · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Famine · Foreign policy · Irish · Isolationism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.42 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2007 - 2024 (18) |
| Highly cited | No |