IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ieshis/v42y2015i1p62-75.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Ireland Starved and the Big Issues in Pre-Famine Irish Economic History

Author

Listed:
  • Peter M. Solar

    (Vasalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles)

Abstract

This reflection on Joel Mokyr's Why Ireland Starved discusses the way in which Mokyr addressed three big issues in pre-famine Irish economic history: Why population grew so rapidly, why the Irish were so dependent on the potato and what role British control played in Irish economic development. It suggests that differences among Irish counties were small relative to the differences between Ireland and elsewhere in Europe, hence cross-section analysis within Ireland, Mokyr's preferred method, may not be able to capture the causes of rapid population growth and potato dependence. As for the influence of British control, the way in which seventeenth-century changes in landownership shaped subsequent economic development is neither fully elaborated nor tested empirically.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter M. Solar, 2015. "Why Ireland Starved and the Big Issues in Pre-Famine Irish Economic History," Transfer: Irish Economic and Social History, , vol. 42(1), pages 62-75, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ieshis:v:42:y:2015:i:1:p:62-75
    DOI: 10.7227/IESH.42.1.4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.7227/IESH.42.1.4
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.7227/IESH.42.1.4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ieshis:v:42:y:2015:i:1:p:62-75. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.