In the 1800s, as Britain  became the world's most powerful  industrial empire, Ireland starved.  The Great Famine fractured long-held assumptions about political  economy and 'civilisation', threatening  disorder in Britain. Ireland was  a laboratory for empire, shaping  British ideas about colonisation,  population, ecology and work. 
In Rot, Padraic Scanlan reinterprets  the history of this time and the result  is a revelatory account of Ireland's  Great Famine. In the first half of the  nineteenth century, nowhere in Europe  - or the world  - did the working poor  depend as completely on potatoes as  in Ireland. To many British observers,  potatoes were evidence of a lack of  modernity among the Irish. However,  Ireland before the famine more closely  resembled capitalism's future than  its past. While poverty before and  during the Great Famine was often  blamed on Irish backwardness, it did  in fact stem from the British Empire's  embrace of modern capitalism. 
Uncovering the disaster's roots  in Britain's deep imperial faith  in markets and capitalism, Rot reshapes our understanding of the  Famine and its tragic legacy.




![Manchan, Magan IRISH INTEREST Magan Manchan: Listen to the Land Speak [2022] hardback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/manchan-magan-magan-manchan-listen-to-the-land-speak-2022-hardback-57197364117843_{width}x.jpg?v=1743077146)
![Goggins, David POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY David Goggins: Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds [2018] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/goggins-david-david-goggins-can-t-hurt-me-master-your-mind-and-defy-the-odds-2018-paperback-54040061378899_{width}x.jpg?v=1705507339)

![Keane, John B & Keane, John B. DRAMA John B. Keane: Sive [2009] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/keane-john-b-keane-john-b-john-b-keane-sive-2009-paperback-58292931101011_{width}x.jpg?v=1758904373)