Podcast: The Great Famine in Ireland with Padraic X. Scanlon

Padraic X. Scanlan joins Frank Armstrong to discuss his book Rot: A History of the Irish Famine, which explores the modernity of Ireland’s experience with potato cultivation, culminating in the arrival of the dreaded blight phytophthora infestans in 1845.

He reveals how Ireland became the guinea pig for British colonialism of the late nineteenth century, aspects of which linger to this day. Thus, the staggering inequality, pervasive debt, outrageous rent-gouging, precarious employment, and vulnerability to changes in commodity prices that torment so many in the twenty-first century were rehearsed in the Irish countryside before the potato failed.

Frank previously reviewed the book: https://cassandravoices.com/history/the-deep-and-inveterate-root-of-social-evil/

Episode Credits:

Host: Frank Armstrong

Music: Loafing Heroes – ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com

Produced by Massimiliano Galli – https://www.massimilianogalli.com

Author

  • Frank Armstrong

    Frank Armstrong graduated with a BA (International) from UCD majoring in history, during which time he spent a year at the University of Amsterdam on an Erasmus scholarship. He later earned a barrister-at-law degree at the Honorable Society of King’s Inns, and gained a Masters in Islamic Societies and Cultures at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, before taking a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education.
    Prior to setting up Cassandra Voices his writing was published in the Irish Times, the London Magazine, the Dublin Review of Books, Village Magazine, and the Law Society Gazette, among others.
    He is the editor-in-chief of Cassandra Voices.

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