Britain and the empire The Great Irish Famine Essay

Britain and the empire The Great Irish Famine - Essay Example This essay will focus on Christine Kinealy’s findings on the famine, mostly related to the relationship of Britain and Ireland during the years of the famine including relationship of the famine with churches, with monarchy, and the nationalist movement. Ever since the famine occurred in 1845, there have been a number of books and literature works published on it, yet the work of Kinealy has taken the famine literature to another level. Kinealy uses many sources and research materials that were otherwise not used to evaluate the famine. With these sources, she demonstrated another aspect of the famine with the relationship of Ireland and Britain during the famine. She focused on the role of the government and also on the importance of saving lives through private charity. Another aspect which Kinealy focuses on is the food supply which no one had ever discussed before. She talked about how Ireland produced enough food even after the potato blight. It was her work which gave a new vision to the impact of the famine and the aspects which were given least attention. The book is an evaluation of Kinealy’s survey A Death Dealing Famine which she conducted in 1997. Her intention towards this book was not to give a general history, but to examine the famine through the number of different contexts and through her narrative. On her research of different contexts, there is new material presented on charity, memory, and the religious response. The interpretation of Kinealy is identical to the controversial claim in 1997 that Ireland had in reality not suffered with deficit of food and the famine was artificial. Kinealy carried out a lot of research on the famine and chose to write about her ideology. Her book was highly criticized as it gave a different yet true picture of the Irish famine after about 50 years of misinterpretation. Her view and research actually