Atlas of the Great Irish Famine

Description

Edited by John Crowley, William J. Smyth, Mike Murphy
Geography Department, University College Cork

Cork University Press, 2012
710 pages
ISBN 13: 9780814771488 ISBN 10: 0814771483

The Great Famine is possibly the most pivotal event/experience in modern Irish history.

The atlas begins by acknowledging the impossibility of adequately representing the Great Famine or any major world famine.  Yet by exploring a number of themes from a reconstruction of pre-Famine Ireland onwards to an exploration of present-day modes of remembering; by the use of over 150 highly original computer generated parish maps of population decline, social transformation and other key themes between the census years 1841 and 1851: and through the use of poetry, contemporary paintings and accounts, illustrations and modern photography, what this atlas seeks to a achieve is a greater understanding of the event and its impact and legacy.