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Rot

An Imperial History of the Irish Famine

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About this listen

 'Captivating, notable, brilliant, thought-provoking'
A New Yorker Best Book of 2025

'A vigorous and engaging new study of the Irish famine . . . Richly underpinned by research in contemporary sources and firmly rooted in historical scholarship.' Fintan O'Toole

'Comprehensive, elegantly written and heartbreaking' John Banville

'A vivid, polemical narrative that does justice to victims and explains the ideologies that worsened the disaster.' Irish Independent

'Scanlan's history of the ''Great Hunger' and its repercussions is meticulous, measured and damning.' Financial Times

'Mr. Scanlan's haunting and terrible book is undoubtedly a history title of the year.' Wall Street Journal

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.©2025 Padraic X. Scanlan 19th Century Europe Great Britain Modern United Kingdom Capitalism Imperialism

Critic reviews

Rot is a moving modern history of the Great Potato Famine. With great insight and impeccable research, Padraic Scanlan vividly brings this terrible catastrophe and the stories of its heroes and villains back to life.
Rot brilliantly blends economic, social, and environmental history to deliver a stunning new account of one of nineteenth-century Europe's most shameful tragedies. Padraic Scanlan joins clear-eyed, comprehensive research and analysis to deliver a persuasive indictment of faith in free markets. As illuminating as it is harrowing, Rot is a must-read for anybody interested in the histories of capitalism and empire.
Crisply written and based on an impressive range of contemporary sources, Padraic Scanlan's Rot is the best kind of historical writing.
Rot is a book I have longed to read. Framing the Irish Famine within the context of the British empire is revelatory. An incredibly important work.
All stars
Most relevant
Loved the story telling style of the reader. This is a dense book, but the writers approach, setting out the events and providing the wider context of the UK economy and political challenges at the time sets out a comprehensive overview of the symptoms and interlocking issues that resulted in the cascade failures that exacerbated the affects of the great famine. It gave me a greater insight into something that I thought I had a good perspective on, I didn't , but now I do .

Must read about a pivotal period on Irish history

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I certainly do not fault the research but I was overwhelmed by the detail and found myself losing interest.
In an academic paper this amount of information would be laudable but for the general reader not what is required perhaps?

Detail such as I could not cope

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