In 1994 my wife, Leslie A. Williams, an art historian, presented a paper analyzing some of the period illustrations relating to the Irish Famine. As sometimes happens in research, from that first glance into the subject she was drawn further and further into the questions surrounding the catastrophe in Ireland. As she wrote in some notes for the preface,
This book began because the author, having been raised as an Anglophile, lived in Ireland for seven years. She could not comprehend how the English, to her a sympathetic and often generous people, allowed more than a million Irish men, women and children to perish while shipments of wheat and potatoes were exported from their land; while rents were being paid; while the Church of Ireland received its tithes; and while the 20,000 British troops with 5,000 oat-eating cavalry horses were being fed from local sources.
The word ‘allowed’ is certainly problematic in this context, as Leslie recognized.
Perhaps we should ask how is it that only one million of those at risk starved? How were the second million saved? Or, looking at later statistics indicating that three million Irish (men and their families) were dependent on public works in 1847, how is it that only one million of those pauperized workers and their family members died? Perhaps the British did wonderfully well, or at least their very best, considering the magnitude of the problem.
However, like other historians who studied the Irish Famine over the past few decades, Leslie found the old appeal to inevitability unsatisfactory.
On the other hand, there were also famine-threatening failures of the potato crop in Belgium and in Prussia, and no widespread national disaster of starvation in either country. A sense of unified identity, purpose and responsibility provided for those regions. Less of a sense of national (or imperial) responsibility was felt after 1846 by the metropolitan government in London toward the Queen’s more distant subjects in Ireland. This book will explore some of the sources for that lack of unity that the empire manifested in the time of Ireland’s most desperate need.
As she moved from the illustrations to textual commentary regarding the Famine, Leslie became convinced that one major factor influencing Britain’s response to the crisis was the British press. She noticed how early newspaper accounts of the potato blight and speculation about its consequences for Ireland were reported within an environment already dominated by the negativity surrounding British reaction to Daniel O’Connell and his campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union. Thus her study begins with ‘The Year of Repeal’ and follows events through 1849, after which point the Famine began to fade from the press.
Leslie had just about completed the draft of the manuscript in the fall of 2000 when she was diagnosed with melanoma. An operation in November seemed successful. Shortly after the new year, however, we learned that the cancer had spread to her bone marrow. She died after a short time in hospital on 7 February 2001.
She had worked on the book as best she could until she entered the hospital. She had completed the research and had written second drafts all of the chapters. I promised her that I would prepare the book for publication. I have edited the chapters and occasionally filled in some background material. I have also written the introduction and conclusion. I am very pleased to present this work to which my wife dedicated so much of the last few years of her life.
I trace your words, pressed onto simple paper
but impressed upon my heart like mystic runes
or find your thoughts in dog-eared pages
noted and underlined and now underscored.
(excerpt from Felix Cupla, by Kevin McHugh)
William H.A. Williams
Union Institute and University
Cincinnati, Ohio
2002