Demography, depopulation, and devastation: Exploring the geography of the Irish potato famine

Historical Geography

Volumn 33, Issue , 2005, Pages 54-77

  Ell, Paul S ^a   Gregory, Ian N ^a  

^a QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY BELFAST   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

SOLANUM TUBEROSUM;

EID: 65449182534     PISSN: 10916458     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. See M.M. Postan and H.J. Habakkuk, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe,Vol.6:1
2. The Industrial Revolutions and After: Incomes, Population and Technological Change (Cambridge Carn-bridge University Press, 1966): 61.
3. The Database of Irish Historical Satistics was developed at the Queen University of Belfast with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Queen's University. The Datasets are deposited with AHDS History at the University of Essex.
4. Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland Srarved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy 1800-1850 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983).
5. Seån Duffy, ed., The Macmillan Atlas of Irish History (New York Macmillan, 1997): 90-153
6. Lfam Kennedy, Paul S. Ell, E.M. Crawford, and LA. Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine: A Surrey ef the Famine Decades (Dublin: Four Courts Pros, 1999). Our arride builds on adjusted darasets, new map coverages, and comments from scholars In response Mapping the Great Irish Famine to define far more deafly key geographies and base analysis on a firmer Footing.
7. F.H.A. Aalan, Kevin Whelan, and Mathew Stour, eds., Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997): 85-89
8. T.W. Freeman, Pre-Famine Ireland: A Study in Histroical Geography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957): 316-317
9. T.W. Freeman, Ireland: A General and Regional Geography, 2nd ed. rev. (London: Methuen, 1960): 118-134
10. Aalan, et al., Irish Rural Landscape 86.
11. For a more detailed discussion of the advantages and development of an Irish historical GIS, see "A Historical GIS for Ireland elsewhere In this volume.
12. Joel Mokyr and Cormae Ógrida, " New Developments in Irish Population History, 1700-1850," Economic History Review 24, 2nd ser. (1984): 475.
13. The 1821 Census of Ireland, although the first fully completed Irish censui, was rernarkably comprehensive and accurate. Hence this Figure can be relied upon. See David A. Gatley and Paul S. Ell, Counting Heads An Introducton to the Census, Poor Law Data and Vital Registration (Bishop's Stanford: Statistics for Education, 2008) for more information.
14. Baronies are ancient units. Their precise boundaries were determined through the Ordnance Survey's mapping of Iieland during the first half of the nineteenth century. and through the collection of statistics at barony level in the 1821 census. Baronies nest within county boundaries. Their number clangs over time. Immediately pre-famine thets were 313. They became obsolete after the 1891 census, Foot law unions were more recent units concerned, as the name suggests, with the administration and distribution of relief for the poor. They were created just prior to the famine over the famine itself there were 131 unions. Poor law unions do not nest within other administrative boundaries-they cross both county and parish boundaries. The agricultural censuses used poor law unions rather than haronies meaning that traditionally it was very difficult to compare to the population censuses.
15. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Take the Censor of Ireland for the year 1841, British Parliament Papers 24 (1843): xiv.
16. Using manual techniques, it is possible to plot dan onto a common geography for a sural number of census years. This approach was a adopted in our early work, In Figures 3 and 4, post. famine data is plotted to a set of barony boundaries for 1141, We were able to do this because boundary changes in 1851 and 1861 were limited, usually irrvolvinp: the simple division of one barony into two. These data can be summed and plotted onto 1841 boundaries. While this approach is suitable for simple visualization over a short period of time, it cannot take account of boundary changes that do not result in the creation of a new spatial unit, and It cannot be applied over several censuses where division and subdivision of spatial units is much more complex The more complex and precise redisricting techniques referred to later in this article are essential for metre complex longitudinal analysis.
17. Thus, if 80 percent ofa source unit intersects with target unit Aand the remaining 20 percent with target unit B then 80 percent of its population should be allocated to Aand 20 percent to B.
18. Ian N. Gregory and Paul S. Ell, "Breaking the Boundaries integrating 200 Years of the Census using GIS" journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Sales A (In press).
19. Ian N. Gregory, "The Accuracy of Anal Interpolation Techniques: Standardising 19th and 20th Century Census Data to Allow Long-Term Comparisons," Computers Enviroment and Urban Systems 26 (2002): 293-314.
20. More formally, population loss is calculated as Loss=(0-[{end-pop-start- pop)/(ead-pop+start-pop)])-100.
21. Iain Bracken and David Martin, "Linkage of 1981 and 1991 UK Censuses using Surface Mod-elling Concepts,"Evironment A 27 (1995): 379-390
22. A. Stewart Fotheringham, "Trends in Quantitative Methods 1: Stressing the Local," Progess in Human Geography 21 (1997): 88-96. (Pubitemid 27416283)
23. A. Stewart Fntheringharn, Chris Brunsdon, and Martin Charlton, Geographically Weighed Re-gression The Analysis of Spatially Varying Relationships (Chichester: Wiley, 2002).
24. Dummy variables have a sake of either one, to indicate that a feature is present, or zero to indicate that it, is absent
25. Neil Wrigly, "Revisiting the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and tie Ecological Fallacy," in Andrew 6. Cliff Peter R. Gould, Anthony G. Hoare, and Nigel J. Thrift, eds, Diffusing Geog-raphy Essays for Peter Haggett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995): 49-71.
26. Hots that local t-values must be used with caution due to problems with multiple significance testing.
27. Work with the Great Britain Historical GIS has taken place recently to make it more accessible and link qualitative information to the statistical data that are more generally associated with GIS. Descriptions of plies it various points in time, historical and modern maps and travel-lers' tales are all linked to the underluingng geo-statistal resource (see www.visionofbritain.org.uk). At present this work has been aimed, at making information available to the public. We are developing the GIS to make it a resourcs for scholars.