In the book “Why Ireland starved: a quantitative and analytical history of the Irish economy, 1800-1850” the author Joel Mokyr tries to assess why the Great Famine of Ireland from 1845-1852 was so disastrous. Mokyr is an economic historian and as a result, the book is from an economic perspective and does not consider other factors outside of the economy as causes tot the famine. The majority of the book focuses on the lead up to the event and it is not until the last chapter when Mokyr discusses the economy during the famine.
The layout of the book is focused around a very scientific method. Mokyr states that he will be assessing hypothesises and will determine whether it is true by using evidence. He claims that all hypothesises will be treated as correct until proven wrong. Each chapter of the book is focused towards a different hypothesis and they are examined from a large variety of different views to draw a conclusion. All the hypothesis are based upon previous arguments by academics.
The first …show more content…
This is both a strength and a weakness because the economic situation was a huge cause as to why Ireland starved and is therefore important to understand. However, by doing this Mokyr misses out other critical factors (such as political factors) that cause Ireland to have a famine. Mokyr uses a good selection of quantitative data to support his argument such as statistics, censuses and more. It is used effectively to examine previous debates surrounding what were the causes of the famine. However, Mokyr does not refer to qualitative data which can be equally as important. This is probably because of low literacy rates in Ireland means there is small amounts of written evidence but it is not non-existent. Newspapers could have been a good source to use to understand more about how the people of Ireland felt at the time and what problems they were facing before and during the
The layout of the book is focused around a very scientific method. Mokyr states that he will be assessing hypothesises and will determine whether it is true by using evidence. He claims that all hypothesises will be treated as correct until proven wrong. Each chapter of the book is focused towards a different hypothesis and they are examined from a large variety of different views to draw a conclusion. All the hypothesis are based upon previous arguments by academics.
The first …show more content…
This is both a strength and a weakness because the economic situation was a huge cause as to why Ireland starved and is therefore important to understand. However, by doing this Mokyr misses out other critical factors (such as political factors) that cause Ireland to have a famine. Mokyr uses a good selection of quantitative data to support his argument such as statistics, censuses and more. It is used effectively to examine previous debates surrounding what were the causes of the famine. However, Mokyr does not refer to qualitative data which can be equally as important. This is probably because of low literacy rates in Ireland means there is small amounts of written evidence but it is not non-existent. Newspapers could have been a good source to use to understand more about how the people of Ireland felt at the time and what problems they were facing before and during the