Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine is a 2025 book by historian Padraic X. Scanlan.
The book examines the history of the Great Famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. Scanlan argues that the fundamental cause of the famine was the monopolisation of land in Ireland by an Protestant Anglophone elite that cared only to produce food that could be exported for profit, fuelled by the British government's refusal to intervene once the famine began (driven by a belief in free market capitalism and discrimination against the Irish).
Kirkus Reviews reviewed the book positively, describing it as a "fine history." [1] Writing in The New Yorker, literary critic Fintan O'Toole reviewed the book as "dutiful, sober, and rigorously unemotional... a vigorous and engaging new study of the Irish famine." [2] Darran Anderson of the Financial Times praised the book as "disturbing and insightful... timely then not just for its subject but its sobriety." [3] Writing in The Nation , author John Banville praised the book as "comprehensive, elegantly written, and heartbreaking... fascinating in the intricacy of the path it follows, or makes, through the complexities of mid-19th-century relations between Ireland and 'the mainland.'" [4]
Writing for Foreign Affairs , international affairs scholar Andrew Moravcsik wrote that the book made its argument convincingly, saying that "the disaster holds lessons for a modern era of extreme pro-market ideology and rising inequality." [5] Writing in The Wall Street Journal , historian Crawford Gribben of Queen’s University Belfast praised the book, saying that "Scanlan’s haunting and terrible book is undoubtedly a history title of the year." [6] Writing in The Irish Times , historian Breandán Mac Suibhne of the University of Galway reviewed the book positively, saying that "there is much that is familiar in Rot, but everywhere Scanlan looks at the familiar in new and interesting ways." [7]
Writing in History Today , historian Jay Roszman of University College Cork gave the book a more mixed review, describing it as "lucidly written and well-paced," but criticising that "the simplicity of argument comes at a cost, eroding much of the complexity and contradictions of the Famine’s occurrence." [8]
Eoin O'Malley of The Irish Independent gave the book a negative review, describing Scanlan as "a polemicist... [his] approach is to select evidence to back up his instincts, not subject those instincts to a test in which contrary evidence is brought to bear," saying that "Scanlan might think he is doing good work, but to jump on academic fads such as colonialism seems more like activism than scholarship," while also criticising Scanlan for writing "for a North American audience." [9]