The Irish potato famine

I'm currently reading Cecil Woodham Smith's phenomenal history of the Irish potato famine The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845 - 1849. It's a tremendous work and it makes quite clear that the British governments slavish devotion to laissez faire economic and social policies fueled much of the starvation. Approximately 1 million people died as a result of this famine, another million or so fled to the United States. The failure of the government to act in any substantive manner is horrific to read and hard to fathom. The obvious parallel in U.S. history would be Hoover's inaction in the early years of The Great Depression. Yet even that is not a true parallel as the utter lack of empathy, compassion or even humanity displayed by Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Charles Trevelyan goes beyond anything that Hoover or his minions did, or did not, do during the Great Depression.

It's a fascinating and disturbing read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in social history generally and Irish and/or British history more specifically.