Peter CostelloSurplus People: from Wicklow to Canada by Jim Rees (Collins Press, €12.99 / £11.99)
The Great Hunger as a national disaster is by now well established in the national memory (which was not always the case – many of those who ëdid wellí out of the Famine preferred to let it pass in silence for many decades. However, the national story is made of countless local stories, and in this book Jim Rees, a well-trained local historian, concentrates on the clearance of the Coolatin estate in the decade after 1847. Lord Fitzwilliam was by the terms of the day a liberal minded propitiator, and a supporter of Catholic Emancipation. From his lands at Coolatin some 6,000 people removed themselves to Canada. Fitzwilliam had arranged for work at the other end, but his agents had not expected whole families to arrive.
Of particular interest in this book is the benefit of sailing from a small port in smaller ships.
These were generally sound but uncomfortable – such crossing remained unchanged for decades as we can read in The Amateur Emigrant by R. L. Stevenson. (The population at the time of the Famine was eight million, a figure which Pearse felt should be achieved again in our own time. Yet whether an agriculture economy could have supported that summer even in the 1920s is doubtful.)
This is an excellent book and provides revealing and new insights it what became a formative experience for many North American families.