Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The sources of financial and political instability
- 2 The economic-policy reforms of Sir Robert Peel
- 3 Famine relief before the crises of 1847
- 4 Famine relief during and after the crises
- 5 The intentions and consequences of redistributive relief policy
- 6 Ireland and Mauritius: the British Empire’s other famine in 1847
- Conclusion: Britain’s biggest economic-policy failure
- Bibliography
- Index
- People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History
6 - Ireland and Mauritius: the British Empire’s other famine in 1847
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The sources of financial and political instability
- 2 The economic-policy reforms of Sir Robert Peel
- 3 Famine relief before the crises of 1847
- 4 Famine relief during and after the crises
- 5 The intentions and consequences of redistributive relief policy
- 6 Ireland and Mauritius: the British Empire’s other famine in 1847
- Conclusion: Britain’s biggest economic-policy failure
- Bibliography
- Index
- People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History
Summary
With respect to food: nearly the whole of the cultivation of the Island being Sugar – the food consumed by the population (rice) is imported entirely from India, and by the houses engaged in cultivating the Island. Most of these houses having failed, and such a shock having been given to the credit of those which remain that their Bills will not be negotiable as usual for the purchase of Rice. There is a great risk that the island will be left without its necessary supplies. … the peculiar circumstances of the labouring population … having no other means whatsoever but the sugar estates, the great proportion of which must be immediately suspended, we feel strongly [there are] – reasons for some interference – which might not be justifiable under ordinary circumstances.
James Wilson to Third Earl Grey, ‘The Island of Mauritius’, 17 October 1847.Mauritius is an island in the Indian Ocean over 1,200 miles from the southeast coast of the African continent, and over 6,000 miles away from Ireland. It is, perhaps, best known as the former home of the Dodo (raphus cucullatus), a flightless species of giant pigeon that became extinct within a century of the arrival of the first Europeans to reach the island in 1598. Mauritius is also known as a former sugar plantation with a history of slavery and indentured labour. It is natural therefore to approach its history with an expectation that there would be poverty, resentment against its former coloniser, and internal racial and class conflict far worse than that of Ireland. Yet the reality has turned out very differently. The roots of this can be traced to 1847 and the British government’s decision to restart Mauritius’s economy at the time of the Irish famine. Without that effort, some of the Mauritian population and its economy could well have ended up ‘as dead as a Dodo’. This chapter describes how the British government’s intervention avoided this outcome and how this should change the way historians think about policy mistakes made in Ireland during its famine.
In terms of civil war and conflict, Mauritian history could not be more different from that of modern Ireland.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain’s Financial Crisis , pp. 229 - 276Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022