Overview

The 1840s witnessed widespread hunger and malnutrition at home and mass starvation in Ireland. And yet the aptly named 'Hungry 40s' came amidst claims that, notwithstanding Malthusian prophecies, absolute biological want had been eliminated in England. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were supposedly the period in which the threat of famine lifted for the peoples of England. But hunger remained, in the words of Marx, an 'unremitted pressure'. The politics of hunger offers the first systematic analysis of the ways in which hunger continued to be experienced and feared, both as a lived and constant spectral presence. It also examines how hunger was increasingly used as a disciplining device in new modes of governing the population. Drawing upon a rich archive, this innovative and conceptually-sophisticated study throws new light on how hunger persisted as a political and biological force.

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9781526145628

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'The Politics of Hunger is a deeply learned and humane book, rich in archival detail and judiciously deployed anecdotes about the real lives of those who faced food scarcity as their primary, quotidian reality. [.] Malthus argued 'a satisfactory history of this kind, of one people, and of one period, would require the constant and minute attention of an observing mind during a long life.' Griffin's is such a mind and The Politics of Hunger is such a book.' Journal of Historical Geography -- .

'The Politics of Hunger is a deeply learned and humane book, rich in archival detail and judiciously deployed anecdotes about the real lives of those who faced food scarcity as their primary, quotidian reality. [.] Malthus argued 'a satisfactory history of this kind, of one people, and of one period, would require the constant and minute attention of an observing mind during a long life.' Griffin's is such a mind and The Politics of Hunger is such a book.' Journal of Historical Geography 'Francis Bacon once observed that rebellions of the belly are the worst. This highly original monograph explores how hunger politics operated in the 18th and 19th centuries as a weapon of protest wielded by the undernourished urban and rural populations of England. The fierce suppression of the food rioters of the 1790s led to new forms of protest: incendiarism, cattle maiming, and threatening letters. By 1800 wages had replaced the price of food as the critical component in working families' living standards. Griffin (Univ. of Sussex, UK) challenges the conventional idea that the Hungry Forties witnessed the rediscovery of hunger. Instead, he shows how the twin discourses of hunger and starvation survived from 1801 into the 1840s. A close-grained study of broadsides, ballads, letters, and speeches provides the evidence. Griffin also explores the effects of dubious local and national policies, such as the Speenhamland system for supplementing the wages of workers, which led to their impoverishment as farmers underpaid their workers, knowing that public assistance would make up the difference. English theorists reduced the poor to a distinct and decidedly animalistic race. As Griffin concludes, hunger defined popular protest and popular politics.' --D. R. Bisson, Belmont University Summing Up: Highly recommended. Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association. -- .

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Carl J. Griffin is Professor in Historical Geography at the University of Sussex

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