One overriding impression after years of research is the truth of R. Dudley Edwards's maxim: "Nothing is inevitable in history." The Famine was not inevitable, just as world hunger today is avoidable. The political will of the powerful was lacking. Ireland was considered an inferior relation to Britain. It must be dominated but left ultimately to fend for itself.
The Whig government which replaced Sir Robert Peel's administration in 1846 confronted the Irish poor with a harsh ideological climate. Lord John Russell, a weak Prime Minister, allowed Irish relief policy to be dictated by a few ideologues, particularly the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, and the Treasury mandarin, Charles Trevelyan. Racial and sectarian prejudices confirmed economic dogma.
Prof Cormac O Grada found "history suggests that `good' government can help avert famines." He agrees with Peter Gray's verdict that the charge of culpable neglect is "indisputable"; British policy amounted to a "death sentence on many thousands".
The government provided £9.5 million towards various relief programmes (over half of which was given as a loan). This was a considerable figure - multiply by 50 for today's value - even if nearly £70 million was expended on the Crimean war a few years later.
But the begrudging tone of the Treasury response, the obsession with preventing a dependency mentality emerging, the constant injunction to self-help to the starving, and the abdication of responsibility after autumn 1847 left a bitter legacy.
Ireland's prolonged colonial experience reached a tragic climax during the Great Famine. Trevelyan viewed the cataclysm as "the judgment of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people". This providentialism, combined with the laissez-faire doctrines of minimum state intervention and reliance on market forces, turned a natural disaster - the repeated failure of the potato crop on which up to four million Irish people depended - into a national catastrophe.
Several institutes and scholars helped with this project. Most notably, Ken Hannigan told me about the computerisation of the index to the 1845-6 Relief Commission papers in the National Archives. This enabled us to identify original material on the Internet. Co-operation extended to providing photocopies of selected documents.
The Royal Irish Academy allowed me to consult bound copies of the Nation and the Freeman's Journal near the library stacks, thus saving time and trouble. Dom Mark Tierney, of Glenstal Abbey, granted access to the 1846 diary of a Tipperary curate.
I am particularly indebted to the published works of Dr Christine Kinealy and Prof Donal Kerr. Irish Hunger: Personal Reflections on the Legacy of the Famine (edited by Tom Hayden, Wolfhound) is another coping stone in the historiography of the Famine. This anthology contains material ranging from a poem by Seamus Heaney to articles by our own John Waters.
Finally, Eva O Cathaoir was on hand to explain the tortuous ramifications of the Poor Law.