Agricultural History Review, Volume 53 Part 1 (2005), p. 116

To students of the Great Irish Famine (1845–52), Charles Trevelyan is a controversial and generally disliked figure. Despite being a civil servant he, more than any senior politician of the Famine period, has been represented as responsible for relief policies that were parsimonious and inappropriate. This is a serious charge as, in the space of only six years, approximately one million Irish people died and an even higher number emigrated from Ireland. Moreover, demographically (and in many less quantifiable ways) Ireland never recovered from the tragedy of the Famine.

An unusual feature of the Irish Famine was that both administrative and fiscal responsibility for relief measures from 1845 (when blight first appeared on the potato crop) were given to the Treasury, and this role history review continued despite a change of government in 1846, when the Whig leader, Lord John Russell, replaced the Tory, Sir Robert Peel, as premier. This put Trevelyan in a very strong position, as he was permanent secretary of the Treasury and generally regarded as an authority on Ireland. But it also meant that the Treasury principle of balancing the books, and later, modernizing the Irish economy, were sometimes given primacy over the need to save lives.

Despite the abundance of publications that accompanied the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine in 1995, no major reappraisal of Trevelyan was made. On the contrary, most famine publications have been happy torepeat the assertions made in the 1960s by Cecil Woodham-Smith (author of the best-selling The great hunger) and Jenifer Hart (an authority on civil-service history), and have followed their characterization of Trevelyan as cold, zealous and moralistic. One article about Trevelyan was even sub-titled ‘A Victorian Cromwell?’

According to Haines, Famine historians have almost universally characterized him as an ‘omnipotent dictator’ and ‘parsimonious egotist’. They also suggest that his actions were motivated by his dislike of Catholics and desire to reform the Celtic character (Trevelyan was from Cornwall and described himself as a ‘reformed Celt’). Haines provides a corrective balance to this and similar assertions, arguing that far from being an intolerant Protestant evangelical, he liked Catholics. An even more serious charge, for which Haines offers evidence, is that a number of Trevelyan’s detractors have offered judgement without ever having consulted his papers. Haines’ reassessment, which is based on an exhaustive reading of not only Trevelyan’s documents but a wide range of other sources, is therefore very welcome.

Nor is it just historians who have given Trevelyan a prominent place in the history of the Famine. He is mentioned in a popular Irish folk ballad, ‘The Fields ofAthenry’ written in the 1970s (although often assumed to be older). In it, a women is singing to her lover who is about to be transported because he ‘stole Trevelyan’s corn, so the young might see the morn’. As a consequence, in popular memory, Trevelyan’s central role infamine relief – as a heartless and distant dispenser offood – is confirmed. Yet the folk records of the Famine (which are retrospective anyway) contain few references to any government officials, politicians or even Queen Victoria (who in Ireland is widely remembered as ‘the Famine Queen’).

Defences of Trevelyan are rare, although in ‘Apologia for a Dead Civil Servant’ published in 1977, originally in the Irish Times, the respected historian P.M.Austin Bourke offered a corrective view of Trevelyan. He argued, not totally convincingly, that Trevelyan was only a civil servant, albeit a very conscientious one, who did as his political masters bid him. He also briefly suggested that Trevelyan’s attitude towards the Irish poor was much more compassionate than traditionally portrayed. These themes are developed by Haines, more convincingly, 27 years later. Haines further claims that by focusing on Trevelyan as the villain of the tragedy, sight has sometimes been lost of the real cause of the Famine, that is, the potato blight (Phytophthora infestans). This interpretation, however, contradicts many of the recent histories of the Famine (including my own) which argue that despite the limitations of 1840s communications, more could have been done to alleviate the suffering triggered by the potato blight. Haines, however, concludes that not only is Trevelyan’s tarnished reputation not deserved but ‘Phytophthora infestans, not Trevelyan, was the tyrant who brought death and suffering to Ireland on a scale never before witnessed’.

But Trevelyan is nothing if not complex; a cursory glance at the correspondence of many of his contemporaries suggests that he was an exacting colleague, leading to the pejorative reference to ‘Trevelyanisms’, describing his way of controlling relief provision. Moreover, Trevelyan’s authority had the power to intimidate even his aristocratic superiors. There was also consensus, both then and now, that he was a good administrator, honest and hard working. Significantly, Trevelyan was knighted for his services to famine relief in 1848. A strength of Haines’ book is that it offers insight into the personal life of Trevelyan, and by doing so, a much warmer person emerges. At the same time, however, Trevelyan was a skilled self-publicist who in 1848 published (at first anonymously) an optimistic view of famine relief. His timing was inappropriate as the potato blight had not run its course and excess mortality, mass evictions and large scale emigration continued; in some areas, on a higher level than in the previous three years.

Overall, Haines’ book is well written and engaging. By his own admission, however, he adopts an adversarial style, but this style gives the book much of its energy and clear focus. For some, therefore, it may not make comfortable reading. There are some errors: for example, Thomas Keneally’s name is mis-spelt on page 14 (confusing for me and other readers) and in some places the index could have been extended – but in such a large, complex study, a few errors are probably inevitable. Ingeneral though, whether you agree or disagree with Haines’ interpretation and conclusions, this book is a major addition to famine historiography. It is based on extensive research which is cleverly synthesized and offers a fresh insight into a major event in not only Irish but British history. It is also a further reminder that many of the significant contributions to our understanding of the Famine and its consequences have come from scholars working outside Ireland.