Podcasts about padraic scanlan

In 1845, a novel pathogen attacked potato fields across Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia—but only in Ireland were the effects apocalyptic. At least one million Irish people died, and millions more scattered across the globe, emigrating to new countries and continents. Less than fifty years after the union of Ireland with the rest of Great Britain, the newly formed United Kingdom—the most powerful country in the nineteenth-century world—failed millions of its own citizens, leading to decades of poverty, ecological ruin, and collective trauma. How did this happen? Today’s guest Padraic Scanlan recontextualizes the disaster’s origins, events, and consequences in his new book “Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine.” We situate the Irish Great Famine in a larger history of economic consolidation and exploitation caused by British policies toward Ireland. The blight that decimated the potato plants was biological, but the Famine itself was manmade, caused by the British government’s structures of land ownership, labor, and rent collection. The real tragedy of the Famine wasn’t that the British maliciously intended and propagated starvation, but that their efforts to address the “Irish Question” only exacerbated the problem.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  What could the tragic 19th Century Irish potato famine have to do with modern Medicaid work requirements promoted by North Carolina Republicans? As author Padraic Scanlan documents in a powerful new book, the parallels between what the men running the British Empire did to the peasants of Ireland nearly two centuries ago and the […]

Imagine John Wick. Only instead of losing his puppy, he's lost his entire family because the British let them freeze to death. And imagine now that they're all in Ireland and it's the middle of the Famine. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Black '47. Joining us to talk about this film and the misconceptions around the Irish Potato Famine is Padraic Scanlan, author of the new book Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine. This movie is bonkers and actually has a lot to say on Irish history. And this conversation won't leave you hungry. About our guest:Padraic Scanlan is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, cross-appointed to the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies. He is also a Research Associate at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St. Michael's College.His research focuses on the history of labour, enslaved and free, in Britain and the British empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is currently in the early stages of research on a new project, on the transformation of the line between ‘home' and ‘work' in the industrial era. His most recent book, Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine, out now from Robinson Books and Basic Books, reinterprets the history of the Irish Great Famine (1845-1851). In the first half of the nineteenth century, nowhere in Europe – or the world – did the working poor depend as completely on potatoes as in Ireland. To many British observers, potatoes were evidence of a lack of modernity and ‘civilization' among the Irish. Ireland before the Famine, however, more closely resembled capitalism's future than its past. Irish labourers were paid some of the lowest wages in the British empire, and relied on the abundance of the potato to survive. He shows how the staggering inequality, pervasive debt, outrageous rent-gouging, precarious employment, and vulnerability to changes in commodity prices that torment so many in the twenty-first century were rehearsed in the Irish countryside before the potatoes failed.

In his new book, "Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine," Historian Padraic Scanlan debunks common myths about the Famine and traces the ecological and economic consequences to the crises of today, such as food insecurity and climate change.

What could be more innocent than a nice cup of cha? In this episode we hear from Seren Charington-Hollins, Markman Ellis, Mathew Mauger and Mukta Das on how England's love of tea is deeply intwined with the British Empire, including how Britain once forced the trade of opium for tea in China. The historians Catherine Hall and Padraic Scanlan also tell us about England's taste for sugar and its origins in slavery.This show was produced by Lewis Bassett. Music comes from Forest DLG. Get extra content and support the show on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the British Empire began dismantling the slave system that had helped to build it. Parliament banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, and in 1833 the government outlawed slavery itself, accomplishing through legislative action what the United States would later achieve in part by the horrors of civil war. Abolition has long been a cause célèbre in the British imagination, with men like William Wilberforce receiving credit for moving the empire to right a moral wrong. Yet as our guest today argues, there were other, equally powerful motivations beyond morality that fueled British efforts to abolish slavery. On today's show, Dr. Padraic Scanlan joins Jim Ambuske to discuss his new book, Slave Empire: How Slavery Made Modern Britain. Scanlan is an Assistant Professor of History at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto.  And as you'll hear, there was as much money to be made in the abolition of slavery as there was in slavery itself.

This week on Down to Business, University of Toronto's Padraic Scanlan talks about the controversy around Henry Dundas and some unsettling chapters of Canada's past.  

Padraic Scanlan joined me on the podcast to talk about how Britain rose to global power on the backs of enslaved workers. Modern Britain has inherited the legacies and contradictions of a liberal empire built on slavery. Modern capitalism and liberalism emphasise 'freedom' - for individuals and for markets - but are built on human bondage.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Padraic Scanlan joined me on the podcast to talk about how Britain rose to global power on the backs of enslaved workers. Modern Britain has inherited the legacies and contradictions of a liberal empire built on slavery. Modern capitalism and liberalism emphasise 'freedom' - for individuals and for markets - but are built on human bondage.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2017), explores the bureaucratic, economic, and military consequences of translating abolition law into lived reality for the British colony of Sierra Leone. It overturns highly moralistic notions of British antislavery and reveals the murkier, at times frenzied, and extremely profitable realities of abolition that paved the way for an exploitative and violent colonial history in Africa. Louise Moschetta is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, working on Indian indentured labour in the British imperial world and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2017), explores the bureaucratic, economic, and military consequences of translating abolition law into lived reality for the British colony of Sierra Leone. It overturns highly moralistic notions of British antislavery and reveals the murkier, at times frenzied, and extremely profitable realities of abolition that paved the way for an exploitative and violent colonial history in Africa. Louise Moschetta is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, working on Indian indentured labour in the British imperial world and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2017), explores the bureaucratic, economic, and military consequences of translating abolition law into lived reality for the British colony of Sierra Leone. It overturns highly moralistic notions of British antislavery and reveals the murkier, at times frenzied, and extremely profitable realities of abolition that paved the way for an exploitative and violent colonial history in Africa. Louise Moschetta is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, working on Indian indentured labour in the British imperial world and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2017), explores the bureaucratic, economic, and military consequences of translating abolition law into lived reality for the British colony of Sierra Leone. It overturns highly moralistic notions of British antislavery and reveals the murkier, at times frenzied, and extremely profitable realities of abolition that paved the way for an exploitative and violent colonial history in Africa. Louise Moschetta is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, working on Indian indentured labour in the British imperial world and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2017), explores the bureaucratic, economic, and military consequences of translating abolition law into lived reality for the British colony of Sierra Leone. It overturns highly moralistic notions of British antislavery and reveals the murkier, at times frenzied, and extremely profitable realities of abolition that paved the way for an exploitative and violent colonial history in Africa. Louise Moschetta is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, working on Indian indentured labour in the British imperial world and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices