Eating people is wrong: Famine's darkest secret?

Arbeitspapier

Cannibalism is one of our darkest secrets and taboos. It is the ultimate measure of the resilience or otherwise of civilizational processes to extreme conditions. How common was cannibalism in times of famine in the past? Both the nature of the evidence for famine cannibalism and the silences about it challenge the empirical historian to the limit. After a review of the global historiography, this paper attempts to assess the evidence for cannibalism during Ireland's many famines, culminating in the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series ; No. WP13/02

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: famine ; cannibalism

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Ó Gráda, Cormac
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University College Dublin, UCD School of Economics
• (where): Dublin
• (when): 2013

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/72202
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET