Noel Carolan will present a talk entitled ‘The Starving West’: Food Supply Challenges and the New Irish State in 1922 and 1925 on Wednesday May 22nd, 2024, at 8 pm in the Heritage Room, Old Girls’ School, Corrandulla. The talk is open to the public and can also be viewed on Zoom at zoom.us/j/4244845743.

Noel’s talk opens with ‘The Starving West’ photography of 1898 when Connemara photographs featured in fundraising efforts in Britain and Ireland. The talk compares the severity of the 1898 food shortage across Ireland and county Galway in particular. West of Ireland developments during the 1922 food supply crisis are then examined. The main focus is on the 1925 food supply shortage when photographs of Connemara people appeared in dozens of newspapers across the North America. Newspaper headlines about famine in Ireland featured prominently in various efforts to undermine the integrity of the Irish Free State government in Britain, Canada, the USA, and even Russia.

Noel is a local history and family history enthusiast who is due to complete a history PhD, at Dublin City University in the coming months. He is researching the politics of food supply in Ireland, during peace and war, from 1895 to 1923. Noel’s PhD research is funded by DCU, a Universities Ireland History Bursary, and the Irish Research Council. He has presented talks to dozens of local history groups and delivered papers at academic conferences in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Britain, and Czechia.

This presentation is funded by the RIA Decades of Centenaries Bursary.