Amazon.com description: Product Description: This long awaited book is a study of the making of Britainís Irish policy in the period immediately preceding and during the Great Famine of 1845ñ50. It looks particularly at interpretations of and response to the ëland questioní, in the context of debates on reconstruction of Irish rural society, the relief of poverty, and the interventionist role of the state. Political agitation increasingly focused attention on Irish social problems in the early 1840s, but it was the Famine which forced them to the forefront of British politics. This book analyses the ideological forces underlying the decisions which had such fatal consequences for the people of Ireland and for the countryís future.