The Great Famine of 1845-9 remains the great climacteric in Irish history. This title contains the first volume in a set of five of reprints of contemporary works relating to the Great Famine, including writings on the medical conditions in Ireland at the time gathered from the "Dublin Journal of Medical Science" and similar publications.

This book is a major study of the cultural foundations of the Tudor plantations in Ireland and of early English imperialism more generally. John Patrick Montaño traces the roots of colonialism in the key relationship of cultivation and civility in Tudor England and shows the central role this played in Tudor strategies for settling, civilising and colonising Ireland. The book ranges from the role of cartography, surveying and material culture - houses, fences, fields, roads and bridges - in manifesting the new order to the place of diet, leisure, language and hairstyles in establishing cultural differences as a site of conflict between the Irish and the imperialising state and as a justification for the civilising process. It shows that the ideologies and strategies of colonisation which would later be applied in the New World were already apparent in the practices, material culture and hardening attitude towards barbarous customs of the Tudor regime.

The remainder of the collection was sold in 1810.