Famine and ‘hongersnood’ as transnational memory: Literary legacies of the 1840s food crises in Ireland and the Netherlands

The potato blight in Ireland (1845–1849) and the dire effects of the Phytophthora infestans in the Netherlands (1845–1847) have been investigated primarily through a socioeconomical lens. The cultural practices that have shaped and transmitted the memories of these famine pasts, however, require further examination, especially in connection to the Dutch potato hunger. This article investigates the cultural legacies of these two concurrent famines as both transgenerational and transnational forms of famine memory. Focusing on literary texts, and in particular children’s and young adult novels, as carriers of famine recollections, this study demonstrates recurrent narrative scripts which go back to earliest cultural representations of these hunger crises. While tropes, plotlines and characterisations are thus a form of transgenerational prosthetic memory, the cultural repertoires used to convey famine memory also appear to be transnational, in that Dutch and Irish famine literatures are structured around similar narrative templates.