"The end of the 1960s witnessed a major change in history education as a new generation of textbooks appeared which incorporated the tenets of a critical academic historiography. Developing since the 1940s, this 'revisionist' historiography exposed various popular accounts of key historical events as nationalist myths and endorsed the view that Irish history should be seen as 'a complex and ambivalent process rather than a morality tale'.   "

"Pursuing this argument, the new books contend that the famine was not caused by a single factor but by many. Contrary to the old books, they highlight the role of domestic circumstances. Thus, the habit of early marriage, the creation of large families, the subdivision of holdings into ever smaller patches of land and the lack of opportunities outside agriculture are all seen as having contributed to a growing population pressure on the land and to an excessive reliance on the potato as the primary food crop, thus preparing the way for the devastating impact of the potato blight in 1845 and the years thereafter. Perhaps because of the importance they attach to other than political factors, the books recoil from claiming that the famine would not have occurred if Ireland had had its own government.
        In another and related contrast to their forerunners, the new books devote much more attention to the social, economic and cultural characteristics of Irish society during the famine, enabling the student to have a more inside look at the events of the time. "

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