This paper deals with two principal questions, drawing closely on the experience of Ireland. First, it addresses a deficit in our knowledge of resource governance institutions and land tenure systems as moderators of the impact of famine. We have known for some time of the extent and distribution of common tenancy systems in districts of 19th-century Ireland and across wider Europe, but little has been written about their role in determining levels of ecological risk exposure. Knowing that both distress and common tenancy were higher in marginal, impoverished Irish districts, this is an omission of some concern. Second, although current thinking on common-pool resource governance suggests such systems were potentially robust to ecological stress, why did this not translate into greater resilience in the Irish case? The paper argues that to make sense of this contradiction, we must consider both the local behaviour of ecological stressors, and the wider context of Irish colonialism. Using local clustering analysis and geographically weighted regression, it shows how the impact of key stressors varied geographically. It concludes by suggesting that narratives and analyses of the role of common-pool resource governance in conferring ecological resilience must be tempered with a fuller appreciation of geopolitical context.