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| ⚫ | The '''Great Famine''' struck ] between ] and ]. It is unclear how many died, but figures are put well in excess of half a million people, some estimated exceed a million. Nearly 6 million others emigrated to escape the hardship, most fleeing by boat to ]. | ||
| ⚫ | Between ] and ], a blight (], or ]) struck potato crops across ] |
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| ⚫ | Between ] and ], a blight (], or ]) struck ] crops across ], turning them into a black, soggy, and inedible mess. In '''Ireland''', this important food staple was highly depended upon by the working class, as a primary foodsource. | ||
| ⚫ | The result of |
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| ⚫ | The result of the blight was widespread ], though it affected different parts of Ireland to different degrees. The blight also had a hard economic impact, causing a loss of income for Irish farmers, most of whom were tenants of British landowners. As a direct consequence of the blight, Irish tenants were routinely evicted by British landlords, by the enforcement of the constabulary. | ||
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| ⚫ | All of this was in the context of a debate within the British ], regarding the repeal of the ], which promised to introduce sufficient quanities of grain into the ]. Effects of the famine were exacerbated by the resistance of the British government to endeavour in ] | ||
| == Census and Death records == | |||
| -style reform. | |||
| To this day, while defenders of conservative ] policies refer to the '''Irish potato famine''' as an ''unfortunate act of nature'', the '''Irish''' commonly hold that actions to exacerbate the famine constituted as a ] act by British authorities. | |||
| Ireland had undergone a series of census reports, dating back to the 1820s, though some recent historians dispute their reliability. On the basis of population growth trends, Ireland's population was expected to reach between 8 and 9 million people by 1851. In fact it only reached 6.5 million. While no-one knows how many died (state registration of deaths had not begun yet), historians estimate that a <i>minimum</i> of 500,000 men, women and children died. The number may be considerably more than that, but no-one can be certain, though recent historical studies have suggested small numbers than used to be presumed. For one fact not borne in mind in earlier calculations was a key side-effect of malnutrition, namely a plummeting in fertility rates and rates of sexual activity. A significant proportion of the expected increase would have been made up by new births that simply never occured. Nevertheless, even considering this additional factor that may explain <i>some</i> of the gap between the 8-9 million expected and the 6.5 million people achieved, the scale of the deaths, and the accompanying ] of perhaps one million people, primarily to ], was staggering. Critics have observed how during this time, Irish and Anglo-Irish landowners exported corn (and other crops) which could have saved the lives of many Irish people. However, had they not done so, a major economic crisis could have resulted, with would have bankrupted the entire agricultural sector and through loss of foreign currency devestated the urban and industrial economies. For example, it could have forced far more estates to evict their tenants, these estates only being able to survive themselves and in many cases lower rents or provide local relief due to the income coming in from grain exports, Most historians have concluded that not to continue the export could have plunged the <i>entire</i> Irish economy into economic meltdown, forcing mass emigration on a scale even worse than that experienced from all the island, including those parts to that point not heavily hit by the early stages of the famine, notably in east and north east of the island. It was the classic 'no win' situation faced by many economies hit by famine. | |||
| According to Indiana University Professor of Anthropology ], | |||
| :"The British call it "The Great Famine." The scarcity of food was blamed on the weather, the potato fungus and, perhaps, most of all on the ] notion of ]. The Irish had overbred and there wasn't enough food to feed them all given the crop failure. However, as ] once observed, "'Famine is a useful word when you do not wish to use words like ']' and '].'" | |||
| That in itself was a result of the tradition of ] of each farm equally among all male children, leaving holdings by the 1840s so small that the only crop that could be grown in sufficient quantities on such small holdings to feed a family was potatoes. In 1845, for example, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of .4 to 2 ]s (one to five ]s) in size, while 40% were of 2 to 6 hectares (five to fiteen acres). This included ] and ] that could not be used for food production. | |||
| The initial British government response towards the early famine was, in the view of historians, adequate. Unfortunately, with tragic consequences, the Tory government of Sir ] was replaced (with the help of Irish MPs under ]) by a Whig ministry under ] (whose family, ironically had Irish links through estates they owned in County Meath). Russell like many leaders of the time (and like leaders such as ] and ] in the 1980s) believed in a ] economic policy of non-intervention in the economy. So whereas Peel had imported Indian Maize to feed the starving, Russell instead focused on providing support through public works and the provision of ]. Unfortunately a disastrous ] was introduced, which limited aid to those who owned less than one acre of land. This forced poverty-striken starving tenants either to give up their homes and land, and so become destitute <i>after</i> the famine, or hold on to them and risk starvation. However it followed the economic theory of time that was intended to discourage the 'undeserving poor' from using the welfare system while they still had means (however theoretical in the absence of a harvest) of providing for themselves. | |||
| As a result, a disastrous application of the ] economic theory and ignorance in London of the scale of the problem turned a disaster into a catastrophe. Large sums of money were donated by charities; ] sent funds, ] personally gave the modern day equivalent of €70,000 (not the mythical £5 claimed!), while some native americans famously sent money and grain (an act of kindness still remembered to this day). Nevertheless such charitable donations could not solve the scale of the problem. However the claim sometimes made that the British were guilty of 'genocide' in their 'deliberate' inaction during the Famine is widely rubbished by historians as 'propagandistic nonsense'; Britain and other major states similarly mishandled other famines, including famines in Scotland though ignorance, incompetence and what were in retrospect flawed economic theories at the time. | |||
| Potato blights continued in Ireland, especially in ] and ]-]. These killed few people, partly because they were less severe, partly because Irish-Americans and Britain contributed to relief efforts. More directly however, it was due to a complex range of reasons. The growth in the numbers of railways made the importation of foodstuffs easier. The banning of sub-division, coupled with emigration, had increased the average farm holding, enabling tenant farms to diversify in terms of produce grown. The increasing wealth in urban areas meant alternative sources of food, grain, potatoes and seed were available in towns and villages. Furthermore, the 1847-49 peak of the famine also wiped out one entire class, the 'cottiers' or farm labourers, leading to a restructuring of the agricultural economy, which by the 1870s was more efficient, as well as having access to new farm machinery and product control that had not existed thirty years earlier. | |||
| Crucially, the economic policy of ], (ie, non state intervention in the marketplace) that had been fashionable in the 1840s and applied to Ireland by the government of ] (and which would become fashionable again under ] and ]) was no longer so fashionable in the 1870s. As a result, state intervention was quicker, more effective and more directed than had been the case in the 1840s. Of particular importance was the wholescale re-organisation of the agricultural sector, which had begun after the famine with the ] and which in the peroid (1870s-1900s) saw the nature of Irish landholding changed completely, with small owned farms replacing mass estates and multiple tenants. Many of the large estates in the 1840s were debt ridden and heavily morgaged. As a result, policies of wholescale evictions of tenants who could no longer pay the full rent took place, increasingly the scale of the poverty and famine. (Though a number of estates themselves went backrupt attempting to feed their starving tenants, or were bankrupt in the immediate aftermath.) In contrast, estates in the 1870s were on a better economic footing, and so capable of reducing rents and providing locally organised relief, as was the Roman Catholic Church, which was better organised and funded than it had been in 1847-49. | |||
| Different sexual habits and a different demographic profile also helped curb the danger of mass starvation in the 1870s, as against the 1840s. The 1850s had seen as resurgence in Roman Catholicism under the ultramontane Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, ], resulting in less sexual activity outside marriage (which was commonplace before the 1850s, hence the near doubling of the population over a couple of generations prior to the 1840s). As a result of fewer non-marital children and a rise in the marriage age, fertility rates had dropped. The abandonment of subdivision meant that only one sibling and his children was reliant on food from the farm, while his siblings went to other careers (often in urban centres) where food was freely available. In addition, emigration had led to the mass exodus of young people of marital or child-rearing age, leaving many spinster women and bachelor men, unmarried and without children, in the country. Together, all these factors produced a drop in the number of dependent children and a rise in single individuals who were able to feed themselves on their farmsted. | |||
| As a result, later mini-famines made only minimal impact and are generally forgotten, except by historians. However, even though by the 1880s Ireland went through an economic boom unprecedented until the ] (1995-2002), emigration, often of children who no longer could inherit a share in the land and who as a result chose to go abroad for economic advantage and to avoid poverty, continued. By the ], the Irish population had fallen to around 4 million, about the same as the population in ] and ] and only a half of its peak population. | |||
| The same mould (''] infestans'') was responsible for the 1847-51 and later famines. When people speak of "The Irish potato famine", or "an Gortha Mor", (pronounced, 'on gore-ta more') they nearly always mean the one of the ], even though a similar Great Famine in fact hit in the early eighteenth century. | |||
| The fact that only four types of potato were brought from ] was at the root of the famine. In fact the lack of ] in the food made it possible for a single ]-relative to have those devastating consequences. | |||
| ==Additional Reading== | ==Additional Reading== | ||
Revision as of 11:57, 4 January 2003
See also: History of Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Ireland, Daniel O'Connell.
The Great Famine struck Ireland between 1847 and 1850. It is unclear how many died, but figures are put well in excess of half a million people, some estimated exceed a million. Nearly 6 million others emigrated to escape the hardship, most fleeing by boat to America.
Between 1845 and 1850, a blight (water mould, or oomycete) struck potato crops across Europe, turning them into a black, soggy, and inedible mess. In Ireland, this important food staple was highly depended upon by the working class, as a primary foodsource.
The result of the blight was widespread famine, though it affected different parts of Ireland to different degrees. The blight also had a hard economic impact, causing a loss of income for Irish farmers, most of whom were tenants of British landowners. As a direct consequence of the blight, Irish tenants were routinely evicted by British landlords, by the enforcement of the constabulary.
All of this was in the context of a debate within the British Parliament, regarding the repeal of the Corn Laws, which promised to introduce sufficient quanities of grain into the United Kingdom. Effects of the famine were exacerbated by the resistance of the British government to endeavour in socialist -style reform.
To this day, while defenders of conservative English policies refer to the Irish potato famine as an unfortunate act of nature, the Irish commonly hold that actions to exacerbate the famine constituted as a genocidal act by British authorities.
According to Indiana University Professor of Anthropology Seamus Metress,
- "The British call it "The Great Famine." The scarcity of food was blamed on the weather, the potato fungus and, perhaps, most of all on the Malthusian notion of overpopulation. The Irish had overbred and there wasn't enough food to feed them all given the crop failure. However, as Frank O'Connor once observed, "'Famine is a useful word when you do not wish to use words like 'genocide' and 'extermination.'"
Additional Reading
- Cormac O'Grada, An Economic History of Ireland
- Robert Kee, Ireland: A History (ISBN 0349106789)
- F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (ISBN 0006860052)
A number of localised studies on the impact of the Famine has been published in recent years. Information on these may be got from major bookstores.
See Also Misplaced Pages entries on: History of Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Ireland, Daniel O'Connell.
External link
- For more on the pathogen see http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/mar2001.html
- Republic of Ireland website