The Great Famine in Ireland, a natural catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude, was caused by the actions and inactions of the Whig government, headed by Lord Robert Peel. The British government’s efforts to relieve the famine were inadequate, and the blight infection caused 100,000 deaths outside Ireland and influenced much of the unrest that culminated in the European Revolutions of 1848. The British government created famine codes that were designed to predict and thus prevent mass famine.
Some historians and political activists have argued that British policy in Ireland during the Great Irish Famine was an example of genocide. They believe it occurred at the height of the Second World War, with the Japanese already occupying Burma and invading the British Indian province. During the Great Irish Famine, the British government debated about its responsibility for relief programs for those suffering from hunger and disease. John Mitchell, who claimed “God sent the blight but the English created the Famine”, is a big man, physically, intellectually, and in every sense.
Coogan’s work paints a portrait of devastating neglect, abuse, and mismanagement, particularly in relation to the British response to the Irish Potato Famine. The belief in human overpopulation is not only factually incorrect but also leads otherwise decent people to endorse the British government’s non-intervention and laissez-faire approach. The famine has cast long shadows in Irish memory, particularly in its relations with Britain.
📹 What really caused the Irish Potato Famine – Stephanie Honchell Smith
Dig into what caused the Irish potato famine, and explore how the UK government’s response turned the crisis into a catastrophe.
How did the British make the Great Famine worse?
Originally, the problem was a series of potato crop failures, which affected the population further by the British exporting all Irish crops. Therefore, the British turned it into a famine by not helping the situation with valid relief measures or discontinuing the crop export.
Robert Peel was the first one who attempted to help the famine situation, and was known as “having been generally effective in curbing famine mortality in the first season of the crisis” (Gray, “British Relief Measures” 77). However, most of the policies were short-lived due to its great number of flaws. Peel did not plan for a long-lasting famine, and therefore only repaired the situation for a little while. His secret purchase of the Indian corn was a good idea, but it would not last a long time and was difficult to distribute to the Irish. Further, he did not take into account that some areas were worse off than others and therefore needed more corn.
Another failure was the relief committees that were established in the beginning of the famine years. While they were created with the best intentions, it received plenty of criticism. According to Cormac O’Grada, an inspector claimed that the relief committees were “a decided curse to the country and the service. an area of interested motives and debating societies”. This inspector is partly right, because the relief committees were able to pick and choose whom they wanted to help. They were the ones that sent the list to the British government, and the ones that were in charge of distributing help. The British had created the relief committees to calm down the chaos, but instead created more chaos susceptible to corruption.
One of the main problems on the question of relief was that the British government did not utilize all their resources for saving their colony. They were more concerned with staying out of it as much as possible, which is evident through Charles Trevelyan’s non-interference policy. Peter Gray states that: “Relieving suffering was never the sole concern of many politicians” ( The Irish Famine 39). All they were required to do was to save face in front of the world, and therefore they were constantly looking for ways to push the problem away from them and onto the Irish population. Therefore they came up with the solution of emigration. Emigration solved the entire problem for the British government simply because it sent the problem away. But they never took into account the physical ramifications on the Irish population of traveling a far distance.
Why are there no photos of the Irish famine?
Photographs of the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1852) are scarce due to the expensive equipment required and the limited access to photography. Even newspapers and journals used drawings and prints for illustrations. To find pictures of the famine, researchers rely on Prints and Drawings and Ephemera Collections. An example from the Prints and Drawings Collection depicts a poor family wrestling with famine while Mr. Balfour plays golf.
What was the truth behind the Great Famine?
The great famine was caused by a failure of the potato crop, which many people relied on for the majority of their nutrition. A disease called late blight destroyed the leaves and edible roots of the potato plants in successive years from 1845 to 1849.
Great Famine, famine that occurred in Ireland in 1845–49 when the potato crop failed in successive years. The crop failures were caused by late blight, a disease that destroys both the leaves and the edible roots, or tubers, of the potato plant. The causative agent of late blight is the water mold Phytophthora infestans. The Irish famine was the worst to occur in Europe in the 19th century.
In the early 19th century, Ireland’s tenant farmers as a class, especially in the west of Ireland, struggled both to provide for themselves and to supply the British market with cereal crops. Many farmers had long existed at virtually the subsistence level, given the small size of their allotments and the various hardships that the land presented for farming in some regions. The potato, which had become a staple crop in Ireland by the 18th century, was appealing in that it was a hardy, nutritious, and calorie-dense crop and relatively easy to grow in the Irish soil. By the early 1840s almost half the Irish population—but primarily the rural poor—had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato for their diet. Irish tenant farmers often permitted landless labourers known as cottiers to live and work on their farms, as well as to keep their own potato plots. A typical cottier family consumed about eight pounds of potatoes per person per day, an amount that probably provided about 80 percent or more of all the calories they consumed. The rest of the population also consumed large quantities of potatoes. A heavy reliance on just one or two high-yielding types of potatoes greatly reduced the genetic variety that ordinarily prevents the decimation of an entire crop by disease, and thus the Irish became vulnerable to famine.
How many Americans have Irish ancestry? Overview of the people of Ireland, with a focus on the impact of the mass emigration to the United States during the 19th century.
What caused the Great Famine in England?
The Great Famine started with bad weather in spring 1315. Crop failures lasted through 1316 until the summer harvest in 1317, and Europe did not fully recover until 1322. Crop failures were not the only problem; cattle disease caused sheep and cattle numbers to fall as much as 80 per cent. The period was marked by extreme levels of crime, disease, mass death, and even cannibalism and infanticide. The crisis had consequences for the Church, state, European society, and for future calamities to follow in the 14th century.
Famines were familiar occurrences in medieval Europe. For example, localised famines occurred in the Kingdom of France during the 14th century in 1304, 1305, 1310, 1315–1317 (the Great Famine), 1330–1334, 1349–1351, 1358–1360, 1371, 1374–1375, and 1390. ( 3 ) In the Kingdom of England, the most prosperous kingdom affected by the Great Famine, there were additional famines in 1321, 1351, and 1369. ( 3 ) For most people there was often not enough to eat, and life was a relatively short and brutal struggle to survive to old age. According to official records about the English royal family, an example of the best off in society, for whom records were kept, the average life expectancy at birth in 1276 was 35. 28 years. ( 3 ) Between 1301 and 1325, during the Great Famine it was 29. 84 years, but between 1348 and 1375 during the Plague, it was only 17. 33 years. ( 3 ) It demonstrates the steep population drop between 1348 and 1375 of about 42%. ( 4 )
During the Medieval Warm Period (10th to 13th centuries), the population of Europe exploded compared to prior eras and reached levels that were not matched again in some places until the 19th century. Indeed, parts of rural France are still less populous than in the early 14th century. ( 3 ) The yield ratios of wheat (the number of seeds one could harvest and consume per seed planted) had been dropping since 1280, and food prices had been increasing. After favourable harvests, the ratio could be as high as 7:1, but after unfavourable harvests it was as low as 2:1—that is, for every seed planted, two seeds were harvested, one for next year’s seed, and one for food. By comparison, modern farming has ratios of 30:1 or more (see agricultural productivity ). ( 3 )
Did Winston Churchill create a famine?
Misrepresentation of the Bengal Famine is key to the anti-Churchill case promulgated by the activist scholars who gathered at the college which bears their enemy’s name. Contemporary quotes from a stressed Churchill to the effect that the Indians were a “beastly people” who “breed like rabbits” are abused to imply that (as his equally short-tempered political colleague Leo Amery put it in 1944) there was “not much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s” when it came to the allegedly disposable lives of non-whites. But this is simply not true.
The famine was caused by a cyclone ruining Bengali rice-crops, exacerbated by Japan’s invasion of British Burma, formerly a leading exporter of rice regionally. The rest of India should have been able to make up the shortfall, but government had been devolved from London to natives in India’s various regions, many of whom, being of different religions and castes, acted with insufficient urgency and concern to save Bengali lives, or actively hoarded rice to drive up prices and profits – so prejudice was indeed a factor in the famine, but prejudice from other Indians, not white Mr Churchill.
When Churchill discovered the scale of the crisis, he lobbied Australia to send food-ships – despite the regional presence of Japanese submarines. Churchill did decline to transfer food direct from Britain to India, but only because the Royal Navy was needed back home to facilitate the D-Day landings. Churchill ultimately prioritized saving Europe over Bengal, but not because he hated Bengalis. His harsh words to Leo Amery were just a reflection of his anger at having to make such an impossible choice. In peacetime, he repeatedly praised rabbit-like population-increase in India as a key benefit of “the beneficence and wisdom” of British rule – prior to WWII, the Raj did indeed massively reduce age-old rates of local famine.
Predictably, as shown in a report co-authored by Andrew Roberts, the Cambridge symposium featured a litany of other equally spurious claims, including that cowardly Churchill didn’t immediately grab a machine-gun and fight in WWII personally, despite being 64 years old when hostilities began.
Did the British cause the Great Famine in Ireland?
In June 1847, the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed, which aimed to support Irish poverty by requiring Irish property to contribute to the famine. The British parliament was criticized for contributing to the famine, with The Illustrated London News reporting that Britain allowed “a mass of poverty, disaffection, and degradation without a parallel in the world”. The “Gregory clause” of the Poor Law prohibited anyone holding at least 0. 4 acre (0. 1 ha) from receiving relief.
This meant that farmers who had to sell their produce to pay rent and taxes had to deliver up their land to the landlord to qualify for public outdoor relief. This led to thousands of people being evicted from the land, with 90, 000 in 1849 and 104, 000 in 1850.
In 1849, the Encumbered Estates Act allowed landlord estates to be auctioned off upon the petition of creditors, leading to wealthier British speculators purchasing the lands and taking a harsh view of tenant farmers who continued renting. Rents were raised, and tenants were evicted to create large cattle grazing pastures. Between 1849 and 1854, around 50, 000 families were evicted.
What actually caused the Irish Potato Famine?
The Irish Potato Famine, also known as the Great Hunger, began in 1845 when a mold known as Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans ) caused a destructive plant disease that spread rapidly throughout Ireland. The infestation ruined up to one-half of the potato crop that year, and about three-quarters of the crop over the next seven years. Because the tenant farmers of Ireland—then ruled as a colony of Great Britain—relied heavily on the potato as a source of food, the infestation had a catastrophic impact on Ireland and its population. Before it ended in 1852, the Potato Famine resulted in the death of roughly one million Irish from starvation and related causes, with at least another million forced to leave their homeland as refugees.
Ireland in the 1800s. With the ratification of the Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, Ireland was effectively governed as a colony of Great Britain (until the Irish War of Independence ended in 1921). Together, the combined nations were known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
As such, the British government appointed Ireland’s executive heads of state, known respectively as the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary of Ireland, although residents of the Emerald Isle could elect representation to the British Parliament in London.
Are the British to blame for the Irish famine?
The Irish Potato Famine left as its legacy deep and lasting feelings of bitterness and distrust toward the British. Far from being a natural disaster, many Irish were convinced that the famine was a direct outgrowth of British colonial policies. In support of this contention, they noted that during the famine’s worst years, many Anglo-Irish estates continued to export grain and livestock to England.
Were the British to blame for the Irish famine?
The Irish Potato Famine had a profound and enduring impact on Irish sentiment towards the British, with many Irish people attributing the famine to the consequences of British colonial policies. It was argued that during the most acute period of the famine, numerous Anglo-Irish estates persisted in the exportation of grain and livestock to England.
Could the Great Famine have been prevented?
The Famine in Ireland was a significant disaster, despite its uncertain mortality effect. Despite economic problems, Ireland was a growing empire and an integral part of the world’s workshop. The United Kingdom’s resources could have mitigated the consequences of potato blight in Ireland. Within Ireland, substantial food resources could have been diverted to feed the starving people. The policy of closing ports during shortages to keep home-grown food for domestic consumption had previously been effective in staving off famine.
An embargo was placed on the export of foodstuffs from the country during the subsistence crisis of 1782-84, which was successful. The British government refused to allow a similar policy to be adopted in 1846-47, ensuring that Black ’47 was associated with suffering, famine, mortality, emigration, and misrule. The British government’s policy of keeping prices low in areas without a regular market and preventing established dealers from raising prices beyond the fair price with ordinary profits was deemed inadequate.
Why was the British government heavily criticized at the time of the Irish potato famine?
The government of Russell was the subject of criticism for failing to prohibit the export of Irish grain during the harsh winter of 1846-47, for its inability to ensure the distribution of food to those most in need, and for the reduction of relief measures.
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An interesting happy story that came out of the Irish Potato Famine is the Choctow Nation sent $170 to help the Irish during the famine. There is a great statue that commemorates this in Cork County. In 2020, the Irish returned the favor raising $1.8 million to help the Choctow during COVID. The Irish said that the Choctow ‘donated money, then were subjugated to the Trail of Tears by the United States.’ This was a comparison to how the English treated the Irish. The Republic of Ireland officially states that the Choctow are allies of their Republic. These are stories that show that even Natives from the USA and white Europeans can help each other through horrible times and even become generational allies.
3:25 What’s interesting about alcoholism claim is that just a few years before the potato famine, Ireland was the site of a massively successful temperance campaign led by a Catholic priest, Theobald Mathew. So successful was this campaign that between 1838 and 1841, national alcohol consumption was cut in half.
Key to remember is that Ireland always had food during the famine. As your article pointed out, we produced plenty, but were forced to export it. People protested and begged and tried to rob food storeages at the time. Despite the obvious suffrage of the Irish people, the British Crown ignored improving things for the Irish. Their attitude was of complete indifference. They allowed Irish people to starve, nay encouraged it. This occurred while also anglosising our culture and carrying out a variety of other forms of oppresion. The famine is therefore seen by Irish people as a genocide and rightly so. Whole families were wiped out forever. All of which is far less palatable a reality than merely an agricultural misfortune.
I wish you had touched on why we were dependent on the potato so much. Because of the British Occupation, we had to subdivided our land and our farms, and because people had larger families back then, very soon, people could only grow crops for their consumption on land the size of an average garden. The potato was the only crop that could be grown in such small crops, we survived before the potatoes introduction because we had control over our land and had enough to grip other more various crops, if the potato didn’t exist, we could have grown any food at all.
Back in 1944-45, northern Vietnam was struck with a devastating famine that killed two million and it was done by the Japanese and the French, altogether, to exploit our paddy fields. The Irish famine tragedy really struck hard to me, for how eerily similar the British tactics was to that of Japan and France to our unfortunate people.
I come from an industrial city in the north of the UK, with lots of Irish heritage on all sides of my family tree, including a Cork-ish surname. Absolutely unsurprisingly, you can trace back in various directions, and find someone who came over from Ireland in the late 1840s. It’s honestly like 4 different family branches, and that’s just me. I’m sure there are millions of similar stories in family trees across the world. Crazy the effect this blight had on history, and the more you learn about it, the more upsetting it gets.
YOU FORGOT TO MENTION ! One of the unexpected sources of aid in this crisis was the Ottoman Caliphate. How an Ottoman Sultan helped Ireland in the great famine. Ottoman Sultan Abdul Majeed the 1st went out of his way to try to help, so he could ease the suffering of the Irish people. Sultan Abdul Majeed was only 23 years old in 1847, when he personally offered £10,000 in aid to Ireland, but this time he would have to scale back his generosity. British diplomats advised him that it would be offensive for anyone to offer more than Queen Victoria, who had only donated £2,000. It was suggested that he should donate half of that amount so he gave £1,000. The press also blamed the British diplomats in Constantinople for rejecting the initial donation of £10,000 just to avoid embarrassing Queen Victoria. Meanwhile, Sultan Abdul Majeed had found other ways to help. Today, the port town of Drogheda in Ireland includes a crescent and a star, both of which are symbols of Islam, in its coat of arms. Local tradition in the town has it that these symbols were adopted after the Ottoman Empire secretly sent five ships loaded with food to the town in May 1847. The reason for the secrecy is that the British administration had allegedly tried to block the ships from entering Drogheda’s harbor. Evidence that backs these claims include newspaper articles from the period and a letter from Irish notables explicitly thanking the sultan for his generosity and help. Facts
As a Taiwanese, I can’t imagine what it would be like to eat potato as staple food. Mostly, we process potatoes into bagged chips and French fries, which are welcomed by the young but not by the old. We also use potato as seasonings and side dishes, but we don’t eat much. I heard that people in other countries would eat mashed potato. Is that tasty? I’m sure it would bring “special” texture…
The Ottoman Empire originally tried to send 10,000 pounds sterling in assistance to the Irish people, but the British government forced them to lower this amount to 1,000 (to ensure, apparently, that their aid did not overshadow England’s 2,000 pound contribution). While there is documented evidence of this monetary contribution, there is no set proof of an additional physical contribution: 3 ships of food, bound from the Ottoman Empire to Ireland, supposedly snuck past the blocked ports of Dublin and Belfast and delivered their cargo to the town of Drogheda. In gratitude, the modern Coat of Arms of the town contains a star and crescent symbol on the top.Phytophthora infestans was a disease (originally from Mexico, actually, that travelled to Europe via boat) that devastated crops in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. A million people died of starvation or disease, and two million more immigrated to other countries. Ireland lost ¼ of its entire population.
Theres also a bigger reason the blight wiped out entire crops, the Irish grew only a few types of potatoes. That’s what the British (navy if i remember) would buy. So that’s what farmers grew. Diversified food or even diversified potato plants would have kept the blight at bay. One bad year became many because the next planting season even more land was dedicated to the crop (that would fail again … and again). Those potato varieties had been good crops so they kept doubling down hoping to dig out of a hole to disastrous consequences. In conversations with an agricultural biochemist i learned that that same blight is still around and still impacts potato crops but farmers who plant a variety of potato types survive it.
The Penal laws basically ensured that Ireland largely became a single crop dependent society. Part of these laws was that land had to be divided amongst the sons of a family. Within three generations, farms were so small they were unsustainable unless they were sold or the potato was grown there. So, the potato was not a choice of the Irish, but a necessity. Coupled with that,after the Famine, Irish agitators worked by various passive and aggressive means to return the control and ownership of the land to the Irish people which a generation later lead to the struggle of Independence and finally the Irish state we have today. So the next time you hear an Irish potato joke, just try to remember that without it, there would be no Ireland
The Ottoman Empire 🇹🇷 wanted to help Irish people. But since the help was a lot more than the queen made, the queen didn’t allow them. So the ottoman empire made a small money aid and secretly sent ships to Ireland. Today you can see the Turkish flag’s crescent and star on the Drogheda United football team football team logo. ⭐🌙
I am a teacher in the west of Ireland. “An Gorta Mór” or “The Great Famine” is a topic I teach. It is one I teach through the lens of objective truth: it was a genocide through both act (e.g the shutting down of the Quakers soup kitchens/workhouses/continuous export of Irish food/famine roads/higher taxes etc.) and omission. It is important to realise this.
As a British person I’m disgusted in the acts of our government which was responsible for so many Irish lives. And I’m sad to say our corrupt government hasn’t changed much to this day. But the government don’t speak for the people. The people of the u.k are much like anywhere else. Some are nice and some are not. But we’re definitely not all in agreement with our governments policies
1) Genetically, potatoes in Europe are weak: when the Spanish brought potatoes back, the sample size was very small, genetically speaking. This made the susceptible to disease since the crops lacked the genetics to adapt. 2) When the blight hit, the English basically said, “We aren’t going without. You, however, can fend for yourselves.”
The primary factor influencing these weather conditions was a phenomenon called the “North Atlantic Oscillation” (NAO), which refers to the changes in atmospheric pressure and wind patterns occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean. The NAO can fluctuate between two phases: positive and negative. During the negative phase, Ireland typically experiences wetter and stormier conditions due to the prevalence of low-pressure systems and enhanced westerly winds. The period from 1845 to 1852 coincided with an extended negative phase of the NAO, resulting in prolonged wet and damp weather conditions across the country. It’s believed that the impact of the blight on the Irish potato crop during the Great Irish Famine could have been reduced if farmers had cultivated a greater variety of potato types. The famine was primarily caused by an outbreak of late blight (Phytophthora infestans), a devastating fungal disease that specifically targeted the Irish potato crop, which was predominantly comprised of a single susceptible variety called the Irish Lumper. The Irish Lumper variety was particularly vulnerable to the late blight pathogen, and its widespread cultivation across Ireland made the entire crop susceptible to the disease. Had farmers instead grown a more diverse range of potato varieties, including both early and late-maturing types, the impact of the blight would have likely been lessened. The reliance on the Irish Lumper as a staple crop was a result of various factors. The Irish Lumper was particularly well-suited to the Irish climate and soil conditions, making it easier to cultivate in large quantities.
The man responsible for the famine relief, Jonathan Peele, basically sat on his hands and did absolutely nothing to help the Irish and was awarded with a title and a baronhood by the Queen. Jonathan Peele is probably one of the most despised people in Irish history behind Oliver Cromwell who conquered Ireland.
A country that produced plenty of food stuffs of many kinds was forced to export almost all of it while the population starved to death due to only one crop failing for a number of years. A conscious decision was made to take thousands of tonnes of food from a starving country. Ireland supplied 4/5 of the beef, pork and butter in British cities at the time. A famine doesn’t happen when only one crop out of hundreds fails unless measures are purposely taken to exacerbate the effect. Even the soup kitchens helped on the condition that the Irish abandoned their Irish identity in the form of dropping the ‘O’ in their name. That’s why you have variations in Irish names, eg, Sullivan/O’Sullivan, Regan/O’Regan, Riordan/O’Riordan. What would you call it other than genocide?
During the Irish Potato Famine the British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel of the British Tories(Conservatives) tried to implement reforms on the starving Irish population however it cost him to lose support from his party the Tories and distancing him due to his policies on helping the Irish population and splinter group called the Peelites(Which was named after Sir Robert Peel) broke off the Tories which caused infighting between the two factions which led the Whigs(Proto-Liberals predecessor to the Liberal party of the UK) manage to have Sir John Russell to have his premier ship as Prime Minister due to policy failures from both parties of the British Empire the Irish were left to die due to starvation most Irish people immigrated to the United States while some Immigrated to Mainland Europe in the aftermath of the Irish potato famine Ireland’s population has not recovered from 8 million pre-famine to 4 million im the aftermath but in Modern Day Ireland the population hasn’t recovered from that era.
I know what the comments will be like. so here’s my take, 99.8 percent of the British population at that time knew nothing about this state of affairs, they were busy being worked to death in mills, coal mines, and factories of all sorts, also, dying in workhouses and of typhoid. I see the problem being that there was a handful of very rich landowners that caused this.
2:15 “Worse still, the British continued to export Ireland’s grain and livestock”….. “Worse still”?!??! The reason Ireland’s diet relied so heavily on the potato is because that’s what the British allowed them to keep. It’s because Ireland was forced to export all of their nutrition that there was a famine. TED, I expected more of you. Disgraceful. Behind The Bastards did a good couple episodes on the subject called “That Time Britain Did A Genocide In Ireland” for any who’d like to take an deep auditory dive.
Reference to the Irish famine: The inconsistency of our invasion of Mexico with the Christian faith has been brought into a stronger contrast, from the fact, that at the very moment we were loading down a vessel of war to the very edge with bread-stuffs for the famishing Irish, and despatching them on this mission of mercy, we were sending bomb-ships, laden with the most destructive implements of war, to lay waste the cities of Mexico, and bury men, women, and children in the ruins of their dwellings and churches. It is a serious inquiry for every Christian, whether, while we have thus been aiming fatal blows at the physical life of a sister republic, we may not have placed ourselves in the way of receiving the fruits of spiritual death in ourselves. -The War with Mexico Reviewed, Abiel Livermore American Peace Society 1850
The English government created the famine. They used that same tired argument still used by right wing governments today, that the Irish people needed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and that no help should be given them lest they become hooked on British welfare relief. Meanwhile, the British people, poor themselves at the time, raised money to send food to the impoverished Irish people, food that rotted aboard ships in British harbours. The British government refused to allow those ships to sail.The Irish, unaware of the attempts to get them help from the people of Britain, began to hate all the Brits and that hatred carries on even into today. Source, book, “The Great Hunger,” have a look. Read. Learn stuff.
“…leaving behind his wife and 6 children.” American conservatives: “He shouldn’t have had a wife and 6 children, if he couldn’t afford them during a famine.” Also American conservatives: “He should’ve just moved to an area with better jobs and no famine.” Also American conservatives: “He should’ve worked harder, so he could make more money.” (He literally worked to death)
This famine is partly why my great grandma was in the USA. The family was on their way when her mother went into labor, giving birth to her. She drank like a fish. Even in her 80s, she was known to sneak out of the house only to be wheelbarrowed home totally smashed, complaining of the shame of being Irish born in London.
I was told Ultimogeniture meant the Irish farms became increasingly small, generation by generation, leading to reliance upon a single nutritious crop – until that failed. Not that it excuses *anything*, I must add. Also this didn’t mention the “transplantation” of many of the population after the English conquest in the 1650’s, where farm owners were dispossessed and allocated the poorest quality land in the west of the country. Still, the USA did that to their indigenous population in the 1870’s and on, with even more catastrophic results. Interesting that politicking on different issues in the U.K. parliament threw the Irish relief efforts under the bus – just like American Congress stalling support for embattled Ukraine, but 180 years later.
The census of 1841 showed a population of over 8 million, it was barely 4 million in the census of 1861 so over 2 million died of starvation and disease and 2 million fled, many of them seccuming to hardship soon after. In reality the Irish continued to suffer malnutrition, poverty and hardship for most of the next 100 years.
Fantastic article. Most articles about the Great Famine side step the fact that the British government was responsible for the death of millions of people. The Brits have been a scourge on this word and more people need to understand why people hate the British. They aren’t hated for memes or jokes. They’re hated for their centuries worth of abuse on this world
One thing that is rarely mentioned that I remember hearing? Is that not long before famine the Irish were more or less forced to switch to a different breed of potato that was had more water in it and I think was less resistant to the blight, also the Irish didn’t have the ability to grow more than one breed of potato which could have allowed a back up crop when the blight spread.
Another reason that the British government was able to justify denying meaningful aid to the Irish was the work of borderline eugenics advocate Thomas Malthus who observed the way that wiod animal populations tend to increase and decrease based on how much food and other resources were available and basically concluded that things like crops failing were just a natural means of population control with recognizing that, you know, human beings are not wild animals and if we have the resources to prevent someone from starving, there is no valid reason not to do so. Basically the nicest thing you can say about this bit of science is that it helped Darwin’s study of evolution by helping him realize how beneficial traits spread within a natural population.
Monoculture is the real cause of the blight. When biodiversity is limited, the organism becomes more susceptible to disease. If farmers had access to more than one species of potato, it would have been less likely that a single disease would wipe out the whole crop. Monoculture is bad for the environment and for the organism being grown. Famine is man made, however. In modern times, famines are caused by the lack of access to food, not by the lack of food in general.
It’s a Combination of Bad Fungi eating the whole of Irish Agriculture, and the Terrible British Politics that lead to the famine. In the end, If I were someone who Physically saw the Irish Potato Famine, I would personally go to parliament and explain to them that it Doesn’t Matter wether someone is Catholic or Protestant, they are all Christians, and depicting the Irish as Lazy while they have nothing else to do is completely Immoral. Allowing millions to stave and die should be a Crime against Humanity, and a Great Sin.
So close to being an okay account of the Irish Famine. Would probably help to travel there and see what remains of the abandoned homesteads in pretty much every parish in rural Ireland. Close to me there is an entire village is unaccounted for. The point is that every aspect of this disaster (bar very the fungus itself and I can assure the release of fungus is also questioned by some academics) was purposeful; the human suffering incalculable and the lasting legacy far reaching. Ireland was, and remains, one of the most fertile countries in the world. It is illogical that starvation would take foot here. Some lasted only little while on eating grass. Secondly, the peasant Irish only became reliant on the potato when all other foodstuffs were exported to Britain. British foreign policy as you rightly point out was inhumane and compounded matters enormously. It forced millions onto ‘Coffin ships’ to the USA and Canada particularly. It is also important to note the help from the Choctaw Nation who had recently suffered their own famine on the “Trail of Tears and Death” to Oklahoma. Third is the indelible mark it left on the Irish psyche. A national trauma such as this was rarely mentioned in the following hundred years. A further point are the numbers. I remember having a conversation with an Irish academic living in Canada. He explained to me that published figures such as a pre-famine population of 8 million people, one million dead and 1-2 million emigrated, cannot explain future population trends in America, Canada, Australia and the UK.
I am 50% Irish from the Munster area, and though I have not found the evidence yet of when my father’s family came to the U.S., I am reasonably sure that some of my ancestors came to America as a result of the famine. I also believe that the famine and all the discrimination and cruelty led to “The Troubles” that plagued Ireland for years. I am also impressed that the Choctaw Nation sent money to help the Irish and the Irish returned the favor so generously during Covid. Honorable people, the Choctaw’s.
My great great grandfather fled northwestern Ireland during the famine, to Glasgow where he married a Glaswegian and had 5 children..the conditions were still really awful in Glasgow back then apparently ..but not as life threatening as it was in Ireland. my great grandfather (his son, who I was fortunate enough to meet when I was tiny!) and my great aunts and uncles had awful lung damage from pollution in the Glasgow poor areas but they all moved to England and lived into old age. Irish Great great grandad died in a ‘poorhouse’ in Glasgow in his 40s which by todays standards is very young, his wife died in her 40s too orphaning my then teenage great grandad and his young siblings at the time. It’s sad to think about how they must have suffered in those days compared to how fortunate we are now but I bet he thought he’d lived a long life compared to those back home in Ireland…I try to see it as though he was one of the lucky ones.
Going no further than the title, specialists in the subject do not call it the ‘potato famine’, because that implies that the Irish starved because the potato crop failed. That was certainly a contributing factor, but 1846 and on were bumper harvests elsewhere (blight spreads during humid conditions, which is generally good for vegetation). Hard to convince yourself to click on a article that cannot even get the first basic right.
lots of hate to the british empire and queen. Queen Victoria had already aided Ireland with £2,000, and her advisors in London refused to accept any offer exceeding the monarch’s aid. Faced with this dictate, Sultan Abdulmejid unwillingly slashed his original offer of aid, and sent Ireland £1,000 instead.
The Irish Potato Famine occurred in the mid-19th century, primarily between 1845 and 1852. It was a period of severe food shortage and mass starvation in Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. The main cause of the famine was a potato disease called late blight, which destroyed the potato crop, a staple food for the Irish population. This catastrophe resulted in the deaths of approximately one million people due to starvation and disease, with another million emigrating to escape the famine’s effects.
A good summary of the genocide but misses out on the centuries of dispossession and disenfranchisement inflicted on the Irish by Britain which led to the dire situation of the Irish before the Famine started. The native Irish population were driven off their lands to live in the poorer marginal land in the west of the country during the Cromwellian period and the Penal laws then formalised the oppression of the Irish. For example, Catholics were forbidden from purchasing land and were restricted in leasing land, therefore at the time of the Famine the vast majority of Irish people were tenant farmers paying rent to landlords who often lived in Britain. Inheritance laws were manipulated to prevent the consolidation of Catholic estates, e.g. upon the death of a Catholic landowner, the land HAD to be divided equally among all his sons unless the eldest converted to Protestantism, in which case they would inherit the entire estate. Catholics were barred from holding public office or entering the legal profession. Catholics were also deprived of the right to vote in parliamentary elections. This is the legacy of British colonialism – we simply cannot say that it happened a long time ago and we should forget it. What happened during that time still resonates today – it is now over 150 years later and the Irish population still has not returned to its pre-famine levels.
In the late 1700’s the population in Ireland was about 4 million. In those days infant mortality was high, everywhere in the world. When the potato became the staple crop, the Irish were more well nourished and the population exploded to about 8 million, a level unsustainable at that time. So it could be said that the famine was in part due to the success of the potato harvest.
Please read the full history instead of blaming the British, as such myths and half truths perpetuate hate. The Irish landlords were primarily to blame. Ireland had suffered regular famines under the Irish parliament prior to 1801 which are conveniently forgotten. Even when the Irish devolved government chose to end upon the Act of Union, our was still de rigueur for Britain not to intervene in Irish domestic matters. Only after all attempts failed did Britain lose patience and blockade the ports to stop Irish farmers exporting crops.
The English didn’t just lack the political will” to aid the Irish; the actively worked to hinder aid from other countries. The Muslim Chalifate donated more than 1000% of what Queen Victoria has donated for the Irish. The British refused and asked him to lower it a little less than what the Queen did as not to make her look bad. The Khalif still sent 5 ships loaded with goods. They were blocked by the English when only one was able arrive Irish shores in Drogheda, Ireland. The English did worse to Palestines when they gave their homes to European Zionists. That’s why Irish and Muslims are one in their hate of oppression and English arrogance.
Modern science dispels a huge amount of the lies surrounding the famine. While studying history in Irish schools, I was told both that only Ireland was affected by the blight and that “Ireland was uniquely dependant on the potato”. I’ve since discovered that both of these were lies. The 1840s blight affected Six Continents. Furthermore, marginal and underclass communities throughout Northern Europe were very dependent on the Potato. Yet, while “Food shortages” did affect much of Europe, leading to the “Year of Revolutions” in 1848, only in Ireland was there Famine and deaths. A more recent Lie, propounded by British and British Apologist “Historians” points to the food exports from Ireland during the famine and blames the deaths on “Irish greed”. What those Liars fail to mention is that while the vast majority of the population was Catholic, even by as late as 1880, less than 4% of the land owners in Ireland were Catholic. Many of these landholdings still exist and these Protestant land owners NEVER considered themselves as “Irish”, either then or now. They always call themselves “British”. The response of the Protestant landowners to the Famine, which overwhelmingly affected solely the Catholic population – they composed and sang hymns celebrating the deaths of the “lazy Catholic Irish”. There are numerous examples of contemporaneous letters and speeches in English newspapers and in the British Parliament from this Protestant land owning Class, demanding that the Government do NOTHING to help the starving.
The British Response to the Irish Famine: Context and Actions The Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1852) was a catastrophic event primarily triggered by a potato blight, a fungal disease that devastated the staple food crop for much of the Irish population. While the famine was a natural disaster, the British government’s response to it has been widely criticized. However, it is important to understand that the famine was not intentionally caused by the British, and there were several efforts, albeit often inadequate, made to alleviate the suffering of the Irish people. The Role of Natural Disaster and British Intentions The potato blight, a naturally occurring plant disease, was the primary cause of the famine. The British government did not intentionally cause the famine; rather, it was an unforeseen and uncontrollable event. The failures that followed were due to poor management, limited understanding of crisis management, and adherence to economic policies that discouraged government intervention. The belief in laissez-faire economics, which emphasized minimal government interference in the market, played a significant role in the inadequate response. Efforts Made by the British Government and Society \t1.\tPublic Works Programs: The British government established public works projects to provide employment to those affected by the famine. At its peak, these programs employed over 700,000 Irish people, offering them a meager income in exchange for hard labor. However, these efforts were poorly organized and did not fully address the crisis.
One part of that people don’t know is that The Ottoman Empire Sent ships to aid The Irish people. They sent food And Grain for them. But they did it Secretly. One cause The British Government told them ” No You can’t send this To the Irish people, they are our people and it’s offensive that you are donating more then her Majesty the Queen ” The Ottoman emperor basically just sent ships anyway. Lol
“The British starved Ireland!” The British actually sent aid, it just was inadequate because of the pre-modern context “Welll…the British didn’t help enough!” I hope people realise blaming the British for a fungus is essentially calling them godlike. The British despite all their accomplishments are in fact just human.
The english history is littered with incidents of cruelty and borderline genocides. The calcutta famine is also one of english doing. In irelend the blight was turned into famine by the english but in calcutta the crop and the yield was bumper every thing was good but the english exported every last grain of rice and wheat to england. During the potato famine, in 1846 the ottoman empire tried to donate 10000 pounds but was denied by the british cuz the queen was donating 2000 pounds and nobody can donate more than the queen. The ottomans send food and medicines but were blocked by the english, they somehow sneaked to drogheda but the intent of the english was pretty obvious.
The Great Hunger* Also, while The Choctaw Gift is a tearjerker, the Ottoman’s attempt at offering aid highlights the bastardry of the UK. Essentially, the amount the Ottoman leader at the time was willing to offer was so much that it would have embarrassed the Victorian Crown who themselves did comparitively little at that time to ameliorate the Irish. Hence, they blocked it. One more thing, it reeeally gets me irate that the Brits called Irishfolk lazy when THEY’RE LITERALLY PAYING THEIR TAXES WITH FOOD THEY AREN’T ALLOWED CONSUME THROUGHOUT THIS PERIOD!!!
Ireland was producing enough food. Britain purposely exported the crops and left very little food in Ireland. They aimed to use hunger as a political weapon to starve the Irish into submission. While Ireland was starving England was lavishly enjoying the riches stolen from its colonies. Dictators in Ethiopia used this same ideology. Ethiopia once the bread basket of Africa became one of the most malnourished countries in the world. Dictators planned to supress the population with hunger so nobody would dare fight against them.
Complete dependency on the potato came about because the British forbade Catholics to bequeath the entire farm to the eldest child. Instead, it was mandatory for farms to be subdivided equally amongst all the children, reducing field sizes, reducing efficiency and creating a complete dependency on the potato as the only crop that yielded sufficient calories from small plots. When the potato-blight struck there was no fallback source of nutrition.
There’s a major problem here, and it has to do with population growth. Ireland had a tremendous expansion of it’s population prior to the famine, setting up a major disaster when crops failed. This is now true with countries that do not control their populations due to archaic cultural and religious factors. Big families an asset?
It was a genocide, and one of the biggest cover ups in history even to this day. We live on an island. We did not survive on potatoes only, the very notion is ridiculous. No one talks about the ship loads of food and livestock that was taken out of Ireland on a daily basis at the time. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food and farm animals all taken out of the country. While the people were ripped from their homes and farms. Ffs, I wish one day people will stop making a mockery of what happened to the Irish. It was an invasion, that led to the starving and displacement of a nation’s people, all by the British crown. Not the British people, the crown.
The article brushes past explaining why more than half of the population subsisted almost entirely on one crop. The native Irish were evicted from their lands from the time of Cromwell onwards. The land was taken from the people who it belonged to by force and threat of death, and turned into massive estates, given to the English aristocrats as reward for political favour. The goal was to use these local lords to eradicate any opposition to English rule in Ireland – and to do that by eradicating anything that made Ireland different to Britain – any sense of irishness. Irish people were told to go west, to land that couldn’t support them. It was ethnic cleansing in its purest sense. The only thing that would grow in the poor land in the west, to which people had been banished, were potatoes. It was only a matter of time before catastrophe struck. The potato essentially delayed the genocide by 200 years, but it was genocide sure enough
There’s an interesting parallel after the famine with slavery in the United States. The British (including the Irish parliamentarians), to their credit, from 1870 started passing land acts in Parliament to give Irish tenant farmers back their land. In 1870 97.5% of land in Ireland was owned by landlords. By 1929 97.5% of land was owned by former tenants. In the US, Lincoln’s plans to provide land grants to freed slaves were dashed when he was assassinated. The Netherlands and Belgium are mentioned in this article: In 2024 Belgium’s Average Industrial salary was €48,800 per year. In The Netherlands: €52,200. In Ireland in 2024: €52,200. If you look at the fate of Ireland after the famine you see that simply starting a process of creating generational wealth and developing an open economic system allowed it to catch up to and surpass its neighbours. The same is not true for African Americans who never got that chance after their trauma. So when people use the Irish as an example of “well they got over it, why can’t you” they’re leaving out some crucial facts.
>”Global weather patterns for which they bear little responsibility.” Don’t you mean that they bear absolutely none? Our global political system is controlled by a very small group of individuals, and even voters in “developed” countries have very little say in what policy is adopted. Much less do any of these farmers living on the margins of global society have any control over the climate crisis. People in those poorer countries, additionally, have negligible “carbon footprints,” and even the average person in a “developed” country does so little damage to the environment compared to the corporations that actually have the political and economic influence that creates and maintains the policies leading to climate breakdown. If Everybody recycled and shopped greener, it would still be true that 100 corporations are the cause of 70% of climate emissions. The political and economic system is putting and keeping us in crisis, not all the little people who are driving to work instead of taking the bus because there isn’t one in their neighborhood.
Thank you for the reply. I don’t buy the argument that a little bit of warming will cause catastrophic economic and climatic changes. A little bit of warming will lead to longer growing seasons, more arable land and maybe a Northwest passage which will be like a new Panama or Suez canal, significantly limiting the distance for sea trade and therefore maritime trade emissions. And, far more people die from cold than from heat every year. I suppose if you live on an island 3 to 4 feet above sea level rising temperatures are a bit of a concern but that’s a risk you take in life.
English population was 18million, Irish was about 12million, there was no industrialized farming in the UK until after WW1. The UK government was controlled by the elite, the general population had no voting rights. Wellington is famed for the invention of security grilles to stop people getting into his home, because he treated his farm workers so badly, in England. As normal the story is very complex, and simplified by an American 😢. Don’t assume I’m English.
I’m slightly confused about why the corn wasn’t nutrient rich enough to replace the potato. Most people will know that potatoes aren’t nutrient rich at all. In fact, they don’t even count as one of your 5-a-day because they don’t have any nutritional value other than carbs. Sweetcorn however… absolutely is nutrient rich.
In some northern region of today’s Germany there had been the potato blight, too. But it afflicted the population not in the same desastrous way as the people of Ireland because of agricultural reforms in the 1830th. For example in Prussia the farmers had to change their crops every year on their fields – the so called Dreifelderwirtschaft = three fields agriculture. The changing of the crops prevented the soil to become poorly. Nevertheless because of the bad weather conditions with bad harvests in the 1840ers many Germans left their homeland and emigrated to America, too.
History isn’t a nice thing. I believe it was manmade, as British colonial countries needed cheapest blue collar labour they could get. And, labourers who could speak English. Hence, the Irish who built up Australia, America, Canada, etc……….Alcohol was also made available as cheap as possible to keep them docile also.
A total catastrophe for Ireland. On the positive side, they now have freedom, much of their population eventually got a better life in America and Ireland’s population has to an extent recovered and they are a relatively wealthy nation. Contrast that to Scotland, which also suffered from famine, and population decline, and has not yet gained its independence, there are large areas where you see no population, masses of ruined houses, something like 60% of the country now lies empty, a sporting land for the British aristocracy and London oligarchy, and our history isnt allowed to be known, a history of linguistic and cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing. This is why the Scots supported the EU so strongly, the EU was a safety refuge against the abuses of the London oligarchy
This talk misses the point. Probably the single most important ‘take away’ from the Irish famine is insufficiently stressed here and that is that the Irish were not in charge of themselves. Societies that govern themselves tend not to have famines. This blight ravaged the potato crop throughout Europe but only in Ireland did it result in the estimated 1-2 million deaths and population collapse. That Ireland was an integral part of the Union is seen by this event to be a fiction – London would never have let one million Yorkshire people die or for that county to be emptied of a huge proportion of its people. Yorkshire was British: Ireland was a colony. It was a defeated nation or, perhaps more correctly, a defeated culture. Provided countries do not allow themselves to decline into anarchy or rule by an uncaring elite they tend to avoid famine. Annoying too is the predicted segue into climate change. There isn’t a warning to the world regarding climate change from this wholly avoidable event. Please teach the correct lesson, namely that good, accountable politics matters and alternatives have disastrous outcomes.
War with England and colonialism of Ireland. Belligerent party gain the spoils of war, the Land. Confiscated land given as payment to soldiers, some settled some sold. Which created landlords with wealth who had the influential legal and political sway of the regions. Landlords rented land to tenants farmers in plots of various sizes. Tenants relying on seasonal work to help with the rent and potatoes for substances. If a tenant failed to pay his rent then the confiscation of either grain, Livestock or Wool is taken in Lieu of payment. Potato Blight infection = no substance for household. With no Tenancy rights and nothing left to confiscate, eviction by Bailiff and Police with the dwelling walls tumbled to insure no further use. WOOL; Wool has been one of England’s best commodities, income and Tax revenues for century’s. Since the medieval ages English wool has been sort by merchants from Flanders to Genoa. It has built and paid for Bridges, Castles, Cathedrals, Colleges, Manor houses, Ships and Wars. Since the 1800’s towns such as Leeds had been creating larger mechanized Mills able to produce more cloth than the country could produce wool. there was the incentive to find sheep grazing pastures for the profitable wool commodity. With the wealthy influential landlords interest in creating more wool which in turn creates more tax revenue. With this political incentive slant it is much easier to rationalize the Divine Providence of Famine upon a people with less “Moral character” Than to say Genocide for profit.
you need to get the story right if you keep planting last years small potatoes the crop gets weak and prone to desease so you need to grow seed potatoes at least every third year, the english landlords demanded rents so you could not leave a field for growing seed if you didnt pay you were evicted,also thousands of tons of food was exported to england. stop trying to blame the weather the blame lies solely on the invaders .
4:14 – Earths changing climate is not effected by the tiny amount of carbon dioxide produced by man. The current composition of the earths atmosphere is .04% carbon dioxide and is signifcantly lower than the Jurrasic and Cretaceous eras when the Earths climate was much warmer. To get a green house effect like that of 536 AD required massive volcanic activity and caused world wide crop failure and disease. Of the .04% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, all of mans activity accounts for only 5% to 6% depending on who you ask. Our changing climate is most effected by solar cycles and volcanic activity.
What is missing in this article is the varietal of Potato that was very susceptible to the “blight” That potato was “The Irish Lumper” It was exceptionally high-yielding and rich in vitamins potato and for that reason, it was widely planted to support the ever larger families. No evidence exists that had the Irish switched varieties of potato would have made any difference. Interestingly enough “The Irish Lumper” has been reintroduced to Ireland recently and with modern pesticides any evidence of the return of the blight could be managed.
You made anti-Irish propaganda. Potatoes became a monoculture and the main source of nutrition for Irish farmers as the direct result of British mandates and British landownersin Ireland. British landowners who were installed by Britain by mandate, and then changed from a surf system to charging farmers rent. This means that every possible scrap of crops that could be sold HAD to be sold, resulting in the aforementioned monoculture of the most nutritious and sturdy crop available so the farmers wouldn’t starve at the behest of their owners. Britain didn’t just import corn to Ireland to attempt to fight the famine. They exported more corn from ireland than they brought in. They imported the worst corn they could find. Corn that couldnt be digested unless it was milled several times before ingestion.
The British really should be taught about this in school, hardly anyone in Britain knows this, it’s been erased from history. As a Welsh person whose family is Irish who went to school in England and Wales and has an Irish passport, I’m really shocked it’s not covered. If it wasn’t for my parents and grandparents I also wouldn’t have known. It’s not the fault of modern British but it would give them an understanding as to why they are so unpopular in Ireland and what the troubles were really about.
As an English person, I humbly accept full responsibility for the suffering caused by our actions, particularly regarding the tragic Potato Famine which deeply affected our fellow Irishmen. Our greed led to devastating consequences, and for that, I offer my heartfelt apologies. While I take pride in our achievements, it is imperative not to shy away from our past wrongs. Instead, we must confront them with humility and seek reconciliation. I must address a comment made in passing: it’s untrue that we killed our own kind. Just as today, society was divided into common folk and aristocracy during that time period, and I come from the former. Like the rest of the world, we in England also suffered devastation and poverty, albeit to a lesser extent. I sympathise deeply with all those affected by these hardships.
You say British but what you should say is English! Scotland had nothing to do with it And famine is not the right description there was plenty food It was genocide Also it had a lot to do with much of the land and wealth being given to the Protestant incomers by the English much like the highland clearances
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