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The Great Irish Famine (also known as the '''Great Hunger''' and, in Irish , '''''An Gorta Mór''''' or '''''An Drochshaol''''') was a Famine , and its aftermath, in Ireland between 1845 and 1849. The famine was caused initially by Potato Blight , an Oomycete that almost instantly destroyed the primary food source of many Irish people. The blight explains the crop failure but the dramatic and deadly effect of the famine was exacerbated by other factors of economic, political, social, and religious origin. Its immediate effects continued until 1851. Much is unrecorded but estimates are that around one million people, about 12% of the population, died in the three years from 1846 to 1849.Demography (official journal of the Population Association of America), Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 1986), pp. 543-562. Fertility Trends, Excess Mortality, and the Great Irish Famine - Phelim P. Boyle, Cormac O Grada. This paper estimates mortality and fertility rates prevailing in Ireland during the 25-year period before the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1849. A technique is developed to estimate the age-specific mortality level during the Famine and the number of Famine-related deaths. The paper concludes that fertility rates were declining during the period 1821-1845 and that the effects of the Famine were especially severe on the very young and the very old. Ignoring deaths among emigrants, it is estimated that one million individuals perished as a result of the Famine. The analysis permits year-by-year reconstruction of the Irish population age structure for the period 1821-1851. Most of these deaths were the result of famine-related diseases rather than starvation. Another one million people are estimated to have fled as refugees to Great Britain , the United States , Canada and Australia during the same period, increasing the Irish Diaspora . The famine occurred within the British imperial homeland at a time well into the modern prosperity of the Victorian Era of the Industrial Revolution during a time when Ireland was, even during the famine, a net exporter of food. The immediate effect on Ireland was devastating and its long-term effects proved immense, changing Irish culture and tradition for generations. The population of Ireland continued to fall for 70 years, stabilising at half the level prior to the famine. This long-term decline ended in the west of the country only in 2006, over 160 years after the famine struck.Central Statistics Office: 2006, Census 2006: Preliminary Report , Stationery Office: Dublin CAUSES AND CONTRIBUTING FACTORS The 1840s saw the introduction of the pathogen '' Phytophthora Infestans '' into Europe. Plant pathologist Jean Beagle Ristanio speculates that the pathogen (not a fungus but an Oomycete ) arrived in Europe on a shipment of potatoes from South America in the 1830s. All of Europe's potato crop soon fell victim to the fungal infection, none more so than Ireland's; and in Ireland none more so than in the western and southwestern counties, with their reputation of single crop and/or subsistence farming on tiny holdings of two acres or less. Land Consolidation In the 16th century Plantations Of The Country were undertaken under Mary I and Elizabeth I . The plantations in Counties Laois and Offaly and in Munster did not survive, but the Plantation Of Ulster fundamentally established an English Protestant presence in Ireland. In 1649 Oliver Cromwell 's forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition and Occupied The Country , bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars . Cromwell passed a very harsh series of Penal Laws against Roman Catholics and confiscated almost all of their land. Consolidation of lands into large estates was widespread in Europe , but in Ireland consolidation occurred via different laws applied to Presbyterians and Roman Catholics, favoring the Anglican s of the Church Of Ireland , a State Religion under the British Crown . Lands owned by Catholics were instead subdivided. By the time of The Great Hunger these discriminatory laws were gone, but had biased large land-ownership to mostly Protestant, English, and often Non-resident , or "absentee", landlords. This period also saw the rise of economic and other colonialism, often influencing countries to produce for export a single crop. Ireland, too, became mostly a single-crop nation, but that primary harvest of potatoes, the Irish mostly consumed at home. The potatoes grew well in Ireland and seemed the only crop that could support a peasant family limited — through subdivision of larger Catholic-owned estates — to a very small tenant plot of land. Tenants, subdivisions, and bankruptcy " Subdivision " resulted from The Popery Act which was one of the Penal Laws (Ireland) , enacted to discriminate against Roman Catholics. The Act divided lands and property equally among male heirs (instead of being Inherited By The First-born Son ); over generations, tenant farm size shrank, split between all living sons. By the 1840s, subdivision resulted in Catholics working the smallest farms and so becoming ever poorer. In 1845, for example, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 0.4 to 2 Hectare s (one to five Acre s) in size, while 40% were of two to six hectares (five to fifteen acres). Holdings were so small that only potatoes — no other crop — would suffice to feed a family. The British Government reported, shortly before the Great Hunger, that poverty was so wide-spread that one third of all Irish small holdings could not support their families, after paying their rent, except by earnings of seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland .Robert Kee, ''The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism'' p.15. By the 1840s, the Irish land-holding system was under serious strain. Many big landlord estates already carried heavy mortgages from earlier farm crises. Ten percent went bankrupt due to the Great Hunger. Many small tenancies, lacking long-term leases, rent control or security of tenure, became so small and unsustainable — through subdivision — that the tenants struggled to survive even in the good years, and depended on the potato crop, as only potatoes would provide enough nutrition on such small farms. Yet, the large landlord estates — owned by absentee Britons — exported many tons of cattle and other foodstuffs to foreign markets. Any attempt by the tenant farmer to increase productivity of their land holding was actively discouraged by threats of disproportionately high increase in rent — and even eviction. Dependancy on the potato The famine of 1845 acquired the name ''An Gorta Mór'' because it became the most deadly of all the ones which preceded it. There were twenty-four failures of the potato crop according to the Census of Ireland Commissioners in 1851. The first recorded by the commissioners was 1728, in1739 the crop was ‘entirely destroyed, and again in 1740, in 1770 the crop largely failed again. Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 Penguin Books, London, England, 1991 In 1800 there was another ‘general’ failure, and in 1807 half the crop was lost. In 1821 and 1822 the potato failed completely in Munster and Connaught, and in 1830 and 1831 were years of failure in Mayo, Donegal and Galway, in 1832, 1833, 1834 and 1836 a large number of districts suffered serious loss, and in 1835 the potato failed in Ulster. In 1836 and 1837 brought ‘extensive’ failures throughout Ireland and again in 1839 failure was universal throughout the country. In 1841 the potato crop failed in a lot of districts, and in 1844 the early crop was extensively lost. Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 Penguin Books, London, England, 1991 According to Cecil Woodham-Smith in her notable work, The Great Hunger, “the unreliability of the potato was an accepted fact in Ireland… and in 1845 the possibility of yet another failure caused no particular alarm.” In the forty years since the union, this commission was only one in a long line of commissions “to report on the state of Ireland.” According to Woodham-Smith, there had been no fewer than 114 Commissions and 61 Special Committees, and of them she says, “without exception their findings prophesied disaster.” Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 Penguin Books, London, England, 1991 Evictions Relief of Ireland's poor people was then directed by Poor Law legislation. The Poor Law Union raised money from rates (local taxes) on landlords, based on how many tenants farmed that estate. Renting small farms to subsistence farmers was unprofitable; the British Government used the rating system to encourage consolidation of holdings — thought more profitable and, theoretically, able to pay for those no longer able to farm. Over half a million people were evicted during the Famine.(O'Neill, Famine Evictions, King (ed.), Famine Land and Culture. Food exports to England Records show Irish lands exported food, even during the worst years of the Famine. When Ireland experienced a famine in 1782-83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. Merchants lobbied against the export ban, but government in the 1780s overrode their protests; that export ban did not happen in the 1840s. Cecil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in ''The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849'' that, "...no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation." Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five-year famine. Christine Kinealy, a University of Liverpool fellow and author of two texts on the ''Irish Famine: This Great Calamity'' and ''A Death-Dealing Famine'', writes that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon and ham actually increased during the famine. The food was shipped under guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland. However, the poor had no money to buy food and the government then did not ban exports. Irish Meteorologist Austin Bourke, in ''The use of the potato crop in pre-famine Ireland'' disputes some of Woodham-Smith's calculations, and notes that during December 1846 imports almost doubled. He opines that "it is beyond question that the deficiency arising from the loss of the potato crop in 1846 could not have been met by the simple expedient of prohibiting the export of grain from Ireland." The Quakers are the only protestant religious group commonly recognised to have come to the aid of the Irish during the Great Famine but, unfortunately, often at a price more costly than gold. Quaker Alfred Webb, one of the many volunteers in Ireland at the time, wrote: "Upon the famine arose the wide spread system of proselytism...and a network of well-intentioned Protestant associations spread over the poorer parts of the country, which in return for soup and other help endeavoured to gather the people into their churches and schools...The movement left seeds of bitterness that have no yet died out, and Protestants, and not altogether excluding Friends, sacrificed much of the influence for good they might have had..."Alfred Webb, unpublished biography, c.1868, p. 120-122 In addition to the religious, non-religious organizations came to the assistance of famine victims. The British Relief Association was one such group. Founded in 1847, the Association raised money throughout England, America and Australia; their funding drive benefited by a "Queen's Letter", a letter from Queen Victoria appealing for money to relieve the distress in Ireland. With this initial letter the Association raised £171,533. A second, somewhat less successful "Queen's Letter" was issued in late 1847. In total, the British Relief Association raised approximately £200,000. (c.$1,000,000 at the time) Claims of potato dependency Irish tenant farmers, forced into smaller and smaller land holdings by the subdivision rules of the Penal Laws, depended too much on potatoes as a food. Ireland was not unique in its single-crop dependency, common among exporting nations. (For example, many countries of Asia with Rice .) Ireland's rapid shift to potato cultivation about 1790 helped Ireland's population grow to Overpopulated levels despite political upheaval and warfare. Soldiers and wars tend to disrupt most farming; not so for the sub-surface potato. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, potatoes were a staple for most Europeans. The blight spread across Europe, but only in Ireland were its consequences so drastic. Dispossession, subdivision, small tenant farms, and reliance on a single crop for home consumption export , are just a few of many potential reasons why Ireland suffered so much more than the Continent. Another weakness is that all the potatoes in Ireland came from a limited genetic pool, just a few imports from South America , and thus had little Genetic Resistance to the disease once it was introduced. Jeremy Rifkin , in his book ''Beyond Beef'', writes "The Celtic grazing lands of...Ireland had been used to pasture cows for centuries. The British colonized...the Irish, transforming much of their countryside into an extended grazing land to raise cattle for a hungry consumer market at home.... The British taste for beef had a devastating impact on the impoverished and disenfranchised people of..Ireland.... Pushed off the best pastureland and forced to farm smaller plots of marginal land, the Irish turned to the potato, a crop that could be grown abundantly in less favorable soil. Eventually, cows took over much of Ireland, leaving the native population virtually dependent on the potato for survival (pp. 56,57)." DEATH TOLL No one knows how many people died in the Famine. State registration of births, marriages or deaths had not yet begun, while records kept by the Roman Catholic Church are incomplete. Many of the Church Of Ireland 's records (which included records of local Catholics due to the collection of Tithes (10% of income) from Catholics to finance the Church of Ireland) were destroyed during the Civil War in 1922. One possible estimate has been reached by comparing the expected population with the eventual numbers in the 1850s (see Irish Population Analysis ). Earlier predictions expected that by 1851, Ireland would have a population of eight to nine million. In 1851 the actual population was 6.6 million. Modern historians and statisticians estimate that between 500,000 and 2,000,000 died. Joe Lee, ''The Modernisation of Irish Society'' p.1. Cormac Ó Grada suggests the higher number of one million. In addition, in excess of one million Irish emigrated to the United States , Great Britain , Canada , Australia , and elsewhere, while more than one million emigrated over following decades; by 1911, a combination of emigration and an abnormally high number of unmarried men and women in the population, had reduced the population of Ireland to 4.4 million. Detailed statistics into the population of Ireland since 1841 are available at Irish Population Analysis . REACTIONS ]] As early as 1844, , but this charge was dropped, and he was convicted under a new law purposefully enacted of Treason Felony Act and sentenced to 14 years transportation. 1848 rebellion ''Main article: Young Irelander Rebellion Of 1848 '' ]] In 1847 William Smith O'Brien , the leader of the Young Ireland party, became one of the founding members of the Irish Confederation Michael Doheny’s The Felon’s Track, M.H. Gill & Son, LTD, 1951 Edition to campaign for a Repeal of the Act Of Union , and called for the export of grain to be stopped and the ports closed. History of Ireland, from the Treaty of Limerick to the present time (2 Vol). By John Mitchel James Duffy 1869. pg414 The following year he organised the resistance of landless farmers in County Tipperary against the landowners and their agents. Response of United Kingdom Government The initial British government policy towards the famine was, in the view of historians such as ".Lee, ''op.cit'' p.1. This 1740–1741 famine is commonly referred to as The Forgotten Famine. Commonly, the government would encourage landowners to evict their tenants. During the 1846–49 Irish Famine, Tory government head Sir Robert Peel bought some foreign Maize for delivery to Ireland, and repealed the Corn Laws , which prohibited imports of cheaper foreign grain to Ireland. The Irish called the maize imported by the government 'Peel's brimstone' — partly because of maize's yellow colour, partly that it had to be ground twice, partly that maize does not have--as potatoes do have--Vitamin C. Repeal of the Corn Laws during 1846 to 1849, came too late to help the starving Irish, and was politically unpopular, ending Sir Robert's ministry. Succeeding him was a Whig ministry under Lord John Russell, Later Earl Russell . Lord John's ministry focused on providing support through "public works" projects. Such projects mainly consisted of the government employing Irish peasantry on wasteful projects, such as filling in valleys and flattening hills, so the government could justify the cash payments. Such projects proved counterproductive, as starving labourers expended the energy gained from low rations on the heavy labour. Furthermore, prospects of paid labour influenced Irish peasants to remain at work, far from their farmlands. So they did not farm, which fact worsened the famine. Eventually, a soup-kitchen network, which fed three million people, replaced the public works projects. In the autumn of 1847, the soup kitchens were shut down and responsibility for famine relief was transferred to the Poor Laws unions, through the raising of Poor Law taxes. The Irish Poor Laws were even harsher on the poor than their English counterparts; those paupers with over a quarter-acre of land were expected to abandon it before entering a workhouse — something many of the poor would not do. Furthermore, Ireland had too few workhouses. Many of the workhouses that existed were closed due to financial problems; authorities in London refused to give large amounts of aid to bankrupt Poor Laws unions. Therefore, disaster became inevitable; only about a million people were on workhouse relief rolls on any given day. In 1849 London finally came up with a plan to save bankrupt Poor Laws Unions that were offering little or no relief; however, it was primarily funded by a tax on Ulster (the then most-prosperous part of Ireland) rather than by the Imperial treasury. As such, it was seen as a violation of the spirit of the Act of Union. Britain tried in turn government direct aid, reliance on private charities (some to be financed by taxes on landlords), public works programs, soup kitchens, workhouses, and a laissez-faire policy backed by military force. Nothing worked, or, if something did work, it was not funded sufficiently. Discussions then on how to solve this problem so closely mirror modern-day arguments as to suggest that close study of the Potato Famine might yet help the modern world. Charity Large sums of money were donated by charities; Calcutta is credited with making the first donation of £14,000. The money was raised by Irish soldiers serving there and Irish people employed by the East India Company . Pope Pius IX sent funds, Queen Victoria donated £2,000 while the Choctaw Indians themselves victims of the genocidal Trail Of Tears famously sent $170 (although many articles say the original amount was $710 after a misprint in Angi Debo's "The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Nation") and grain, an act of generosity still remembered to this day, and publicly commemorated by President Mary Robinson on the 150th anniversary of the famine. AFTERMATH See Also: Irish potato famine (legacy) Potato blights continued in Ireland, especially in 1872 and 1879–1880. These killed few people, partly because they were less severe, but mainly for a complex range of reasons. However, on the other hand, the population in Ireland soon shrank from over 8 million to about 6 million due to starvation and exodus from the famine. The growth in the numbers of Railway s made the importation of food easier; in 1834, Ireland had 9.7 km (6 miles) of railway tracks; by 1912, the total was 5 480 km (3,403 miles). The banning of subdivision, coupled with emigration, increased the average farm size; greater acreage let farmers grow crops other than potatoes alone. The increasing wealth in urban areas meant alternative sources of food, grain, potatoes and seed were available in towns and villages. The 1870s agricultural economy thus was more efficient and less dependent on potatoes, as well as having access to new farm machinery and product control. After the famine the Encumbered Estates Act completely reorganized agriculture during 1870s–1900s, as small owned farms replaced mass estates and multiple tenants. Many of the large estates in the 1840s were debt-ridden and heavily mortgaged. In contrast, estates in the 1870s, many of them under new Irish middle class owners thanks to the Encumbered Estates Act, were on a better economic footing, and so capable of reducing rents and providing locally organized relief, as was the Roman Catholic Church, which was better organised and funded than it had been in 1847–49. If subdivision produced earlier marriage and larger families, its abolition produced the opposite effect; the 'inheriting' child would wait until they found the 'right' partner, preferably one with a large Dowry to bring to the farm. Other children, no longer with the possibility of inheriting a farm (or part of it at least) had no economic attraction and no financial resources to consider an early marriage. Consequently, later mini-famines made only minimal effect and are generally forgotten, except by historians. By the 1911 census, the island of Ireland's population had fallen to 4.4 million, about the same as the population in 1800 and 2000 and only a half of its peak population. The same water mould ('' Phytophthora Infestans '') was responsible for the 1847–51 and later famines. When people speak of "the Irish famine", or "''an Gorta Mór''", they nearly always mean the one of the 1840s, even though a similar Great Famine did in fact hit in the early 18th century. The fact that only four types of potato were brought from The Americas was a fundamental cause of the famine, as the lack of Genetic Diversity made it possible for a single Oomycete to have much more devastating consequences than it might otherwise have had. EMIGRATION ''See also: Irish Diaspora '' While the famine in question was responsible for a massive increase of anywhere from 45% to nearly 85%, depending on the year and the county, of emigration from Ireland it was not the sole cause, nor even the era when massive emigration became a fact of life in Ireland. That can be traced to the 1814-1815 post-Napoleon world when cereal crops and linen -- Ireland's two primary exports -- which had commanded high prices during the war years, collapsed with the advent of peace in Europe; the famine merely quickened the pace. From the defeat of Napoleon and the beginning of the famine "at least 1,000,000 and possibly 1,500,000 emigrated"C.Ó. Gráda, ''A Note on Nineteenth Emigration Statistics'', Population Studies, Vol. 29, No.1 (March 1975) During the worst of the famine emigration reached somewhere around 250,000 per year, with far more emigrates coming from western Ireland than any other. Two other notions concerning Irish emigration at this time are generally mistaken:
While it is undeniable that eviction(s) played a key role, another factor was excess population and the desire to keep the family farm and land holding intact. This meant that, as a rule, families ''en masse'' did not emigrate, younger members of it did. So much so that emigration almost became a rite of passage, as evidenced by the data that show that, unlike similar emigration throughout world history, women emigrated just as often, just as early, and in the same numbers as men. The emigrant started a new life in a new land, sent remittances "reached £1,404,000 by 1851" Foster, R.F. ,''The History of Ireland: 1600-1972'',(The Peguine Press, England, 1988) p. 371 back to his/her family in Ireland which, in turn, allowed another member of the family to emigrate. The massive influx of Irish to the United States, over any other country, came mainly in the final quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century. Generally speaking, emigration during the famine years of 1845 to 1850 was to England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and Australia. ibid. #2, p.268 By 1854, between 1½ and 2 million Irish left their country due to evictions, starvation, and harsh living conditions. In America, most Irish became city-dwellers: with little money, many had to settle in the cities that the ships they came on landed in. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, Massachusetts; New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Baltimore, Maryland. In addition, Irish populations became prevalent in some American mining communities. The 1851 census reported that more than half the inhabitants of Toronto, Ontario were Irish, and in 1847 alone, 38,000 famine Irish flooded a city with less than 20,000 citizens. Other Canadian cities such as Saint John, New Brunswick; Quebec City and Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Kingston and Hamilton, Ontario also received large numbers of Famine Irish since Canada, as part of the British Empire, could not close its ports to Irish ships (unlike the United States), and they could get passage cheaply (or free in the case of tenant evictions) in returning empty lumber holds. The largest Famine grave site outside of Ireland is at Grosse-Île, Quebec, an island in the St. Lawrence River used to quarantine ships near Quebec City. In 1851, about a quarter of Liverpool's population was Irish-born. The Famine is often seen as an initiator in the steep depopulation of Ireland in the 19th century. However, some say that it is likely that real population began to fall in 1841 with the Famine accelerating any population changes already occurring. They argue the Famine was necessary to restore population equilibrium to Ireland given that population increased by 13–14% in the first three decades of the 19th century using Thomas Malthus 's idea of population expanding geometrically while resources increase arithmetically. Between 1831 and 1841 population grew by 5%. Application of Malthus's writings to Ireland were popular during the famines of 1817 and 1822> However by the 1830's, a decade before the potato famine, they were seen as overly simplistic and Ireland's problems were seen "less as an excess of population than as a lack of capital investment."Peter Gray, 1995, ''The Irish Famine'', Thames and Hudson:London The mass exodus in the years following the famine must be seen in the context of overpopulation, industrial stagnation, land shortages, religious discrimination, declining agricultural employment and inadequate diet. These factors were already combining to choke off population growth by the 1830s. It would be wrong, therefore, to attribute all the population loss during the famine to the potato blight alone. JUDGEMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT'S HANDLING OF THE FAMINE Contemporary opinion
Historical opinion
Suggestions of Genocide
MEMORIALS TO THE FAMINE The Great Famine is still remembered in many locations throughout Ireland, especially in those regions that suffered the greatest losses, and also in cities overseas with large populations descended from Irish immigrants. In Ireland
In England
In Wales
In Scotland
In North America , New York.]]
In Australia
SEE ALSO
BOOKS BY YOUNG IRELANDERS (IRISH CONFEDERATION)
ADDITIONAL READING
NOTES AND REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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