Critical food shortages were not new to Ireland. Famine struck in 1740, and it was caused by arctic weather conditions resulting in poor harvests. More than a century later history repeated itself, and this time, the Great Hunger of the 1840s wasn't triggered by freezing weather. In fact, Irish potatoes were destroyed by a fungus. At the beginning of 1845 nobody in Ireland, Great Britain or anywhere else could have anticipated the events that were about to unfold.
Ireland Before the Disaster
The number of people in Ireland had grown by leaps and bounds in the nineteenth century, and it meant that there would have to be enough food to feed all of those extra mouths. There were more than eight million Irish at the start of the 1840s. A third of the population depended on one crop — the potato — for a major portion of their diet. They relied so heavily on the potato partly because of geography. They grew well in Ireland's cool, damp climate.
Another reason was the land Irish farmers had to work with. Most of the countryside was owned by an English and Anglo-Irish hereditary ruling class. Many of them were landlords who never set foot on Irish soil, and they had local agents to manage their estates. The Penal Laws ensured that Catholics wouldn't be allowed to purchase or bequeath any land as they saw fit. Thus, the Protestants remained the ruling elite of Ireland.
Under this system, estates were controlled by Protestant middlemen, who rented large tracts of land to farmers. They also divided it into smaller plots as much as they wanted to increase rental income, a system called conacre. The poorest of the poor were the Irish farm laborers, and they found themselves being forced to live on smaller and smaller plots of land, ranging from one-eighth of an acre to two acres. The potato was the only crop that yielded so much food in such a small space.
The Potato Blight
In 1845, Irish farmers realized their potatoes were rotting. They disintegrated into lumps of black, inedible sludge. Potatoes kept in storage also succumbed to the rot, depleting the harvest. Phytophthora infestans, a type of water mold, was able to spread quickly and the situation got worse.
People began to look in the fields for weeds and nettles. Laborers sold everything they had to buy food, including furniture, bedding and extra clothing. When they had nothing left to sell, they borrowed money from 'gombeen men,' moneylenders who charged anywhere from twenty to fifty percent interest. Hungry people begged for help from priests and government officials. The blight continued into 1846 and inevitable diseases such as typhoid and cholera combined with starvation to form a deadly one-two punch in Ireland.
How England Responded to the Crisis
Sir Robert Peel of the Tory government tried to convince Queen Victoria to repeal the Corn Laws, which restricted the amount of foreign corn that could be imported into Britain. The Queen, however, did not make the laws. Parliament made the laws. When it refused to cancel the Corn Laws, she accepted this decision.
Peel was ousted in 1846 and his successor, Lord John Russell, had far less sympathy for the starving masses of Ireland. The concept of relief didn't sit well with the Whig government, which was firm in its belief that the Irish famine was a problem that should have been solved by the people in Ireland. Nothing was to interfere with the natural course of trade.
One thing that did flourish in 1847 was the dreaded symbol of Victorian charity, the workhouse. By 1848, one-seventh of the Irish population, about one million people, were being supported by workhouses. With segregation, confinement, physical labor and unpleasant food, these facilities resembled prisons rather than compassionate shelters.
Legacy of the Potato Blight
Irish immigrants left their country for new lives elsewhere. Many of them went to the United States, where feelings of bitterness stoked intense separatist passions. The struggle for Ireland's independence continued well into the 20th century and the rift between Ireland and Britain still exists. The Irish government designated May 17, 2009 as the first National Famine Memorial Day.
References:
Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Houghton Mifflin, 2001
A History of Ireland by Mike Cronin, Palgrave, 2001
Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy and Memory by Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press, 2000
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