The Irish Potato Famine and Emigration

The Irish Potato Famine and Emigration

During the Victorian era, England experienced tremendous growth in wealth and industry while Ireland struggled to survive. The reasons for Ireland's inability to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution are complex, and have been the subject of debate for more than a century. Many English viewed the Irish as stubborn farmers who refused to embrace the new technology. The Irish, however, believed the English had sabotaged their efforts to industrialize. The truth of why the Irish fared so badly while England became the most powerful nation in the world probably lies somewhere between these two extremes.

It's a common assumption that Ireland's mass exodus during the first half of the l9th century was the result of the disastrous potato blight of 1845, but the famine was actually the proverbial last straw. Until the 17th century, the Irish, like much of feudal Europe, consisted of many peasants under the rule of a minority of wealthy landowners. When Oliver Cromwell invaded Ireland in the mid-17th century, those landowners who refused to give up Catholicism saw their property confiscated and then redistributed to the English Army. By 1661, 40% of Ireland was owned by England. Many Irish peasants-stayed on as tenant farmers, working the land and paying rent for the small plots of land where they lived and grew their own food. But as crops became less profitable, many landowners began taking back the land from the Irish poor in order to graze sheep and cattle for English consumption. This led to a series of evictions, where tenant farmers were forced off the land that sustained them, often with no warning at all. One of the worst, now known as the Ballinglass Incident, (after the wes...

... middle of paper ...

... religious conspiracy to some of the Brahmins of Boston.

Bibliography

Smith, Woodham. The Great Hunger, New York, 1964.

O Grada, Cormac. The Great Irish Famine, Dublin: MacMillan, 1989.

Lees, Lynn. Exiles in Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London, Cornell, 1979.

Reader, W.J. Life in Victorian England, London: B.T.Batsford Ltd., 1964.

Whitehill, Walter Muir. Boston: A Topographical History, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1968.

O'Connor, Thomas H. Bibles, Brahmins, and Bosses, Boston, Trustees of the Boston Public Library, 1991.

Foster, R.F. Modern Ireland 1600-1972, London, Penguin Press, 1988.

Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor, London, Penguin Press, 1985.

Lunn, Kenneth. Hosts, Immigrants, and Minorities: Historical Responses to Newcomers in British Society 1870-1914, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.