In this paper I will be talking about The great potato famine and it’s effects on Ireland. The great potato famine started in Ireland in the summer of 1845 and ended in 1852. It killed around 1 million people and forced over 2 million people to move out of Ireland. The potato was their main food source, so starvation was a huge factor. When the potatoes became infected people started to get what was called the “Famine Fever”. To better understand this I will also be explaining the history of Ireland along with the history of the potato. The Effects of the famine permanently changed Ireland’s -demographic, political and cultural landscape.
The Potato blight did not originate in Ireland. It was discovered in the USA in 1843 and in Canada in 1844. It is thought to have travelled to Europe on trade ships that lead to the blight in Europe and then in 1845 in Ireland. People first thought that the famine was caused by underground volcanoes or static electricity, but almost 40 years later scientists discovered that it was caused by an infestant called, Phytophthora. Phytophthora is a fungus that caused mildew to take over the potato making them basically turn to rotten curled up mush within a few days after the potato was dug up from the ground.
The famine fever caused symptoms such as dysentery, scurvy, typhus, and many infestations of lice. Like I mentioned earlier, the famine killed more than 1 million people. If people didn’t die with the fever they still had the chance of dying of starvation because Ireland really depended on the potato. Before the famine the Irish would eat potatoes with all three meals. Within only five years the population in Ireland was reduced by a quarter. The famine fever wasn’t the only thing k...
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...ded up working as tenants to the landlords. After the famine about 4.5 million people left to the United states because they didn’t think they would ever get their independence back from the English.
This is a song that was written by a man named Brendon Graham. The song talks about all the pain brought on by the great potato faimine.
In this paper I provided information on the great potato famine and the devastation it caused. Even after the great potato famine things in Ireland were still not great. After doing research on the great potato famine in Ireland I find it interesting that Notre Dame adopted the name “The Fighting Irish” for their college football team because it is a good representation of how the Irish fought through the famine. I Found it interesting to read that the effects of the famine can be traced to people of the Irish nationality today.
Starting in the 1830s, many immigrants came flooding into the United States of America due to hard times, famines, and economic opportunities. Everyday, thousands of underprivileged citizens would take on the task of being an American. To begin, many immigrants were Irish due to the Irish Famine in the late 1840s (Doc 2). According to Catherine Moran McNamara, “The Irish lived under awful stress. I’ve seen the family thrown out (Doc 2).” Meanwhile during the Irish Famine, many potato crops died, leaving families without a source of food or income(OI). However, the Irish were not the only culture going through tough times. In Greece, the pay was unbearable with only five dollars a day(Doc 3). Also, George Kokkas explains that Greece lacked education for the youth. He stated that “I was concerned for the education of my kids.
confined to live in the slums. The slums were in a way like ghettos. They were very poor,
middle of paper ... ... n that after nearly seven hundred years of attempted domination, the British oppression of the Irish had deprived them of all but the bare necessities of survival, and caused such destitution that when the potato famine struck, the poor could not avoid the worst privations, given the social and political conditions controlling their lives. The British government’s ineffectual attempts at relieving the situation played a major role in worsening the situation; they allowed prejudice and State and individual self-interest, economic and religious dogma to subjugate even the least consideration for humanity. Ultimately British politicians bear considerable blame because they were not prepared to allocate what was needed to head off mass starvation, and they as the parent government did nothing to protect its subject people.
The analysis of the Irish economic problem, the Great Famine, was a remarkable topic to study by several classical authors such as, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo or William Senior. A contextualization skim of the economic characteristics of the country is required in order to know about their main ideas with respect to the topic, taking into account the aspects like the land property, the political power and the relation between Ireland and England.
The Irish began immigrating to North America in the 1820s, when the lack of jobs and poverty forced them to seek better opportunities elsewhere after the end of the major European wars. When the Europeans could finally stop depending on the Irish for food during war, the investment in Irish agricultural products reduced and the boom was over. After an economic boom, there comes a bust and unemployment was the result. Two-thirds of the people of Ireland depended on potato harvests as a main source of income and, more importantly, food. Then between the years of 1845 and 1847, a terrible disease struck the potato crops. The plague left acre after acre of Irish farmland covered with black rot. The failure of the potato yields caused the prices of food to rise rapidly. With no income coming from potato harvests, families dependent on potato crops could not afford to pay rent to their dominantly British and Protestant landlords and were evicted only to be crowded into disease-infested workhouses. Peasants who were desperate for food found themselves eating the rotten potatoes only to develop and spread horrible diseases. ¡§Entire villages were quickly homeless, starving, and diagnosed with either cholera or typhus.¡¨(Interpreting¡K,online) The lack of food and increased incidents of death forced incredible numbers of people to leave Ireland for some place which offered more suitable living conditions. Some landlords paid for the emigration of their tenants because it made more economic sense to rid farms of residents who were not paying their rent. Nevertheless, emigration did not prove to be an antidote for the Famine. The ships were overcrowded and by the time they reached their destination, approximately one third of its passengers had been lost to disease, hunger and other complications. However, many passengers did survive the journey and, as a result, approximately ¡§1.5 million Irish people immigrated to North America during the 1840¡¦s and 1850¡¦s.¡¨(Bladley, online) As a consequence of famine, disease (starvation and disease took as many as one million lives) and emigration, ¡§Ireland¡¦s population dropped from 8 million to 5 million over a matter of years.¡¨(Bladley, online) Although Britain came to the aid of the starving, many Irish blamed Britain for their delayed response and for centuries of political hardship as basi...
Phythophthora infestans was the lethal fungus that infested Ireland's potato crop and eventually ruined all of the land it grew on. This time is called the Great Famine and has impacted Ireland due to its destructive extinction of the potato farms which caused disease, extreme poverty, and death.
The Irish migrated to America to flee from famine and were poor due to lack of money and skill. They were forced to work in factories and became political chess pieces to political machines like Tammany Hall. The Germans relocated to America to escape economic hardship and political tensions. Many farmers, artisans, and rebels of the failed revolutions of 1848 came to America for a better life. The Germans were wealthy and were able to move westward to further increase their capital. The Nativists condemned the presence of immigrants in America because of the crime and disease they brought with them, and for being politically liberal and integrators of
Many Irish peasants were forced to deal with the hardship of the Irish potato famine from about 1845-1850. Said famine wiped out roughly the entire potato crop in Ireland, thus causing much of the Irish population to decrease by about one quarter. The English who did little to help despite their leadership position indirectly fueled the famine. Prior conflicts between the Irish Catholics, and British Protestants continued to make matters worse, until the end of the famine in about 1850. During 1845, the Irish people were plagued by a fungal epidemic in their potato crop. Due to the past cultural conflicts the British government took no action, and this eventually led to the emigration and death of hundreds of Irish Catholics.
During 1845-1846 events in Ireland would change the lives of many. The Great Potato Famine was a major incident that shocked the entire world. This incident was cause by a disease that traveled from ships overseas. The Great Potato Famine affected one of the biggest crops at the time, which was the potato. Many people got sick from this disease otherwise known as, Phytophthora Infestins. Phytophthora Infestins killed about 1 million people in Ireland.
During the mid 1840’s, blight in the potato crops in Ireland caused widespread starvation and migration of Irish citizens to the United States. Yet, the massive loss of life and massive exodus could have been avoided if British taxation upon the working class of Ireland was nullified. Though the struggle for liberation was already taking place, the potato famine furthered the cause and helped spread awareness. Furthermore, the potato famine made the average Irish family more reliant upon the government for subsidies and supports to get by.
With 3 million either gone or dead from the island of Ireland, 1845 was possibly the most painful year in its history. It was also obvious that something was afflicting Ireland, with the smell and sight of the crops. Death rate grew high, and immigration even higher during this time period of the famine. The Great Potato Famine of 1845 had a massive effect on Ireland in population decrease, the reactions of the people, and effects it had on the future of Ireland.
INTRODUCTION The history of Ireland "that most distressful nation" is full of drama and tragedy, but one of the most interesting stories is about what happened to the Irish during the mid-nineteenth century and how millions of Irish came to live in America (Purcell 31). Although the high point of the story was the years of the devastating potato famine from 1845 to 1848, historians have pointed out that immigrating from Ireland was becoming more popular before the famine and continued until the turn of the twentieth century. In the one hundred years between the first recording of immigrants in
Beginning in 1845 and lasting until 1861 the Great Potato Famine of Ireland killed over a million people, and causing another million to leave the country. The famine began in September 1845 as leaves on potatoes suddenly turned black and curled, then rotted. The cause was an airborne fungus (phytophthora infestants) originally transported by ships traveling from North America to England. Many other factors contributed to this devastation.
...ight hit the fields and destroyed the crops, disaster ensued. In those terrible years, between 1846 and 1851, one million people died of starvation, malnutrition, typhus, recurring fever, dysentery and scurvy. Another million Irish citizens emigrated.
Until the 1860s, the early immigrants not only wanted to come to America, but they also meticulously planned to come. These immigrants known as the “Old Immigrants” immigrated to America from many countries in Northern and Western Europe, known as, Sweden, Norway, Scandinavia, Wales and Ireland. Some of them traveled to Canada, but most of them came to the U.S. seeking freedom they didn’t get in their own countries. Ireland had also recently suffered through a potato famine, where the citizens were left poor and starving. Most settled in New York City and other large cities, where they worked in factories and other low-paying jobs. The immigrants caused a great increase in population in these areas. The “Old Immigrants” tried not to cluster themselves with others of their own nationality. They would mostly try to fit in with Americans as best as they could. Many of them had a plan to come to America, so they saved their money and resources before they arrived so they could have a chance at a better life. On the other hand, another group of immigrants began to arrive