In the early 1800s life in Ireland wasn’t easy, Irish citizens got by day to day by farming and relying on the potato. The potato was their main source of food and money. With out the potato the Irish would have nothing. No one was prepared for what was about to happen in 1845, the beginning of the Great Irish Potato Famine. The Irish Potato Famine was the worst tragedy in the history of Ireland. The outcome of the famine would result in hundreds of thousands dead, an failure of the economy in
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 Irish Potato Famine and The Holocaust in Literature Writers often use literature as a means of communicating traumatic events that occur in history, and such events are recorded by first-hand accounts as well as remembered by people far removed from the situation. Two traumatic events in history that are readily found in literature are The Irish Potato Famine and The Holocaust. A literary medium that has been used quite poignantly to convey trauma is poetry and the poetry from these two
was known as the Great Famine. The nation was deeply devastated by this event both economically and socially. The Great Famine claimed over a million lives due to hunger and disease and resulted in the exodus of another million all in the span of six years. It is uncertain whether or not the famine could have been avoided, but the severity of the famine could have definitely been reduced. There were certain policies and procedures implemented by the British that set the Irish economy up for inevitable
The Irish Potato Famine 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
The Irish Potato Famine: The Ignorance of England The Irish Potato Famine, occurring in Ireland from 1845 to 1849, began as a natural catastrophe of great magnitude, with its effects exacerbated by the actions and inactions of the British government. Consequently, millions of people died of starvation while others tried to flee the merciless conditions through emigration (Donnelly). This event also inspired Jonathan Swift to compose a horrific solution in “A Modest Proposal,” which stated that the
The Great Irish Famine was undoubtedly one of Irelands darkest periods of history. The Great Famine, or also referred to as the Irish Potato famine was from 1845 through 1852 where many people starved, were disease stricken, poor and some forced to emigrate. The reliance on the potato to the Irish people was so great that when the Famine struck, the population declined greatly. The famine caused around one million deaths and another million immigrated to different countries. The Irish people’s health
1845 to 1849, this is exactly what happened when a potato famine struck the British ruled country. The Great Irish Famine of 1846 was called "God's Famine" when an unknown, uncontrollable disease turned Ireland's potato crop to slime. Britain's
Alexis Dudley Mr. Bill Briggs World History 5 March 2014 The Irish Potato Famine The Irish Potato Famine was one of the single most dramatic and devastating events in human history. It impacted not only the Irish, but the English and Americans as well. Millions died from this famine and millions more Irish fled from the place they had always called home to other countries such as Great Britain, Canada, and the United States with the hopes of finding a better life. It triggered one of the first
A critical time in Irish History, the Great Irish Potato Famine in known in history books around the world, Europe’s last famine. Between 1845 and 1852 in Ireland was a period of excessive starvation, sickness and exile, known as the great Irish potato famine. During this time The Isle of Ireland lost between twenty and thirty per cent of its people. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s the impact and human cost in Ireland, where a third of the population was entirely
The Irish Potato Famine The Irish Potato Famine caused over one million deaths of children, men, and women, creating fear in Ireland, leading to many questions over whether people would move or not. Things like what people would eat, where people would go, and what would happen after everything scared people. Over 3,000,000 peasants relied on potatoes in Ireland, and people could stay on a diet only consisting of potatoes, so it was a very important crop. However, people soon noticed something
Irish Immigration Without the potato or some food substitute available in sufficient quantity to replace it, the Irish simply died. Historians dispute how many died but the best of the experts, like Cormac O’Grada, estimate that about one million did. Some died of outright starvation, perhaps as many as 9 percent in Mayo, but most died of the diseases that easily infected and ravaged the malnourished, like dysentery or diarrhea. Whatever the cause, they died everywhere: in their mud cabin hovels
their meals. However, the potato was also a staple in the diets of the middle class and upper class citizens even though they could afford more expensive foods. In 1845, the population of Ireland expected to have a favorable potato crop. However, when the farmers dug up the expected crop that year, they were faced with a black, liquid mess. This lead to a 50% loss in potatoes and each family had to fend for themselves and harvest however many potatoes they needed. The potato crops increasingly worsened
Hopelessness of the Irish in Nineteenth Century England Throughout my research into the subject of the Irish in England's industrial north during the early nineteenth century, one fact became quite clear; contemporary writers' treatment of the Irish was both minimal and negative. I consulted many sources, Friedrich Engels, Leon Faucher, James Kay-Shuttleworth to name but a few and the reoccurring theme as pertaining to the Irish in all these works was mainly consistent; the Irish were a lazy, vulgar
years, the people of Ireland have suffered many hardships, but none compare to the devastation brought by the Irish potato famine of 1845-1857. A poorly managed nation together with ideally wicked weather conditions brought Ireland to the brink of disaster. It was a combination of social, political and economic factors that pushed it over the edge. After a long wet summer, the potato blight first appeared in Wexford and Waterford in September of 1845. The phytophora infestans were carried in
The Great Irish Potato Famine was during a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration through 1845-1850. According to the journal, “The Context of Migration: The Example of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century” by James H. Johnson, this caused the population of Ireland to decrease 20-25% and it did not stabilize again until the 1930’s. Although there was a potato crop failure in Europe in the 1840’s, one third of the Irish population was dependent on this crop. This was inevitable due to the
The Impact of Travel on the Evironment Human history has been defined by movement and expansion, as humans slowly moved throughout the globe. Even after humans had populated the entire world, humans continued to travel for many reasons: war, trade, adventure, and religion. It would seem that the human species is filled with inveterate travelers. Throughout history, those nations and civilizations that had the best modes of transportation seemed to have a real competitive advantage. The “northern
their ethnic group. Such is the case of the Irish who migrated to Quebec from 1815 to the Potato Famine of 1847. What causes and factors drove these people to cross an ocean and leave their homeland for the unknown prospects of Quebec? To examine and fully answer this question, one must look at the social, economic and religious conditions in Ireland at the time, as well as what drew the Irish to Quebec rather than somewhere else. To know why the Irish left Ireland, one must look at what was going
advent of the railways and the photographic negative. They had witnessed the expansion of the Empire, and, as a result, were living in a time of great economic stability. Yet they had also seen thousands of people starving-and dying-due to the Irish potato famine and poor conditions and benefits in British factories and witnessed the entire order of society questioned as the working classes began to demand representation in Parliament. The English also experienced biological and scientific breakthroughs
in the 1640’s and lasted until 1922. No other occurrence throughout Irish history has had a greater impact on the lives of the citizens of the country. Along with the act of occupation came the emergence of Protestantism, which conflicted with the traditional religion of Ireland, Catholicism. The English occupation of Ireland affected many aspects of Irish history from the potato famine to the War for Independence. However, Irish nationalism came to a boiling point April of 1916, in what is now known