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The Great Famine (also known as the Irish Potato Famine) is the name given to a major famine which struck Ireland between 1847 and 1849 (though its after-affects continued until 1851). Well in excess of three quarters of a million Irish people died, while in its long-term impact, millions emigrated. While its immediate impact on Ireland was considerable, its longterm impact, in terms of changing land-holding structures, sexual and marriage patterns and emigration, proved immense.

The Potato in Ireland

The potato contains considerable food energy, and yet is very easy to cultivate. Typical farming practice of the era seeded a field once after being hoed, and future year's crops were "seeded" by simply leaving some of the potatoes unharvested in the ground. Weeding was minimal, and irrigation unnessesary.

For all of these reasons the potato had become Ireland's major food crop after being introduced sometime around 1650. Even small plots could provide enough calories for a family, and other lands were used for cash crops like flax. The abundance of food and cash led to a rise in population in Ireland, and predictions from the early 19th century called for a population of 8 to 9 million by 1851.

The potato's benefits also led to a dangerous inflexibility in the Irish food system. The majority of calories were being provided from a single crop. That alone is not unusual, and is still the case today for many farmers around the world. However the traditional Irish practice of the day was to sub-divide plots among the male children of a family, and with increased calories the number of surviving mail heirs was quickly increasing.

Irish Landholdings

The catastrophe that was the Famine was the product of a number of complex problems with affected nineteenth century Ireland. One of the most central was the nature of land-holdings. From the middle ages onwards, Irish ownership of the land of the island had been in decline, as waves of settlers, from the Elizabethan plantations on, assumed control of large tracts of land. A practice of consolidation of lands into large estates was widespead in Europe, but in Ireland it was complicated by the discriminatory laws applied to all faiths other than the established Church of Ireland, but which most directly affected Irish Roman Catholics, by far the largest religion on the Island, and the religion of the overwhelming majority of 'mere Irish'. ('Mere' in contemporary english meant 'pure' or 'fully'.) Under the Penal Laws, Irish catholics faced the threat of confiscation of property. While the enforcement of the law fluctuated both in terms of period and geography, and by the time of the Famine the laws had in any case been repealed, the cultural impact of the discrimination they embodied helped shape Irish attitudes towards land. As a result of all of this, by the time of the Famine, with a few exceptions, Irish catholics were restricted to holding small, frequently improverished tenancies on the larger estates, lacking what came to be known as the 'Three 'F's', which included fair rent and guaranteed tenure.

This was further complicated by a cultural tradition, augmented by discriminatory law, known as ''sub-division', whereby lands and property, instead of being inherited by the older or oldest son (primogeniture) was divided equally among male heirs, both legitimate and on occasion illegitimate. (This tradition, which had existed to pre-Norman times, covered not merely land inheritance, but even inheritance of Irish kingships, where Irish monarchs and chieftains were not succeeded by their oldest son but by a family member elected by and from five generations of family members.) In its nineteenth centuryland-holding form, it meant that, over each generation, the size of a tenant farm was reduced, as it was split between all living sons. In 1845, for example, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 0.4 to 2 hectares (one to five acres) in size, while 40% were of 2 to 6 hectares (five to fifteen acres). This included marshland and bogland that could not be used for food production. As a result, holdings were so small that the only crop that could be grown in sufficient quantities, and which provided sufficient nourishment to feed a family, was potatoes. A British Government report carried out shortly before the Famine noted that the scale of the poverty was such that one third of all small holdings in Ireland were presumed to be unable to support their families, after paying their rent, other than through the earnings of seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland.

As a result, the Irish landholding system in the 1840s was already in serious problems. Many of the big estates, as a result of earlier agricultural crises, were heavily morgaged and in financial difficulty. Below that level were mass tenancies, lacking proper rent control and security of tenure, many of them through sub-division so small that the tenants were struggling to survive in good years, and almost wholly dependent on potatoes because they alone could be grown in sufficient quantity and nutritional value. Furthermore, efforts of tenants to increase the productivity of their land was actively discouraged by the threat that any increase in land value would lead to a disproportionately high resulting increase in rents, possibly leading to their eviction.

The Blight

Although the origins are still unclear, in 1845 a potato blight struck across Europe, turning potatoes into a black, soggy, and inedible mess. The Freeman's Journal (the main nationalist newspaper) on June 27 1846 carried a headline 'DISEASE IN THE NEW POTATO CROP', recounting an early outbreak in County Mayo. By 1847, the vast majority of that year's crop was ruined. Food stores and emergency supplies made up for some of this setback, but the blight appeared again in 1849, and there were no reserve capacity remaining. The result was widespread famine, though it affected different parts of the island to different degrees.

No-one knows for certain how many people died in the Famine. State registration of births, marriages or deaths had not yet begun, while the Roman Catholic Church's records, where they exist at all, are incomplete, perhaps understandably given the sheer scale of deaths. Many of the Church of Ireland's records (which included records of local catholics, who paid Tithes (local taxes) to the local Church of Ireland), were destroyed when the IRA boobytrapped and blew up the Irish Public Records Office in 1922.

One possible estimate has been reached by comparing the expected population with the eventual numbers in the 1850s. Earlier predictions expected that by 1851, Ireland would have a population of 8 to 9 million. This calculation is based on numbers contained in the ten year census results compiled since 1821. However a recent re-examination of those returns raise questions as to their accuracy; the 1841 Census, for example, incorrectly classed farm children as labourers, affecting later calculations on how many adults capable of child-bearing existed to produce children between 1841 and 1851!). What we do know is that in 1851 the actual population was 6.6 million. Making straight-forward calculations is complicated by a secondary impact of famine, a key side-effect of malnutrition, namely plummeting fertility and sexual activity rates. The scale of that impact on population numbers was not fully recognised until studies done during African famines in the twentieth century. As a result, corrections based on inaccuracies in census returns and on the previous unrealised decline in births due to malnourishment have led to an overall reduction in the presumed death numbers. Modern historians and statisticians reckon that between 500,000 and one million died. Most historians suggest the death-toll was in the region of 700,000 to 800,000. In addition, in excess of 1 million Irish emigrated, to the United States, Great Britain, Canada and further afield, 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.

The initial British government response towards the early famine was, in the view of many historians such as F.S.L. Lyons 'prompt and relatively successful'. Furthermore, contrary to myth, as Professor Joe Lee observed:

there was nothing unique, by the standards of pre-industrial subsistence crisis, about the famine. The death rate had been frequently equalled in earlier European famines, including, possibly, in Ireland itself during the famine of 1740-41.

In the case of the 1847-49 Irish Famine, with tragic consequences the Tory government of Sir Robert Peel (who had begun his career in the Dublin Castle British administration that governed Ireland and so had some understanding of Ireland) was replaced (with the help of Irish MPs under Daniel O'Connell) by a Whig ministry under Lord John Russell Russell, like many leaders of the time, believed in a laissez faire economic policy of non-intervention in the economy. So whereas Peel had imported Indian Maize to feed the starving, Russell instead focused on providing support through public works and the provision of work-houses. Unfortunately a disastrous Gregory Clause was introduced, which limited aid to those who owned less than one acre of land. This forced poverty-striken starving tenants either to give up their homes and land, and so become destitute after the famine, or hold on to them and risk starvation. However it followed the economic theory of time that was intended to discourage the so-called 'undeserving poor' from using the welfare system while they still had means (however theoretical in the absence of a harvest) of providing for themselves.

As a result, a disastrous application of the laissez faire economic theory and ignorance in London of the scale of the problem turned a disaster into a catastrophe. Large sums of money were donated by charities; Pope Pius IX sent funds, Queen Victoria personally gave the modern day equivalent of €70,000, while some native americans famously sent money and grain (an act of generosity still remembered to this day, and publicly commemorated by President Robinson in the 1990s). Nevertheless such charitable donations could not solve the scale of the problem.

Critics have observed how during this time, Irish and Anglo-Irish landowners exported corn (and other crops) which could have saved the lives of many Irish people. Conversely, it may be argued that such arguments mis-understand the nature of the famine economy, where many estates were only kept afloat and so were able to avoid mass evictions, provide local famine relief or were able to reduce rents, through the grain exports income. Economic historians have argued that not to continue the export could have plunged the entire Irish economy into economic meltdown; without the income, estates would have gone bust, leading to mass evictions, the laying off of estate staff, the resultant closure of local shops, businesses and industry all of which were reliant on income from the estates, and the spreading of the economic hardship and devastation throughout all of Ireland, including those parts to that point not heavily hit by the early stages of the famine, notably in east and north of the island. It was the classic 'no win' situation faced by many economies hit by famine.

The Aftermath

Potato blights continued in Ireland, especially in 1872 and 1879-1880. These killed few people, partly because they were less severe, partly because Irish-Americans and Britain contributed to relief efforts. More directly however, it was due to a complex range of reasons. The growth in the numbers of railways made the importation of foodstuffs easier. The banning of sub-division, coupled with emigration, had increased the average farm holding, enabling tenant farms to diversify in terms of produce grown. The increasing wealth in urban areas meant alternative sources of food, grain, potatoes and seed were available in towns and villages. Furthermore, the 1847-49 peak of the famine also almost wiped out one entire class, the 'cottiers' or farm labourers, leading to a restructuring of the agricultural economy, which by the 1870s was more efficient and less dependent on potatoes, as well as having access to new farm machinery and product control that had not existed thirty years earlier.

Crucially, the economic policy of laissez faire that had been fashionable in the 1840s was no longer so fashionable in the 1870s. As a result, state intervention was quicker, more effective, and more directed than had been the case in the 1840s. Of particular importance was the wholescale re-organisation of the agricultural sector, which had begun after the famine with the Emcumbered Estates Act and which in the period (1870s-1900s) saw the nature of Irish landholding changed completely, with small owned farms replacing mass estates and multiple tenants. Many of the large estates in the 1840s were debt ridden and heavily morgaged. As a result, policies of wholescale evictions of tenants who could no longer pay the full rent took place, increasingly the scale of the poverty and famine. (Not all estates treated tenants poorly; local studies have documented cases of estates them going backrupt attempting to feed their starving tenants, or were bankrupt in the immediate aftermath, having reduced rents to almost nothing during the Famine years.) 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 organised relief, as was the Roman Catholic Church, which was better organised and funded than it had been in 1847-49.

Different sexual habits and a different demographic profile also helped curb the danger of mass starvation in the 1870s, as against the 1840s. The 1850s had seen as resurgence in Roman Catholicism under the ultramontane Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen, resulting in less sexual activity outside marriage, which was commonplace before the 1850s, hence the near doubling of the population over a couple of generations prior to the 1840s. As a result of fewer non-marital children and a rise in the marriage age, fertility rates had dropped, augmented by a falling marriage rate and rising average age of marriage. The abandonment of subdivision meant that only one sibling and his children was reliant on food from the farm, while his siblings went to other careers (often in urban centres) where food was freely available. In addition, emigration had led to the mass exodus of young people of marital or child-rearing age, leaving many spinster women and bachelor men, unmarried and without children, in the countryside. Together, all these factors produced a drop in the number of dependent children and a rise in single individuals who were able to feed themselves on their farmsted.

As a result, later mini-famines made only minimal impact and are generally forgotten, except by historians. However, even though by the 1880s Ireland went through an economic boom unprecedented until the Celtic Tiger (1995-2002), emigration, often of children who no longer could inherit a share in the land and who as a result chose to go abroad for economic advantage and to avoid poverty, continued. By the 1911 census, the Irish 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 mould (Phytophthora infestans) was responsible for the 1847-51 and later famines. When people speak of "The Irish potato famine", or "an Gortha Mor", (pronounced, 'on gore-ta more') they nearly always mean the one of the 1840s, even though a similar Great Famine in fact hit in the early eighteenth century.

The fact that only four types of potato were brought from America was at the root of the famine. In fact the lack of genetic diversity in the food made it possible for a single fungus-relative to have those devastating consequences.

The Political Impact of the Famine

In Ireland

No major political reaction resulted from the Famine, ironically given its economic, environmental, social but above all personal impact. While Ireland in the 1820s to 1840s had been dominated by the various political movements under Daniel O'Connell, it was not until the 1880s under Charles Stewart Parnell, nearly forty years after the Famine, that a major Irish nationalist political movement, the Home Rule League (later known as the 'Parliamentary Party') appeared. Outside the mainstream, too, reaction was slow. The 1848 Young Ireland rebellion under Thomas Davis and John Mitchel, through occuring at the start of the Famine, was hardly impacted upon by the Famine, as much as by the clash between the 'catholic nationalism' of O'Connell and the pluralist republicanism of Davis. Another rebellion would not occur again until the 1860s under the Fenians/Irish Republican Brotherhood. Historians have speculated that, such was the culture shock on Ireland, the nation was numbed into inaction for decades afterwards; in other words, that politics mattered less to people after the traumatic experiences of the late 1840s.

Most remarkably of all, Ireland remained surprisingly attached to symbols associated with the United Kingdom. Though its electorate was small (as elsewhere), Irish voters up until the mid 1880s continued to vote for the two major British political parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, with more votes and seats going to the latter, even though it had been the party of government during the Famine! A large body of voters continued to vote for Unionists, who wished to maintain the Union that joined Britain and Ireland right into the twentieth century. (The Dublin township of Rathmines had a unionist dominated council and unionist mayor as late as 1929!)

Even the British Royal Family avoided censure. While later generations of republicans portrayed Queen Victoria as the 'Famine Queen' (who according to myth had only donated a miserly £5 or even £0,5,0 (5 shillings) to famine relief; In fact it was the modern day equivalent of €70,000!) Victoria and her family received surprisingly warm welcomes during Irish visits in the 1850s and 1860s. Three princes at various stages (the future kings Edward VII and George V along with Prince Albert Victor lived in Ireland, with one future king and queen famously going for a stroll through poor parts of Dublin without bodyguards! (Like Queen Victoria, their bodyguards when they discovered the fact were 'not amused'.) Contemporary accounts report that political meetings of nationalists in Ireland as late as the 1860s finished with the singing of 'God Save the Queen'!

Irish Emigrants Abroad

If Ireland seemed surprisingly tolerant of British political parties and the monarchy, emigrants were not so. Many Irish emigrants to America quickly associated with republican groups and organisations like the Fenians, in the process often becoming more fanatical and passionate than their brethren at home.

The Famine became a major platform for emigrant anger. John Mitchel, a veteran of the 1848 rebellion, and a journalist by trade (who had written for Thomas Davis's newspaper, The Nation), proved a superb propagandist in the campaign against British rule in Ireland. Analysing the famine, he wrote

"The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine . . . a million and half men, women and children were carefully, prudently and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created."

Though historically inaccurate, and rarely quoted anymore by Irish historians as a neutral source, Mitchel's commentary expressed the anger felt by many emigrants, who saw themselves as the dispossed, forced from Ireland by a famine they blamed on Britain. The famine became a constant issue with Irish Americans, who to an extent perhaps almost unrivalled among emigrant communities in the United States, remained emotionally attached to their native land, often nicknamed the 'oul' sod'. Leaders such as John Devoy in later decades came to play a major role in supporting Irish nationalism. It was no accident that the President of Dáil Éireann, Eamon de Valera in 1920 chose to travel to the United States, not elsewhere, in his efforts to get the Irish Republic recognised and accepted, or that when Michael Collins launched special bonds to fund the new Republic, many were sold to Irish Americans.

The Famine Legacy Today

The modern Republic of Ireland commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine in the 1990s. It was a contrast, in many ways, with the 100th anniversary in the 1940s. Then, no commemorations were held. It may still have been too traumatic an experience; the children of many Famine survivors were still alive, as indeed were some born in the Famine. Only in the 1990s was the Irish state able to commemorate what was one of the most traumatic experiences in Irish history. British Prime Minister Tony Blair used the opportunity to apologise for the failings of past British governments on the issue. A large amount of new famine studies were produced, many detailing for the first time local experiences in a geographic area, an estate, a parish. Historians took the opportunity to re-examine all aspects of the Famine experience; from practical issues like the number of deaths and emigrants, to the longterm impact it had on society, sexual behaviour, land holdings, property rights and the entire Irish identity. One irony struck observers. In the immediate aftermath of the Famine, two things changed; sexual behaviour underwent a revolution, while the Roman Catholic Church underwent a revival. In the 1990s, one hundred and fifty years after the Famine, Roman Catholicism had gone into massive decline in Ireland, while the sexual mores adopted by the Irish in the 1850s, had undergone a new more liberal revolution.

Internationally, Ireland has been at the forefront of international famine relief. In 1985, Irish rock star and founder of Live Aid, Sir Bob Geldof revealed that the people of Ireland had given more to his fundraising efforts per head of population than any other nation on earth. Irish famine relief charities, Goal, Concern, Trocaire and Gorta play a central role in helping famine victims throughout Africa. In 2000, Bono, lead singer with Irish band U2, played a central role in campaigning for debt relief for African nations in the Jubilee 2000 campaign, while Mary Robinson as president visited Rwanda to highlight injustices. Having left the presidency, she became a vocal campaigner as United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights.

Footnotes

• Robert Kee, The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism p.15.
• Joe Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society p.1.
• FSL Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine p.42.
• Lee, Op.Cit p.1.
• James H. Murphy, Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Victoria (Cork University Press, 2001) (ISBN 1859183344)
• John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland (1861)

Additional Reading

• Cormac O'Grada, An Economic History of Ireland
• Robert Kee, Ireland: A History (ISBN 0349106789)
• Joseph Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society (ISBN 0717105679)
• F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (ISBN 0006860052)
• John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland
• James H. Murphy, Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Victoria (ISBN 1859183344)

A number of localised studies on the impact of the Famine has been published in recent years. Information on these may be got from major bookstores.

See also Misplaced Pages entries on: History of Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Ireland, Daniel O'Connell.

External links

• For more on the pathogen see http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/mar2001.html
• Republic of Ireland website