The Great Irish Famine(1845-

1849)

Introduction:
The Irish Potato Famine, also known as the Great Hunger, began in 1845
when a fungus called Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans) spread rapidly
throughout Ireland. The infestation ruined up to one-half of the potato crop
that year, and about three-quarters of the crop over the next seven years.
Because the tenant farmers of Ireland—then ruled as a colony of Great Britain
—relied heavily on the potato as a source of food, the infestation had a
catastrophic impact on Ireland and its population. Before it ended in 1852, the
Potato Famine resulted in the death of roughly one million Irish from
starvation and related causes, with at least another million forced to leave
their homeland as refugees.

Cause of the famine:

In the early 19th century, Ireland’s tenant farmers as a category , especially
within the west of Ireland , struggled both to provide for themselves and to
supply British market with cereal crops. Many farmers had long existed at
virtually the subsistence level, given the tiny size of their allotments and
therefore the various hardships that the land presented for farming in some
regions. The potato, which had become a staple crop in Ireland by the 18th
century, was appealing therein it had been a hardy, nutritious, and calorie-
dense crop and comparatively easy to grow in the Irish soil.
By the first 1840s almost half Irish population—but primarily the agricultural
poor—had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato for his or her
diet. Irish tenant farmers often permitted landless labourers referred to as
cottiers to measure and work on their farms, also on keep their own potato
plots.
A typical cottier family consumed about eight pounds of potatoes per person
per day, an amount that probably provided about 80 percent or more of all the
calories they consumed. The rest of the population also consumed large
quantities of potatoes. A heavy reliance on only one or two high-yielding sorts
of potatoes greatly reduced the genetic variety that ordinarily prevents the
decimation of a whole crop by disease, and thus the Irish became vulnerable
to famine.

In 1845 a strain of the water mold Phytophthora infestans , which causes late
blight in potatoes (as well as tomato plants), arrived in Ireland accidentally
from North America. When plants become infected with it, lesions appear on
the leaves, petioles, and stems. A whitish growth of spore-producing
structures may appear at the margin of the lesions on the underleaf surfaces.
Potato tubers develop rot up to fifteen mm (0.6 inch) deep. Secondary fungi
and bacteria often invade potato tubers and produce rotting that leads to great
losses during storage, transit, and marketing. Hot dry weather checks the
spread of Phytophthora, but in 1845 Ireland had unusually cool moist weather,
which allowed the blight to thrive. Much of that year’s potato crop rotted within
the fields. That partial harvest failure was followed by more-devastating
failures in 1846–49, as each year’s potato crop was almost completely ruined
by the blight.

Demographic Consequences:
It is estimated that the Famine caused about 1 million deaths between 1845
and 1851 either from starvation or hunger-related disease. A further 1 million
Irish people emigrated. This meant that Ireland lost a quarter of its population
during those terrible years. The Famine’s impact was most severe in the west
of Ireland where some counties lost more than 50 per cent of their population.

The Famine’s immediate impact in terms of mortality and population loss is

clear. The Famine's longer-term economic and political effects require some
interpretation. The most consequential of these was mass emigration from
Ireland, which persisted for decades after Black ’47. Indeed, it is only in
recent decades that Ireland has experienced net immigration. This massive
outflow of people had serious economic and social consequences.

It is true that Irish people had been emigrating in growing numbers in the first
half of the 19th century. Some 1 million crossed the Atlantic between 1800
and 1845. But the Famine turned this flow into a flood. As one historian has
pointed out, more people left Ireland "in just eleven years (in the 1840s and
'50s) than in the preceding two and one-half centuries." After 1845, emigration
became something of a norm in certain parts of Ireland.

6 million people left between 1841 and 1900. This figure exceeded the total
population of Ireland at the beginning of the 19th century. By 1901, Ireland's
population had been cut in half, to just 4.4 million. Indeed, the population of
the island, although it has been on the rise since the early 1960s, is still short
of 7 million. This makes Ireland one of the few countries in the world to suffer
population decline over the past 170 years when the world’s population has
increased more than six fold.

The United States also felt the impact of the Irish Famine, as it became the
principal recipient of the mammoth exodus that ensued. About two-thirds of all
Irish emigrants in the last six decades of the 19th century came to this
country. Most Americans today who have an Irish family background are
descended from those who arrived here at that time.

Together with the 5 million Germans and the millions of Scandinavians who
arrived alongside them, Irish immigrants changed the demography of this
country.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/irish-potato-famine
https://www.dfa.ie/irish-embassy/usa/about-us/ambassador/ambassadors-
blog/black47irelandsgreatfamineanditsafter-effects/