A Brief Introduction to the Famine

On September 9, 1845, Irish newspapers reported for the first time that there was a famine in Ireland. At that time, the population of Ireland was 8,295,000. By 1851, there were fewer than six million people remaining there. From the time of the Dublin Evening Post's first report of a "disease in the potato crop," until recovery was established, more than one and a half million people died of starvation and disease, while hundreds of thousands of others had emigrated to Canada and America.


It was in the late summer of 1845 that a fungus from North America (Phytophthora infestans) infested the potato crop of Ireland, destroying forty percent of the crop. The following year, the fungus destroyed one hundred percent of the crop.


This period in Irish history has been referred to, particularly by the British, as "The Great Hunger" or "The Great Famine." The more acceptable revisionist (and apologist) viewpoint is that the starvation resulted from the weather, the fungus, overpopulation, and a colonial system that made the Irish dependent on the potato.


The World Book Encyclopedia has the following entry for "The Potato Famine":


During the early 1800's, Ireland's population grew rapidly. About half the people lived on small farms that produced little income. Others leased land on estates and had to pay high rents to landlords.

Because of their poverty, most of the Irish people depended on potatoes for food. But from 1845 to 1847, Ireland's potato crop failed because of a plant disease. About 750,000 people died of starvation or disease and hundreds of thousands more left the country.

The British government, under pressure from various Irish groups, gradually passed laws to help the Irish. These laws protected tenants' rights and established fair rents. Later laws provided financial help so that tenants could buy land from their landlords.
(Gillmor)

However, "The Great Starvation" has been deemed a more appropriate term by other historians, who point out that the Irish peasants were allowed to starve while the country was exporting beef, pork, wheat, butter, eggs, oats, and barley at the rate of eight ships' worth a day. Many blame the English for the plight of the Irish. John Mitchel wrote in The Last Conquest of Ireland in 1861, "The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine...and 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." (Metress, 1) Others have been more blunt. Frank O'Connor stated, "Famine is a useful word when you do not wish to use words like 'genocide' and 'extermination' (Metress, 1). Here the disastrous period has clearly been defined as genocide.

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