The Great Famine, also known as the Great Hunger (Irish: an Gorta Mór [ənˠ ˈɡɔɾˠt̪ˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ]), the Famine and the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. With an excess death impact of 775,000 to 1.5 million, and related mass emigration of 1 million of more, it constituted a major historical social crisis and had a significant impact on Irish society and history.
The proximate cause of the famine was the infection of potato crops by blight throughout Europe. The impact of blight on food supply caused 100,000 deaths outside Ireland, and influenced much of the unrest that culminated in European Revolutions of 1848. Longer-term reasons for the scale of the famine's impact included the system of absentee landlordism and single-crop dependence. Initial government actions to alleviate famine distress, which were constructive but limited, were ended by a new Whig administration in London that pursued a laissez-faire economic doctrine. Additionally, there was a widespread belief among members of the British upper class, and therefore among members of the British government, that the famine was divine judgement or that the Irish lacked moral character. Aid resumed only to some degree at a later stage. Large quantities of food were exported from Ireland during the famine, and the refusal of London to bar such exports, as had been done on previous occasions, was an immediate and continuing source of controversy. This controversy contributed to the exacerbation of the Irish issue in British politics, the intensification of Irish nationalism and of anti-British sentiment, and to the campaign for independence. Additionally, the famine indirectly resulted in the eviction of tens of thousands of households, a situation exacerbated by a provision that forbade access to workhouse aid for those possessing more than one-quarter acre of land, resulting in forced sale and surrender of land.
While crop failures began in 1845, the worst year of the famine was 1847, which became known as "Black '47". The population of Ireland on the eve of the famine was approximately 8.5 to 8.75 million. During the Great Hunger, roughly one million people died and over one million more emigrated, causing the country's population to fall by 20–25% between 1841 and 1871, with some towns' populations falling by as much as 67%. Between 1845 and 1855, at least 2.1 million people left Ireland, one of the greatest exoduses from a single island in history.
The famine is considered a defining moment in the history of Ireland. Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political, and cultural landscape, with the deaths and mass emigration spurring a century-long population decline. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine became part of folk memory. Strained relations between many Irish people and the then ruling British government worsened further because of the famine, heightening ethnic and sectarian tensions and boosting nationalism and republicanism both in Ireland and among Irish emigrants around the world. Considerable debate also exists regarding nomenclature for the event, including whether to use the terms "Famine", "Potato Famine" or "Great Hunger".
When the potato blight returned to Ireland in the 1879 famine, the Land League boycotted "notorious landlords", and its members physically blocked the evictions of farmers. The resulting reduction in homelessness and house demolitions led to a significant decrease in the number of deaths.
Causes and contributing factors
Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom in January 1801 following the passage of the Acts of Union. Executive power lay with the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Chief Secretary for Ireland, who were appointed by the British government. Ireland sent 105 members of parliament to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, and Irish representative peers elected 28 of their own number to sit for life in the House of Lords. Between 1832 and 1859, 70% of Irish representatives were landowners or the sons of landowners.
In the 40 years that followed the union, successive British governments grappled with the challenges of governing a country that had, as Benjamin Disraeli said in 1844, "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien established Protestant church, and in addition, the weakest executive in the world". One historian calculated that between 1801 and 1845 there had been 114 commissions and 61 special committees inquiring into the state of Ireland, and that "without exception their findings prophesied disaster; Ireland was on the verge of starvation, her population rapidly increasing, three-quarters of her labourers unemployed, housing conditions appalling and the standard of living unbelievably low".
Lectures printed in 1847 by John Hughes, Bishop of New York, provide a contemporary examination of the antecedent causes, particularly the political climate, in which the Irish famine occurred.
Landlords and tenants
The "middleman system" for managing landed property was introduced in the 18th century. Rent collection was left to the landlords' agents, or middlemen. This system assured landlords of a regular income and relieved them of direct responsibility while leaving tenants vulnerable to exploitation by the middlemen. The effectiveness of middlemen was measured by the rental income they could extract from tenants. Middlemen leased large tracts of land from the landlords on long leases with fixed rents and sublet to tenants, keeping any money raised in excess to the rent paid to the landlord. This system, coupled with minimal oversight of the middlemen, incentivised harsh exploitation of tenants. Middlemen would split a holding into smaller and smaller parcels so as to increase the amount of rent they could obtain. Tenants could be evicted for reasons such as non-payment of rents (which were high), or a landlord's decision to raise sheep instead of grain crops. Cottiers paid their rent by working for the landlord, while spalpeens (itinerant labourers) paid for short-term leases through temporary day work.
A majority of Catholics, who constituted 80% of the Irish population, lived in conditions of poverty and insecurity. At the top of the social hierarchy was the Ascendancy class, composed of English and Anglo-Irish families who owned most of the land and held significant power over their tenants. Some of their estates were extensive; for example, the Earl of Lucan owned more than 60,000 acres (240 km2). Many of these landowners lived in England and functioned as absentee landlords. The rental revenue was mostly sent to England.
In 1800, the 1st Earl of Clare observed of landlords that "confiscation is their common title". According to historian Cecil Woodham-Smith, landlords regarded the land as a source of income, from which as much as possible was to be extracted. With the peasantry "brooding over their discontent in sullen indignation" (in the words of the Earl of Clare), the landlords largely viewed the countryside as a hostile place in which to live. Some landlords visited their property only once or twice in a lifetime, if ever. The rents from Ireland were generally spent elsewhere; an estimated £6,000,000 was remitted out of Ireland in 1842.
In 1843, the British government recognized that the land management system in Ireland was the foundational cause of disaffection in the country. The prime minister established a Royal Commission, chaired by the Earl of Devon (Devon Commission), to enquire into the laws regarding the occupation of land. Irish politician Daniel O'Connell called this commission "perfectly one-sided", noting that it was composed of landlords with no tenant representation.
In February 1845, Devon reported:
It would be impossible adequately to describe the privations which they [the Irish labourer and his family] habitually and silently endure ... in many districts their only food is the potato, their only beverage water ... their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather ... a bed or a blanket is a rare luxury ... and nearly in all their pig and a manure heap constitute their only property.
The Commissioners concluded they could not "forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain". The commission stated that poor relations between landlord and tenant were principally responsible for this suffering. Landlords were described in evidence before the commission as "land sharks", "bloodsuckers", and "the most oppressive species of tyrant that ever lent assistance to the destruction of a country".
Because any improvement a tenant made on a holding became the landlord's property when the lease expired or was terminated, tenants had limited incentive to make improvements. Most tenants had no security of tenure on the land; as tenants "at will", they could be evicted at the landlord's discretion. The only exception to this arrangement was in Ulster, where, under a practice known as "tenant right", tenants were compensated for any improvements they made to their holdings. According to Woodham-Smith, the commission stated that "the superior prosperity and tranquillity of Ulster, compared with the rest of Ireland, were due to tenant right".
Landlords in Ireland often used their powers without compunction, and tenants lived in fear of them. Woodham-Smith writes that, under these circumstances, "industry and enterprise were extinguished and a peasantry created which was one of the most destitute in Europe".
Tenants and subdivisions
Immense population growth, from about 2 million in 1700 to 8 million by the time of the Great Famine, led to increased division of holdings and a consequent reduction in their average size. By 1845, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 0.4–2 hectares (1–5 acres) in size, while 40% were of 2–6 hectares (5–15 acres). Holdings were so small that no crop other than potatoes would suffice to feed a family. Shortly before the famine, the British government reported that poverty was so widespread that one-third of all Irish small holdings could not support the tenant families after rent was paid; the families survived only by earnings as seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland. After the famine, reforms were implemented making it illegal to further divide land holdings.
The 1841 census showed a population of just over eight million. Two-thirds of people depended on agriculture for survival but rarely received a working wage. They had to work for their landlords in return for a small patch of land to farm. This forced Ireland's peasantry to practice continuous monoculture, as the potato was the only crop that could meet nutritional needs.
Potato dependency
Walter Raleigh is often credited with introducing the potato to Ireland, bringing the first plants to this new estate, in Myrtle Grove, Youghal, Cork, sometime soon after 1586, and later his estate in Lismore, County Waterford. Though Anthony Southwell (1579-1623), a contemporary, Norfolk born, Munster Planter, or Francis Drake, are similarly credited with their introduction to County Cork, Ireland. The cultivation of the crop was promoted by the likes of The Royal Society, and John Haughton, from the 17th century. By the late 17th century, they had become widespread as a supplementary food, but the main Irish diet, at that time, was still based on butter, milk, and grain products.
The Irish economy grew between 1760 and 1815 due to infrastructure expansion and the Napoleonic Wars (1805–1815), which had increased the demand for food in Britain. Tillage increased so much that only a small amount of land was available to small farmers to feed themselves. The potato was adopted as a primary food source because of its quick growth in a comparatively small space. By 1800, it had become a staple food for one in three Irish people, especially in winter. It eventually became a staple year-round for farmers. A disproportionate share of the potatoes grown in Ireland were the Irish Lumper, creating a lack of genetic variability among potato plants, which increased vulnerability to disease.
Potatoes were essential to the expansion of the cottier system; they supported an extremely cheap workforce, but at the cost of lower living standards. For the labourer, "a potato wage" shaped the expanding agrarian economy. The potato was also used extensively as a fodder crop for livestock immediately before the famine. About 33% of production, amounting to 5,000,000 short tons (4,500,000 t), was typically used in this way.
Blight in Ireland
Before the arrival of Phytophthora infestans, commonly known as "blight", only two main potato plant diseases had been discovered. One was "dry rot" or "taint", and the other was a virus known popularly as "curl". Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete (a variety of parasitic, non-photosynthetic organism closely related to brown algae, and not a fungus).
In 1851, the Census of Ireland Commissioners recorded 24 failures of the potato crop going back to 1728, of varying severity. General crop failures, through disease or frost, were recorded in 1739, 1740, 1770, 1800, and 1807. In 1821 and 1822, the potato crop failed in Munster and Connaught. In 1830 and 1831, counties Mayo, Donegal, and Galway suffered likewise. In 1832, 1833, 1834, and 1836, dry rot and curl caused serious losses, and in 1835 the potato failed in Ulster. Widespread failures throughout Ireland occurred in 1836, 1837, 1839, 1841, and 1844. According to Woodham-Smith, "the unreliability of the potato was an accepted fact in Ireland".
Experts are still unsure how and when blight arrived in Europe; it almost certainly was not present before 1842, and probably arrived in 1844. The pathogen has been traced to the Toluca Valley in Mexico, whence it spread within North America and then to Europe. The 1845–1846 blight was caused by the HERB-1 strain of the blight.
In 1844, Irish newspapers carried reports of a disease that had attacked the potato crops in America for two years. In 1843 and 1844, blight largely destroyed the potato crops in the Eastern United States. Ships from Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York City could have carried diseased potatoes from these areas to European ports. American plant pathologist William C. Paddock posited that the blight was transported via potatoes carried to feed passengers on clipper ships from America to Ireland. Once introduced in Ireland and Europe, blight spread rapidly. By mid-August 1845, it had reached much of northern and central Europe; Belgium, The Netherlands, northern France, and southern England had all already been affected.