The Great Famine (Irish: an Gorta Mór meaning "the great hunger" or an Drochshaol meaning "the bad life") was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 during which the island's population dropped by 20–25 percent. Approximately one million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. 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 dependent on the potato for food—was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.
The famine was a watershed in the history of Ireland. Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political and cultural landscape. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements. Modern historians regard it as a dividing line in the Irish historical narrative, referring to the preceding period of Irish history as "pre-Famine."
Causes and contributing factors
From 1801 Ireland had been directly governed, under the Act of Union, as part of the United Kingdom. Executive power lay in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Chief Secretary for Ireland, both of whom 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 twenty-eight of their own number to sit for life in the House of Lords. Between 1832 and 1859 seventy percent of Irish representatives were landowners or the sons of landowners.
In the forty years that followed the union, successive British governments grappled with the problems of governing a country which had, as Benjamin Disraeli put it in 1844, "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien 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." This was a contrast to Britain, which was beginning to enjoy the modern prosperity of the Victorian and Industrial ages. Laws against education of Irish Catholics and possession of land had made such a progress impossible until the penal laws were repealed only fifty years before the Famine, but the economical recovery was slow because the landlord families still kept their land.
See also: Chronology of the Great FamineLandlords and tenants
Catholic emancipation had been achieved in 1829, and Catholics made up 80 percent of the population, the bulk of whom lived in conditions of poverty and insecurity. At the top of the "social pyramid" was the "ascendancy class," the English and Anglo-Irish families who owned most of the land, and who had more or less limitless power over their tenants. Some of their estates were vast: the Earl of Lucan, for example, owned over 60,000 acres (240 km 2 ). Many of these landlords lived in England and were called "absentee landlords". They used agents to administer their property for them, with the revenue generated being sent to England. A number of the absentee landlords living in England never set foot in Ireland. They took their rents from their "impoverished tenants" or paid them minimal wages to raise crops and livestock for export.
In 1843, the British Government considered that the land question in Ireland was the root cause of disaffection in the country. They set up a Royal Commission, chaired by the Earl of Devon, to inquire into the laws with regard to the occupation of land in Ireland. Daniel O'Connell described this commission as perfectly one-sided, being made up of landlords and no tenants. Devon in February 1845 reported that "It would be impossible adequately to describe the privations which they 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 that 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 the principal cause was the bad relations between the landlord and tenant. There was no hereditary loyalty, feudal tie or paternalism as existed in England. Ireland was a conquered country, with the Earl of Clare speaking of the landlords saying "confiscation is their common title." According to Woodham-Smith, the landlords regarded the land as a source of income from which to extract as much money as possible. With the Irish "brooding over their discontent in sullen indignation" according to the Earl of Clare, Ireland was seen as a hostile place in which to live, and as a consequence absentee landlords were common, with some only visiting their property once or twice in a lifetime. The Rents from Ireland were then spent in England, it being estimated that in 1842 £6,000,000 was remitted out of Ireland. Rent collection was left in the hands of the landlords' agents, whose ability according to Woodham-Smith, was measured by the amount of money they could contrive to extract.
During the eighteenth century a new system for dealing with the landlord's property was introduced in the form of the "middleman system". This assured the landlord of a regular income, and relieved them of any responsibility; the tenants however were then subject to exploitation through these middlemen. Described by the Commission as "the most oppressive species of tyrant that ever lent assistance to the destruction of a country," they were invariably described as "land sharks" and "bloodsuckers."
The middlemen leased large tracts of land from the landlords on long leases with fixed rents, which they then sublet as they saw fit. They split the holding into smaller and smaller parcels to increase the amounts of rents they could then obtain, a system called conacre . Tenants could be evicted for reasons such as non-payment of rents (which were very high), or if the landlord decided to raise sheep instead of grain crops. The cottier paid his rent by working for the landlord. Any improvements made on the holdings by the tenants became the property of the landlords when the lease expired or was terminated, which acted as a disincentive to improvements. The tenants had no security of tenure on the land; being tenants "at will" they could be turned out whenever the landlord chose. This class of tenant made up the majority of tenant farmers in Ireland, the exception being in Ulster where there existed a practice known as "tenant right", under which tenants were compensated for any improvements made to their holdings. The commission according to Woodham-Smith stated that "the superior prosperity and tranquility of Ulster, compared with the rest of Ireland, were due to tenant right."
Landlords in Ireland used their powers without remorse, and the people lived in dread of them. In these circumstances Woodham-Smith writes "industry and enterprise were extinguished and a peasantry created which was one of the most destitute in Europe."
Tenants, subdivisions, and bankruptcy
In 1845, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 0.4 to 2 hectares (one to five acres) in size, while 40% were of two to six hectares (five to fifteen acres). Holdings were so small that only potatoes—no other crop—would suffice to feed a family. The British Government reported, shortly before the famine, that poverty was so widespread that one third of all Irish small holdings could not support their families, after paying their rent, except by earnings of seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland. Following 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 those depended on agriculture for their survival, but they rarely received a working wage. They had to work for their landlords in return for the patch of land they needed in order to grow enough food for their own families. This was the system which forced Ireland and its peasantry into monoculture, as only the potato could be grown in sufficient quantity. The rights to a plot of land in Ireland could mean the difference between life and death in the early 19th century.
Potato dependency
The potato was introduced to Ireland as a garden crop of the gentry. By the late seventeenth century it had become widespread as a supplementary rather than a principal food, the main diet still revolved around butter, milk and grain products. In the first two decades of the eighteenth century, it became a base food of the poor, especially in winter. The expansion of the economy between 1760 and 1815 saw the potato make inroads in the diet of the people and becoming a staple food all the year round for the cotti
Flights to Ireland | Belfast | Dublin | Shannon | Red Tag Flights
Flights to Ireland, looking for Cheap Flights to Ireland from Canada? Whether it’s a last minute ... Cheap Flights from Toronto: Las Vegas Deals Fall Vacations 2009 Flights to France
Cheap Flights to Toronto - Compare Toronto flights
Search and compare prices on cheap flights to Toronto and get the latest ... UK & Ireland departure airports for flights to Toronto London (all airports)
Toronto Cheap Flights - Search Flights to Toronto
Toronto Cheap Flights ... Cheap flights (UK & Ireland) Cheap flights (Canada) Billigflüge (Deutschland)
Cheap Flights, Airline Tickets, Airfare & Travel Deals
Toronto; Find cheap airline tickets to all destinations. North America; South America ... Cheap flights (UK & Ireland) Cheap flights (Canada) Billigflüge (Deutschland)
Cheap Flights from Toronto | Domestic & International Airline Tickets ...
Flights from Toronto, Get the Best Flight Deals on ... Cheap Flights from Toronto: Las Vegas Deals Fall Vacations ... Flights to Germany Flights to Ireland United Kingdom
Cheap UK & Ireland Flights from Toronto | London Charter Flights ...
Search. Compare. Book - Cheap UK & Ireland Flights from Toronto. Book a cheap Charter Flight or save with our Discounted Airfares. Think Flight Centre for Cheap Flights to United ...
Cheap Flights to Canada, Toronto & Montreal :: Air Transat Ireland
Fly from Dublin & Shannon to Toronto & Montreal with Air Transat. To Book click or call 018 666700 (Republic of Ireland) 028 90312312 (Northern Ireland).
Flights from Toronto to Calgary (AB)
Cheap flights to Calgary from Toronto. Search and compare Toronto (ON) to Calgary (AB ... Cheap Flights (USA) Cheap flights (UK & Ireland) Billigflüge (Deutschland) Cheap flights ...
Cheap flights from Northern Ireland to Toronto (Canada)
Northern Ireland to Toronto flights. Search and compare cheap flights from Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) to Toronto (Canada) to find the latest deals from all major airlines ...
Cheap Flights to Toronto - Compare Toronto Flights
Search and compare cheap flights to Toronto. Find Toronto flights from a huge ... Cheap Flights (USA) Cheap flights (UK & Ireland) Billigflüge (Deutschland) Cheap flights (Australia ...