Irish Potato Famine Causes and Consequences

Irish Potato dearth Causes and ConsequencesThe Irish Potato Famine was a taxing event in Irish history that claimed millions of casualties. Often referred to as the swellest Disaster to ware potty Ire cut down, the direct draw of the shortage was ascribable to the Potato smite that ruin numerous harvests and driving the Irish tribe into aridness and starvation. As a result, many an(prenominal) Irish immigrated in sizeable numbers into the mainland of Great Britain, Canada, and the coup lead States. The paucity can be attri onlyed as a reason for creating the early(a) keisters of the Irish comm building blockies in America (Allan 5). However, the effects of the shortage could have been extenuated had the side approached the problem differently. The face dis wish well for the Irish and establishment of land laws drove the Irish into a financial crisis which led the Irish into macrocosm just dependent on the murphy. This continued dependency worsenedned the im pact of the shortfall (Connell 281). To properly understand why the famine ravaged the Irish population so much, unity mustiness first understand the historical kinship in the midst of the Irish and the English and how the potato fits into the picture.From the very beginning, the Irish and the English conflicted with each other. King Henry II of England in 1171 took advantage of armed combat in Ireland to annex the island within the kingdom. However, unlike the Scottish and Welch, Ireland never cherished to coexist under the English rule. Ireland was alike geographic on the wholey, linguistically, and culturally distanced from England which affected its mogul to do with lawmakers to keep Irish interests (Allan 7). During the spread of the protestant re nervous straination in the 16th century Europe, religious differences between the Roman Catholic Irish and the eventual Protestant England worsened the mutual perception of each other. This fault in the relationship also had serious international diplomatic consequences as the Catholic Irish favored other Catholic nations who were often Englands enemies in this religious war. Subduing the Catholic Ireland became a very important objective to the Protestant English Cr profess amidst these religious wars. The period of the Tudor Conquest was a very bloody one and victory to sub callable Ireland had been achieved under Elizabeth I. However, enforcing Protestantism be to be a difficult endeavor for the later regime (Pelling 2).In lieu of using aggressive force like Elizabeth I, pile I used more subtle tactics. Instead of forcibly converting the Irish Catholic into Protestants openly, he send hordes of Protestants from England and Scotland to settle Ireland. Inevitably, this deeply hurt the English-Irish relationship and led to frequent b verbotens of violence through break the 17th century. by and by the defeat of the Catholic jam II of Boyne, a ruling Protestant class emerged verboten of Ireland and was supported by a collection of discriminatory laws passed, between 1620-1728, to void Catholicism. These laws restricted Catholics from placeicipating in politics, holding official po mystifyions, buying or inheriting land. The bishops were also subject to these laws often experiencing banishment or cosmos forced to register and practice preaching in very special regions. These laws were somewhat successful in converting the Catholics who wanted to take out persecution which reaffirmed the efficacy of James plan (Pelling 3). However, the rest of the Catholic population suffered in p everywherety due to the severity of these penal laws.The penal laws do it virtually impossible for Catholics to aver land. As a result, most rented land from Protestant land owners. The landowners broadly preferred to live in their estates and left the management of the land to agents. These agents, evoke in making a profit, would rent out smaller plots of land at higher prices to the tenant s. At the bottom of this hierarchy was the Irish savage who was burdened with gro cowcatcher enough diet for subsistence and paying the highest rent per unit of land. The introduction of the potato put uped wretched Irishmen to access nutrients necessary for development non wholly for themselves scarcely also for their livestock (Wong).The first Irish potatoes, bountiful by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1588, were introduced to the farming community. planetually it make its counselling to Ireland where Irishmen quickly adopted the versatility of this crop. Before the potato, the Irish typically consumed grain and milk. The problem with these is that milk often becomes easily accessible if one has large plots of lands that allow livestock to easily graze. However, this was non the case for the sixteenth century Irish as land was constantly being captured and redistributed. The oats and grains in this case took all-night to grow and poor people did non have the means to figure ou t these grains. The potato replaced grains and milk as an easy to store, easy to access alternative. not only that, the potato could also be easily prepared by boiling it. dismantle in cases when Irish tenants faced confiscation during stroke to pay rent, the potato could be easily hidden by burying it underground unlike the grain. Displaced people could re-grow potatoes faster than they could with grain. Despite their situation, as tenacious as the climate and the soil favored the potato, they could grow it without much difficulty. The potato dependency of the Irish grew out of desperate need to keep oneself and the family animate (Connell 282-3).The potato proved to be a very easily possible crop whose nourishing effects will be seen on the Irish population everywhere a period of time. For a very long time, the potato grew well enough in Ireland to increase the population. From 1750 to 1840, the population nearly tripled from 2.6 million to 8.5 million people. However, the se increases were noticed in areas where Irish peasants grew potatoes because potatoes yielded more forage per acre of land compared to any other crop. However, it would be these parts of the population that would be most affected by the potato b ignition (ONeill 35-6).The main culprit behind the potato famine was the Phytophthora infestans which is an oomycete. An oomycete is a fungus-like eukaryote. Not to be confused with fungus, oomycetes are responsible for some of the most waste whole kit and boodle diseases-the Potato Blight being one of them (Sleigh 289). The Potato Blight spores favor warm and wet conditions. Rain and wind also conform to a part in helping the spores travel and infect plants over long distances. Even if the infection sets in, the early stages of blight can be easily missed as not all the plants are septic simultaneously. Signs of the blight can be seen as dark patches on the switch of the plant. Whitish mold begins to form on the leaves and the infect ed tubers appear botched. Overall, the plant and its tubers begin to rot (Koepsell and Pscheidt 165). The Phytophthora infestans originated from the highlands to central Mexico. The first track save incidence involving the blight was in the United States in 1843. The winds from the United States carried the spores toward Nova Scotia which traveled crossways the Atlantic Ocean with a shipment of seed potatoes in 1845 oral sex toward Europe (Reader). at one time the Blight was in Europe, it spread throughout many parts of Northern and Central Europe. By 1845 Belgium, Holland, northern France and southern England had all been stricken. (Donnelly 42). In 1845, the crops lost to the Blight have been estimated to be 50-60% (Kinealy 32). The Irish unsophisticated were hit the hardest in 1846 and that is when deaths were recorded due to starvation. This trend had a ruinous impact for people who were completely dependent on the potato for aliment (Kennedy et. al 69). Not only did the Irish starve, they were faced with evictions as a result of smashure to come up with proper rent payments. brusque response from the English presidency activity did not remedy the problem either.Michel, a semipolitical journalist and national activist, wrote on the English Rule on March 7, 1846 that the Irish were expecting famine day by day and owed it not to the rule of heaven as to the greedy and cruel policy of England. In the same article, he continued to write that the people reckon that the gentle as they roll are but ministers of Englands rapacity that their starving children cannot sit down to their scanty meal but they see the harpy child of England in their dish. Mitchel wrote that the Irish simply watched as their pabulum rotted outside(a) at the same time heavy-laden ships, freighted with the yellow edible corn their own hands have sown and reaped, spreading all sail for England (Mitchel). In The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps), written by Mitchel in 1861, it treated the British policies toward the famine as a method to deliberately wipe out the Irish and circulated the famous phrase, The churchman, indeed, send the potato blight, but the English created the Famine (Mitchel). Records indicate that Ireland exported pabulum even during the worst of the famine.When Ireland go through a famine in the early 1780s, the government responded by banning any exports which caused the food prices to drop quickly. However, in the case of this famine, no bans were seen in the 1840s (Kinealy 354). Cecil Woodham-Smith, author of The Great Hunger Ireland 1845-1849, wrote that food exports in the face of the famine caused great tensions between the Irish-English relationship. Nothing made the Irish angrier than the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation. Woodham-Smith notes that Ireland continued to be a net exporter of food throu ghout most of the famine (Ranelagh 115). Not only did the omit of an export ban hurt the Irish condition but the unwillingness of the English government to directly cull the problem made the effects of the famine worse.Lyons describes the English response to the first phase of the famine to be successful (Lyons 30). In response to the crop failure of 1845, inflorescence Minister Sir Robert bare bought hundred thousand British pounds worth of corn from America. However, the shipment was delayed by weather conditions and did not arrive until 1846. Once the shipment had arrived, the corn had not been ground into its edible form. In stray to do this, it would be a long process and the Irish would not be able to carry it out locally due to the lack of means (Kinealy 38). Peel also motioned to repeal the tariffs on the grain to lower their prices. However, it did not remedy the problem. As the famine continued to grow worse in 1846, the conservative party split on the issue and Peel w as forced to resign on June 29 (Ranelagh 115). Peel was succeeded by overlord John Russell who incompetently acted towards the famine and worsening the benignantitarian crisis.Russell and his ministry enacted a overt works project with the goal of employing as many Irish as possible. However, the project proved to be difficult to handle (Kinealy 80). Under Russells ministry, Sir Charles Trevelyan served in charge of administering famine relief. His lack of action and prejudice toward the Irish was widely believed to worsen the famine (Lyons 30-4) . Trevelyan perceived the famine as mechanism for trim back surplus population and characterized the famine to be The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigatedThe real evil with which we must contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moralistic evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people (ORiorden). The new Russell ministry then(pre nominal) strictly followed the laissez-faire belief which led to a stop of the government based food and relief which left many people without work, food, or money (Woodham-Smith 408-11). After abandoning these projects, relief was primarily supplied through workhouses and soup kitchens. However, the apostrophize of carrying these projects fell on local hands, primarily on the landlords who would in move around evict the tenants to avoid carrying out this responsibility (Lyons 33).Landlords were responsible for paying on behalf of tenants who paid less than 4 in annual rent. Consequently, landlords who housed many poorer tenants caused them to be a liability. To solve this issue, landlords began evicting tenants from the smaller plots to clear any debt. According to James Donnelly Jr., almost 250,000 people were evicted between 1849 and 1854 (Poirteir 155). In West Clare alone, landlords evicted families by the thousands. After Clare, County Mayo evictions accounted for 10% of al l evictions between this time. One of the worst evictors being Earl of Lucan who purportedly owned over 60,000 acres of land, evicted around 2,000 tenants and used the asinine land for grazing (Litton 96). In response to this, violence occasionally skint out against the landlords. Lord Clarendon appealed to Russell out of fear of a revolt but was ignored because Russell held them mostly responsible. Russell was quoted saying It is quite true that landlords in England would not like to be shot like hares and partridgesbut neither does any landlord in England turn out fifty persons at once and burn their houses over their heads, giving them no provision for the future. Despite Russells disagreement over the issue, the curse and Outrage Act was passed in the December of 1847 to cull any superfluous disintegrations (Litton 98-99). Another example of unwise policy making under Russell ministrys wing was the Gregory clause. Donnelly describes it to be a particularly vicious amendment to the Irish Poor legal philosophy which would prevent certain tenants who had more than quarter-acre of land from receiving any assistance. The Gregory clause was welcomed by the poor law commissioners who saw it as an easy way out of administering relief. However, many, including Donnelly, would agree that this clause was indirectly a death-dealing instrument (Donnelly 110). In the light of the circumstances created by the famine, many Irish families resorted to emigration which paved one of the early foundations of the Irish American communities.During the famine, the Irish emigrated to England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Traveling such(prenominal) distances was not without a price. It is estimated that one out of five died from disease and malnutrition and deathrate rates of 30% on the coffin ships were not unusual (The Shiplist). collect to starvation, evictions, and sub-human victuals conditions, about 2 million left Ireland by 1854. some Irish imm igrants in America made up a earthshaking population in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore by 1850s. The 1851 count report indicated large influx of the Irish in Toronto, Ontario making up over a half of their population. Canadian cities such as Saint John, Quebec city, Montreal, Ottawa, and Hamilton also experienced a sharp influx of Irish immigrants (Gray 97-9). Although some Irish managed to escape the famine, not everyone had the opportunity or the means to do so. Many, unfortunately, lost their lives to the famine.It isnt cognise how many exactly died during the Famine but it is believed that more died from diseases than from starvation. Official record keeping by the government had not yet started and the Roman Catholic Church records were not complete either (The General Register Office). However, many eye witness accounts suggested some characteristics of the famine and diseases that afflicted the Irish. English quaker William Bennett in Mayo wrote aboutt hree children huddled together, lying thither because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbsperfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, function gone, and evidently in the last stages of actual starvation.Marasmic children, who suffered from a severe form of protein-energy malnutrition, greatly disturbed Quaker Joseph Crosfield who witnessed, in 1846, a heart-rending scene of poor wretches in the last stages of famine imploring to be received into the house. whatsoever of the children were worn to skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger, and their limbs wasted almost to the bone.It has been a difficult project for historians to predict a close number of lives lost to the famine due to poor record keeping. The disputed information gathered by the census commissioners for deaths occurred since 1841 found that there were 21,770 deaths that occurred from starvation and 400,720 deaths from disease. The diseases thought to have caused these deaths were fever, dyse ntery, cholera, smallpox, and influenza. The census commissioners remarked that The greater the amount of destitution of mortality, the less will be the amount of recorded deaths derived from any household form-for not only were whole families move away by disease, but whole villages were effaced from off the land. (Kennedy,et.al 106) Historians also believe that it is a reasonable scenario for disease to be so rampant considering the living conditions of the Irish during the famine. The most important factor towards spreading diseases is enabling human contact under unsanitary conditions. Mass gatherings at the soup kitchens and work houses served as ideal conditions for pathogens to spread from one person to another. Many diseases also afflicted the Irish due to malnutrition. Nutritional induced illnesses were starvation, marasmus (protein deficiency), and Dropsy (Edema). What made these diseases worse is that non-nutritional dependent diseases manifested severely in starved peop le than they would in otherwise normal individuals (Kennedy, et al. 104). Keeping all these conditions in mind, a likely estimate of deaths were approximated to one million from disease and starvation. Another million have been believed to have emigrated out of Ireland. As a result, some scholars estimate that the Irish population was reduced by 20 to 25 percent (H. Kennedy 43). Even after the famine had past, it still continued to affect the Irish political scene and still continues to be a controversial event in Irish history.The poor British policies toward the famine stirred unforgivable and memorable anger within the Irish. Many Irish who emigrated to the United States quickly became part of associations that favored Irelands independence and repeal of the Act of Union. The famine and its causes became the main foundation of Irish emigrant anger. Most of them viewed it to be the reason for leaving Ireland in the first place. John Mitchel, journalist for the Nation, expressed the emigrants angry sentiments when he wroteThe Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine, a million and half men, women, 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. (Mitchel, English Rule)As a result, these sentiments ignited the desire for Ireland to secede from Englands grasp. After a failed 1848 rebellion (also known as the Famine rebellion) led by the Young Irelanders, some of the members fled to America. In the absence of British restrictions, the Young Irelanders encouraged anti-British sentiments and began another crowd referred to as the Fenian Brotherhood and its Irish counterpart being the Irish republican Brotherhood devoted toward eradicating the British rule from Ireland. This Brotherhood also went so far as to recruit the Irish Americans who served in the Civil state of war to take part in an insurrection in Ireland. Ho wever, this plan would fail due to poor communications. However, this did not discourage the Irish from advancing the cause for independence. This time, the Irish Revolutionaries chose to pursue a movement that was grassroots although Irish American help would not be turned away (The History Place). The maintain for independence would continue well into the 20th century still provide by what the Irish, and some historians, believe to be a man-made famine.Even in modern times, some historians suggest that the British inaction classifies the famine as an attempt to systematically wipe out the Irish. Francis A. Boyle, a law professor of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote in 1996 a report that the English government attempted to ethnically cleanse the Irish through enforcing policies aimed to hurt the Irish as a group (Ritschel). Historian Peter Duffy wrote that The governments crime, which deserves to blacken its epithet forever was based in the effort to regenerate I reland by landlord-engineered deputy of tillage plots with grazing lands that took precedence over the obligation to provide food for its starving citizens. It is little wonder that the policy looked to many people like genocide. (Duffy 297-8) However, historians such as Cormac O Grada assert that the Famine should not be considered a genocide because the sentiment to exterminate the Irish as a group of people was absent. O Grada, instead, claims that the Famine was an extreme case of break and poor decision making on the English governments part (O Grada 10).