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- Also called:
- Irish Potato Famine, Great Irish Famine, or Famine of 1845–49
- Date:
- 1845 - 1849
- Location:
- Ireland
- Context:
- human migration
- Ireland
- late blight
- potato
- Phytophthora infestans
- Key People:
- John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
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Top Questions
What caused the Great Famine?
What caused the Great Famine?
The Great Famine was caused by a failure of the potato crop, which many people relied on for most of their nutrition. A disease called late blight destroyed the leaves and edible roots of the potato plants in successive years from 1845 to 1849.
Read more below:The Mold that Wrecked Ireland
late blightRead more about late blight, the disease that destroyed Ireland’s potato crops.
What were the effects of the Great Famine?
What were the effects of the Great Famine?
As a direct consequence of the famine, Ireland's population fell from almost 8.4 million in 1844 to 6.6 million by 1851. About 1 million people died and perhaps 2 million more eventually emigrated from the country. Many who survived suffered from malnutrition. Additionally, because the financial burden for weathering the crisis was placed largely on Irish landowners, hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers and laborers unable to pay their rents were evicted by landlords unable to support them. Continuing emigration and low birth rates meant that by the 1920s Ireland's population was barely half of what it had been before the famine.
Ireland: The 19th and early 20th centuriesRead more about the change in Ireland’s population in the Ireland article.
Why were potatoes so important to Ireland?
Why were potatoes so important to Ireland?
The potato plant was hardy, nutritious, calorie-dense, and easy to grow in Irish soil. By the time of the famine, nearly half of Ireland's population relied almost exclusively on potatoes for their diet, and the other half ate potatoes frequently.
potatoRead more about the characteristics of the potato plant.
How did the potato blight happen?
How did the potato blight happen?
The Irish relied on one or two types of potatoes, which meant that there wasn't much genetic variety in the plants (diversity is a factor that usually prevents an entire crop from being destroyed). In 1845 a strain of water mold accidentally arrived from North America and thrived in the unusually cool moist weather that year. It continued to destroy potato crops from 1846 to 1849.
Read more below:The Mold that Wrecked Ireland
water moldRead more about water molds.
How many people died during the Great Famine?
How many people died during the Great Famine?
About one million people died during the Great Famine from starvation or from typhus and other famine-related diseases. An estimated two million more emigrated from the country.
typhusRead more about typhus.
Great Famine, famine that occurred in Ireland in 1845–49 when the potato crop failed in successive years. The crop failures were caused by late blight, a disease that destroys both the leaves and the edible roots, or tubers, of the potato plant. The causative agent of late blight is the water mold Phytophthora infestans. The Irish famine was the worst to occur in Europe in the 19th century.
Cause of the Great Famine
In the early 19th century, Ireland’s tenant farmers as a class, especially in the west of Ireland, struggled both to provide for themselves and to supply the British market with cereal crops. Many farmers had long existed at virtually the subsistence level, given the small size of their allotments and 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 in that it was a hardy, nutritious, and calorie-dense crop and relatively easy to grow in the Irish soil. By the early 1840s almost half the Irish population—but primarily the rural poor—had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato for their diet. Irish tenant farmers often permitted landless labourers known as cottiers to live and work on their farms, as well as to 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 just one or two high-yielding types of potatoes greatly reduced the genetic variety that ordinarily prevents the decimation of an entire 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 15 mm (0.6 inch) deep. Secondary fungi and bacteria often invade potato tubers and produce rotting that results in 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 in the fields. That partial crop failure was followed by more-devastating failures in 1846–49, as each year’s potato crop was almost completely ruined by the blight.
