Potatoes or Politics? The Great Irish...

Potatoes or Politics? The Great Irish Famine

Mackenzie Laney

HIS 2800: Writing in History

Dr. White

November 16, 2016

Laney 1

The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1851, also known as the Great Famine, decimated the

Irish population. The population dropped from 8.4 million in 1844 to 6.6 million by the end of

the famine in 1851.1 The famine itself was caused by successive potato blights, a crop the Irish

people, especially the lower classes, relied on heavily as a food supply. Repeated unsuccessful

harvests left the rural poor to starve, with no other food source available. Many starved to death

and the Irish Diaspora was spurred, most emigrants leaving for the Northern United States. Over

one million deaths can be attributed directly to the Famine along with the emigration of over a

million more people. Starvation and disease was widespread, with some parishes losing over

fifty percent of their population.2 County Mayo was considered the worst hit county in Ireland,

losing 60 per 1,000 people each year.3

Ireland suffered many other potato blights during the nineteenth century, but none as

damaging as The Great Famine. Reasons behind the high mortality rate and destructive power of

this particular famine have been debated in the historiography since. Some historians take an

extreme interpretation of the famine, called the “Mitchelite” interpretation, in which the famine

is likened to a genocide committed by the British government. In 1860 John Mitchel published

The Last Conquest of Ireland (perhaps) and accused the British government of genocide against

the Irish. He argued that Britain had the means to end the Famine and withheld these resources

for malicious reasons. His argument is a contemptuous accusation which has held as an

1 Encyclopedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Great Famine.”

2 William J. Smyth, “The story of the Great Irish Famine 1845-1852: A geological perspective,”

in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy,

(New York: New York University Press, 2012), 4-13.

3 Cormac O’ Grada, “Morality and the Great Famine,” in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, ed.

John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York University Press,

2012), 170-179.

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interpretation of the Famine since, despite Mitchel’s omission of evidence that contradicted his

theory. This evidence included the fact that the exported food was still not enough to feed the

starving Irish people.4

Other interpretations of the Famine range from this extreme accusation to a simple

explanation of the potato blights, unsuccessful harvests, and an inadequate food supply. Recent

writing on the Famine highlights the “Mitchelite” analysis, including Christine Kinealy’s

argument in The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion. Kinealy aims to prove that

Ireland was producing enough food to feed itself, but that this was being exported to Britain. She

concludes that the British government transformed a simple potato blight into a devastating

famine, therefore placing the majority of the blame on the British.5 Kinealy, however, is

considered an anti-revisionist and nationalist by other Famine historians, such as James

Donnelly.6

There is ample reasoning behind arguments that meet in the middle of these two

interpretations. The relief programs and efforts put in place by the British government were

mostly ineffective, but to label them as malicious is a matter of extreme opinion. The harsh

conditions of the Public Works programs and workhouses often added to the mortality rate and

the extension of the Poor Law into Ireland was detrimental.7 Britain did also continue exporting

4 James Donnelly, Great Irish Potato Famine (Stroud: The History Press, 2002).

5 Christine Kinealy, The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion (London: Palgrave,

2002), 110-116.

6 Donnelly, Great Irish Potato Famine.

7 Peter Gray, “British relief measures,” in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley,

William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 75-86.

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food out of the starving nation, as Kinealy points out, and perhaps contributed to Ireland’s strict

dependence on the potato in the first place.8 The policies put into effect in Ireland by the British

government in response to the Famine exacerbated the potato blight, in part creating a

devastating Famine that transformed Ireland.

There were two different British governments in office during the Famine, one

conservative and one liberal. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s conservative party was in office

from 1841 through June of 1846. This office was considered to be somewhat generous towards

and considerate of the victims of the Famine. However, Peel was only in office until June of

1846, before the worst of the Famine. Peel repealed the Corn Laws, one of the last remaining

barriers to free trade, in 1846 in an attempt to replace the dependence on the potato with grains.

In a speech to the House in February of 1846, Peel argues for the repeal of the Corn Laws. He

read letters detailing the horrors of the famine, warned of the impending danger to both Ireland

and England, and played to the morals of the men. Peel asks, “Was it not our duty to the country,

aye, our duty to the party that supported us, to avert the odious charge of indifference and neglect

of timely precautions? It is absolutely necessary… that you should understand this Irish case.”9

While Peel claims his insistence on repeal is directly tied to increasing Ireland’s food supply,

some historians, and his opposition in government at the time, believed he had other reasons.

Throughout Peel’s administration, he was working towards complete free trade. The Corn Laws,

which regulated imports of wheat, were an obstacle to this goal. Evidence to support this claim

8 Kinealy, The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion, 116.

9 Robert Peel, “Sir Robert Peel's speech on the Second Reading of the Bill for the Repeal of the

Corn Laws (16 February 1846),” in English Historical Documents Volume IX 1833-1874, ed.

G.M. Young and W.D. Handcock (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge).

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includes the fact Peel planned to remove the bills gradually, over a span of three years, instead of

immediately to provide the needed food supply.10

Despite the questions that remain in Peel’s motivations, he also established a Relief

Commission and secretly purchased a large amount of maize to be distributed by this

Commission, not to directly feed the people, but to regulate the price of grain. These actions

earned Peel criticism from the British of being too generous. The opposition to Peel claimed that

he was exaggerating the Famine in order to further his free trade agenda. A London newspaper

referred the Famine as “Sir Robert Peel’s Famine” and asserted “There is not a potato in all

Ireland half so rotten as ‘awful calamity’ is likely to turn out.”11 Resistance to Peel’s corn policy

argued that he was lying about the Famine to play to Parliament’s emotions when he discussed

Ireland as he campaigned for the abolition of the Corn Laws. After the laws were abolished, a

London newspaper called it a “feeble performance”. That same article also included a denial of

increased suffering in Ireland, “In fact, his picture of Irish destitution…was simply a picture of

the past, present, and future condition of Ireland.”12 A view of the Famine as a political ploy

would be detrimental in latter pleas to the British for relief and government assistance.

Opposition to Peel also arose from Irish Catholics as Peel wished to implement a strict coercion

bill to deal with agrarian rebellion resulting from increasing levels of starvation.13 In Peel’s

absence, the Whigs, a fragile and liberal minority government, stepped in.


11 “SIR ROBERT'S Irish Famine is tottering to its fall,” John Bull, March 28, 1846.

12 “The Corn Law Abolition Bill has at length passed through committee,” John Bull, May 9,

1846.

13 Gray, “British relief measures”, 75-86.

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The second government in office during the Famine was the administration of Lord John

Russell. From the Whig party rather than the conservatives, Russell was at first popular among

Catholics, as tolerance from Protestant England was promised. This would change however , as

described by historian Peter Gray,

What the Famine revealed was the severe limitations of the reformist Whig position on

Ireland, and the strength of countervailing ideological and political imperatives- a

providentialist theodicy and a moralist obsession with self-help, Smithian liberal political

economy, and the ascendancy of British middle-class pressures for budgetary restraint

and transferring the fiscal and moral responsibility for the Famine back to the Irish

countryside.14

This pushing of moral responsibility back to the Irish poor is further investigated by Mohamed

Salah Harzallah in his article “The Great Irish Famine: Public Works Relief During the Liberal

Administration”. The current economic ideology of the time, Political Economy “…discouraged

all forms of governmental intervention whether in the economy or in the field of public

charity.”15 This ideology aimed to shape and better the character of the poor and even considered

governmental assistance to have damaging effects.16 This ideology unfortunately fit well with

prejudices and stereotypes about the Irish being ignorant and in consistent poverty. The pressures

of this school of thought combined with pressure from lobbyists to repeal the criticized policies

Peel previously put in place fell to Russell’s shoulders. Some of this pressure came from corn

and grain market lobbyists, including British corn merchants, who argued against state corn

14 Gray, “British relief measures”, 75.

15 Mohamed Salah Harzallah, “The Great Irish Famine: Public Works Relief During the Liberal

Administration,” Nordic Irish Studies 8, (2009): 83-96.

16 Ibid.

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purchases and any interfering in the markets. In response, Russell put the Relief Commission

under stricter Treasury Control.17

By the summer of 1846 grain prices were escalating, reaching more than double the

average by early 1847, the worst year of the Famine and the state corn purchase was gone.

Russell’s response to heightening issues was the 1846 Labour Act which reinvigorated the public

works. From October of 1846 to March of 1847 the number of people served by public works

increased by about 600,000. Public works projects included road construction and workhouses

where harsh conditions, particularly during the Irish winters, led to a higher mortality rate. The

combination of the poor’s malnourished bodies and crowded conditions created the perfection

conditions for epidemics of fevers, such as typhus.18 Based on Irish medical accounts submitted

in an 1848 questionnaire in the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, historian Larry

Geary quantifies the death caused by disease during the Famine. He reports that in the Schull

district alone about 2,000 people died of fever and dysentery by the end of 1846 and that a local

medical practitioner estimated 35 people were dying a day in the same district by February of

1847.19

The overcrowding and insufficient wages of the public works programs led to violence

within the workhouses. Laborers in Tipperary attacked their engineer, and Board of Works


18 Ibid.

19 Larry Geary, “Medical relief and the Great Famine: ‘Report on the recent epidemic fever in

Ireland’: the evidence from County Cork,” in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley,

William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 209- 213.

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officials received death threats from laborers.20 The Bradford Observer reported on Famine riots

in Tipperary and Clonmel in 1846. The rioters were focused on stealing food products, and the

article refers to them as “starving creatures” numbering in the thousands, even claiming five

thousand at one time. Targets allegedly included “Flour mills, bakers’ shops, meal wagons, and

in short everything and place which contained meal or bread, which the crowds could come

at…”21 Dissatisfaction with the government policies spread and the conditions of the

workhouses, the high mortality rate, and publicized suffering of the Irish poor inspired charity

from multiple sources including the British Association, the Vatican, American philanthropists,

and Quakers. These donations quickly dried up however, as such giving and charity was

somewhat of a fad and other causes overshadowed the Famine.22

The public works programs were revealed to be insufficient and ineffective as the Famine

worsened. After public shaming of the British government, the programs were abandoned in

favor of a soup kitchen program, as a Temporary Relief Commission. The soup kitchens aimed

to provide direct food aid, similar to that of Robert Peel’s Relief Commission. The public works

programs were closed about three months before the soup kitchens were fully operational

however, and from March through May people were without relief. Workhouses closed, leaving

people to live in the streets, without work. Once operational, the mortality rates did fall with

more than three million rations distributed at the peak of the program in July of 1847. A British

newspaper article from the summer of 1847 details the rations distributed by the Relief

20 Harzallah, “The Great Irish Famine: Public Works Relief During the Liberal Administration”,

83-96.

21 “Ireland- Famine Riots” Bradford Observer, April 23, 1846.


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Commissioners. According to the Third Monthly Report of the Commission, “Of the 2,409

electoral divisions of Ireland, 1,677 are now under the act, and are distributing 1,923,361 rations

per day…”23 The soup kitchens turned out to be much cheaper than the public works programs,

but despite their success the soup kitchens were abandoned in September of 1847 in favor of an

extended Poor Law.24 Some law-makers claimed the soup kitchens had been so successful that

they had cured Ireland of famine. In their final report the relief commissioners concluded that

there was no doubt the program was successful and that “The absolute starvation that was spread

over the land has been greatly arrested…”25

Peter gray attributes this change to the “…growing conviction in Britain that ‘Irish

property must pay for Irish poverty’”.26 This abandonment of the successful soup kitchens is

further proof for Harzallah that the British government chose political and economic ideology

over the lives of the poor. As evidence to this claim Harzallah mentions that Lord John Russell,

Charles Wood, and Charles Trevelyan, all of whom were important politicians and figures in

Britain at the time, believed the Famine was God’s will, and that Ireland’s suffering would

change its population for the better.27 Many people in Britain also still believed the Famine was

23 “Ireland”, Bury and Norwich Post, July 7, 1847, issue 3393.


25 Patrick Hickey, “Mortality and emigration in six parishes in the Union of Skibbereen, West

Cork, 1846-47,” in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and

Mike Murphy, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 371-379.

26 Gray, “British relief measures”, 83.

27 Harzallah, “The Great Irish Famine: Public Works Relief During the Liberal Administration”,

83-96.

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being exaggerated by the Irish, perhaps a reason behind ineffective relief. Russell explained why

the death rate could not be believed in this speech to Parliament in 1847,

For instance, a man found dead in the fields would probably be mentioned in the police

returns as having died of starvation; and in many cases the constabulary were guided in

the reports they made by what they had heard rumoured among the people, rather than by

any positive knowledge which they possessed of the precise facts.28

Based on this same reasoning, Russell refused to have a death estimate at the height of the

Famine in the House of Commons. 29 Refusal to admit the death rate and claims that it was

untrue inspired more denial from the British people, as descriptions of the Famine were

considered to be possibly fabricated.

Many newspapers also often claimed the Famine was not as horrific as declared. A

common explanation was that this suffering and poverty was no worse that of ‘usual’ Ireland. A

London newspaper John Bull wrote “To what extent does the destitution of 1846 exceed that of

former periods- we might say, exceed the ordinary destitution?”30 In Newcastle Guardian and

Tyne Mercury, a relief administer blames the Famine on the laziness of the Irish people. He says,

“…I can feel but little pleasure in administering relief to such a people. It can do them no good-

only, perhaps, lengthen out, for a few more days or weeks, their miserable existence, when,

unless the alms continue to be poured in upon them, they must inevitably perish.”31 This denial

28 John Russell, “Deaths: Ireland,” March 9, 1847, Hansard, Official Report of debates in

Parliament. 29 O’ Grada, “Morality and the Great Famine,” 170-179.

30 “Week passes after week…,” John Bull, March 21, 1846.

31 “The Famine in Ireland,” Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury, April 3, 1847.

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and reduction in severity of the Famine is similar to that of the denial, previously discussed,

which increased opposition to Peel’ administration.

As a replacement of relief, the Poor Law was extended and a separate Poor Law

Commission for Ireland was established for Ireland. The Poor Law placed responsibility for the

poor and the Famine onto Irish tax payers and landowners. This responsibility is evident in the

wording of the Act. Irish landowners are referred to as ‘guardians’. The portion of the Act

designating this reads, “That the guardians of the poor in every union in Ireland shall make

provision for the due relief of all such destitute poor persons as are permanently disabled from

labour…”32

Also accomplished by the Act, the number of workhouses and their capacities were

expanded and infirmaries were now included in the workhouses. Ireland was divided into 130

Poor Law Unions, with a workhouse in each union. The workhouses were designed to be dull

buildings with monotonous, harsh work and strict discipline. For these reasons the extension of

the Poor Law “…introduced a penal element to the public works…” according to Peter Gray.33

The language of the workhouse records emphasized this penal element, as people inside were

32 “Act to make further provision for the relief of the poor in Ireland,” in English Historical

Documents Volume IX 1833-1874, ed. G.M. Young and W.D. Handcock (Abingdon-on-Thames:

Routledge).


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referred to as ‘inmates’ or ‘paupers’.34 The legislation also allowed a small amount of outside

relief, but it was clear direct governmental relief was at an end.35

Another extension of the Poor Law was the requirement of all land occupiers to pay aid

rates based on the number of tenants, meaning a landowner with subdivided land paid higher

rates. This legislation urged landowners to evict small tenants. In response, evictions rose,

reaching 100,000 in 1850. 36 Protestant tax payers in the north also objected to this tax, as they

were paying for poor relief elsewhere in the country. In response to this opposition Russell

imposed a limit on the rates in 1850. In a speech to the Committee in December of 1849, Russell

explains, stating, “…occupiers of land in Ireland, instead of considering the burden of pauperism

a reason for their giving greater employment, have, on the contrary, taken alarm at the extent of

the burden imposed on them, and have rather diminished than increased the number of their

laborers.”37

Both prime ministers of Britain during the Irish Potato Famine instituted relief programs

that were largely ineffective. The political and economic ideologies that influenced Peel and

Russell, such as free trade and Political Economy, outshone the need of the Irish people in relief

34 William J. Smyth, “Classify, confine, discipline and punish- the Roscrea Union: A

microgeography of the workhouse system during the Famine,” in Atlas of the Great Irish

Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York

University Press, 2012), 128-144.

35 Christine Kinealy, “The operation of the Poor Law during the Famine,” in Atlas of the Great

Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York


36 Kinealy, The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion,141.

37 John Russell, “Poor Relief: Ireland,” April 26, 1849, Hansard, Official Report of debates in

Parliament.

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policies. Things such as workhouses and the extension of the Poor Law increased the death rate,

perhaps prolonging the Famine. The politics of both Peel and Russell in turn worsened a Famine

originally caused by a potato blight. The devastation of the potato blight itself however, can be

attributed to the dependence of the rural Irish poor on the potato as a food supply.

The potato was first introduced to Ireland in 1588 and by the early eighteenth century the

potato was the dietary staple for two-thirds of Ireland’s population. The diet of Ireland’s lower

class consisted of mostly potatoes, combined with milk and some oats and vegetables. According

to William J. Smyth in “Variations in Vulnerability”, “of the… 8.2 million in the population,

around three million were classified as agricultural labourers…The annual consumption of

potatoes by this class constituted 57% of the island’s annual human consumption of potatoes in

the early 1840s.”38 Little land was needed to cultivate a crop of potatoes and that land did not

need to be of high quality.39 The primary system of land organization in Ireland prior to the

Famine was called ‘rundale’. This Celtic system operated based on shared ownership of land,

communal growing land, and a group distribution of crops. British colonialism combined with

this system, with British landowners instituting rents and further subdividing the land as the

population grew, or in other areas abolishing the system and replacing it with a British one. The

potato allowed this subdivision, as it required one-fourth of the land wheat did. This led to a

greater concentration of population and more dependence on the potato.40

38 William J. Smyth, “‘Variations in Vulnerability’: understanding where and why the people

died,” in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike

Murphy, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 180-198.

39 Kinealy, The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion, 110-116.

40 Dean M. Braa, “The Great Potato Famine and the Transformation of Irish Peasant Society,”

Science & Society 61, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 193-215.

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This population growth that developed alongside the growing reliance on the potato can

be explained multiple ways. Some historians liken it to a ‘Malthusian crunch’, an inevitable

effect of natural population growth. Thomas Malthus viewed famine as population check and in

his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population he wrote, “Famine seems to be the last,

the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the

earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the

human race.”41 Other historians, such as Dean Braa, assign a portion of blame to British

colonialism. As the British landlord class subdivided their land, increasing the number of tenants

paying rent, the population grew more concentrated and contingent on the potato.42 Whether the

dependence on the potato was caused by British colonial practices of subdividing land, or a

natural and inevitable population growth, it led to a devastating Famine.

Potatoes were not the only crop grown in Ireland, despite the people’s dependence. In the

years before the Famine, Ireland was considered the ‘breadbasket’ of England, producing a large

corn crop. This is illustrated in quote from a London newspaper, published in 1837; “Last week

the supply of oats from Ireland amounted to 20,782 quarters, while those of English growth were

only 2,027 quarters, and from Scotland 4, 979.”43 Many other food products were exported out of

Ireland to England, including vegetables, dairy products, cattle, poultry, and fish.44 These exports

continued throughout the Famine, an issue Irish Nationalists have used as the basis of their

41 Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (London: J. Johnson, 1798), 61.

42 Braa, “The Great Potato Famine and the Transformation of Irish Peasant Society”, 193-215.

43 “Irish Imports,” The Champion, January 1, 1837, issue 16.


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genocide accusations. These claims are most often exaggerated and the role of food exports

overstressed when discussing the cause of the Famine.45 Many have attempted to prove that

Ireland was producing enough food to feed itself throughout the Famine years. This is the thesis

of Christine Kinealy’s book, The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion. While the

severity of this claim and the relevance of it to the actual starvation experienced by the Irish

people are highly debated, it cannot be ignored in a study of the effect of British politics on the

Famine.

Kinealy provides compelling evidence in support of her argument, including the

following statistics. In the first nine months of 1847, the worst year of the Famine, 3,435 poultry

were exported to Liverpool and another 2,375 to Bristol. In April of 1847, twenty tons of

potatoes were exported from Portaferry to Liverpool. From 1846 to 1847, 936,200,000 pounds of

grains were exported out of Ireland. According to the British government’s allowance of one

pound of corn per adult per day, this could have fed two million people for sixteen months.46

This continuation of Britain importing food products from Ireland during the Famine is

not only supported by scholars such as Kinealy. British newspapers recorded the amounts and

origins of imports into cities. An article published on June 28, 1947, at the height of the famine,

describes Irish imports into London. “The Irish imports of wheat, flour &c., were also heavy,

viz.:- 290 tons of wheat…1,217 barrels of flour…1,160 loads of oatmeal, 164 bags of Indian

corn, 200 bushels of peas…63 tons of beans, 48 barrels of biscuits, 194 bags of rice, 67 tons of

barley…”47 The same newspaper which lists imports from Ireland warns against Irish poor



47 “Importations into Liverpool,” John Bull, June 28, 1847.

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arriving on the same ships carrying infectious disease, the only hint there is something dubious

about Irish imported goods.48 Kinealy concludes that “The Irish poor did not starve because there

was an inadequate supply of food within the country, they starved because political, commercial

and individual greed was given priority over saving lives in one part of the United Kingdom.”49

In contrast to Kinealy’s argument, Peter Gray contends that these local food products,

including grains and livestock may have ended up being too expensive for the rural poor, even

when produced in Ireland.50 James Donnelly reminds readers that while this image is horrifying,

it is “… seriously inadequate and badly distorts the real story of what happened to the food

supply in Ireland during the Famine years.”51 The issue of Irish imports to Britain is the key issue

in nationalist accusations of genocide. In contrast to this argument, an export embargo would

likely have been impossible due to resistance from large farmers. Even if this had been instituted,

according to historian Cormac O’Grada, an export embargo on grain would have only filled one

seventh of the food supply needed to make up for the Famine.52 Accusations of genocide and

purposeful withholding of resources are far-fetched and extreme, but the fact remains Ireland

was exporting food while it starved. Donnelly, despite his criticisms of this argument, maintains

48 “Sanatory Condition of the City,” John Bull, May 29, 1847.




52 Ibid.

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that “…a million people should not have died in the backyard of what was then the world’s

richest nation…”53

The effect on Ireland of the Famine was absolute. Population loss alone transformed the

country’s dynamics. The rates of emigration matched the rates of death, both around 9% between

1841 and 1851. Almost two million people would leave Ireland from 1846 to 1852, ending up

overseas or in the slums of British cities such as Liverpool and Glasgow.54 A London newspaper

in early 1847 acknowledged this mass exodus, expecting 300,000 people to leave Ireland for the

United States of America by the end of the year. The newspaper also hoped the United States

will accept these people “quietly” and predicts it will be beneficial to the country.55

While the majority of Irish immigrants ended up the northeastern United States, some

traveled a shorter distance. An archaeological excavation of the cemetery of the Catholic mission

of St. Mary, and St. Michael in London, completed by the Museum of London Archaeology in

2005 and 2006, discovered evidence of Famine victims in London. The burial ground was closed

after a decade of use in 1854, during which time it quickly became a mass grave in an Irish

Catholic area of London.56 The health and osteological evidence supports the previously

unsupported claim that these were recent immigrants and victims of the Famine. Abnormally

53 Ibid.

54 William J. Smyth, “Exodus from Ireland- patterns of emigration,” in Atlas of the Great Irish

Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York


55 “Emigration,” Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, March 7, 1847.

56 Michael Henderson, Natasha Powers, and Don Walker, “Archaeological evidence of Irish

migration? Rickets in the Irish community of London’s East End, 1843-54,” in Atlas of the Great

Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York


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high levels of rickets in the buried children are evidence of poor nutrition, crowded living

conditions, and ill health.57

Other effects of the Great Famine included later land reform and a loss of language and

heritage. After the mass evictions during the Famine and loss of landed peasantry, land reform in

Ireland was popular issue in Britain. Justice for Ireland was a promise made by the Liberal Party,

elected in 1868. The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1870 attempted to protect peasants and tenants.

The Act offered compensation for improvements to the land and compensation for “disturbance”,

or eviction. The Act was extremely restrictive however, and less than 1,000 tenants applied for

compensation. There were six more Land Acts enacted in Ireland from 1870 to 1925. The

majority of these acts focused on providing protections for the tenant and peasantry class of

Ireland. Landlordism in Ireland greatly declined, and a new land system replaced it. Land reform

redistributed land and transferred ownership, all of which was controlled by the British state.

While much of the land reform was aimed at social justice, unfortunately the agricultural

laborers did not benefit much.58

Another effect of the Famine, and any massive loss of population, was a decline in the

native language. Irish was already in decline before the Famine, but the event sped the process

excessively. This decline most likely began when English was established as national system of

education in Ireland in 1831. School was taught entirely in English, despite many children only

speaking Irish. Children were encouraged to learn English and speaking Irish was seen as a

57 Ibid.

58 Willie Nolan, “Land reform in post-Famine Ireland,” in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, ed.

John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New York University Press,

2012), 570-579.

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hindrance to education and viewed as the language of the peasantry. Considering the peasant

class was affected the greatest by the Famine, many Irish speakers were lost. In 1851, of thirty-

one counties surveyed, only seven had a population with more than 50% Irish speakers. The Irish

language’s association with ignorance and poverty increased with the Famine. The loss and

shame of a native language is argued to be able change a country’s cultural worldview, as people

interpret their world through language. The loss of a native language also contributes to a loss of

heritage, for example folklore traditions which were most likely recorded in Irish.59

The Irish Potato Famine devastated Ireland in a multitude of ways, and is not always

blamed solitarily on the potato blight. Britain’s politics of the time period exacerbated the Irish

Potato Famine. By placing financial responsibility onto the Irish, delivering inadequate relief

when provided, continuing to export food products out of Ireland, and arguably at times

punishing the Irish paupers, British politics and policies worsened the suffering and starvation

caused by the unsuccessful harvests and potato blight. This is not to say the British are to blame

for Irish deaths, that the exacerbating of the issues was intentional nor malicious, or that the

British government committed genocide. The Famine was caused by a single event, the potato

blight, but was consistently aggravated by the British government in the following years.

59 Mairead Nic Craith, “Legacy and loss: the Great Silence and it’s aftermath,” in Atlas of the

Great Irish Famine, ed. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy, (New York: New

York University Press, 2012), 580-588.

Laney 19

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