Understanding the Irish Famine involves wrestling with several complicated questions. To what extent can the origins of Ireland’s crisis be traced to its colonial ties to Great Britain? Why was one-third of the country’s poor almost totally dependent upon a potato monoculture? And, once the potato economy collapsed, why did Britain fail to prevent a level of death and relocation that saw the loss of at least a quarter of the country’s population within a period of five years? Why, unlike other European countries that experienced the blight, did Ireland’s population fail to rebound from the disaster? And finally, were the victims of Britain’s failure an ethnic group—the Irish people—or were they a class—the Irish poor?
Trying to answer these questions inevitably involves searching back through Irish history, an exercise akin to peeling an onion. We remove layer after layer (wiping away the occasional tear), in search of a starting point. The onion, however, will at least eventually run out of layers. Not so with Irish history. Each layer uncovers another, and then another, ad infinitum. So, lest we end up back in the misty age of the fir bolg, I have chosen a somewhat arbitrary but relevant starting point. I begin the first chapter of Section One by noting that in 1169 Dermot, King of Leinster, having lost both wife and kingdom, invited the Anglo-Norman Second Earl of Pembroke to leave Britain and invade Ireland. This Strongbow, as the Earl was called, did very happily and successfully, beginning what turned out to be the very long conquest of Ireland. This reach back to England’s original colonial sin may seem excessive. However, Chapter One’s brief forced march through the 700-year evolution of Ireland from Gaelic society to colonial kingdom and then in 1801 to membership in the United Kingdom sets a barebones, historical stage for what is essentially a tale of two islands. The history of the “Irish” Famine is not just about Ireland. It is also about Ireland’s convoluted relationship with Great Britain. Indeed, the catastrophe could be called The Great British Famine.
One of the things that makes the Famine so complex is that so many strands of the entangled histories of Britain and Ireland are gathered together and pulled through the narrow aperture of that deadly crisis. Therefore, having very briefly reviewed Ireland’s long colonial past in Chapter One, the rest of the first section explores the strands of religion, politics and culture in Pre-Famine Ireland and the influence each would have upon the ways the crisis was perceived and dealt with by Britain. Chapter Two, for example, takes up the British narrative of the Irish Other, an essentially negative construct of fears and prejudices that would strongly influence how Britons reacted to the crisis on its “sister island.” Since this topic could be a book-length subject, I have focused the discussion mainly on the reports by British travel writers who visited Ireland before the Famine. Chapter Three looks at religious tensions in Pre-Famine Ireland centering around Daniel O’Connell’s drive for Catholic Emancipation and the Protestant attempt at a “Second Reformation.” Chapter Four investigates how Britain’s liberal, moralistic political economy laid the basis for how it would respond to famine in Ireland. Of particular interest is the design of Ireland’s Poor Law system, which was destined to become the principal instrument of famine relief.
Although these chapters are intended to shed light on the British response to the Famine, none of them explains the causes of the potato dependency that left so many people at risk when the blight destroyed the potato crop. That is the purpose of Section Two, “The Rise and Fall of Ireland’s Potato Economy.” Chapter Five briefly summarizes the state of the Irish economy after the Act of Union. In much greater detail Chapter Six investigates the complex, systemic relationship that combined population pressure, land use, and monoculture to produce Ireland’s potato economy. Chapter Seven looks at how the potato blight brought about the collapse of that economy and considers whether this was the result of a freak accident of nature or the inevitable outcome of an unsustainable system. While rejecting the idea that the disaster was inevitable, this chapter argues that Ireland’s land/people/potatoes system incorporated within itself a bias for disaster which was triggered by the blight
Section Three focuses on “The Famine Years,” a term which can be a bit confusing. For example, the potato blight arrived in Ireland in the summer of 1845. Yet, the blight was not the Famine. Many people were hungry, but no one starved. The following year, however, when almost the whole potato crop failed, people were starving by the thousands. By mid-1847 starvation was on the decline, yet mortality rates remained high. Since excess mortality continued into the mid-1850s, when, then, did the Famine end: 1849, 1850, 1852?.
n addressing these questions, I found it helpful to follow the harvest year (fall to fall) rather than the calendar’s trek from January to December, since each fall’s harvest created conditions that would help shape the following twelve months. Thus, Chapter Eight deals with the period 1845-1846. It considers the initial confusion surrounding the arrival of the potato blight, showing how awareness of a potential crisis was often fitted into existing political and cultural narratives about Ireland. Chapter Nine covers the almost complete devastation of the potato harvest in the fall of 1846. It considers the Government’s attempt to deal with widespread starvation, first through a massive expensive and ultimately inadequate public works program, and then through the more successful attempt to directly feed one third of the nation in the summer of 1847. The approached of that fall’s harvest saw the passage of an amended Poor Law act which inaugurated the second phase of famine relief. This act channeled virtually all aid through the Irish Poor Law system which was financed almost entirely by taxes on Irish property. As discussed in Chapter Ten, the new relief system got off to shaky start with the harvest of 1847. At first the blight seemed to be on the wane. However, it soon became clear that the relative healthy potato crop was also appallingly small. Too few potatoes had been planted, and so privation continued. In 1848-1849, the focus of Chapter Eleven, an increase in potato cultivation led to a powerful revival of the blight. Mortality rates in most parts of Ireland match those of “Black ’47.” Chapter Twelve explains that by the harvest year 1849-1850 the blight was largely confined to the western part of the country There, however, the situation was exacerbated by a rising tide of evictions. In addition to tracking the potato harvests, Section Three also contains discussions about mortality rates, the ineffectiveness of famine relief, the changing patterns of emigration, the ever-increasing numbers of evictions and the Government’s decision to use the crisis to restructure rural Ireland.
Section Four reviews the consequences of the Famine. Chapter Thirteen, covering the period from 1850-1852, considers the collision between imperial dreams and Irish realities. It first looks at the failure of evangelical Protestants to use the crisis to expand the “the Second Reformation.” The rest of the chapter investigates British hopes, largely imagined, for an influx of English and Scottish investors and farmers who would transform the West of Ireland into a veritable garden. Using English “high-farming” techniques, these “colonizers” were expected to replace Irish bogs with bountiful farms. However, the realities of topography, climate, rising labor costs, falling agricultural prices and the growing appeal of grazing gradually put an end to such dreams.
Just as the Famine gathers together many strands from the past, so it spread its effects widely into the future. Chapter Fourteen considers the long-term influences the Famine had upon Irish agriculture and land use, demographics and family structure, emigration and the diaspora, religion, language and politics.
The concluding chapter discusses how, through a muddle of conflicting goals, the British government failed in its responsibilities to the victims of the Famine. It considers both the options open to the Government and the obstacles to adopting more effective policies. The chapter ends with a discussion of the genocide issue and the basis upon which British failures may be judged.