IRELAND 1845-1851
Mother IRELAND
“The Great Irish Hunger epoch changed
the face and the heart of Ireland.
The Famine--yielded like the ice of
the Northern Seas;
it ran like melted snows in the
veins of Ireland for many years afterwards.”
--Edith Somerville, Irish Memories (1917).
Prior to 1845, Ireland was called “the breadbasket of the United Kingdom”.
It was a major exporter of food to Britain, including vast amounts
of high quality grain products. Irish food fueled England’s industrial revolution.
I
“ reland’s
climate is salubrious, although humid with the
healthy vapours of the Atlantic; its hills, (like its history,) are
canopied, for the most part, with clouds; its sunshine is more
rare, but for that very reason, if for no other, far more smiling
and beautiful than ever beamed from Italian skies. Its
mountains are numerous and lofty; its green valleys fertile as
the plains of Egypt, enriched by the overflowings of the Nile.
There is no country on the globe that yields a larger average
of the substantial things which God has provided for the
support and sustenance of human life….
And yet, there it is that man has found himself for generations
in squalid misery, in tattered garment often as at present;
haggard and emaciated with hunger; his social state a contrast
and an eye-sore, in the midst of the beauty and riches of nature
that smile upon him, as if in cruel mockery of his unfortunate
and exceptional condition.”
--Bishop John Hughes, New York, (from Co Tyrone, Ireland)
A Lecture on Antecedent Causes of Irish Famine - 1847
"IRELAND by a fatal destiny, has been thrown into the
ocean near England, to which it seems linked by the same
bonds that unite the slave to the master….The traveler
meets no equality of conditions: only magnificent castles
or miserable hovels; misery, naked and famishing shows
itself everywhere …and the cause of it all? A cause
primary, permanent, radical, which predominates over
all others--a bad aristocracy.”
-- Gustave de Beaumont, colleague of Alexis de
Tocqueville, in his book: IRELAND, after he had visited
Ireland in mid-1830s. (Reprinted by Harvard Press 2006)
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote to his father from Ireland in
1835, ten years before the Famine began:
"You cannot imagine what a complexity of miseries five
centuries of oppression, civil disorder, and religious
hostility have piled on this poor people.... [The poverty is]
such as I did not imagine existed in this world. It is a
frightening thing, I assure you, to see a whole population
reduced to fasting like Trappists, and not being sure of
surviving to the next harvest, which is still not expected for
another ten days.”
Dependency on Potatoes
• Dependency of Irish people on a potato crop is primarily
explained through the pre-famine land system and the result of
colonization by the English.
• The Irish people were British subjects and supposed citizens at
this time. (Act of Union 1800)
• By 1830s, 95 per cent of Irish land was owned by about 5000
English landlords, having been confiscated by conquest,
colonization and plantation policies of British monarchs and
governments, especially since time of Elizabeth I, “Queen regnant
of England & Ireland” (1538-1603).
•
Between one-half and two-thirds of Ireland's landowners were
permanent absentees, who governed their Irish estates through
agents and middlemen whose mandate was to extract the largest
amount of profit from the land.
• By the late 17th century, the potato had become widespread as a
supplementary rather than a principal food, as the main diet still
revolved around butter, milk, and grain products.
• In the first two decades of the 18th century, however, the potato
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 became a
staple all the year round for farmers.
• The large dependency on this single crop was one of the reasons
why the emergence of Phytophthora infestans had such
devastating effects in Ireland, and had far less effects in other
European countries (which were also hit by the fungus).
These
unequal
conditions,
coupled
with
the
incompetence and greed of the landowners, could
only lead to a catastrophe for Ireland when the
potato blight struck in Ireland on 9 September
1845.
_____________________
An Irish poet in 1849 gives his version of what happened:
God sent a curse upon the land because her sons were slaves;
The rich earth brought forth rottenness, and gardens became graves;
The green crops withered in the field, all blackened by the curse,
And wedding gay and dance gave way to coffin and to hearse.
English
landlords and their agents despised
the lower orders of Irish tenants and peasants
and used the law and the occupying army to
enforce their exploitation of the poor tenants.
“Undoubtedly it is the landlord’s right to do so as he
pleases….If he choose to stand on his right, the tenants
must be taught by the strong arm of the law that they had
no power to oppose or resist…property would be valueless
and capital would no longer be invested in cultivation of the
land if it were not acknowledged that it was the landlord’s
undoubted and most sacred right to deal with his property
as he wished.” –Lord Broughman, 23 March 1846, House of
Lords, London.
It was said that the……………..
“Irish peasant can live...
if his crop does not fail;
and he can pay his rent,
and if his pig,
fed like himself out of his garden-does not die.”
Effect of Potato Blight
• The effect of the crisis on IRELAND was incomparable
for the devastation it wrought, causing 1 million dead
and another million plus refugees and spurring a
century-long population decline.
• Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout
Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost
in Ireland – where one-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.
Mother IRELAND
DEATHS during FAMINE (1845-1852)
• Ireland – 1 million
• Ireland: births fell by a third, resulting in
about 0.5 million "lost lives".
• Belgium - 40,000–50,000
• Prussia (Germany) - 42,000
• France - 10,000
Famine Diseases
Starvation and dietary deficiency diseases, e.g.
scurvy and pellagra, accounted for some famine
deaths but the vast majority were caused by one
or other of a host of contagious or communicable
diseases that raged during these years:
Typhus fever, relapsing fever, typhoid or
enteric fever, dysentery, diarrhea,
tuberculosis, smallpox, measles among
children, and Asiatic cholera (which broke out
in 1848.)
The Scattering
• Ireland – 1.5 million emigrated during famine years 1845-1851
• By the end of 1854 nearly two million Irish people - a quarter of
the population - had emigrated to the United States in ten years.
• From 1820 to 1920
• Over 4,400,000 people emigrated from Ireland to USA.
• Scotland: Highland potato famine - 1.7 million people (1846–52)
emigrated (removal by forced displacement of a significant
number of people in the Scottish Highlands during 18th and 19th
century, carried out by hereditary aristocratic British landowners.)
Greatest Tragedy since the Black Death
- 2 and ½ million people fled Ireland by 1855 • “Part of the horror of the Famine is its atavistic nature—the
mind-shattering fact that an event with all the premodern
character of a medieval pestilence happened in Ireland [in 19th
century] with frightening recentness. This deathly origin then
shattered space as well as time, unmaking the nation and
scattering Irish people and history across the globe.”
--Terry Eagelton, literary scholar & critic.
• “The Irish famine was the greatest single peace-time tragedy
since the [fourteenth century] Black Death.”
--Joe Lee, Irish historian.
Britain’s laissez-faire policy:
Response to Irish Famine
• Dominant economic theory - mid-19th century:
It is not government's job to provide aid for its citizens,
or to interfere with free market of goods or trade.
• Do
nothing that might diminish the profits of the
landholders and landlords in English society.
• Leave capitalism alone. laissez-faire = "let them do
as they will".
• Some workhouses & soup kitchens provided, but
discontinued.
• “Let Irish property pay for Irish poverty.”
Charles Trevelyn, British relief administrator
writes about Irish Famine:
• "The judgment of God sent the calamity to
teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must
not be too much mitigated...The famine will
produce permanent good out of transient evil.
• The real evil with which we have to contend is
not the physical evil of the Famine, but the
moral evil of the selfish, perverse and
turbulent character of the people."
Charles Trevelyan’s PRAYER
for the IRISH - 1847
Official view of British Government, in Edinburg Review & as a
Pamphlet on THE IRISH CRISIS, published 1847, Trevelyan warned
of need to eliminate “the canker of state dependency” manifest in
the tendency of all Irish classes to “make a poor mouth”.
He concluded his report with this prayer:
“God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity
has been offered may rightly perform its part, and that we may
not relax our efforts until IRELAND fully participates in the social
health and physical prosperity of Great Britain, which will be the
true consummation of their union!’”
Abundance of food available in Ireland
during the Famine years
In the long and troubled history of England and Ireland
no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered
relations
between
the
two
countries
as
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.
Irish exports to England in 1847
“The British government decided to leave food import and distribution
to free market forces and allowed vast amounts of foodstuffs
to be exported from Ireland.” --Christine Kinealy, Famine Scholar
Shipments to British Ports from Ireland 1847 (worst year of famine)
• 4,000 ships carrying peas, beans, rabbits, salmon, honey, potatoes
• 9,992 Irish cattle
• 4,000 Irish horses and ponies
• 1,000,000 gallons of butter
• 1,700,000 gallons of grain-derived alcohol
Lady Jane Wilde, in poem: THE STRICKEN LAND - 1847
Weary man, what reap ye? -- "Golden corn for the stranger."
What sow ye? -- "Human corpses that wait for the avenger."
Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see ye in the offing?
"Stately ships to bear our food away amid the stranger's scoffing."
There’s a proud array of soldiers — what do they round your door?
They guard our masters’ granaries from the thin hands of the poor.
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping— would to God that we were dead;
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.
Legacy & Loss after FAMINE
GAELIC Language & Culture
• Colonization engendered sense of shame in traditional
Gaelic culture & language
• Gaelic Language declined
• Death & Emigration-large proportion of Irish speakers
• Effect of loss of his father’s Gaelic language after the
famine: “He says they lost their language and now
they’re all walking around like ghosts, following maps
with invisible streets and invisible place names. He says
the Irish are still in hiding in a foreign language.” (in The
Sailor in the Wardrobe by Hugh Hamilton)
Legacy of Famine in Music
Story lives on in Song at Rugby
“The sheer strength and resilience of Famine narratives are sometimes most evident
in the unlikeliest of places. Any Irish sporting team playing in an international game
(soccer, rugby, GAA) will be serenaded by supporters--homeland and diasporic-singing Pete St John’s popular and enduring Fields of Athenry” (Atlas of Great Famine, 2012)
By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young girl calling
Michael, they have taken you away
For you stole Trevelyan's corn
So the young might see the morn.
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay….
CHORUS
Low lie the Fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly.
Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry.
SKIBBEREEN One of the most famous and widely sung Famine songs was
written by poet Patrick Carpenter of Skibbereen, Co. Cork.
(The Irish Singer's Own Book, Boston, 1880)
http://www.youtube.com/v/GO
X9BcUP2Rw&feature/youtu.be
George Bernard Shaw of Dublin wrote 50 years after
the Potato Blight in Man and Superman:
• VIOLET: The Famine?
• MALONE: No, the starvation. When a
country is full of food, and exporting it, there
can be no famine. Me father was starved
dead; and I was starved out to America in me
mother’s arms. English rule drove me and
mine out of Ireland.
Great Hunger memorial, Cambridge Commons, Massachusetts
Dedicated by President of Ireland, Mary Robinson July 23, 1997
Andrew Greeley, sociologist
writes about the IRISH Famine
• No Western country offers better evidence
than Ireland for the conclusion that all
human hopes are futile, all human passions
vanity and all human effort useless.
• Nor does any country provide more
fascinating proof of the obdurate refusal of
humankind to give up in the face of tragedy.
Scholarship Today - 2012
•
2012 Famine scholars today “give us a view of famine administration which is closer
to Cecil Woodham Smith’s [best seller book, 1962]” (Atlas of Great Irish Famine-March 2012).
•
1962 “No issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two
countries [England and Ireland] as 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 in The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849, best-seller book
published 1962.
•
2012 ”Despite the overwhelming evidence of prolonged distress caused by successive years of
potato blight, the underlying philosophy of the relief efforts was that they should be kept to a
minimalist level; in fact they actually decreased as the Famine progressed… “Disease and
starvation existed side-by-side with a substantial and flourishing commercial sector.” --Christine
Kinealy, a leading scholar on the Great Famine. Irish America Magazine (July, 2012).
•
2002“Colonial Britain let millions of people die from starvation in India and Ireland to avoid
paying for costly aid efforts.” --Simon Schama, British scholar, professor of art & history,
Columbia University.
•
1997 "Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass
starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, and racial group
known as the Irish People.” -- Francis Boyle, professor of international law at University of Illinois.
Scholars cont’d…
• 1965 “In the late 1840s, 'all Ireland was a Belsen’, ” a sweeping
reference to the notorious German extermination camp. This Oxford
scholar minced no words: 'The English governing class ran true to
form. They had killed two million Irish people.' …And that the death
toll was not higher 'was not for want of trying'. --A.J.P. Taylor, of
Oxford University, distinguished historian of modern Germany;
columnist in London Review of Books, in his review of The Great
Hunger by Cecil-Woodham Smith in New Statesman.
• 1965 Taylor’s comment drew many responses: “Mr. F. H. Hinsley
calls it a “gaffe” when A.J.P. Taylor says that in the Great Famine ‘all
Ireland was a Belsen’. I was with a Quaker relief unit at Belsen, and
I have read Miss Woodham-Smith’s book about the Irish famine. I
see no “gaffe”. --J. M. Hinton, Fellow/ Tutor in philosophy,
Worcester College, Oxford. Letter in New York Review of Books.
Quinnipiac University, Hampden, Ct
announced October 2012 the opening of
Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum