The Great Famine in Ireland
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Before the Famine
• During the 1100s, Ireland was a united
country
• Subsequently it was conquered by England
in the 1200s
• The Irish Catholics who stayed behind were
given the less fertile land
• English landlords brought in Protestant
Scottish and English settlers into the
northern parts of Ireland and pushed out the
local Catholic farmers
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12TH CENTURY
• Before 12th century
– N.I. & Republic of Ireland = IRELAND
• In the 12th century
– Ireland conquered and colonised by
England
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Why are these people fighting?
• In the 1500s, Ireland
was conquered by
King Henry VIII and
England.
• He split England
away from the
Catholic Church.
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Why are these people fighting?
England
• King Henry took land
in Northern Ireland
from Catholic nobles
and gave it to his
English and Scot
friends.
• People are still mad
about this.
Northern Ireland
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The English in Ireland
•The English have been present in Ireland since the time of the Norman Invasion.
•The Reformation brought change that would effect both England and Ireland.
•Henry VIII of England broke all ties with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530’s
and declared himself the head of the Church of England.
• The Irish people living under English rule, remained Catholic and continued to
recognized the Pope as their spiritual leader.
•This caused a division between English Protestants and Irish Catholics.
•The Irish allied themselves with Catholic Spain and fought for their
independence.
•The Irish and their Spanish allies were defeated by the English at the Battle of
Kinsale in 1601.
•The English government seized lands and Irishmen were forced to work for their
new English landlords and made to rent plots of land they once owned.
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Under James I: Ulster Plantations
• Before plantation Ulster was the most Irish and most Catholic province of Ireland.
During the Nine Years’ War (1594-1603), a revolt led by Hugh O’Neill, Earl of
Tyrone became a nationwide threat to English rule.
• After O’Neill’s defeat, the English Crown promoted the rights of Irish freeholders
to undermine the power of the great lords.
• In 1607 O’Neill was called to London but instead, fearing imprisonment, he fled
to continental Europe with most of the aristocracy of Ulster.
• After the “Flight of the Earls”, the Crown abandoned the freeholders and went
for a full-scale plantation by British Protestants.
• 1609, six years after the accession of James VI. of Scotland to the throne of
England as James I a scheme was matured for planting Ulster with Scotch and
English, and the following year the settlement began.
• The actual settlers were mostly Scotch, and the Ulster plantation took the
character of a Scotch occupation of the North of Ireland
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Ulster
Plantation
Established
Under
King James I
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% Of Land Owned by Catholics in Ireland
[in green]
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Cromwell and Ireland
• In August 1649, Cromwell and 12 000 soldiers arrived
at Ireland
• For the next ten years, a third of the Irish population
was either killed by the soldiers or died of starvation
• Catholic boys and girls were shipped to Barbados and
sold as slaves
• Catholic land was given to Protestants, which led to
much strife, even to this very day, for the Protestants
and Catholics in Ireland still break out into murderous
riots, and cannot even walk around in the other’s
neighborhoods
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Cromwell and Ireland
• In 1649 Cromwell came to Ireland, striking first at
Drogheda.
• Drogheda is seen in Irish nationalist legend as antiIrish racism, but the garrison there was
commanded by an English Catholic and largely
under English officers, Royalists.
• Inflamed by an initial setback, Cromwell showed
little mercy to the soldiers and priests, killing 2000
of them and having more shipped to Barbados.
• Cromwell may have believed he was taking
revenge for 1641, although Drogheda had not been
involved – it was within the English Pale.
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Cromwell’s View on Catholics
in Ireland
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Ireland 1649
• Government policy was to crush all Catholics.
• Cromwell marched south.
• Some surrendering garrisons were treated well, but
Wexford suffered 2000 casualties including 200
women and children in the marketplace.
• Cromwell dispossessed landowning Irish Catholics
and shared their land amongst his soldiers and
financiers.
• The transportation of those landowners to a barren
province was known as ‘the curse of Cromwell’.
• Those left behind, tenants and labourers, still felt
humiliated.
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Cromwell Bombards Ireland
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Ireland August 1649
• Such religious zeal was involved that the Catholic church
was swept aside.
• All Catholic estates were confiscated and their owners
relocated, if they could prove they had not rebelled.
• Protestant clergymen and schoolmasters were sent
over, and there were strenuous efforts to get the Irish
into Protestant churches, although language was a
barrier.
• However, many Protestant churchmen already in
Ireland were reluctant to work within Cromwell’s
framework. Cromwell’s regime did not last long, and
more moderate people (including his son Henry) came
to the fore.
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Cromwell Primary Source on Ireland
'In the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the
town, and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men. Divers of the
officers and soldiers being fled over the Bridge into the other part of the Town,
where about one hundred of them possessed St Peter's steeple [and two other
Towers]... I ordered the steeple of St Peter's to be fired where one of them was
heard to say in the midst of the flames: 'God damn me, God confound me: I burn.
I burn’ .... The next day, the other two Towers were summonsed…. When they
submitted, their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the
soldiers killed, and the others shipped [as slaves] to the Barbadoes... The last
Lord's Day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church
called St Peter's and they had a public Mass there; and in this very place near
one thousand Catholics were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe
all the friars were knocked promiscuously on the head but two; the one of which
was Fr Peter Taaff... whom the soldiers took and made an end of; the other was
taken in the round tower, under the repute of lieutenant, and when he understood
that the officers in the Tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a friar; but
that did not save him.’
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• Catholic
Political
Cartoon on
Oliver
Cromwell
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Irish Protestant Perspective of
Oliver Cromwell Mural in Belfast
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King James II and Ireland
• Northern Ireland became predominantly
Protestant
• King James II (Catholic) came to the
throne and tried to defeat the
Protestants
• He failed and was defeated by King
William of Orange in the Battle of
Boyne in 1690
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1690 (17th CENTURY)
• King James II of England, a Catholic
• Forced to flee to north of Ireland. Why?
• Because he failed to force Catholicism on the
Protestants in England
• There, he tried to defeat the locals
• New King of England, William of Orange PROTESTANT
arrived in north of Ireland and defeated King James
• Battle of Boyne
• King William remains a hero to Protestants to this day
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William and Mary and Ireland
• Penal Laws were implemented against
the Catholics by the Protestants to
ensure that they had complete control
of Ireland
– No Catholic can buy land
– No Catholic shall be allowed to vote
– No Catholic can join the army
– No Catholic may receive higher education
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Penal Laws
After the Treaty of Limerick (1691), the Irish Parliament, filled with Protestant
landowners and controlled from England, enacted a penal code that secured
and enlarged the landlords' holdings and degraded and impoverished the Irish
Catholics.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
*As a result of these harsh laws:
Catholics could neither teach their children nor send them abroad;
persons of property could not enter into mixed marriages;
Catholic property was inherited equally among the sons unless one was a
Protestant, in which case he received all;
a Catholic could not inherit property if there was any Protestant heir;
a Catholic could not possess arms or a horse worth more than £5 ;
Catholics could not hold leases for more than 31 years,
and they could not make a profit greater than a third of their rent.
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church was banished or suppressed,
and Catholics could not hold seats in the Irish Parliament (1692), hold public
office, vote (1727), or practice law.
Cases against Catholics were tried without juries, and bounties were given to
informers against them.
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Penal Laws
The Irish countryside, with its green pastures and wonderful farmland, had been turned into
English plantations. Land-owning Irishmen who worked for themselves became English tenants
overnight.
Worse, “Penal Laws" governing the conduct of Irish Catholics were enacted. Over the years,
those restrictive laws diminished the ability of the Irish people to flexibly manage their own
affairs. Laws like these set in motion a disaster-in-the-making.
The Irish Catholic was forbidden the exercise of his religion.
He was forbidden to receive an education.
He was forbidden to enter a profession.
He was forbidden to hold public office.
He was forbidden to engage in trade or commerce.
He was forbidden to live in a corporate town or within five miles thereof.
He was forbidden to own a horse of greater value than five pounds.
He was forbidden to purchase land.
He was forbidden to vote.
He was forbidden to keep any arms for his protection.
He was forbidden to hold a life annuity.
He could not be a guardian to a child.
He could not attend Catholic worship.
He could not himself educate his child.
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Penal Laws
*Under
these restrictions many able Irishmen left the
country, and regard for the law declined;
even Protestants assisted their Catholic friends in
evasion.
*In the latter half of the 18th cent., with the decline of
religious fervor in England and the need for Irish aid
in foreign wars, there was a general mitigation of the
treatment of Catholics in Ireland, and the long
process of Catholic Emancipation began.
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Lord Lieutenant
(Viceroy).
Administered Ireland –
often a member of the
aristocracy and a cabinet
member.
Ministers
Were usually always
English – known as the
‘Castle’.
Chief Secretary
Irish Parliament
Lesson 1
Responsible for pushing
government legislation
through the Irish
Parliament.
Until 1782 could only pass
laws approved by the
English. Thereafter,
could introduce their own
laws.
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Ireland During the 1800’s
32
•Irish-Catholics struggled to earn more rights and had some
success, however living conditions improved little for the Irish.
•Most Irish people lived in poverty and two-thirds of the Irish were
dependent upon agriculture as a source of income.
•Most of the land in Ireland was owned by English landlords.
• These landlords planted crops to be harvested and sold in
England.
•Corn, for example, was grown in Ireland and exported to
England.
•So much of the harvest was exported that very little was left to be
consumed by the Irish.
•The grain available for sale in Ireland was often too expense for
the Irish farmer to purchase.
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19th CENTURY
• For years, Catholic Irish fought against Protestant
Scottish and English settlers without success
• 1800 : Ireland became part of UK
• Hostilities between Catholics and Protestants did not
end
• Late 1800s : some local Irish demanded HOME
RULE (like our concept of self-government)
• Fighting often broke out
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•Irish society was dominated by the wealthy English landowners
34 and most Irish
were at the bottom of the social pyramid. Irish farmers could rent land from
English landlords by working the landlords farm in exchange for a plot of land
to work for himself.
•There were also large numbers of farmers that traveled from farm to farm
looking for work.
•However, “in 1835, an inquiry found that over two million people were
without employment of any kind.”(8)
•Poor farmers who could not afford to rent large farms could rent small plots
to grow enough food to feed their families.
•The crop of choice was the potato.
•The potato was introduced to Ireland in 1590 and could grow in poor
conditions.
• Potato crops required very little care which was significant because poor
farmers had to spend most of their time working for their landlords.
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Population Growth
• At the beginning of the 1800s, Ireland had a
population of over 8 million people, and was one
of the most densely populated regions.
• Between 1799 and 1841, it had increased by
172%.
• This was due to:
–
–
–
–
A healthy diet of potato plus milk
Early marriages
High birth rate
High infant survival rate
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Pressures on Land
• In County Mayo, there were 475 people for
every square mile of farmland.
• 80% of the Irish people lived in the countryside
and worked the land
• Land did not belong to them; it belonged to
20,000 English landlords.
• Each landlord had 1000 acres of land that was
divided into farms and rented out to the Irish
Catholic tenant farmers
• If you did not pay your rent, you would be
evicted
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Subdivisions of Land
• Sub-division created many small farms in Ireland as
this practice continued with each generation
• In 1845, almost 200,000 farming families lived on
less than 5 acres of land per family.
• In 1845, 135,000 farming families lived on less than
1 acre of land.
• Whiles the farms got smaller, their rents increased
by 100%.
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Importance of the Potato
• Due to the limited amount of land per family, the
potato was relied heavily upon.
• On one acre of land, you could produce 8 ¾ tons of
potatoes a year.
• It would take almost four acres of land to produce
the equivalent in wheat.
• The potato could grow on most types of land, even
bogland.
• Crop rotation was not necessary
• The potato was also nutritious and had many uses.
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The Potato
Large estates were owned by the British and run by
agents, and these were under pressure to maximize
income from rents for the benefit of absentee landlords.
Many agents were corrupt; all were committed to the
greatest possible exploitation of the estates and their
tenants.
One of the consequences was
that Irish agriculture adopted
the potato as the staple
food-crop of the peasantry,
and economic forces acted to
bring about what would prove
a disastrous dependency on
a very few varieties.
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The Potato
To Irish, potato-growing, land renters, the potato was
everything. It was both food and cash. Part of the
crop was sold to pay the rent and buy what the family
needed. The rest of the crop fed the family. There
was very little, if any, crop diversity.
An Irish potato crop failure in 1845 would not merely harm a
family’s financial well-being. It would jeopardize that family’s
ability to provide for basic physical needs. And if the reason
for the failure was a potato blight that affected the whole
country, the negative impact could have
national proportions.
That’s just what happened to the Irish people
between the years of 1845-1849.
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Importance of the Potato
• The potato when supplemented with milk provided most of the
calories and vitamins needed for a healthy life.
• Poverty may have been a problem in Ireland, but the children grew
healthy and strong, and fatal illnesses were rare.
• Per 10 pounds of potatoes:
– 3000 calories
– 45 grams of protein
– 1.92 milligrams of calcium
– 21.34 milligrams of iron
– 1,600 milligrams of vitamin A
– 444-1,218 milligrams of vitamin C
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The Potato
In 1845, the fungus Phytophthora infestans arrived accidentally
from North America.
A slight climate variation brought the warm, wet weather in
which the blight thrived.
Much of the potato crop rotted in the fields. Because potatoes
could not be stored longer than 12 months, there was no surplus
to fall back on.
All those who relied on potatoes had
to find something else to eat.
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The Blight
• Winds from southern England carried the fungus to the countryside around
Dublin.
• The blight spread throughout the fields as fungal spores settled on the
leaves of healthy potato plants, multiplied and were carried in the millions by
cool breezes to surrounding plants.
• Under ideal moist conditions, a single infected potato plant could infect
thousands more in just a few days.
• The attacked plants fermented while providing the nourishment the fungus
needed to live, emitting a nauseous stench as they blackened and withered
in front of the disbelieving eyes of Irish peasants.
• There had been crop failures in the past due to weather and other diseases,
but this strange new failure was unlike anything ever seen.
• Potatoes dug out of the ground at first looked edible, but shriveled and rotted
within days.
• The potatoes had been attacked by the same fungus that had destroyed the
plant leaves above ground.
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• THE LUMPER IS A
WHITE POTATO
THAT WAS
COMMONLY GROWN
IN IRELAND BECAUSE
IT PRODUCED A
LARGE CROP AND
GREW ON POOR
SOIL.
• HOWEVER , IT WAS
ALSO PRONE TO
DISEASE- THE
BLIGHT. IT ARRIVED,
IN 1845, FROM
EUROPE AND
QUICKLY SPREAD.
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Potato Fungus
The next spring, farmers planted
potatoes again. The potatoes
seemed sound, but some harbored
dormant strains of the fungus.
When it rained, the blight began
again. Within weeks the entire
crop failed.
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Visual sources 2/5 Lesson 12
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• THE FUNGUS HIT
THE POTATOES
FIRST, BEFORE
SHOWING
BLOTCHES ON THE
LEAVES AND
STEMS. EVEN
POTATOES THAT
SEEMED FINE
WHEN DUG UP,
ROTTED LATER.
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Views on the Blight
• By October 1845, news of the blight had reached London. British
Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, quickly established a Scientific
Commission to examine the problem.
• After briefly studying the situation, the Commission issued a gloomy
report that over half of Ireland's potato crop might perish due to
'wet rot.'
• Meanwhile, the people of Ireland formulated their own unscientific
theories on the cause of the blight.
• Perhaps, it was thought, static electricity in the air resulting from
the newly arrived locomotive trains caused it.
• Others reasoned that 'mortiferous vapors' from volcanoes
emanating from the center of the earth might have done it.
• Some Catholics viewed the crisis in religious terms as Divine
punishment for the "sins of the people" while others saw it as
Judgment against abusive landlords and middlemen.
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Views on the Blight
• In England, religious-minded social
reformers viewed the blight as a heavensent 'blessing' that would finally provide an
opportunity to transform Ireland, ending
the cycle of poverty resulting from the
people's mistaken dependence on the
potato.
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The Great Hunger
1845-1849 Famine Hits Ireland
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Poetry During the Famine
THE FAMINE YEAR (THE STRICKEN LAND)
By Jane Francesca Wilde
Weary men, what reap ye? -- Golden corn for the stranger.
What sow ye? -- Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see you 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.
We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride, But God will yet take
vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.
Now is your hour of pleasure -- bask ye in the world's caress;
But our whitening bones against ye will rise as witnesses,
From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffin'd masses,
For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes.
A ghastly, spectral army, before the great God we'll stand,
And arraign ye as our murderers, the spoilers of our land.
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• BY OCTOBER 1845,
ONE THIRD OF THE
CROP HAD BEEN
LOST AND 87,000
PEOPLE HAD DIED
OF HUNGER. FOOD
PRICES ROSE
QUICKLY AND
THOSE WHO
NEEDED FOOD
MOST, COULD NOT
AFFORD IT.
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• "I ventured through that parish this day, to ascertain
the condition of the inhabitants, and although a man
not easily moved, I confess myself unmanned by the
extent and intensity of suffering I witnessed, more
especially among the women and little children, crowds
of whom were to be seen scattered over the turnip
fields, like a flock of famished crows, devouring the raw
turnips, and mostly half naked, shivering in the snow
and sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, whilst their
children were screaming with hunger. I am a match for
anything else I may meet with here, but this I cannot
stand."- Captain Wynne, Inspecting Officer, West Clare,
1846
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December 16, 1846
"Our accounts from the northern parts of this country are most
deplorable. What the poor people earn on the public works is barely
sufficient to support them. All their earnings go for food; and the
consequence is, that they have nothing left to procure clothing. Since
the extreme cold set in, sickness and death have accordingly followed in
its train. Inflammation of the lungs, fevers, and other maladies,
resulting from excessive privation, have been bearing away their
victims. Many have died in the course of last week; and the illness in
every case was traceable to the want of clothing and firing, if not of
sufficient food."
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Food Riots
Note: The following article is
taken from Pictorial Times,
October 10, 1846.
“Famine, the most pinching, has added its horrors to the misery
previously unbearable. Fathers see those they love slowly expiring for
the want of bread. Men, sensitive and proud, are upbraided by their
women for seeing them starve without a struggle for their rescue.
Around them is plenty; rickyards, in full contempt, stand under their
snug thatch, calculating the chances of advancing prices; or, the
thrashed grain safely stored awaits only the opportunity of conveyance
to be taken far away to feed strangers.”
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Eviction
The poor in Ireland
became homeless.
Many had no houses in which to live. When they could not pay rent
to their landlords, family after family were evicted from their
homes. It did a family little good to defend their home.
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Unable to pay rent,
thousands of families were
evicted from their
dwellings.
Starving people with their
possessions on their back,
walked with their children
to nowhere. Many dropped
dead on the roads.
To make sure the evicted
would not return as
squatters, landlords tore off
the thatched roofs and
burned them.
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Many homeless, Irish
people built hovels on
the moors.
“Many of the cabins were holes in the bog, covered with a
layer of sod, and not distinguishable as human habitations
from the surrounding moor, until close down upon them.
The bare sod was about the best material of which any of
them were constructed. Doorways, not doors, were usually
provided at both sides-back and front-to take advantage
of the way of the wind. Windows and chimneys, I think,
had no existence.”
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• 1847 SAW THE
GREATEST NUMBER
OF DEATHS IN
IRELAND.BY NOW
OVER £5MILLION
HAD BEEN SPENT
ON RELIEF
SCHEMES.(AID)
OVER 3 MILLION
PEOPLE DEPENDED
ON THIS AID.
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•English officials most directly involved in Irish relief “believed
in the economic principles of laissez-faire, or non-interference
by the government.”
•The government did provide help to those suffering from the
resulting famine, but the Irish criticized the actions taken by
the English authorities as being slow and inadequate to deal
with the problem of widespread starvation.
• The government simply did not react quickly enough to deal
with the famine.
•Between 1845 and 1855 nearly a million Irish had died from
starvation and nutrition related diseases.
• “Black ’47” was the worst year of the famine, nearly 400,000
died.
• Ironically, Ireland was exporting more than enough food to
feed the starving.
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Laissez-Faire and Aid
• In the first year of the Famine, deaths from starvation were kept down due to
the imports of Indian corn and survival of about half the original potato crop.
• Poor Irish survived the first year by selling off their livestock and pawning
their meager possessions whenever necessary to buy food.
• Some borrowed money at high interest from petty money-lenders, known as
gombeen men.
• They also fell behind on their rents.
• The potato crop in Ireland had never failed for two consecutive years.
• Everyone was counting on the next harvest to be blight-free.
• But the blight was here to stay and three of the following four years would be
potato crop disasters, with catastrophic consequences for Ireland.
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Laissez-Faire and Aid
• In deciding their course of action during the Famine, British government
officials and administrators rigidly adhered to the popular theory of the day,
known as laissez-faire (meaning let it be), which advocated a hands-off
policy in the belief that all problems would eventually be solved on their
own through 'natural means.'
• Great efforts were thus made to sidestep social problems and avoid any
interference with private enterprise or the rights of property owners.
• Throughout the entire Famine period, the British government would never
provide massive food aid to Ireland under the assumption that English
landowners and private businesses would have been unfairly harmed by
resulting food price fluctuations.
• In adhering to laissez-faire, the British government also did not interfere
with the English-controlled export business in Irish-grown grains.
• Throughout the Famine years, large quantities of native-grown wheat,
barley, oats and oatmeal sailed out of places such as Limerick and
Waterford for England, even though local Irish were dying of starvation.
Irish farmers, desperate for cash, routinely sold the grain to the British in
order to pay the rent on their farms and thus avoid eviction.
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Aid
• With the threat of starvation looming, Prime Minister Peel made a
courageous political decision to advocate repeal of England's longstanding Corn Laws.
• The protectionist laws had been enacted in 1815 to artificially keep
up the price of British-grown grain by imposing heavy tariffs on all
imported grain.
• Under the Corn Laws, the large amounts of cheap foreign grain now
needed for Ireland would be prohibitively expensive.
• However, English gentry and politicians reacted with outrage at the
mere prospect of losing their long-cherished price protections.
• The political furor in Britain surrounding Peel's decision quickly
overshadowed any concern for the consequences of the crop failure
in Ireland.
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Aid
• A Relief Commission was established in Dublin to set up local relief
committees throughout Ireland composed of landowners, their agents,
magistrates, clergy and notable residents.
• The local committees were supposed to help organize employment projects
and distribute food to the poor while raising money from landowners to cover
part of the cost.
• The British government would then contribute a matching amount.
• However, in remote rural areas, many of the relief committees were taken
over by poorly educated farmers who conducted disorganized, rowdy
meetings.
• Local landowners, upon seeing who was on the committees, balked at
donating any money.
• There were also a high number of absentee landlords in the remote western
areas with little first-hand knowledge of what was occurring on their property.
• They also failed to donate.
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Aid
• The shaky Irish relief effort soon came under the control of a 38-year-old
English civil servant named Charles Edward Trevelyan, Assistant
Secretary of the British Treasury.
• Trevelyan was appointed by Prime Minister Peel to oversee relief
operations in Ireland and would become the single most important British
administrator during the Famine years.
• He was a brilliant young man of unimpeachable integrity but was also
stubborn, self-righteous, overly bureaucratic, and not given to a favorable
opinion of the Irish.
• Unwilling to delegate any authority in his day-to-day duties, he managed
every detail, no matter how small.
• All communications arriving from his administrators in Ireland were handed
directly to him, unseen by anyone else.
• Important decisions were thus delayed as his workload steadily increased.
• He often remained at his office until 3 a.m. and demanded the same kind
of round-the-clock commitment from his subordinates.
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• .
Aid
• Trevelyan would visit Ireland just once during all of the Famine years, venturing
only as far as Dublin, far from the hard-hit west of Ireland.
• Remoteness from the suffering, he once stated, kept his judgment more acute
than that of his administrators actually working among the people affected
• In the spring of 1846, under his control, the British attempted to implement a
large-scale public works program for Ireland's unemployed.
• Similar temporary programs had been successfully used in the past.
• But this time, Trevelyan complicated the process via new bureaucratic
procedures that were supposed to be administered by a Board of Works located
in Dublin.
• The understaffed Board was quickly swamped with work requests from
landowners.
• At the same time, local relief committees were besieged by masses of
unemployed men.
• The result was confusion and anger.
• British troops had to be called in to quell several disturbances.
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Aid
• Meanwhile, Prime Minister Peel came up with his own solution to the
food problem.
• Without informing his own Conservative (Tory) government, he
secretly purchased two shipments of inexpensive Indian corn (maize)
directly from America to be distributed to the Irish.
• But problems arose as soon as the maize arrived in Ireland.
• It needed to be ground into digestible corn meal and there weren't
enough mills available amid a nation of potato farmers.
• Mills that did process the maize discovered the pebble-like grain had to
be ground twice.
• To distribute the corn meal, a practical, business-like plan was
developed in which the Relief Commission sold the meal at cost to
local relief committees which in turn sold it at cost to the Irish at just
one penny per pound.
• But peasants soon ran out of money and most landowners failed to
contribute any money to maintain the relief effort.
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•
•
•
Aid
The corn meal itself also caused problems. Normally, the Irish ate
enormous meals of boiled potatoes three times a day.
A working man might eat up to fourteen pounds each day.
They found Indian corn to be an unsatisfying substitute.
Peasants nicknamed the bright yellow substance 'Peel's brimstone.'
It was difficult to cook, hard to digest and caused diarrhea.
Most of all, it lacked the belly-filling bulk of the potato.
It also lacked Vitamin C and resulted in scurvy, a condition previously
unknown in Ireland due to the normal consumption of potatoes rich in
Vitamin C.
Out of necessity, the Irish grew accustomed to the corn meal.
But by June 1846 supplies were exhausted.
The Relief Commission estimated that four million Irish would need to be
fed during the spring and summer of 1846, since nearly £3 million worth
of potatoes had been lost in the first year of the Famine.
But Peel had imported only about £100,000 worth of Indian corn from
America and Trevelyan made no effort to replenish the limited supply. Menu
Responses to the Great Famine
Scenario 5
Scenario 6
The Labour Act was passed in 1846
which further worked on landlords to
provide work, punishing them if they
did not by forcing them to pay a
‘labour rate’. However, by the spring
of 1847 the situation was worsening.
From late 1847 the Poor Relief
system (allowing the poorest people
to go to workhouses to be looked
after) was failing. c.200,000 people
were sheltered in workhouses,
double the number they should have
held. Conditions were appalling and
the unions which ran them were
bankrupt.
If you were Russell (PM after Peel)
would you…
a) Begin freely distributing food
through soup kitchens, like the
Quakers had done?
b) Double the ‘labour rate’ – find
work for the poor or go bankrupt?
c) Do nothing. You have already done
enough?
Should Russell…
a) Build more workhouses to cope
with the problem?
b) Begin giving relief to the poor still
living at home – outdoor relief?
c) Expand the public works schemes?
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Responses to the Great Famine
Scenario 5
Scenario 6
The LabourCorrect
Act wasAnswer
passed in 1846
which further worked on landlords to
a) Begin freely distributing food
provide work, punishing them if they
through soup kitchens, like the
did not by forcing them to pay a
Quakers had done.
‘labour rate’. However, by the spring
of 1847 the situation was worsening.
From late 1847
Correct
the Answer
Poor Relief
system (allowing the poorest people
a) Begin giving relief to the poor still
to go to workhouses to be looked
living at home – outdoor relief.
after) was failing. c.200,000 people
were sheltered in workhouses,
double the number they should have
Around 800,000 people were given
held. Conditions were appalling and
aid in their home. Building
the unions which ran them were
workhouses would have been too
bankrupt.
much involvement and public work
Should Russell…
schemes
were dropped in 1847.
Volunteer
If
you were
and
Russell
religious
(PMgroups
after Peel)
like
would
the
Quakers
you… had already begun
distributing food in this way. Once
a) Begin freely distributing food
again, the scheme was chosen
through soup kitchens, like the
because of the laissez-faire
Quakers had done?
approach - it was paid for through
b) Double
local
rates.the
By‘labour
August,
rate’
3 million
– find+
work for
were
fed the
thispoor
way.or
Scheme
go bankrupt?
ended in
September 1847.
c) Do nothing. You have already done
enough?
a) Build more workhouses to cope
with the problem?
b) Begin giving relief to the poor still
living at home – outdoor relief?
c) Expand the public works schemes?
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• ‘SOUP KITCHENS ‘ RUN
BY QUAKERS, WERE SET
UP TO FEED THE
STARVING PEOPLE.THE
POTATO CROP WAS
GOOD IN 1847, BUT
ONLY A SMALL CROP
HAD BEEN PLANTED.
PEOPLE WERE EITHER
TOO WEAK TO SOW THE
PLANTS OR HAD EATEN
THE SEED POTATOES.
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Laissez-Faire and Aid
• On June 29, 1846, the resignation of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel
was announced.
• Peel's Conservative government had fallen over political fallout from repeal
of the Corn Laws which he had forced through Parliament.
• His departure paved the way for Charles Trevelyan to take full control of
Famine policy under the new Liberal government.
• The Liberals, known as Whigs in those days, were led by Lord John Russell,
and were big believers in the principle of laissez-faire.
• Once he had firmly taken control, Trevelyan ordered the closing of the food
depots in Ireland that had been selling Peel's Indian corn.
• He also rejected another boatload of Indian corn already headed for Ireland.
• His reasoning, as he explained in a letter, was to prevent the Irish from
becoming "habitually dependent" on the British government.
• His openly stated desire was to make "Irish property support Irish poverty.“
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Laissez-Faire and Aid
• As a devout advocate of laissez-faire, Trevelyan also claimed that
aiding the Irish brought "the risk of paralyzing all private enterprise."
• Thus he ruled out providing any more government food, despite
early reports the potato blight had already been spotted amid the
next harvest in the west of Ireland.
• Trevelyan believed Peel's policy of providing cheap Indian corn meal
to the Irish had been a mistake because it undercut market prices
and had discouraged private food dealers from importing the needed
food.
• This year, the British government would do nothing.
• The food depots would be closed on schedule and the Irish fed via
the free market, reducing their dependence on the government
while at the same time maintaining the rights of private enterprise.
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Laissez-Faire and Aid
Trevelyan's free market relief plan depended on private merchants supplying food to peasants who
were earning wages through public works employment financed mainly by the Irish themselves
through local taxes.
But the problems with this plan were numerous.
Tax revues were insufficient.
Wages had been set too low.
Paydays were irregular and those who did get work could not afford to both pay their rent and buy
food.
Ireland also lacked adequate transportation for efficient food distribution.
There were only 70 miles of railroad track in the whole country and no usable commercial shipping
docks in the western districts.
Meanwhile, the Irish watched with increasing anger as boatloads of home-grown oats
and grain departed on schedule from their shores for shipment to England.
Food riots erupted in ports such as Youghal near Cork where peasants tried
unsuccessfully to confiscate a boatload of oats.
At Dungarvan in County Waterford, British troops were pelted with stones and fired 26
shots into the crowd, killing two peasants and wounding several others.
British naval escorts were then provided for the riverboats as they passed before the
starving eyes of peasants watching on shore.
As the Famine worsened, the British continually sent in more troops. "Would to God the
Government would send us food instead of soldiers," a starving inhabitant of County
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Mayo lamented.
The Famine (Roisin Hambly)
In the Spring of ’45
I planted my potato crop,
But when I dug them up in Winter
They were black and brown from rot.
There were seven in my family,
Four children under five,
I had to find some food for them,
To keep them all alive.
I saw a soldier selling corn,
No one was around,
I took this opportunity
To knock him to the ground.
I robbed him of his food and money
And quickly ran away,
But sadly I was caught and killed
And left there to decay.
It wasn’t too bad to start with,
But by Autumn ’47,
Two members of my family
Had died and gone to Heaven.
That Winter it was long and cold
And every thing was bare,
Then when my lovely wife passed on
I thought it so unfair.
My family were now so thin,
Their faces were so hollow
They decided to emigrate
But foolishly I didn’t follow.
How does it make you
feel?
How does the narrator
feel?
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Narrative of a Recent Journey of Six Weeks in Ireland.
William Bennett
1847
“My hand trembles while I write. The scenes of human misery and
degradation we witnessed still haunt my imagination, with the
vividness and power of some horrid and tyrannous delusion, rather
than the features of a sober reality. We entered a cabin.
Stretched in one dark corner, scarcely visible, from the smoke and
rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying
there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their
little limbs-on removing a portion of the filthy covering - perfectly
emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of
actual starvation. Crouched over the turf embers was another form,
wild and all but naked, scarcely human in appearance. It stirred not,
nor noticed us.”
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Eye Witness Account
“On some straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a
shriveled old woman, imploring us to give her something, - baring her
limbs partly, to show how the skin hung loose from the bones, as soon
as she attracted our attention. Above her, on something like a ledge,
was a young woman, with sunken cheeks, - a mother I have no doubt,who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our enquiries, but pressed
her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and
despair.”
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Some people were dead as long as 11 days before they were buried.
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The famine grew worse.
“There wasn’t enough wood to
make coffins. Undertakers
developed coffins with sliding
bottoms so they could be
reused after people were
buried in mass graves. Later,
the Sliding Cross Memorial
was made from one of those
temporary boxes.
Mothers who had no food to
give their children gave them
seaweed.”
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Black 47
• Nicholas Cummins, the magistrate of Cork, visited the hard-hit
coastal district of Skibbereen.
• "I entered some of the hovels," he wrote, "and the scenes which
presented themselves were such as no tongue or pen can convey
the slightest idea of. In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons,
to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy
straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horsecloth, their
wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached
with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive -- they
were in fever, four children, a woman and what had once been a
man. It is impossible to go through the detail. Suffice it to say, that
in a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 such phantoms,
such frightful spectres as no words can describe, [suffering] either
from famine or from fever. Their demoniac yells are still ringing in
my ears, and their horrible images are fixed upon my brain."
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Black 47
The dead were buried without coffins just a few inches below the soil, to be gnawed
at by rats and dogs.
In some cabins, the dead remained for days or weeks among the living who were
too weak to move the bodies outside.
In other places, unmarked hillside graves came into use as big trenches were dug
and bodies dumped in, then covered with quicklime.
Most died not from hunger but from associated diseases such as typhus,
dysentery, relapsing fever, and famine dropsy, in an era when doctors were unable
to provide any cure.
Highly contagious 'Black Fever,' as typhus was nicknamed since it blackened the
skin, is spread by body lice and was carried from town to town by beggars and
homeless paupers.
Numerous doctors, priests, nuns, and kind-hearted persons who attended to the
sick in their lice-infested dwellings also succumbed.
Rural Irish, known for their hospitality and kindness to strangers, never refused to
let a beggar or homeless family spend the night and often unknowingly contracted
typhus.
At times, entire homeless families, ravaged by fever, simply laid down along the
roadside and died, succumbing to 'Road Fever.'
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Dublin, Ireland
May 23, 1849
Accounts of the famine appeared in the London Times.
"In a neighboring union a shipwrecked human body was cast on shore; a
starving man extracted the heart and liver, and that was the maddening
feast on which he regaled himself and his perishing family!”
"What, in the name of Heaven, is to become of us? What are we to do?
The country is gone!"
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The Potato Famine in Ireland
• By 1847, the potato famine had reached full strength and much of
the population of Ireland was malnourished and weak.
• This is an account written by a visitor to Ireland who notes much of
the misery he witnessed.
“We have just returned from a visit to Ireland, whither we had gone
in order to ascertain with our own eyes the truth of the reports daily
publishing of the misery existing there. We have found everything but
too true; the accounts are not exaggerated--they cannot be
exaggerated-- nothing more frightful can be conceived. The scenes
we have witnessed during our short stay at Skibbereen, equal any
thing that has been recorded by history, or could be conceived by the
imagination. Famine, typhus fever, dysentery, and a disease hitherto
unknown, are sweeping away the whole population. The poor are not
the only sufferers: fever is spreading to every class, and even the rich
are becoming involved in the same destruction.”
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The Great Migration84
•During that same time, nearly three million Irish would flee Ireland in hopes of
finding a better life.
•250,000 would migrate to England and nearly 2,000,000 would flee to North
America and Australia.
•In 1847 alone 100,000 immigrants sailed to the United States.
•The Irish journeyed to America in search of work.
• Many, for example, hoped to gain employment working in the growing factories of
the northeast.
•Immigrants were packed into “coffin” ships bound for ports in English speaking
countries.
• Many thousands died in the long journey across the Atlantic succumbing to disease
and starvation only to have their bodies thrown overboard.
•The Irish arrived in America all at once it seemed.
•Port cities like Boston, New York and New Orleans were flooded with strange
people, many of whom were near death.
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The Exodus Begins
• By the middle of the 19th
Century, thousands of Irish
immigrants were arriving in the
U.S. in an effort to escape the
devastating famine in Ireland.
• The excerpt here deals with the
initial stages of the Irish flight.
• “The splendid emigrant ships
that ply between Liverpool and
New York, and which have
sufficed in previous years to
carry to the shores of America
an Irish emigration, amounting
on the average to 250,000 souls
per annum, have, during the
present spring, been found
insufficient to transport to the
States the increasing swarms of
Irish who have resolved to try in
the New World to gain the
independence which has been
denied them in the old.”
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• DURING THE FAMINE
YEARS ABOUT 2 MILLION
PEOPLE EMIGRATED TO
ENGLAND,
AMERICA,CANADA AND
AUSTRALIA.CONDITIONS
ON BOARD THE SHIPS
WERE DREADFUL, WITH
VERY LITTLE FOOD. THE 8
WEEK LONG VOYAGES TO
CANADA AND AMERICA
WERE THE
WORSE.DISEASE WAS
WIDESPREAD AND
THOUSANDS DIED.THE
SHIPS WERE KNOWN AS
‘COFFIN SHIPS’
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Emigration
One of the most obvious effects of
the famine was emigration. Although
the famine itself probably resulted in
about one million deaths, the
resultant emigration caused the
population to drop by a further three
million. About one million of these are
estimated to have emigrated in the
immediate famine period, with the
depression that followed continuing
the decline until the second half of
the 20th century. These immigrants
largely ended up in North America,
with some in Australia and in Britain.
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Emigration
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1815-45 – 1.5 million emigrated.
1845-50 – 1.5 million people
emigrated.
1850-1910 – 4.5-5 million
emigrated.
¼ went to England and Scotland;
majority went to America.
Before the famine, it was mainly
single, landless men who
emigrated.
Early years of the Famine –
mainly cottiers and labourers,
plus some richer people
emigrated.
After 1850 it was only
smallholders and labourers.
Whole families now went too.
Emigration was hard.
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The Great Migration
Wave of New Americans Begins
• In hopes of a better future a number of Irish immigrated to the U.S. between
1820 and 1830 and nearly 2 million during the decade of the 1840s.
• Altogether, almost 3.5 million Irish people entered the United States between
1820 and 1880.
• Most of the migration was due to the Irish Potato Famine between 1845 and
1852.
Forms such as this were used to document the
arrival of immigrants to the U.S.
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Coffin Ships
With many of the emigrants suffering from fever, coupled with the
cramped and unsanitary conditions on board what became known as
the "coffin ships", disease was rampant.
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Coffin Ships
Although they were regulated, many of the ships were
privately owned, and some captains grossly overcrowded
them in order to get more fares. Only the slave ships of
the previous century would have had worse conditions.
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Coffin Ships
• During the trans-Atlantic voyage, British ships were only required to supply 7
lbs. of food per week per passenger.
• Most passengers, it was assumed, would bring along their own food for the
journey.
• But most of the poor Irish boarded ships with no food, depending entirely on
the pound-a-day handout which amounted to starvation rations.
• Food on board was also haphazardly cooked in makeshift brick fireplaces and
was often undercooked, causing upset stomachs and diarrhea.
• Many of the passengers were already ill with typhus as they boarded the ships.
• Before boarding, they had been given the once-over by doctors on shore who
usually rejected no one for the trip, even those seemingly on the verge of
death.
• British ships were not required to carry doctors.
• Anyone that died during the sea voyage was simply dumped overboard, without any
religious rites.
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Coffin Ships
• Below decks, hundreds of men, women and children huddled together in the
dark on bare wooden floors with no ventilation, breathing a stench of vomit
and the effects of diarrhea amid no sanitary facilities.
• On ships that actually had sleeping berths, there were no mattresses and
the berths were never cleaned.
• Many sick persons remained in bare wooden bunks lying in their own filth for
the entire voyage, too ill to get up.
• Another big problem was the lack of good drinking water.
• Sometimes the water was stored in leaky old wooden casks, or in casks that
previously stored wine, vinegar or chemicals which contaminated the water
and caused dysentery.
• Many ships ran out of water long before reaching North America, making life
especially miserable for fevered passengers suffering from burning thirsts.
• Some unscrupulous captains profited by selling large amounts of alcohol to
the passengers, resulting in "totally depraved and corrupted" behavior
among them.
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Coffin Ships
It is estimated that perhaps as many as 40% of steerage
passengers died either en-route or immediately after
arrival.
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Coffin Ships
• The first coffin ships headed for Quebec, Canada.
• The three thousand mile journey, depending on winds and the captain's skill, could
take from 40 days to three months.
• Upon arrival in the Saint Lawrence River, the ships were supposed to be inspected
for disease and any sick passengers removed to quarantine facilities on Grosse Isle,
a small island thirty miles downstream from Quebec City.
• But in the spring of 1847, shipload after shipload of fevered Irish arrived, quickly
overwhelming the small medical inspection facility, which only had 150 beds.
• By June, 40 vessels containing 14,000 Irish immigrants waited in a line extending
two miles down the St. Lawrence.
• It took up to five days to see a doctor, many of whom were becoming ill from
contact with the typhus-infected passengers.
• By the summer, the line of ships had grown several miles long.
• A fifteen-day general quarantine was then imposed for all of the waiting ships.
• Many healthy Irish thus succumbed to typhus as they were forced to remain in
their lice-infested holds.
• With so many dead on board the waiting ships, hundreds of bodies were simply
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dumped overboard into the St. Lawrence.
Coffin Ships
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Others, half-alive, were placed in small boats and then deposited on the beach at Grosse
Isle, left to crawl to the hospital on their hands and knees if they could manage.
Thousands of Irish, ill with typhus and dysentery, eventually wound up in hastily
constructed wooden fever sheds.
These makeshift hospitals, badly understaffed and unsanitary, simply became places to
die, with corpses piled "like cordwood" in nearby mass graves.
Those who couldn't get into the hospital died along the roadsides. In one case, an
orphaned Irish boy walking along the road with other boys sat down for a moment under
a tree to rest and promptly died on the spot.
The quarantine efforts were soon abandoned and the Irish were sent on to their next
destination without any medical inspection or treatment.
From Grosse Isle, the Irish were given free passage up the St. Lawrence to Montreal and
cities such as Kingston and Toronto.
The crowded open-aired river barges used to transport them exposed the fair-skinned
Irish to all-day-long summer sun causing many bad sunburns.
At night, they laid down close to each other to ward off the chilly air, spreading more lice
and fever
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Coffin Ships
• Many pauper families had been told by their landlords that once they arrived in
Canada, an agent would meet them and pay out between two and five pounds
depending on the size of the family.
• But no agents were ever found.
• Promises of money, food and clothing had been utterly false.
• Landlords knew that once the paupers arrived in Canada there was virtually no
way for them to ever return to Ireland and make a claim.
• Thus they had promised them anything just to get them out of the country.
• Montreal received the biggest influx of Irish during this time.
• Many of those arriving were quite ill from typhus and long-term malnutrition.
• Montreal's limited medical facilities at Point St. Charles were quickly
overwhelmed.
• Homeless Irish wandered the countryside begging for help as temperatures
dropped and the frosty Canadian winter set in.
• But they were shunned everywhere by Canadians afraid of contracting fever.
• Of the 100,000 Irish that sailed to British North America in 1847, an estimated
one out of five died from disease and malnutrition, including over five thousand
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at Grosse Isle.
Coming to America
Even as the boat was docking, these immigrants to America
learned that life in America was going to be a battle for
survival.
Almshouses were filled
with these Irish
immigrants. They
begged on every street.
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First Immigrant to Enter U.S.
through Ellis Island
Irish Girl First Immigrant to Arrive at
Ellis Island
A young Irish girl by the name of Annie
Moore was the first immigrant to
ever enter the U.S. through Ellis
Island.
Since then, more than 17 million people
have entered the United States
through Ellis Island.
Today, in addition to the Cobh County
Cork statue, on the left, there is also
a bronze statue on display at Ellis
Island depicting her arrival.
Statue at Cobh, Co. Cork, of Annie Moore
and her two brothers
leaving for America.
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Coming to America
• Quarantine centers were set up for diseased
emigrants.
• Some settled in new territories in the West.
• Most stayed in cities on East Coast where
they took poorest jobs.
• Emigration continued for almost a century.
• Emigrants brought with them a deep hatred
of England, which they blamed for the
famine and their suffering.
Click movie to see Irish emigrants on Ellis Island.
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Coming to America
All major
cities had
their "Irish
Town" or
"Shanty Town"
where the
Irish clung
together. Ads
for
employment
often were
followed by
"NO IRISH
NEED APPLY."
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Immigrants
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Coming to America
The emigrants were forced to live in
cellars and shanties, partly because
of poverty but also because they
were considered bad for the
neighborhood...they were unfamiliar
with plumbing and running water.
These living conditions bred sickness
and early death. It was estimated
that 80% of all infants born to Irish
immigrants in New York City died.
Their brogue and dress provoked
ridicule; their poverty and illiteracy
provoked scorn.
Irish crosses
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Nativist Response to Irish
Immigration
• The influx of large numbers of
Irish Catholics during the 19th
century disturbed many
conservative Americans who
viewed the ethnic shift in
American society as a
potentially damaging
phenomenon.
• Many publications argued that
the Irish would place their
loyalty to the Catholic Church
above their loyalty to the U.S.
• Also, the 1856 platform of the
briefly influential "KnowNothing" party stressed the
need for native born
Americans to take charge.
106
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This political cartoon from
Harper's Weekly, by W. A.
Rogers, ran with the
caption, "The balance of
trade with Great Britain
seems to be still against
us. 630 paupers arrived at
Boston in the steamship
Nestoria, April 15th, from
Galway, Ireland shipped by
the British Government."
How does this
cartoon portray
Irish immigrants?
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108
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Coming to America
America meant more hardship for many Irish immigrants.
Most were Catholics - and Catholics weren’t always welcomed
into American cities at the time. Anti-immigrant sentiment
existed in 19th century America.
“Irish need not apply.”
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110
Irish immigrants in the United
States had to contend with
racist attitudes.
What is the message in this
political cartoon which
appeared in Harpers Weekly?
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Coming to America
The Chicago Post wrote, "The Irish fill our prisons, our poor
houses...Scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you
tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and
sending them home would end crime in this country."
Not only the men worked, but the women too. They became chamber
maids, cooks, and the caretakers of children. Early Americans
disdained this type of work, fit only for servants, the common
sentiment being, "Let Negroes be servants, and if not Negroes, let
Irishmen fill their place..."
The Blacks hated the Irish and it
appeared to be a mutual feeling.
They were the first to call
the Irish "white nigger."
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City life for Immigrants
• The “New” group usually congregates together and
forms an almost isolated community and institutions in the
giant and growing cities of America.
• The Irish came together in great neighborhoods and
sections of all Eastern Cities.
• They formed their own political groups and parties.
• They used their large numbers to build powerful
political groups that dominated some large Cities and
industries in those cities.
• Example: Police and Firemen in New York, Boston,
Chicago, Philadelphia.
• They set up: Churches, Hospitals, Welfare Organizations,
Schools, Social Clubs, Political Organizations, Jobs, and
Security
• They helped each other in exchange for loyalty during the
voting season.
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A statue of a mother and her
children can be found in Ellis
Island, New York, which
represents not only the honor
of her being the first emigrant
to pass through Ellis Island but
also stands as a symbol of the
many Irish who have embarked
on that very same journey.
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America Remembers
New York State's Irish Hunger Memorial -- an extraordinary new
memorial devoted to raising public awareness of the events that led
to the "Great Irish Famine and Migration" of 1845-1852.
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• THE POPULATION HAD
DROPPED BY AT LEAST
2 AND A HALF
MILLION.
• EMIGRATION NOW
PLAYED A LARGE PART
IN IRISH LIFE.
• EMIGRANTS SENT
HOME MILLIONS OF
POUNDS.
• EDUCATION WAS SEEN
AS A MEANS OF
ESCAPING POVERTY
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Population
• c.1 million men,
women and children
died between 184550.
• Irish population
declined from c.8
million in 1841 to
c.6m in 1851.
• By 1900 the Irish
population was ½ the
size it was in 1845.
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Land
• Cottiers (small land owners)
were destroyed and their
population fell dramatically.
• c.200,000 smaller farms
were lost.
• 10% of the old landlord
class went bankrupt.
• Encumbered Estates Act
was passed in 1849 to speed
up the sale of land.
• 1850s – c.3,000 estates
sold.
• But – most were brought by
speculators or existing
members of the landlord
class.
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Farming and Living Standards
• There was less
concentration on potato
farming and more
concentration on dairy and
exporting cattle.
• Living standards improved
because wages increased.
• Housing standards
improved as did literacy –
due to urbanisation.
• The m-c farmer became
the centre of Irish
countryside – there was a
77% increase in farmers’
income and many farmers
got the vote in 1850.
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By the time the most
damaging effects of the
Great Hunger were over,
Ireland’s population had
dropped from about 8
million (at its highest-ever
level in 1845) to about 5
million. It has never
recovered from that mass
exodus.
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DARK ROSALEEN
By Sister Anne Therese Dillen
I thirst beside the heather-laden bogs –
no samaritan for me;
no one here to see
that I shall die amidst the
plenty, in the field –
and that its yield
will sail to shores beyond the sea.
How can it be
that flocks of sheep can find their fill
while I lie empty and in pain?
or is it vain
to beg attention to my plight?
How can I fight
when I am listless, drained alone,
shrunken to the bone
while others eat what I have
grown in toil?
Woman of the soil –
I fade against a wall of human greed
and - sower of the seed –
I languish as it grows...
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Hatred of England
The famine in Ireland caused further animosity between
England and Ireland. The Irish people blamed England for
not doing enough to lessen the effects of the famine.
Fortunately, the people
of Ireland and England
are working out their
longstanding differences.
They have a lengthy
history of enmity.
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Background
• In 1800, Ireland became part of the
United Kingdom (England)
• In the late 1800s, local Irish Catholics
sought limited self-government known
as Home Rule
• Hostilities continued and were so bad
that Britain lost control of the southern
part of Ireland
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Catholic Emancipation Actand Daniel O’Connor
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Daniel O'Connell, known as "the Liberator," was born on 6 August 1775 near Cahirciveen
in County Kerry and was educated in France because as a Roman Catholic he was unable to
go to University in Britain.
He returned to Ireland, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Dublin in 1798.
He built up a highly successful practise as a lawyer and dealt with many cases of Irish
tenants against English landlords.
During the next two decades he was active in the movement to repeal British laws that
penalized Roman Catholics because of their religion.
Catholics were barred from Parliament but O'Connell became the leader of the battle to
win political rights for Irish Roman Catholics.
In 1823 he organised the Catholic Association, which played an important role in the
passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829. O'Connell was elected to the House of
Commons for County Clare in 1829 in what Peel called "an avalanche" but — although he
was by law allowed to stand as a candidate — he was prevented from taking his seat
because of the anti-Catholic legislation which was in force.
He stood successfully for re-election in 1830 and remained an MP for various
constituencies until his death.
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Daniel O’Connor and Young Ireland
• In the 1832 General Election O'Connell became MP for Dublin and also
nominated about half of the candidates who were returned, including three of
his sons and two of his sons-in-law.
• Of the 105 Irish MPs, some forty-five were declared Repealers: that is, they were
committed to the repeal of the Act of Union. O'Connell fought fiercely against
Grey's Coercion Act of 1833.
• O'Connell often allied himself with the Whigs in Parliament and was party to the
Lichfield House Compact in 1834-35 along with Lord John Russell in a successful
effort to cause the fall of Peel's first ministry.
• He became lord mayor of Dublin in 1841.
• As head of the Catholic Association he received a large annual income from
voluntary contributions by the Irish people (the Catholic Rent of 1d a month) who
supported him in a series of demonstrations in favour of Irish Home Rule.
• He was forced by Feargus O'Connor and other extremist Irish MPs to introduce
the idea of Home Rule into parliament prematurely.
• In 1840 O'Connell founded the Repeal Association which was not nearly so
successful as the Catholic Association until "Young Ireland" began to publish The
Nation.
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Daniel O’ Connor and Young
Ireland
• After the demonstration at Clontarf in 1843 O'Connell was arrested and
early in 1844 was convicted of seditious conspiracy.
• The conviction was subsequently reversed by the House of Lords on 4
September 1844 and O'Connell resumed his career. Among other things,
he opposed Peel's establishment of the "godless colleges" in Belfast,
Dublin, and Cork
• In 1845 the famine struck Ireland and the "Young Ireland" members of
O'Connell's party began to advocate revolutionary doctrines that he had
always opposed.
• Their arguments in favour of violent opposition to British rule led to an
open split in Irish ranks in 1846. O'Connell was distressed by this
disaffection among the Irish.
• Although suffering from ill health, he set off for Rome in January 1847
but died in Genoa on 15 May 1847.
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What is
next?
Reform?
‘I could try to ensure that
I work within parliament
to push for reforms for
Ireland which could lead
to greater justice and
fairness and equality of
legislation in Ireland’.
Repeal?
‘Or I could campaign in
Ireland for a movement to
push for the repeal of the
Act of Union. I am, after
all being paid the
O’Connell tribute in
recognition of my services
to Irish Catholics’.
In the end O’Connell’s long-term aim of repeal was replaced with a short-term
desire for reform. However, O’Connell was prepared to re-ignite the repeal
campaign if the Union failed and equality was not achieved. But why did he
take this stance?
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My first object is to get Ireland for the Irish…Old Ireland and liberty!
That is what I am struggling for…What numberless advantages would not
the Irish enjoy if they possessed their own country? A domestic
parliament would encourage Irish manufactures…Irish commerce and
protect Irish agriculture. The labourer, the artisan, and the shopkeeper
would all be benefited by the repeal of the union…They say we want
separation from England, but what I want is to prevent separation taking
place…what motive could we have to separate if we obtain all these
blessings?...I want you to do nothing that is not open and legal, but if the
people unite with me and follow my advice it is impossible not to get the
Repeal…there was no pursuit of Roman Catholic interests as opposed to
Protestant…the object in view was the benefit of the whole nation.
Daniel O’Connell, 14th May 1843
What exactly does O’Connell want?
Lessons 6 & 7
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Stage 1 – Repeal (1840+)
Parish Priests
Some bishops
Catholic Church
Archbishop MacHale
Support?
Young Ireland
X = Middle-classes?
Lessons 6 & 7
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Mass Meetings
Methods of the Repeal
Association
Increased support?
Repeal Rent
Lessons 6 & 7
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Source 1 - O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist - Daniel
O’Connell 1830-1847, 1989.
It was his earlier pressure which had forced Peel
and his Cabinet, at last, onto the path of concession
in Ireland; and, once committed to that path, they
saw the breaking of O’Connell’s power as the
necessary preliminary to a course of Irish reform.
The fact that it was a Tory and not a Whig
administration which intended to yield ground should
not blind us...to the essential fact that it was a
British government which would yield, in the face of
Irish agitation. O’Connell himself had repeatedly, if
partly rhetorically, begged to be put out of business
- the business of Repeal - by being outbid by ‘Justice
for Ireland’. Up to a point, this was precisely Peel’s
intention - to undercut O’Connell’s movement by
concessions.
Aims
•To examine the
success of
O’Connell’s
leadership.
Lesson 8
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Source 2 - Harriet Martineau, History of the Thirty
Years Peace 1816-1846, 1848.
Aims
•To examine the
success of
O’Connell’s
leadership.
The untruthfulness of O’Connell must be regarded
as a constitutional attribute in O’Connell two sets of
characteristics were united...He was genuinely
impetuous, ardent, open-hearted, patriotic, ad
devoted; and then again, he was genuinely cautious
and astute; calculating, sly, untruthful; grasping.
selfish, and hypocritical. He was profuse, and he
was sordid; he was rash, and he was unfathomably
politic; now he was flowing out, and now he was
circumventing. Among all his charges, however, he
never was brave, he never was reliable or accurate;
and he never kept his eye off the money boxes
which supplied his annual income from the scrapings
of the earnings of the poor.
Lesson 8
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Source 3 - O. MacDonagh in A New History of
Ireland, volume 5, edited by W.E. Vaughan, 1989.
His part in the later campaigns for Catholic
emancipation had both promoted him to a sort of
national leadership and cleared away what was, in
many ways, a great cross-issue obstructing the path
of reform. His entry into parliament in 1830
transformed his situation and both enabled and
induced him to develop an entirely new grammar of
pressure politics...Well before he shifted his focus
from Westminster again, he had established his
domination in Catholic Ireland by persuading or
compelling his political rivals, the trade unions, the
priests, the Catholic bourgeoisie, and the rural
masses to support him...throughout his parliamentary
manoeuvres. In short, he had turned Catholic
Ireland into something like a gigantic political party,
which, of course, the leader had to tend and listen
to, but which in the last resort he could count on to
back him, even blindly.
Aims
•To examine the
success of
O’Connell’s
leadership.
Lesson 8
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Aims
•To examine the
success of
O’Connell’s
leadership.
Source 4 - John Mitchell, Jail Journal.
He led them, as I believe, all wrong for forty years.
He was a lawyer; and never could come to the point
of denying and defying British law. He was a
Catholic, sincere and devout; and would not see that
the Church had ever been the enemy of Irish
Freedom. He was an aristocrat, by position and by
taste; and the name of a Republic was odious to him.
Lesson 8
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Source 5 - A. MacIntyre, The Liberator the Irish Party 1830-47, 1965.
Aims
Daniel•To
O’Connell
ad
examine the
success of
O’Connell’s
leadership.
The age of O’Connell witnessed a series of important reforms
in Ireland, undertaken by Government partly in obedience to
current ideas about economics and society but also, in a more
tangible and immediate fashion, in response to the presence
and activity of the O’Connellite party in Parliament.
Whatever the final judgement on O’Connell’s party, there can
be no doubt of its success as a political pressure group. From
the conclusion in 1832 of the struggle for Parliamentary
Reform until the effective rise of Chartism and the Anti-Corn
Law League in the early 1840s, the Irish question formed a
central theme of British politics.
Lesson 8
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2
The Irish Question
The Irish never accepted English rule:
•
They resented English settlers, especially absentee landlords.
•
Many Irish peasants lived in poverty while paying high rents to landlords
living in England
•
The Irish, most of whom were Catholic, were forced to pay tithes to the
Church of England.
Irish nationalists campaigned for freedom and justice.
In 1845, a disease destroyed the potato crop, causing a terrible famine called the
“Great Hunger.”
At least one million Irish died while the British continued to ship healthy crops
outside Ireland. The Great Hunger left a legacy of Irish bitterness that still exists
today.
The Irish struggled for years to achieve home rule, or local self-government.
However, Parliament did not pass a home rule bill until 1914. It then delayed
putting the new law into effect until after World War I.
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Ireland
Exports
• Ireland continued to export food through famine years
• Shipments left Irish ports for England under heavy guard by British soldiers
• British officials believed interfering with trade would harm British economy
Resentful of British Rule
• Famine left many Irish more resentful of British rule than ever
• 1860s, many Irish began to fight for change
• Some wanted independence, others home rule within United Kingdom
Self-Government
• Parliament debated several bills to grant home rule to Ireland, 1800s
• None of them passed
• Ireland did not receive limited self-government until 1920
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Fenian Movement
• In 1865, the British suppressed the
Fenian Rebellion in Ireland.
• The Fenians, a secret revolutionary
organization, was established in
1858 by Irish-Americans.
• Its purpose was to achieve Ireland’s
independence.
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William Gladstone (1809-1898)
* An active legislator
*
*
*
*
*
and reformer.
Known for his
populist speeches.
Could be preachy.
Queen Victoria
couldn’t stand him.
Tried to deal with
the “Irish Question.”
Supported a “Little
England” foreign
policy.
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Gladstone’s 1st Ministry
 Accomplishments:
 1868: Army reform  peacetime flogging
was illegal.
 1869: Disestablishment Act  Irish
Catholics did not have to pay taxes to
support the Anglican Church in Ireland.
 1870: Education Act  elementary
education made available to Welsh &
English children between 5-13 years.
 1870: Irish Land Act  curtailed absentee
Protestant landowners from evicting their
Irish Catholic tenants without compensation.
 1871: University Test Act  nonAnglicans could attend Br. universities.
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Aims
•To examine briefly
Gladstone’s motives.
•To examine his
initial measures.
•To assess the
success of his early
measures.
‘Ireland, Ireland! That cloud
in the west, that coming
storm, the minister of God’s
retribution upon
cruel...injustice. Ireland
forces upon these great
social and great religious
questions.’
Gladstone, in a letter to his
sister, 1845.
Lesson 13
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Gladstone’s Last
Ministries
3rd Ministry: 1886
 First introduced an Irish Home Rule Bill.
 This issue split the Liberal Party.
 Gladstone lost his position in a few months.
4th Ministry: 1892-1894
 1893: Reintroduced a Home Rule Bill.
 Provided for an Irish Parliament.
 Did NOT offer Ireland independence!
 Passed by the Commons, but rejected in the House of
Lords.
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Home Rule for Ireland??
Gladstone debates Home Rule in Commons.
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Home Rule
• Act of Union – gave Ireland voice in the British
Parliament
• Home Rule – legislative drive for independence
– Second parliament for Ireland free from direction
British control
– Ireland would remain part of United Kingdom
– Citizens would swear allegiance to British monarchy
– Exercise autonomy through their own prime minister
and legislative body
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Edward CARSON
Leader of Ulster Unionist Council
UNIONIST
Michael COLLINS
Leader of IRA forces and IRB
REPUBLICAN
Patrick PEARSE
James CONNOLLY
IRB member and leader of Founder of Irish Citizens Army
Easter Rising
SOCIALIST
REPUBLICAN
Arthur GRIFFITH
Founder of Sinn Fein
REPUBLICAN
David LLOYD GEORGE
British Prime Minister 1916 - 1922
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Click here to move to the next slide
Eammon DE VALERA
Leader of Sinn Fein
REPUBLICAN
Herbert ASQUITH
British Prime Minister
Eoin MAC NEILL
Leader of Irish Volunteer Force
NATIONALIST
Roger CASEMENT
Member of IRB
REPUBLICAN
John REDMOND
Leader of Irish Nationalist Party
NATIONALIST
James CRAIG
Deputy Leader of Ulster Unionist Party
UNIONIST
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Click here to move to the next slide
Home Rule: Unionists
• Protestants in the north were not in favor
of Home Rule
– Afraid of Catholics in the south
– Felt they would lose status
– Wanted to remain united with the British
– Outnumbered Catholics
– Irish Protestant Unionists began to militarize
their Orange organizations
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Home Rule: Republicans
• Southern Catholics and Protestants
favored Home Rule
– Republicans wanted complete autonomy
– Feared Unionists
– Formed a number of movements
• Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood
– Attacked military targets, British police, and
Irish Unionists in the north
– Violence expanded to Britain
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Home Rule
•
Beginning of the campaign for Home Rule in
1871.
•
The southern Irish were determined to secure
Home Rule.
•
While the six counties of northern Ireland,
known as Ulster, were predominantly
Protestant, and desired to maintain the union
with Great Britain
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Unionists and Republicans
• 19th century Unionists and Republicans
were fully Irish
– Irish Unionists
• Primarily Protestant
• Dominated the North
– Irish Republicans
• Primarily Catholic
• Controlled the South
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Aims
•To examine what
the Home Rule Bills
wanted.
•To analyse the
impact of their
failure.
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Lesson 19
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In this Punch cartoon, Harry Furniss shows William Gladstone
trying to persuade his Cabinet to support his proposed Home Rule
Bill in 1893.
Lesson 19
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Irish Nationalism
• Sinn Féin (“Ourselves”) founded by Arthur
Griffith in 1905.
• Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)
founded 1848.
• New generation takes over in the 20th c.
Thomas Clarke and Sean MacDermott.
Founded the Irish Volunteers, a
paramilitary group, in 1913.
• Gaelic League (cultural)
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Dublin Lockout 1913
• James Larkin—founded Irish Transport and
General Workers’ Union in 1908.
• Led the union against Dublin United Tramway
Company, owned by William Martin Murphy. He
ran Dublin’s biggest newspaper, department
store, and hotel.
• Employees strike and then face lockout.
• Violent protests, but after six months, it’s clear
they will lose.
• Larkin leaves for the US, and James Connolly
takes his place.
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The Irish Citizen Army.
• The Irish Citizen
Army was formed in
November 1913 by
James Connolly.
• After the outbreak of
World War 1 the
Irish Citizen Army
and the Irish
Volunteers joined
together to start
planning the rising
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Irish Citizen Army
• Founded in 1913 to help locked out men
defend themselves.
• Connolly starts to train and drill them.
• Counter to the Ulster Volunteer Force,
which had organized and trained in the
north.
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James Connolly and the ICA
• Leader of the ICA
– ICA set up to protect workers from police
brutality
– Considered using it to attack British rule in
Ireland
– Too small to act alone
• Told the IRB he would join them in a rebellion
– Grew impatient & wanted to fight the British
alone
– IRB made an alliance with him in Jan 1916
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Cartoon from The
Bystander, 1914:
‘The change in Ireland’
Aims
•To learn how
successive British
governments tried
to deal with the
Irish situation.
•To assess the
reaction of the main
strands of
nationalism to these
events.
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Ireland
• Independence v. home rule
• Britain didn’t grant home rule until 1914
(one month before WWI so home rule was
put on hold)
• 1916 – Easter Uprising---a group of people
lead a rebellion against the British.
Ultimately they were executed. This
sparked a nationalist movement.
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Easter Rising
• The Easter Rising was a rebellion to get
Ireland out of British rule.
• It was staged in Dublin Easter week 1916
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Preparing the Rising
• IRB organizers: Thomas Clarke, Sean
MacDermott, Patrick Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt,
Joseph Plunkett, James Connolly, and Thomas
MacDonagh
• James Connolly brings in the Irish Citizen Army
• Eoin MacNeill and the Irish Volunteer Force.
• He caught on to what was being planned and
ordered his men not to take part in it.
• Hope for German support
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The planning of the Rising
• IRB began planning for the rising.
• Patrick Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt,
Joseph Plunkett , Thomas Clarke ,
Sean Mac Dermott , James Connolly
and Thomas Mac Donagh secretly
drew up the plans for the rising.
• They set the date for the rising on
Easter Sunday 1916.
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Key Personality: Patrick Pearse
• Had been a member of the Gaelic League
– Committed to the revival of the Irish language
– Devoted his time to teaching & writing Irish
• 1903, became editor of An Claideamh
Soluis
• 1908, established St. Enda’s school
– Almost bankrupt him
• Conflict between Unionists & Nationalists
turned him into a republican separatist
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“An Ireland not free merely but
Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely
but free as well”
• Two issues linked:
– Reviving Irish
– Achieving complete independence
• Became one of the foundations of the Irish
state after 1922
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The Irish Volunteers.
In November 1913 the Irish
Volunteers were formed. In July
and August 1914 two ships
landed in Howth and Kilcoole,
full of guns and arms. When
World War 1 started the
Volunteers split up into two
groups. John Redmond led the
National Volunteers, who went
to the trenches to fight with
Britain to help Belgium, while
Eoin MacNeill stayed with the
Irish Volunteers in Ireland.
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Eoin Mac Neill & the Irish
Volunteers
• IRB depended on the Irish Volunteers
• Mac Neill against the idea of a rising
– He argued that the Irish people did not want
one
– But stated that they would fight if the British
introduced conscription, tried to disarm them
or failed to deliver on HR
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Picture found:
http://www.archontology.org/nations/eire/eire_rep1/pearse.php
Picture found:
http://irelandsown.net/connolly5.html
Who?
Connolly
Pearse
• Largely organized by the Irish Republican
Brotherhood
• The Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army
also joined
• The three groups together formed the Irish
Republic
• Led by Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and
others
• The Irish Republic was rising against the
British
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Planning the Rising
The I.R.B began to plan for the Rising. Joseph Plunkett, Patrick Pearse
and Eamonn Ceannt, who were later joined by Seán Mac Dermott,
Thomas Clarke, Thomas Mac Donagh and James Connolly secretly
wrote the plans for the rising.
These men were to sign the proclamation. Easter Sunday 1916 was the
date they set for the rising.
The Irish Volunteers had disagreements.
Eoin MacNeill did not want a rebellion unless they would win.
Roger Casement went to Germany to get guns and bombs.
The ship, the Aud arrived off the coast of Kerry on Holy Thursday but the
British stopped the ship and the guns were sunk with the ship.
When Eoin MacNeill heard of the plans for the rising he cancelled all
plans.
However the rising was still to go ahead on Monday.
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What was the Easter Rising??
The Easter Rising in 1916 was a
very big event in history. When
the Act of Union started in
1801, the British had complete
control over Ireland. They took
the Parliament that was in
Ireland and put it in England.
All the Irish M.Ps had to travel
across to London.
The Irish wanted their Parliament
back.
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What Happened?
• 1,500 Volunteers took part
• A number of women as well
– Acted as messengers, nurses or couriers
– Countess Markievicz the most prominent
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Cumann na mBan: The Women’s
Association
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When?
• Began to develop in September of
1914, after the outbreak of WWI
• Easter Week, 1916
• Lasted from April 24-April 30
• Most significant uprising in Ireland since
the rebellion of 1798
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Why?
• The Irish people were looking for
political freedom and the
establishment of an Irish republic
• The difference in ways of life between
the Irish and the British was becoming
too much for the Irish to handle
Picture found:
http://users.bigpond.com/kirwilli/1916/html
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Picture found:
Dublin city center & O'Connell Street bridge.
http://www.irelandposters.com/irish_movies
Where?
• Dublin, Ireland
• Headquarters for the Irish Republic was
the General Post Office on Sackville
Street (now O’Connell)
• The Dublin Castle, Boland’s Flour Mill,
the South Dublin Union, the Four
Courts, and several railroad stations in
Dublin were all sites of action
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The buildings they took over.
• The rebels took over:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The GPO
The Four Courts
Boland's Mill
South Dublin Union
Jacobs Factory
The Royal College of Surgeons
St. Stephens Green
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Lesson 28
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The Rising
• Easter Monday 1916
• Little attention paid at first
• Took up positions around the city
– HQ in the GPO
• Pearse reads out the Proclamation of the
Irish Republic
• Little other action outside Dublin
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Monday 24th April
• The Irish Volunteers, The
Irish Citizen Army and
Cumann na mBan gathered
together at Liberty Hall.
• They took over several
buildings.
• Pearse read the
Proclamation on the GPO
steps.
• A green, white and orange
flag was raised above the
GPO.
• Only 1,600 people turned up
due to the confusion.
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Flag
• The flag colours were made to represent
the different parts of Ireland.
• Green republic of Ireland
• White peace in all Ireland
• Orange northern Ireland
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Easter Monday 1916
•The rebels, led by James Connolly of the Irish Citizen’s
Army Patrick Pearse of the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, have based their headquarters at the
General Post Office in Sackville Street.
•Pearse has just announced the creation of the Republic
of Ireland from the Post Office.
•Also based at the Post Office is Michael Collins.
•The rebels have carefully chosen the buildings and
areas to capture.
•The South Dublin Union
•The Four Courts
•St. Stephen’s Green
•Boland’s Flour Mill
•The latter building is especially important as it covers
the docks at which any troops sent to Dublin will land.
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•The rebels have cut telephone lines which have
cut off Dublin Castle.
•The British seem to have got over the initial
shock of what the rebels have done and have
started to organise themselves.
• Troops stationed near to Dublin have been
brought in. Dublin Castle have informed the most
senior British army officer based in London, Lord
French, what is going on.
•French is an Irishman but also a strong Unionist.
It is reported that French has ordered four army
divisions to be sent to Dublin.
French
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Tuesday 25th April
• The country was put under
martial law which means the
British could shoot whoever
they needed to.
• The GPO was surrounded
so that no supplies reached
the rebels!
• The British took over the
Shelbourne Hotel and Trinity
College so they could shoot
the rebels in St. Stephens
Green!
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Tuesday April 25th
•The rebels are busying themselves with reinforcing their
bases.
•The British army have surrounded the affected area of
Dublin.
•They have brought in artillery based in Trinity College.
•It would seem that the plan is to split the rebels in two by
driving a wedge between them. Martial law has been
declared by the British.
•There is looting in the streets of the city and innocent
people have been shot by the British army.
•The rebels based at Boland’s Flour Mill, led by Eamon de
Valera, cannot stop British reinforcements landing at
Dublin’s docks.
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Wednesday 26th April
• Today there were hardly
any rebels left!
• A boat called the ‘Helga’
was sent up the Liffey to
bomb Liberty Hall
• The British’s headquarters
was Dublin Castle and the
rebels could not gain
control of it so that
weakened their position
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Wednesday
th
26
April
•British army start their attack on the rebels.
•A gunboat, the ‘Helga’ has been brought in to
assist this action.
•Civilian casualties are high.
•The British flatten any building in their attempt
to destroy the rebels.
•It is clear that they will stop at nothing to deal
with the rebellion.
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Arrival of the Helga
• Sails up the Liffey and begins shelling the
GPO
• Volunteers evacuate the GPO
– Withdraw to Moore St.
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Thursday 27th April
• England’s General Maxwell
came to Ireland and took
command
• O’Connell was mostly on fire
and everyone had to leave it
• In Middle Abbey Street
James Connolly had to be
helped back to the GPO
because he got shot in the
foot
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Thursday
th
27
April
•General Sir John Maxwell has arrived. The
British Prime Minister, had given him one
simple instruction – put down the rebellion as
quickly as was possible.
• No restraints have been put on his methods.
•British soldiers in Dublin have made the
assumption that anyone seen in the city not in
a British army uniform is a rebel.
• The use of artillery has also led to the city
burning and the fire service cannot operate
properly in such circumstances.
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Friday 28th April
• The GPO went on fire
and the rebels had to
get out quickly.
• The Imperial Hotel and
Clery’s, two of the most
major buildings in
Dublin collapsed.
• People heard the rebels
singing The Soldier’s
Song and it later
became our national
anthem.
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•
•
•
The Soldier's Song
(Peadar Kearney)
We'll sing a song, a soldier's song
With cheering rousing chorus
As round our blazing fires we throng
The starry heavens o'er us
Impatient for the coming fight
And as we wait the morning's light
Here in the silence of the night
We'll chant a soldier's song
Soldiers are we
whose lives are pledged to Ireland
Some have come
from a land beyond the wave
Sworn to be free
No more our ancient sire land
Shall shelter the despot or the slave
Tonight we man the gap of danger
In Erin's cause, come woe or weal
'Mid cannons' roar and rifles peal
We'll chant a soldier's song
•
In valley green, on towering crag
Our fathers fought before us
And conquered 'neath the same old
flag
That's proudly floating o'er us
We're children of a fighting race
That never yet has known disgrace
And as we march, the foe to face
We'll chant a soldier's song
Soldiers are we
whose lives are pledged to Ireland
Some have come
from a land beyond the wave
Sworn to be free
No more our ancient sire land
Shall shelter the despot or the slave
Tonight we man the gap of danger
In Erin's cause, come woe or weal
'Mid cannons' roar and rifles peal
We'll chant a soldier's song
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•
•
Sons of the Gael! Men of the Pale!
The long watched day is breaking
The serried ranks of Inisfail
Shall set the Tyrant quaking
Our camp fires now are burning low
See in the east a silv'ry glow
Out yonder waits the Saxon foe
So chant a soldier's song
Soldiers are we
whose lives are pledged to Ireland
Some have come
from a land beyond the wave
Sworn to be free
No more our ancient sire land
Shall shelter the despot or the slave
Tonight we man the gap of danger
In Erin's cause, come woe or weal
'Mid cannons' roar and rifles peal
We'll chant a soldier's song
The Soldier's Song was written in 1907 by Peadar Kearney, an uncle of Brendan Behan, but was not
widely known until it was sung both at the GPO during the Easter Rising of 1916 and later at various
camps where republicans were interned. Soon after, it was adopted as the national anthem, replacing
God Save Ireland. The first edition of the song was published only in 1916.
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Friday
th
28
April
•The General Post Office is in a state of collapse and
the rebels based there have escaped to a nearby
building.
• A last stand is being made in King’s Street but up
against 5,000 troops, the remaining rebels seem to
have little chance.
•It is reported that it is near King’s Street that
attacks against civilians hiding for their own safety
are being carried out by members of the army.
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Saturday 29th April
• Elizabeth Farrell, a female
Volunteer walked through
O’Connell street holding a
white flag. They were
surrendering!
• The reason for this was
because they did not have the
GPO anymore and Pearse
wanted to stop any more
deaths
• 2,000 people were injured
• The city was in ruins
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Surrender
• Pearse witnesses a family being shot dead
in the crossfire
• Decides to surrender on Saturday
12/03/2016
Rockbrook Park School -
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Saturday
th
29
April
The rebels have
surrendered. Connolly
had been seriously
wounded and it was
Patrick Pearse that
formally surrendered to
the British.
Connolly
Pearse
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Pearse’s Surrender Note
12/03/2016
Rockbrook Park School -
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Sunday
th
30
April
•The rebels are marched across
Dublin to prison.
•They are jeered by Dubliners who
have just seen part of their city
wrecked.
• Damage to central Dublin is
estimated at £2.5 million
•–About 500 British soldiers have
been killed and over 1000 civilians.
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12/03/2016
Rockbrook Park School -
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Executions
•The leaders of the rebellion were shown no mercy.
•They were tried in secret by a military court and
sentenced to death.
• Their deaths were only publicly announced after
their executions.
• It was now that public opinion in Ireland turned
towards the rebels.
•There was an overwhelming belief that the
executions had been unfair and that the men
involved, at the very least, deserved a public trial.
•When it became known that Connolly had been tied
to a chair and shot as he was so badly wounded,
there was nothing short of public revulsion in parts of
Ireland.
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Executions
• More than 3,000 people
were arrested and 90 people
were sentenced to death. 15
were killed by the firing
squad.
• James Connolly had to be
strapped to a chair before
getting killed because he
couldn’t stand up.
• Countess Markievicz was
supposed to be killed but
since she was not
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Executions
• Ninety of those people
were sentenced to
death.
• The 15 people who
signed the
Proclamation were also
sentenced to death.
• The would be killed by
firing squad.
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Executions
• British saw the Rising as a ‘stab in the back’
• Put General Maxwell in charge of what to do
– They arrest about 3,000 people
• 88 sentenced to death
• Markievicz & De Valera escape execution
• The leaders are all shot in Kilmainham Jail
– Take place over a week
– Connolly so badly wounded that he was shot tied to a
chair
• Nationalist opinion begins to support the rebels
• Asquith travels to Dublin & orders an end to
executions
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Kilmainham Jail
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The Newspapers!
• The Irish times: The Rising was ‘a criminal
adventure’!
• The Freeman’s Journal: ‘Such a reckless and
barren waste of life, courage, property and the
historic beauty of a capital city’
• The Irish Independent: The Rising was
‘Insane and criminal’. The leaders ‘deserve
little compassion’.
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The peoples opinions!
• The peoples opinions on the seven
signatories quickly changed.
• When the signatories were alive they were
thought of as criminals.
• After they were executed the Irish people
thought they were heroes.
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Early Irish Republican Army (IRA)
– Began with campaign of violence by
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in
late 1800s
– Bombings and assassinations 18701916
– IRB activities frightened Irish citizens
– IRB leadership dominated by men who
believed each generation produced
warriors who would fight for
independence
– Provided basis for resurgence of Irish
culture
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The History of the IRA
• The first signs of the IRA
were evident during the
early 1860.
• Between 1919 and 1921
they fought against British
troops during the Irish
revolution.
• In December 1920 the
British government
passed the Government
of Ireland Act, which
established six of the nine
counties as the province
of Northern Ireland.
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Michael Collins
• In 1916, Collins returned to Ireland to take part in the Uprising in Dublin.
• He fought alongside others in the General Post Office. He played a relatively
minor part and was not one of the leaders who was court-martialed.
• Collins was sent to Richmond Barracks and then to Frongoch internment camp in
Wales.
• He was released in December 1916 and immediately went back to Ireland.
• His goal now was to revitalise the campaign to get independence for Ireland.
• Collins was elected to the executive committee of Sinn Fein and he led a violent
campaign against anything that represented British authority in Ireland primarily the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Army.
• The murder of RIC officers brought a tit-for-tat policy from the British.
• Ireland, post-World War One, was a dangerous country to be in.
• The more killings that were carried out by Collins and the men he led in the
newly formed Irish Republican Army (IRA), the more the British responded with
like.
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Michael Collins, 1921
Poster for film Michael Collins,
Lesson 33
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Irish History and the Growth of
Modern Terrorism
• Modern terrorism came to Ireland in 1919
– Michael Collins took command of IRA and waged
fierce campaign against British
– Collins studied tactics of Russian revolutionaries, and
his followers used bombs, murder, ambushes, and
other terrorist tactics to fight Protestant police force
and British army. Ireland gained independence in
1921 but British held the north of Ireland
– Collins was killed in 1922 by former revolutionaries
opposing peace with the British. After his death, IRA
outlawed by Republic of Ireland.
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Michael Collins continued…
• The notorious Black and Tans and the 'Auxies' were used by the British Army
to spread fear throughout Ireland (though primarily in the south and west).
• Violence led to more violence on both sides.
• On November 21st, 1920, the IRA killed 14 British officers in the Secret
Service.
• In reprisal, the British Army sent armoured vehicles onto the pitch at Croke
Park where people were watching a football match, and opened fire on
them.
• Twelve people were killed. In May 1921, the IRA set fire to the Custom House
in Dublin - one of the symbols of Britain's authority in Ireland.
• However, many of those in the Dublin IRA were captured as a result of this
action.
• The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was given some blunt advice
by his military commanders in Ireland. "Go all out or get out" - meaning that
the army should be allowed to do as it wished to resolve the problem, or if
this was not acceptable at a political level, the British should pull out of
Ireland as the army was in an un-winnable position as matters stood then.
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Irish History and the Growth of
Modern Terrorism
• Role of British army in rebirth of IRA
– As violence grew in Northern Ireland after
failed Catholic civil rights movement, British
sent army to stop rioting
– Young soldiers sided with loyalists against
Republicans and brutally repressed Catholics
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A state of war exists and
murder and violence against
the English are not crimes until
the alien invaders have left the
country.
An t-Óglach (IRA newspaper), 31
January 1919
Dan Breen was one of the men behind the Soloheadbeg
ambush in Co. Tipperary, 21 January 1919, in which
two Irish constables of the RIC were killed.
It marked the start of the Anglo-Irish war.
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IRA: Tipperary Flying Column
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IRA: Mayo Flying Column
These men ‘defied six hundred British troops at Tourmakeady’ according to An t-Óglach.
They lost one man and six shotguns in this famous battle.
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IRA:
MidClare
Brigade
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1. Whereas the spies and traitors
known as the Royal Irish
Constabulary are holding this
country for the enemy, and
whereas said spies and
bloodhounds are conspiring with
the enemy to bomb and bayonet
and otherwise outrage a peaceful,
law-abiding, and liberty-loving
people;
2. Wherefore do we hereby solemnly
proclaim and suppress said spies
and traitors and do hereby
solemnly warn prospective recruits
that they join the R.I.C. at their
own peril. All nations are agreed
as to the fate of traitors. It has the
sanction of God and man.
By order of the G.O.C.
Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army Order, 30 March 1920,
five days after the arrival of the first English
recruits to the Royal Irish Constabulary.
DROGHEDA BEWARE
If in the vicinity a policeman is shot, five of
the leading Sinn Feiners will be shot.
It is not coercion - - it is an eye for an eye.
We are not drink-maddened savages as we
have been described in the Dublin rags. We
are not out for loot.
We are inoffensive to women. We are as
humane as other Christians, but we have
restrained ourselves too long.
Are we to lie down while our comrades are
being shot down in cold blood by the corner
boys and ragamuffins of Ireland?
We say ‘Never’, and all the inquiries will not
stop our desire for revenge.
Stop the shooting of the police or we will lay
low every house that smells of Sinn Fein.
Remember Balbriggan.
(By Order)
Black and Tans
Black & Tans notice, September 1920
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British administration under siege, winter 1920.
Barricade and barbed wire entanglements made Dublin Castle almost a beleaguered fortress.
Officials were unable to stir abroad without an armed escort.
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The ‘Cairo Gang’, so called because of their Middle Eastern
experience, some of them were among the 12 British
intelligence officers assassinated by Michael Collins’s
‘squad’ on the morning of 21 November 1921.
The numbers refer to the names on the back, where Nos 1,
2 and 3 are marked as being Irish.
Neil Jordan’s depiction in the film Michael Collins of British
armoured cars bursting through the main gate of Croke
Park and firing their machine guns on the crowd
was criticised as pure invention.
In fact, armoured cars were involved but outside the
ground and, according to the official enquiry the one at the
St James’s Avenue exit fired fifty rounds.
‘Bloody Sunday’, 21 November 1920.
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Five hundred arrests were made within forty-eight hours of the murders of ‘Bloody Sunday’.
Here an Auxiliary cadet has picked up a couple of suspects in the Ministry of Labour offices in
the Rotunda, Dublin, and marches them through the streets at pistol point.
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‘Behind the wire’.
Nearly 5,000 republicans were incarcerated in internment camps by the early summer of 1921.
‘Conditions were not severe. Many were glad to be out of the struggle.’
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The end of the affair?
The Irish Free State Army takes over Dublin Castle. A Free State officer makes arrangements with a British officer, while
some of the first recruits for the Free State Army wait and look round them with a wild surmise.
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Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921
• Eamonn de Valera, considered to be the leading republican politician in Ireland,
sent Collins to London in October 1921 to negotiate a treaty.
• It was generally recognised by both sides that the situation as it stood in Ireland
could not be allowed to continue.
• The difficult negotiations took three months before the treaty was signed by
Collins and Arthur Griffiths.
• In December 1921, it was agreed that Ireland should have dominion status within
the British Empire; i.e. that Ireland could govern itself but remain within the
British Empire.
• The six northern counties were allowed to contract out of the treaty and remain
part of the United Kingdom.
• To Collins, the treaty was simply the start of a process that, in his eyes, would
lead to full independence for what was now the Irish Free State.
• Collins is said to have commented when he signed the treaty that:
• "I tell you, I have signed my death warrant"
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Arguments for & against the Treaty
Northern Ireland and Its Neighbours
since 1920 by S. Gillespie & G. Jones,
Hodder & Stoughton,, 034062034X, p. 23
We have got peace which is what the people
want.
You may have peace but where is the
Republic we have fought for from 1916?
We are able to set up our own government
and rule ourselves.
Your powers are limited while you stay
in the Empire and have the King as head of state.
An oath of loyalty to the King has
no meaning.
We swore an oath of loyalty to the Republic
and we will not swear an oath to the King.
This is a step towards independence. We will
take other steps and become fully independent.
Britain will continue to interfere in Ireland's
affairs unless you remove her power completely.
We are not in a position to start another war
with Britain.
We will still have British troops
In our country.
Lesson 32 – OHT 3
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Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921
• There were many in the south who believed that Collins had betrayed the
republican movement.
• These people, including de Valera, wanted an independent and united Ireland.
• Some believed that Collins had sold out to the British government.
• Few seemed to realise that Collins was not a politician and that he had been put
into a situation in which he had no experience of what to do.
• He was up against British politicians who were experienced in delicate
negotiations.
• Some have argued that de Valera deliberately put Collins in this situation
knowing that if he came back with an unacceptable treaty, it would seriously
damage the reputation of Collins and weaken whatever political kudos he had in
Ireland - therefore removing any potential threat he may have been to de Valera
at a political level.
• It is known that Collins did not feel that he had the necessary knowledge and
experience to get what was wanted and he asked de Valera to send others
instead of him.
• Some, such as Countess Markievicz, openly called Collins a traitor to the cause.
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Anglo-Irish Treaty
• The Dáil accepted the treaty by just seven votes.
• This, in itself, seemed a justification of what Collins had set out to achieve.
• Arthur Griffiths replaced De Valera as president of the Dáil and Collins was
appointed chairman of the provisional government which would take over
Ireland once the British had left.
• Those who did not support the treaty fell back on violence and a civil war took
place in Ireland from April 1922 to May 1923.
• The IRA split into the 'Regulars' (those who supported the treaty) and the
'Irregulars' (those who did not).
• On August 22nd, 1922, Collins journeyed to County Cork.
• He was due to meet troops of the new Irish Army.
• His car was ambushed at a place called Beal na mBlath and Collins was shot dead.
• To this day, no-one is completely sure what happened or who killed him.
• No-one else was killed in the ambush.
• Collins' body lay in state in Dublin for three days and thousands paid their
respects.
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• Thousands also lined the streets for his funeral procession.
Anglo-Irish Treaty 1921
• Security and Defence
– Britain was to have 3 naval bases in Ireland.
• Ulster
– Would be able to opt out of the Treaty – so could end up being
partitioned permanently.
– A Boundary Commission would be set up to examine the boundaries
of Ulster and make recommendations.
• The powers of the new Irish state
– Southern Ireland would have dominion status – granted Ireland the
same powers as Canada and other Dominions within the Empire. This
was not independence. This meant full control of domestic affairs,
membership of the Empire and the Irish would have to swear
allegiance to the Crown.
– Oath of allegiance was watered down.
Lesson 32 – OHT 2
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20th CENTURY
• 1921 : Ireland divided into two separate parts
• Based on majority religion of each part
• Northern part PROTESTANT became known as
NORTHERN IRELAND – remained part of UK
• Southern part CATHOLIC became known as IRISH
FREE STATE
• Both had own Parliaments
• But continued to recognise English monarchy and
laws regarding foreign affairs
• 1949 : Irish Free State cut ties with Britain
• Became the REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
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Background
• In 1921, Ireland was divided into 2
separate parts, based on majority
religion
– Northern Ireland (which was
predominantly Protestant)
– Southern Ireland (Irish Free State)
• Had their own parliament but consulted the
English monarchy regarding foreign affairs
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Why is Northern Ireland not part of
Ireland?
• In 1921, after some
fighting, the British
tried to make
everyone happy by
creating an Irish Free
State and Northern
Ireland, which would
remain part of the
United Kingdom.
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Creation of Irish Free State /
Northern Ireland
• In 1921, the island of
Ireland was partitioned
by the British
government.
• The 26 southern
counties gaining
independence from
Britain, while the 6
northeastern countries
remained part of the
United Kingdom
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ULSTER
66%
Protestant
IRISH FREE STATE
(becoming the Republic
of Ireland in 1949)
(Six counties - Northern
Ireland)
33%
Catholic
Stayed part of UK
66% Protestant
Given Home Rule, the
right to have its own
government and make
its own decisions.
33% Catholic
BUT….
•The Free State stayed
in the British Empire.
•Irish politicians had to
swear an oath of loyalty
to the King of Britain.
•Ireland had to accept
the loss of Ulster.
10%
Protestant
90%
Catholic
The Catholics felt cheated
by the treaty. They
wanted to be a part of a
united Ireland. They felt
abandoned in the new
Ulster dominated by
Protestants. From the
start they felt no loyalty
to the ‘Orange State’.
Lesson 35
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Ireland Continued
• Post WWI – the Nationalists protested
Parliament and declared themselves
independent.
• The Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought for
Irish independence
• 1921 – Britain divided Ireland: the south
was named a dominion but declared itself
a republic in 1949
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Background to the “Troubles”
• Following Partition in 1921 the Protestants
took steps to ensure they had control
• ‘Gerrymandering’ was used to keep
control of town and city councils
• This meant they could control the
allocation of new housing and many
different jobs
• Catholics were second class citizens
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What did this mean for Northern
Ireland?
• They would have
some selfgovernment, but still
be part of the U.K.
• The Catholics were
now the minority.
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Northern Ireland
• At the time, the 6 northeastern counties
had a built-in Protestant majority (65/35)
• Ethnic bias in the distribution of housing
and welfare services lead to more turmoil
between the two sides
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