Ireland's OWN: History

 

The Great Hunger: Famine or Holocaust? —by Máirtín Pilib de Longbhuel In 1845, Ireland’s potato crop partially failed due to the potato blight, phytophora infestans. Potato crop failure was not abnormal in nineteenth century Ireland. From 1816 to 1818 the potato crop failed because of bad winters. During these two years one person in eight contracted smallpox or typhus and in the year 1817 it is thought that between 50,000 and 65,000 died as a result of famine and famine related diseases. Again in 1821 the crop failed and the following year occurred a famine worse than that of 1817. In eight years of the 1830s the crop failed at some place in Ireland, and during the first four years of the 1840s the crop failed three times. So what happened in 1845 was characteristic of the preceding half century in Ireland. By 1847 starvation and disease had risen to dramatic levels. “Over the next ten years, more than 750,000 died and another 2 million left their homeland for Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Within five years, the Irish population was reduced by a quarter”. The failure of the potato crop had a massive impact on Ireland, in that a disaster of tremendous scale occurred, probably the biggest single disaster, in human costs, in nineteenth century Europe. The potato blight that hit Ireland in the latter half the 1840s happened throughout Europe at the same time. So why did it have such an affect on Ireland? Who was responsible? Was anybody responsible? Ireland had a large, dense population on the eve of the famine. “Between sixty and seventy years before the famine the population of Ireland began and continued to increase at a rate previously unknown in the history of Europe…The increase between 1779 and 1841 has been placed at the almost incredible figure of 172 per cent”. Population growth occurred throughout Europe including Britain. However, these areas, although experiencing similar population changes to Ireland, were very different in many aspects. Population growth in England and Wales occurred because of industrialisation and developments in communications. This doesn’t apply to Ireland because the areas that saw the greatest growth in population, the south and west, were the least industrialised areas in the country. “In 1800, the population of Ireland had been approximately 5.5 million, rising to 7 million in 1821…and to 8.5 million in 1841”. Cecil Woodham-Smith claims that “the Irish were fond of their children, and family feeling is exceptionally strong”. This combined with an abundant supply of cheap food, i.e., the potato, seems to have contributed greatly to the growth of the Irish population. Woodham-Smith also claims that “the miserably low standards of Irish life encouraged young couples to marry early…girls married at sixteen, boys at seventeen or eighteen, and Irishwomen were exceptionally fertile; ‘…for twelve years 19 in 20 of them breed every second year’ – Arthur Young”. Woodham-Smith goes on to say that “by 1841, when a census was taken, the population had reached 8,175,124, and Disraeli declared that Ireland was the most densely-populated country in Europe; on arable land, he asserted, the population was denser than that of China”. This, according to Cormac Ó’Gráda, was a worrying development in that “an expanding population in the west and south [were] virtually unsupported by industry, relying on the worst variety of the cheapest food, often cultivated on wet bogs and bleak hillsides”. What remains uncertain is why the population in the most disadvantaged areas of the country grew at a rate unequalled anywhere else in Ireland, nor seen anywhere else in Europe before. The rate at which the population grew is uncertain also. Estimations in the rate of growth, and the actual number of people in the population vary. Census figures suggest that the population in Ireland in 1841 was slightly less than 8.2 million. This is certainly inaccurate. Different historians estimate that the population ranged from the census statistics of 8.2 million to somewhere over 9 million. What is certain in regard to the Irish population at the time of the famine is that it was a great handicap, in that family sizes were large, leaving life extremely difficult and death quite likely. The rate of population growth also seemed to prove Malthus’s theory, i.e. that food production and population were relative, and that a rapid increase in population would outstrip food production with fatal consequences. Potatoes originated in the Andes region of South America and are believed to have been taken to England by Sir Walter Raleigh, then planted in Ireland by either an unknown Spaniard or by Raleigh himself on his property in Cork in the 1580s. By the seventeenth century they were becoming widely used as a supplement to a diet of oats, grain and dairy produce. “At the beginning of the eighteenth century, potatoes had become the staple winter food of the poor, especially in the provinces of Leinster and Connaught”. Oats continued to be grown, but now on a much lesser scale. However, they were, by now, no longer part of the diet, but were grown as a cash crop. The upsurge in use of the potato during this period happened for a number of reasons; Ireland’s temperate climate was ideal (even Irish rain generally tended not to hamper its growth), they could be grown on various types of land, from poor quality soil, to boggy or rocky soil and on hilly areas, where no other cultivation could occur (this was ideal because the expanding population, some of whom were being forced to farm on less arable land). “The potato, provided it did not fail, enabled great quantities of food to be produced at a trifling cost from a small plot of ground”, on average one acre could yield six tons of the crop. And it had a wide usage in that pigs, cattle and fowl could be fed on it. These factors meant that an over dependence was occurring, and was apparently coinciding with a growth in the population. Ó’Gráda claims that “by 1845 the crop’s share in the tilled acreage was little short of one-third, and about three million people were largely dependant on it for food”, one-third of tilled acreage equated to about 2.1 million acres. The potato caught on better in Ireland than it did elsewhere in Europe due to things like climate, soil and temperature. An average yield of potatoes in Europe was 3.1 tons per acre. This factor contributed to why Ireland was hit harder by the potato blight whereas the rest of Europe went virtually unscathed. Europeans were not as dependent on the crop. However, “the Irish diet, while monotonous and perhaps tasteless, was probably richer than all but the most advanced regions of Europe”. This resulted in a taller and more fertile peasantry. The Jacobite wars of the late seventeenth century seen the defeat of the Catholic Irish and provided for the setting up of an exclusively Protestant parliament in Ireland. This parliament passed the Penal Laws, aimed at preventing Catholics from holding, amongst other things, land. “By 1775, only 5 per cent of land was in the hands of the native Irish…the majority of Catholics were reduced to the status of tenants or poor cottiers”. Cottiers were labourers who rented small plots of land and, at the time, were regarded as the lowest class in Irish society. Ireland consisted, for the most part, of a land tenure system with landlords renting land to tenants. This set-up tended to result in a system of subsistence farming in which the tenants grew potatoes for their own consumption and used their other agricultural produce to pay the landlord. This contributed greatly to Irish farming at the time being seen as backward and unprogressive. It has been argued that the land tenure system significantly retarded the modernization of Irish agriculture. “The land system was blamed not only for creating a disincentive to investment in the land, but also for the failure of rural industry to keep in the south, and for the continued agrarian violence which plagued the Irish countryside…Even John Stuart Mill was tempted into uncharacteristic hyperbole, asserting that the Irish tenant was ‘almost alone amongst mankind’ in not being allowed to reap the fruits of his investment” The length of a land lease between landlord and tenant was at the discretion of the landlord. This left tenants reluctant to invest in the land. And it is believed to have contributed to the backwardness of Irish agriculture at the time and, on the larger scale of things, contributed to the poverty suffered by the tenants at the time. When the potato crop did fail, families who relied on it to keep themselves alive were left with nothing. Even those who grew grain or barley were left with a stark choice; sell the food to pay the rent, or eat the food and be evicted. The result was evictions on a massive scale. “Irish landlords…between 1849 and 1854 alone put over a quarter of a million people on the roadside”. With little other option people went to the workhouses or emigrated on the so-called coffin ships. Many people died of starvation after having been put out of their homes, but it is estimated that close to ten times as many died as a result of famine related diseases. Insecurity in the lives of tenant farmers existed before the famine because of the land tenure system. This system acted as a catalyst in the severity of the famine itself. The British government has traditionally been demonised for their actions, or lack of action, during the famine. Some historians even take exception to calling the happenings of the late 1840s a famine due to the fact that only one crop failed, whereas numerous different types of crops were grown in Ireland at the time. Their argument is that the Irish died not because they lacked potatoes but because they lacked food; how could the loss of one foodstuff cause devastation on such a scale? “The use of the term ‘famine’ is disliked by a number of nationalist commentators…large volumes of food were exported from Ireland as thousands died of starvation. For others, the word ‘holocaust’ is too emotive and ascribes too much culpability to the British government”. A more accurate assertion of the event might be that it was neither entirely a famine, nor entirely a holocaust, but partly both. The British government operated on a system of non-intervention, or laissez faire, as regards economic activity. It was the general conception among people that government interference in economics, trade, etc. would have a negative impact. So when the potato crop first failed in 1845 little changed in regard to British government activity in Ireland insofar as massive amounts of food were still being exported, and those who produced the food were expected to survive on the (now insufficient) potato. The only change that did take place was an increased British military presence in Ireland to escort, i.e. forcibly remove, food from the starving masses. A workhouse system operated in Ireland before the famine. On the eve of the famine it would have been able to accommodate a maximum of 100,000 people, hence completely insufficient and incapable of coping with the imminent disaster. The British government’s lack of intervention seemed to indicate that they were endorsing the Malthusian theory that when overpopulation occurred that a disaster of one type or another would happen in order to restore the equilibrium, and that this was a natural process. In referring to the over-population in Ireland, Malthus said that ‘a great part of the population should be swept from the soil’. Additional relief from the British government was not forthcoming until after the potato crop of 1846 had failed. That winter the Public Works scheme was set up. Kinealy describes the scheme as a disaster and goes on to say that “the works were frequently of little benefit to the community, and as a mechanism for saving lives they failed. In the winter months, hundreds of thousands of destitute Irish died from disease, starvation, exposure or exhaustion”. Wages were low and paid in accordance to labour performed. The Public Works scheme was a failure in that it was the most expensive of the British governments famine relief attempts and it didn’t alleviate the suffering of the people. Some describe the building of roads as starting nowhere and ending nowhere. The scheme coincided with the continued exportation of food from Ireland: “despite the shortfall in food supplies after the 1846 harvest, the government decided not to intervene in the import or export of food from Ireland…In the winter of 1846-47, food exports exceeded food imports to Ireland, resulting in a ‘starvation gap’ in supplies”. It wasn’t until 1847 that the British government tried to tackle the problem of hunger directly through soup kitchens. At the peak of this scheme, over 3 million people were receiving free rations of food every day…demonstrating the capability of the government to provide relief on a massive and unprecedented scale”. But there was still more food being exported from Ireland than being imported. Traditionally the hunger suffered by the people of Ireland in the mid nineteenth century has been described as either a famine, in which the potato crop failed and people died as a result, or as a holocaust, in which the food of the people was forcibly removed from them, and genocide at the hands of the British took place. In reality, the factors which contributed to the disaster are more numerous and more complex. The Great Hunger was the fault of no one person, or single group of people, but a combination of several factors. Ireland’s rapidly expanding population meant that people, prior to the famine, due to large family size, etc. were already finding it difficult to make ends meet. Had the population of early nineteenth century grown at a slower rate the people would have been in a better position to withstand a natural disaster, such as crop failure. There was over-dependence on one crop, and although the potato crop usually yielded large amounts, and was suited to the Irish climate, land, etc. naturally insecurity came with reliance on one crop as the source of food for most of the population. However, reliance on the potato crop was not practiced entirely by choice of those whose diet consisted mainly of potatoes. The land tenure system, which was in place meant that most people were burdened with having to pay rent on top of having to survive. Irrespective of what happened with their own potato crop, rent had to be paid from the proceeds of their other agricultural produce in order to avoid eviction from their homes. The British government failed to intervene in the crisis in Ireland in any meaningful way. Famine relief efforts were either totally inadequate and misguided, as was the case with the Public Works scheme, or little, and too late, as was the case when they first tackled starvation directly, almost two years after the first crop failure of 1845. Others, such a Charles Travelyan, claimed the famine to be an act of God. “The idea that the famine was ‘a visitation of God’…was refuted by nationalist writers…O’Donovan Rossa believed that England had ‘blasphemously charged God Almighty with the crime’, which rightfully should have laid at their door”. The famine, and the extent of its devastation, occurred because of all of these factors combined. See Also: Britain's Holocaust In Ireland Sources: Connolly, S.J., et al, A New History of Ireland V: Ireland Under the Union I 1801-1870, W.E. Vaughan Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1989) Davis, Graham, et al, The Meaning of the Famine, Patrick O’Sullivan Edition, Leicester University Press, London (1997) Kinealy, Christine, A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland, Pluto Press, London (1997) McDowell, R.B., et al, The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History, 1845-52, R. Dudley Edwards – T. Desmond Williams Edition, Lilliput Press, Dublin (1994) Mokyr, Joel, Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800-1850, George Allen & Unwin, London (1983) Ó’Gráda, Cormac, Ireland Before and After the Famine: Explorations in Economic History, 1800-1925, Manchester University Press, Manchester (1993) Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger, Hamish Hamilton, London (1962) Mintz, Steven, The Irish Potato Famine, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/irish_potato_famine.cfm (2003) O’Snodaigh, Aengus, The Irish Holocaust – An Droch Shaol, http://www.rios.de/koepp/mjk/mickc/tiphunger.html (1997) Page updated 3 Aug 2008 Ireland's OWN Logo by Eamann Website Design and Celtic Background by Míchealín Daugherty Copyright © 2008 Ireland's OWN All Rights Reserved.