Apr 02, 2025 08:00:00

What caused this unprecedented famine in which over one million people starved to death?

In Ireland from 1845 to 1849, a great famine called

the potato famine occurred, and many people died of starvation or disease. The New Yorker, a foreign media outlet, examines the causes of this unprecedented famine.

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As its name suggests, the main cause of the famine was a potato shortage caused by

the potato blight disease that spread across Europe from 1845 to 1849. In Ireland at the time, potatoes were the staple food of the poor, and in the 1840s, it is said that about 2.7 million people, more than a quarter of the total population, relied on potatoes as their staple food.

At the time, fewer than 4,000 landlords owned about 80% of the land in Ireland. Many of these landlords were the descendants of Protestants living in England who had confiscated land from Catholic owners in the 17th century. These landlords, who spent part or all of the year in England, rented out their land to Irish tenant farmers and charged them very high rents compared to the English. According to The New Yorker, in Ireland at that time, the rent charged by the English could sometimes be equal to the entire value of the saleable produce of the farm.

To pay the high land prices, tenant farmers would also rent out smaller plots of land to landless workers. It has been pointed out that this system of tenant farming and dependency was only useful when potato harvests were stable.

In addition, Ireland had 3.3 million acres of land planted to grain, and over 2.5 million cattle, 2.2 million sheep, and 600,000 pigs at the time, but most of this food was exported to the burgeoning industrial cities of England and not eaten by the Irish. As a result, poverty was widespread in Ireland.

When the potato famine occurred in 1845, the potato harvest in Ireland was poor, and many people suffered from hunger. Seeing this, British Prime Minister Robert Peel imported a large amount of corn from America in 1846 to relieve the starving people. However, instead of distributing it for free, the government sold it to Ireland for a fee. It is believed that the thinking behind this policy was that 'providing food for free would encourage laziness among the Irish.'

When it became clear in July 1846 that the potato crop failure was spreading more widely, the government of John Russell, who was deeply committed to the principles of free trade, came to power. The Russell government changed its policy from importing corn, which it considered an unjustified interference with the free market, and instead implemented a large-scale public works program to employ the starving people. However, the wages given to the Irish in this program were set lower than those of existing low-wage workers, with the aim of 'preventing disruptions to the labor market.'

These efforts resulted in dire conditions, with people weakened by hunger and disease working hard labor for wages that were insufficient to support their families. At the same time, many landowners used the crisis to force the eviction of Irish tenant farmers in order to convert their land into more profitable pasture land. As a result of these factors, about one million people died of starvation or disease in Ireland between 1845 and 1849, about 1.5 million emigrated to the United States and Canada, and hundreds of thousands to Britain and Australia. As a result of deaths and emigration from the famine, the population of Ireland today is smaller than it was in 1841.

The potato famine also affected Irish-speaking people, and accelerated the Englishification of Irish society. It has been noted that while many Irish people spoke Irish before the famine, the famine and subsequent social changes led to English becoming more widely used.

One of the reasons why the potato famine had such a large impact is said to be the prejudice against the Irish that was deeply rooted in British society at the time. In addition to the strong prejudice that 'Irish poverty is caused by the moral shortcomings of the Irish,' and because potatoes are relatively easy to grow, the Irish who rely on potatoes were seen as inactive and lazy, and unwilling to work hard to earn a wage. Some people also thought that 'the potato failure would serve as a lesson for the Irish to eat meat and become capitalist wage laborers.'

Some Irish people criticized the British government for failing to prevent such a large-scale famine, saying that it 'lacked sufficient understanding and appropriate measures against the humanitarian crisis.' In New York state, under pressure from Irish Americans, it is now mandatory to teach about the potato famine in schools as a 'human rights violation akin to genocide.'