Irish Famine Research Paper

     The Irish Potato Famine was the worst tragedy in the history of Ireland. The outcome of the famine would result in hundreds of thousands dead, an failure of the economy in Ireland, and millions of emigrants forced to leave their home and country just to try to survive. The famine would effect countries other than Ireland as well. Some of these countries included England, America,

In the mid-late 1840's, The Irish Potato Famine caused people to immigrate to the United States.

The book, “The Irish Way” by James R. Barrett is a masterpiece written to describe the life of Irish immigrants who went to start new lives in America after conditions at home became un-accommodative. Widespread insecurity, callous English colonizers and the ghost of great famine still lingering on and on in their lives, made this ethnic group be convinced that home was longer a home anymore. They descended in United States of America in large numbers. James R. Barrett in his book notes that these people were the first group of immigrants to settle in America. According to him, there were a number of several ethnic groups that have arrived in America. It was, however, the mass exodus of Irish people during and after the great

The Irish people would have freight, terror, death and eventually peace with these changes. The potato famine started with blight being discovered by European farmers. The Irish government started to export potatoes and grains to continental Europe to help the Europeans avoid a famine (Smith, 2011). By the end of August of 1845, Ireland was freighted to find out that blight had found its way to their produce (Smith, 2011). The blight in Ireland set off a chain of events that led to the Irish people dying in more ways to get out of Ireland. The government started trying to feed their people by importing corn and grains for food (Smith, 2011). This was not enough to help the young, old and sick. Many of theIrish people were led to complete financial ruin. By the end of 1851 more than a million Irish had died due to hunger and disease exacerbated by malnutrition(Smith, 2011).The only answer for many Irish families was to take a risk and get on a coffin boat and flee to another country. North America was a safe haven for many Irish people. They dreamed of the life they would live in the U.S.A. Nearly 1 million people arrived in many cities which include New York, and Boston (Smith, 2011). When the Irish people arrived, it was a sad reality they did not think they would face. The conditions were despicable. Many families were moved into small rooms with no sanitation, ventilation, day light or electricity (Smith, 2011). The families were charged about $1.50 per week to live in extreme poverty (Smith, 2011). This led to unsanitary conditions for the communities. Diseases were able to thrive in those conditions and one of the more common disease was cholera . The Irish people usually stayed in close proximity to each other and would make a small Irish community. The Irish community strived to make money. They were only hired for unskilled jobs

The United States saw an influx of Irish immigrants due to the Great Famine (potatoes) in Ireland.

During the 18th century the Irish slowly began their migration to America. Centuries of oppression from Protestant English rule had forced them to live very poor lives under strict rules, in some cases having to renounce their Catholic beliefs and having to abandon their Gaelic

When many think of the times of immigration, they tend to recall the Irish Immigration and with it comes the potato famine of the 1840s' however, they forget that immigrants from the Emerald Isle also poured into America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The assimilation and immigration of the Irish has been difficult for each group that has passed through the gates of Ellis Island or South Boston. Like every group that came to America, the Irish were looked down upon; yet, in the face of discrimination,

The first sight of Chinese immigrants came in 1848 on the coast of California. These immigrants came left all they knew back in the Guandong Providence in search of a more prosperous American future. Overpopulation mixed with economic and political crisis were the defining factors for their departure. During 1815-1855 on the entire opposite side of America, Irish immigrants were landing in Boston and New York. Their appearance in America can be divided through the time period in which they came. 1815-1844 Irish immigrants left their native island due to British encroachment, cruel landlords, as well as a explosive population growth from around four million to nine million. Yet, from 1845-1855 a majority of Irish immigrants left due to a fungal infection that wiped out the primary crop in Ireland, the Potato. While the Irish and Chinese had their separate reasons for leaving their original domicile, they ended in the same country facing the same racial

Of course there was a method to the way the Irish gained their likeness and overcame the difficulties that came with absorbing into the American culture. They did this by

A lot of the problems faced were in the area of religion, as I talked about in the paragraph above. Another problem was the fact that a lot of the Irish immigrants were left homeless and jobless, starving in the streets. The promises that had been made to them about the great new world with its abundance of jobs and housing was

Immigrants from Ireland were driven to the United States due to the Great Famine of 1845-1850. Many people were almost completely dependent on potatoes, an easy-to-raise crop, due to Britain’s change of religion. These potatoes then fell victim to the unknown disease that left many families starving, and people dead. Families saved money for several winters to be able to send even one person to the United States, although they would only be able to arrive if they managed to survive the unsanitary and unsafe journey over. After arriving, many Irish immigrants began working in factories, or took jobs in the households of native-born families - then sent money back to Ireland to feed their suffering families, or to pay for another family member

The Irish have played a large role in American life starting all the way back in the colonial days. The earliest Irish to come to the U.S. were Presbyterian Protestants and some belonged to the church of ireland. most immigrants came to the U.S. in search of a better standard of living. The majority of the Irish immigrants were Artisans or Farmers.

The Irish were supposedly the largest group ever to migrate to the United States. Henceforth, today in the United States people of Irish ancestry exceed over forty three million people confined within the United States. What paved the way for the Irish immigrating to the United States was early medieval Christian church. The second was the Roman Catholic nobility. And the final was the potato famine, which was the greatest mass emigration ever.

With its ability to grow in even the worst soil conditions, potatoes were in abundance in the early nineteenth century in Ireland. A visit to the countryside would mean seeing endless rows of potato bushes in fields as far as the eye could see. The potato became the staple of Irish diet, with one-third of the population depending on the root by 1844. But within a year, more than half of the potato crops were destroyed by the blight and thus began the Irish Potato Famine. The failure of the potato crop and its subsequent starvation was attributable to one thing: monocropping. Ireland actually wasn’t alone in fighting blights leading up to the Great Famine. In fact, much of northern Europe was met with the same disease in their potato crops. The difference was that other countries fought off the disease by cultivating different varieties of potatoes and other crops whereas Ireland was left vulnerable to the blight due to its dependence on one strain of the potato, the Irish Lumper. Along with crop failure and starvation, monocropping leads to numerous other environmental and nutritional damages, solvable with one easy solution: grow different crops! But as the saying goes: money is the root of all evil, and in the case of monocropping, the economic profits take control of the business.

Ireland 1845, food was suddenly scarce, money was hard to earn, and what little was earned was immediately spent for survival. The people of Ireland had grown up used to missing meals due to crop failure. However, previous crop failures couldn’t compare to the potato famine of 1845. For the next five years, the blight destroyed nearly all the potato crops and killed many Irish. About one million people died during this time in Ireland because of the starvation and disease. About two million fled the lands of Ireland in hopes of escaping the starvation, disease, death, and poverty that had taken over Ireland since the famine. The tenant farmers, who suffered would farm land that belonged to the absentee landlords. They would grow many crops, most of which were very successful. They were only allowed to keep the potato crops for their own; the rest of the crops would be harvested and exported to England. The absentee landlords lived like kings while the tenant farmers were forced to sell everything they owned so they could have money to purchase food to stay alive. When they ran out of things to sell they were then forced to scavenge for food scraps just to escape death for a while longer. The starvation and struggle of the Irish tenant farmers could have been avoided if the absentee landlords hadn’t been so greedy with collecting the rent. England could have come to the aid of the Irish people sooner than they did if they weren’t so interested in staying true to their