The Irish Famine 1845-1849 Essay

How did the Irish immigrants come? In 1818 there were Irish immigrants,they came on the first steam service to go to the UK ,this was called the called Rob Roy. Within a decade, ships were also ferrying passengers,mainly to areas in liverpool.One pull factor for them was that they heard that England had a lot of isolated area that could be used for growing crops.One push factor is the potatoe famine.Starting, in 1845 the potato famine killed over a million men, women and children in Ireland and caused millions to leave the country.Many poor people grew potatoes for food. Potatoes grew on unhealthy soil, even in winter.When a potato disease called blight arrived, possibly in ships from America.It was a disaster. Potatoes went rotten, and were

The Irish people left Ireland and immigrated to America to enjoy a better life, get away from the poverty and starvation that they were faced with in Ireland due to the potato famine. They face all kinds of discrimination and were forced to take the worst types of jobs, but they never gave up and kept fighting for their freedom. The Irish were brave, courageous, and hardworking and made it possible for all Irish to live happy and free lives in America.

In the early 1800s life in Ireland wasn’t easy, Irish citizens got by day to day by farming and relying on the potato. The potato was their main source of food and money. With out the potato the Irish would have nothing. No one was prepared for what was about to happen in 1845, the beginning of the Great Irish Potato Famine.

     Nineteenth-century Ireland was the most densely populated country in Europe: in 1800, its population was 4.5 million, and by 1841, it had risen to eight million (Kinealy 15). Yet much of this population existed in condition of sorrow and misery lay in the dependence of the peasantry on just one staple crop, the potato; in western countries like Mayo and Galway, nine-tenths of the people ate nothing else (MacManus 602). Here was a disaster waiting to happen, made worst by the rapid rise in population in the first half of the century which forced the peasants to subsist on smaller plots of land (O Grada, The Great Irish Famine 63).

K.H. Connell, in his paper “Land and Population in Ireland, 1780-1845”, describes and explains the significant population growth in Ireland prior to the famine of 1845 and how the uses of the Irish land changed with the population growth.

During the 18th century, Ireland was oppressed by England to the point that the Irish would consider eating and selling their children for money and that the Irish were incapable of making their lives better. During that time there was also a significant religious disdain and prejudice of the Anglo-Irish (English Protestants) to the Irish Catholics.

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

By 1714 the Whigs political party came to power in England and wold stay in power until 1727. IN 1720 the British House of Lords passed a law that stated the Irish House of Lords were subordinate the them. This law also stated that the Irish House of Lords could not mint their own money, make their own laws or have any judicial or legislative authority in their own country. During the 1700's the English restricted the export of wool and wool products from Ireland they also restricted Ireland's trading with the rest of mainland Europe all while increasing the import of English good to Ireland. This lead to the decline of agriculture and the increase in unemployment. Soon the Irish people were dependent on potatoes and pigs for survival but

The turmoil of the second decade of the twentieth century gave way to a greater sense of peace and stability in the third, with a peace treaty signed between Ireland and Britain in December of 1921 and Home Rule finally established for most of the Irish isle (Ferriter, n.d.). At the same time, this new society did not lead to instant prosperity, and indeed poverty remained a major and growing problem in Ireland during this decade (Ferriter, n.d.). Economic and social problems that persisted during this decade certainly could have been pushes to increased immigration.

A Modest Proposal was written in an attempt to open the people of Ireland’s eyes about the overpopulation, poverty, and young thieves on the street. Jonathan Swift, in his writing, A Modest Proposal, uses a unique way to get people’s attention on the problems at hand. Swift’s purpose is to give the people of Ireland something they cannot possibly ignore. He adopts a disappointed tone in order to make his audience feel like they did something wrong for letting this occur for such in his audience of the people of Dublin, Ireland.

The state of Ireland is well described by Swift in this piece. He speaks of woman who “instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg for substance for their helpless infants,”(2633). This is just one of his many observations to point out the extreme poverty Ireland was facing at the time. People were hardly

While the common people may have been the first to be happy to see William the ‘leaders’ soon followed. Thus we can see while the upper classes may have been behind all the organization of the revolution they were not the only one who were in full support of it, everyone wanted this uprising and felt that the king was tyrannical. As William rode on and his support became more and more obvious from all classes many from the upper classes decided to follow his small army of 12,000, helping it grow. (Trevelyan p. 54-60) James now totally aware of the situation began to have multiple fears plaguing him as he fled to London and his army resentful of him eventually began to join the side of William. As William takes control James, at the end of his mental

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

In 1841 to 1850, the loss of potatoes caused about 1.3 million people to emigrate overseas, 70% went to the U.S.A., 28% went to Canada, and 2% went to Australia. During the emigration of Ireland many people had to pay for their own fares to emigrate to the U.S.A., Canada, and Australia. The Fares that were paid for emigration by landlords were only about 3% and these people were usually sent to Canada because these were the cheapest fares, and they were usually sent overseas on coffin ships. To emigrate to the U.S.A was a little more expensive, usually the ones that could afford to pay a little more to emigrate went to the U.S.A. to seek work. Irish immigrant labor in America consisted of unskilled factory workers, which also included children; and Irish males provided much of the labor to construct railroads. Many Irish women could speak English, helping women get jobs as servants in the homes of wealthy second and third generation Americans. In the 1800’s The Irish Potato Famine caused many to die of starvation forcing others to emigrate, leaving about 5 million people in Ireland; in 1845 about 8.2 million, and in 1851 about 6.2 million. Presently there are about 5 million people residing in Ireland and another estimated 20 million Irish scattered throughout the world.

In 1845-47 one million people died as a result of the famine, yet the response of the Irish government to the famine was minimal. “The famine years witnessed the workhouses become overcrowded centres of disease and destitution – in March 1851, 250,611 people were paupers receiving poor relief in the workhouse” (Feriter,2004,p.52) .Voluntary groups such as the Quakers emerged nineteenth century and established soup kitchens.