All of these elements helped to exacerbate the famine. It also saw persistent conflict between landlords and tenants and between the British government and the nationalist or ‘Repeal’ movement. In short, the years before the famine saw a dramatic rise in the Irish rural population without an equivalent rise in economic opportunity and saw the rural poor increasingly reliant on the potato. However O’Connell’s peaceful campaign for Repeal of the Union or Irish self-government was suppressed by use of the military in 1843. Reform of the Corporations in 1840 had given Catholics the vote in municipal elections, meant that for example Catholic nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell became Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1841. To an extent this had happened, Catholic Emancipation – giving Catholics equal civil rights – was passed in 1829. The Union, which abolished the Irish Parliament, was enacted to pacify the country after the Rebellion of 1798, under the premise that it would reform the country, including giving equal rights to Catholics. Ireland had been governed, since the Union of 1801, directly from London, via the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the Lord Lieutenant. Ireland’s population had doubled from 4 million to 8 million between 18, most of whom were poor and dependent on the potato.Ĭonflict between landlords and tenants simmered throughout the early 19 th century, often escalating to the level of a rural insurgency during the for instance the ‘Rockite’ rebellion of the 1820s a protest movement against raised rents and evictions and the ‘Tithe War’ of the 1830s, in which the mostly Catholic peasantry violently resisted the collection of tithes or taxes to the Protestant Church of Ireland. About a third were absentee landlords who did not live in Ireland, leaving the management of their estates to their agents. The ownership of this land was largely in the hands of a largely Anglo-Irish and Protestant landlord class that was often alien to its tenant population in terms of nationality, religion and in many areas of the west, language also. Outside of north east Ulster, which had a growing linen industry, there had been no industrial revolution to absorb the excess population, which, especially in the west and north west, was concentrated in increasingly smaller plots of rented land. The rural poor were however dangerously dependent on the potato as their staple food. The rural population was driven by high birth rates, increasing smallpox inoculation and a relatively healthy diet, that centred around the potato and buttermilk. The mostly rural Irish population had been growing rapidly at a rate of about 2% per year since the mid-18 th century, so that it grew from about 2 million in 1741 to up to 8.75 million by 1847. Background An agrarian disturbance in 19th century Ireland, as locals stone a military eviction party. Their decision to drastically cut relief measures in mid-1847, half way through the famine, so that Irish tax payers, as opposed to the Imperial Treasury, would foot the bill for famine relief, certainly contributed greatly to the mass death that followed. The response of the British Government, directly responsible for governing Ireland since 1801, was also unsatisfactory. Failure to do this during the famine saw many thousands being evicted, greatly worsening the death toll. They did however have to continue to pay rents either in cash or in kind, to landlords. Most poor farmers and agricultural labourers or ‘cottiers’ lived at a subsistence level and had little to no money to buy food, which was widely available for purchase in Ireland throughout the famine years. However, the crisis was greatly compounded by the social and political structure in Ireland in the 1840s. The potato was the staple food of the Irish rural poor in the mid nineteenth century and its failure left millions exposed to starvation and death from sickness and malnutrition. The short term cause of the Great Famine was the failure of the potato crop, especially in 18, as a result of the attack of the fungus known as the potato blight. The Great Famine was a disaster that hit Ireland between 1845 and about 1851, causing the deaths of about 1 million people and the flight or emigration of up to 2.5 million more over the course of about six years. A depiction of a mother and children at Skibbereen during the famine.īy John Dorney.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |