Ireland Starves and Lives to Tell: The Effects of the Great Potato Famine
“It must be understood that we cannot feed the people” (Kinealy Calamity 75). The mid 1800s in Ireland were characterized by extreme poverty, death, and emigration. The Great Potato Famine, also known as “The Great Hunger,” first hit in 1845; however, its effects lasted into the 1850s and can still be seen today. Prior to the famine, Irish manufacture and trade was controlled and suppressed by British government, which made Ireland an extremely poor country. Farmers in Ireland were forced to export crops such as corn, wheat, and oats to Britain, which left the potato as the main dietary staple for the people, especially the poor. Therefore, when the fungus Phytophthora infestans caused some, and eventually all, of the crop to rot over the next couple of years, the reliance on the one crop made the people of Ireland extremely susceptible to the famine. The effects were devastating, and poverty spread across the nation causing a huge increase in homelessness, the death-rate, emigration, and a change in the Irish people and country overall.
One direct effect of poverty during the Great Famine was homelessness. “The total number of people who had to leave their property was around a half million” (Kinealy Calamity 218). Those who could not afford to pay rent to their landlords were evicted and had their homes destroyed (Kinealy Calamity 190). These people often resorted to “begging in the streets, wandering from house to house, or burrowing in bogs or behind ditches, till broken down by privation and exposure to the elements [such as cold and disease], they seek the workhouse, or die by the roadside” (Litton 98). Public ass...
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In 476 AD, centuries of amassed knowledge in science and philosophy, literature and the arts lay in peril of destruction alongside the physical Roman Empire. Thomas Cahill's book How the Irish Saved Civilization sheds light upon the role of the Irish people in the conservation and rebirth of civilization and the Western tradition after the fall of the Roman Empire. It is here that Cahill opens his book and after a brief description of classical civilization, that we are given a look at another people, far different from the Romans and Greeks- the vibrant and intriguing Celts. How these people came in contact with the civilized world and how they assisted in pulling the West out of the Dark ages is, then, the paramount of Cahill's argument.
The Irish began immigrating to North America in the 1820s, when the lack of jobs and poverty forced them to seek better opportunities elsewhere after the end of the major European wars. When the Europeans could finally stop depending on the Irish for food during war, the investment in Irish agricultural products reduced and the boom was over. After an economic boom, there comes a bust and unemployment was the result. Two-thirds of the people of Ireland depended on potato harvests as a main source of income and, more importantly, food. Then between the years of 1845 and 1847, a terrible disease struck the potato crops. The plague left acre after acre of Irish farmland covered with black rot. The failure of the potato yields caused the prices of food to rise rapidly. With no income coming from potato harvests, families dependent on potato crops could not afford to pay rent to their dominantly British and Protestant landlords and were evicted only to be crowded into disease-infested workhouses. Peasants who were desperate for food found themselves eating the rotten potatoes only to develop and spread horrible diseases. ¡§Entire villages were quickly homeless, starving, and diagnosed with either cholera or typhus.¡¨(Interpreting¡K,online) The lack of food and increased incidents of death forced incredible numbers of people to leave Ireland for some place which offered more suitable living conditions. Some landlords paid for the emigration of their tenants because it made more economic sense to rid farms of residents who were not paying their rent. Nevertheless, emigration did not prove to be an antidote for the Famine. The ships were overcrowded and by the time they reached their destination, approximately one third of its passengers had been lost to disease, hunger and other complications. However, many passengers did survive the journey and, as a result, approximately ¡§1.5 million Irish people immigrated to North America during the 1840¡¦s and 1850¡¦s.¡¨(Bladley, online) As a consequence of famine, disease (starvation and disease took as many as one million lives) and emigration, ¡§Ireland¡¦s population dropped from 8 million to 5 million over a matter of years.¡¨(Bladley, online) Although Britain came to the aid of the starving, many Irish blamed Britain for their delayed response and for centuries of political hardship as basi...
In 1929 the Great Depression occurred that sent a panic through the country and a sharp decline in the United States economy. This decline accompanied an increase in homeless people. Although the United States had seen its’ share of homeless, the 1930s-1940s marked the peak. Many people believed the government would provide assistance but were let down. These homeless created Shantytowns to live in and called them Hoovervilles. These Hoovervilles contained awful hygienic conditions that would put many people at risk. The Great Depression brought along hundreds and thousands of homeless people and shantytowns, which was blamed on the government but has shaped
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During the mid 1840’s, blight in the potato crops in Ireland caused widespread starvation and migration of Irish citizens to the United States. Yet, the massive loss of life and massive exodus could have been avoided if British taxation upon the working class of Ireland was nullified. Though the struggle for liberation was already taking place, the potato famine furthered the cause and helped spread awareness. Furthermore, the potato famine made the average Irish family more reliant upon the government for subsidies and supports to get by.
...o the ghosts’ presences is the governess, makes the readers question their trust in the narrator. As well as this Mrs. Grose doubts the claim that the governess is making and her scepticism suggests to the readers that we may not be able to trust her account of events. However, faith is restored when she describes Quint in such vivid detail when she had previously never known that he existed, “red hair, very red, close curling and a pale face, long in shape, with straight good features and little rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair”. Jane also gains the readers’ trust when describing the alleged ghost in her room in such detail, “It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick dark hair hanging long down her back...she took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long and then she threw it over her own head and turned to the mirror.”
middle of paper ... ... n that after nearly seven hundred years of attempted domination, the British oppression of the Irish had deprived them of all but the bare necessities of survival, and caused such destitution that when the potato famine struck, the poor could not avoid the worst privations, given the social and political conditions controlling their lives. The British government’s ineffectual attempts at relieving the situation played a major role in worsening the situation; they allowed prejudice and State and individual self-interest, economic and religious dogma to subjugate even the least consideration for humanity. Ultimately British politicians bear considerable blame because they were not prepared to allocate what was needed to head off mass starvation, and they as the parent government did nothing to protect its subject people.
The Harlem Renaissance took place between 1919 and 1935; it was a movement that included literary arts, specifically the portrayal of black life from a realistic view; it is known as one of the most influential movements as it was the development of the African American culture (Hutchinson 1). In the renaissance blacks essentially made a new identity for themselves; known as the “new negro”, this included no longer allowing whites to treat them as if they were not humans; additionally they would breakdown the stereotypes of blacks and not let whites dictate them because of their color, past, or financial status (Morgan 214). The Harlem Renaissance is fundamentally a group of black literati, such as writers, poets, etc. that got together and decided to change the perception of blacks amongst whites in order to prove to whites that blacks could be just as capable as them in life. Some of the writers involved in the renaissance were poets, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay; in these poets works there are distinctive characteristics of the Harlem Renaissance that are present. The main characteristics that all three writers include in their works is social activism
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