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Origins of the potato famine
Origins of the potato famine
Origins of the potato famine
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The Great Potato Famine
The Great Potato Famine is characterized as one of the leading disasters in Ireland’s history. It began in the summer of 1845 with the appearance of an unusual disease growing on potato crops throughout various parts of Europe. With the spread of this disease, it soon targeted Ireland consuming the major crop of potatoes. The famine began by this mysterious disease that hit many parts of Europe during 1845. This disease known as the blight was caused by a fungus known ‘phytophthora infestans’. Prior to the blight, two main diseases known as ‘curl’ and ‘dry rot’ attacked Ireland but were not as destructive (Kinealy 33). The blight was known to be originated from South America through cargo ships that were transporting goods to Europe. The fungus was carried over through the potato leaves which soon would spread to the actual potato leaving the potato black and rotting with a rancid smell arising from it (Kinealy 30). The fungus would commonly feed on healthy potatoes and quickly decompose of it. With the hit of the blight and many others causes Ireland as a country was threatened. This was the first time that Ireland was hit this hard with “Western Europe’s worst modern peacetime catastrophe,” people were dying from diseases and starvation, and others try to find safety in Britain and the United States (Newsinger, 1).
The dependency of the potato was related to the population during the time of the blight. With the major population the potato was the main crop. The country’s population rapidly growing, it had reached about five million citizens at the time of the Union to well over the eight million mark in 1841 (O’Brien 103). With the population growing, the conditions of Irela...
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...’s position in the situation. Even before The Great Potato Famine, a cycle was beginning within the economy and government itself which in the end caused the Famine. Due to the major population, dependency, economy, and government of Ireland, such a tragedy occurred which led to the starvation, depopulation, and immigration from Ireland.
Works Cited
Kinealy, Chrisitne. This Great Calamity. Roberts Rhinehart Publishers; Colorado, 1995.
Kinealy, Christine. “How Polotics fed the Famine.” Natural History Jan 1996: 105.
Newsinger, John. “The great Irish Famine: A crime of free market economics.” Monthly Review: An independent Socialist Magazine April 1996: 47.
O’Brien, Conor and Cruise. A Concise History of Ireland. Thames and Hudson; New York, 1985.
Ranelagh, John O’Beirne. A Short History of Ireland. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, London, 1983.
Irish American Magazine, Aug.-Sept. 2009. Web. The Web. The Web. 06 May 2014.
Meagher, Timothy. “The Columbia Guide to Irish American History.” Columbia University Press- New York, 2005
The chance to make a living and put some money in their pockets was an attractive situation for struggling Irish immigrants. The inevitable factor for Irish immigrants to leave their homeland was the effects of famine that was occurring among the rural population of Ireland. Ireland depended heavily on potato crops, but as the crops failed they diminished the hopes of survival for many Irish families.... ... middle of paper ...
The analysis of the Irish economic problem, the Great Famine, was a remarkable topic to study by several classical authors such as, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo or William Senior. A contextualization skim of the economic characteristics of the country is required in order to know about their main ideas with respect to the topic, taking into account the aspects like the land property, the political power and the relation between Ireland and England.
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...
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MT) is a slender, rod-shaped, aerobic bacillus which causes tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborn infection which is transmitted via inhaling droplet nuclei circulating in the air. These droplets are expelled from the respiratory secretion of people who have active TB through coughing, sneezing, and talking (Porth, 2011). Some bacilli stay in the upper airway and are swept out by mucus-secreting goblet cells and cilia on the surface of the airway. Others will escape from this protective mechanism to travel and settle down at alveoli (Porth, 2011). Local inflammatory reaction occurs and macrophages are cells that act as next line defense mechanism to fight with mycobacteria. First they engulf micobacteria, try to reduce their strength and ability, and kill them. In the same way they send antigen to helper T lymphocytes to initiate a cell-mediated immune response (Knechel, 2009). The infected macrophages will send produced cytokines and enzymes to breakdown mycobacteria’s protein. It is the released cytokines that attract T ly...
O'Connor, Thomas H. The Boston Irish: A Political History. Boston, MA. Northeastern University Press, 1995.
Tuberculosis or TB, referred to by some as the White death due to the epidemic that arose in Europe that lasted two hundred years, is usually caused by in humans by a microorganism by substrains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It’s hard to determine the exact years in which TB first infected humans, but since the disease leaves traces on the bone in can be found in archeological record and it is believed to go all the way back to the B.C. era. Although it is hard to tell if the bone damage was truly from TB, there is research that shows that it has been around since the 17th and 18th centuries with a high number of incidences of TB, and in 1882 Dr. Robert Koch announced that his discovery of the causing factor of TB, which is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A tuberculosis bacterium is spread through the air by an infected person speaking, coughing, or sneezing. Due to the fact the bacteria is protected by a waxy cell all, the body’s defense takes weeks to develop any kind of immunity and it allows the bacteria to exponentially multiply freely within the body. If TB it’s left untreated it will eat rapidly through many tissues, usually beginning with the lungs, lymph nodes, and kidneys. As the infection spreads to the lungs, it causes a cough and fluid between the chest wall and lungs, which leads to chest pains, severe shortness of breath, and potential heart failure. TB also infects bones and joints that can produce arthritis like pain and characteristic bone damage. Another possibility is that it may affect the fluid around the brain, causing meningitis, which can lead to fever, drowsiness, and eventually coma and death (Wingerson, 2009).
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.
INTRODUCTION The history of Ireland "that most distressful nation" is full of drama and tragedy, but one of the most interesting stories is about what happened to the Irish during the mid-nineteenth century and how millions of Irish came to live in America (Purcell 31). Although the high point of the story was the years of the devastating potato famine from 1845 to 1848, historians have pointed out that immigrating from Ireland was becoming more popular before the famine and continued until the turn of the twentieth century. In the one hundred years between the first recording of immigrants in
With 3 million either gone or dead from the island of Ireland, 1845 was possibly the most painful year in its history. It was also obvious that something was afflicting Ireland, with the smell and sight of the crops. Death rate grew high, and immigration even higher during this time period of the famine. The Great Potato Famine of 1845 had a massive effect on Ireland in population decrease, the reactions of the people, and effects it had on the future of Ireland.
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.
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, in which bacteria may invade many parts of the body, such as the brain, the kidneys, and the spine. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a rod shaped, aerobic bacterium that is resistant to destruction and can persist in necrotic and calcified lesion for prolonged periods and remain capable of reinstating growth (Porth, 2011). However, the most common target is the lungs (Wouk, 2010). The Tuberculosis bacteria severely damage the lungs that it is difficult for a person to breathe. According to Wouk, there are two main types of Tuberculosis. The first type is latent, which means a person carries the tuberculosis germ, but he or she is not sick and can not pass the germ on to the other person, and the other type is active tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is transmitted from person to person through airborne droplets, when a person that is infected with TB coughs, sneezes, talks, and/or sings letting tiny droplet to be released into the air(Bare, Smeltzer, Hinkle, and Cheever, 2008). TB cannot be spread through touching inanimate objects, food, or drinks (Bare et al. 2008). The person must be in the same area an affected individual is in and inspirate the droplets to be affected. Once the bacillus is inspired into the lungs, the bacilli start to multiply causing lung inflammation also known as nonspecific pneumontis (Huether et al. 2008). To cause an immune response the bacilli will travel through lymphatic system and become lodged in the lymph nodes (Huether et al. 2008). Lung inflammation causes the activation of the alveolar macrophages and neutrophils (Huether et al. 2008). Granulomas, new tissue masses of live and dead bacilli, are surrounded by macrophages, which form a protective wall. They then transform into a fibrous tissue mass, the central portion is called a ghon tubercle (Bare et al. 2008). The bacterial then necrotic, forming a cheesy mass, this mass may become calcified and form a collagenous scar (Bare et al. 2008). At this point, the bacteria becomes dormant and there is no further progression of the active disease. The disease can become active again by re-infection or activation of the dormant bacteria (Bare et al. 2008).
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).