The Great Potato Famine

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The Great Potato Famine

The Great Potato Famine was a huge disaster that would change Ireland forever. The people in Ireland were extremely dependent on potatoes and when the blight came the economy went down. When the fungus attacked the potato crops slowly crop by crop throughout Ireland, people began to lose their main source of food. With the people in Ireland’s huge dependency on the potato, people began to starve or get sick from the potatoes. No one had any food to eat. The potatoes were black inside with molds through out it that came from the fungus from something in nature. The weather that brought the blight also was one of the causes because they could not control how the weather was bringing the fungus. Ireland was under the British government and did not help Ireland when they needed Britain. The aftermath of the Great Famine was not only a huge drop in population, but emigration, and much more.

The potato famine killed many people. “The famine brought starvation and disease which claimed 1 million lives” (Jackson 69). The death toll from the Great Famine took a good portion of the Irish population and left a landmark as being one of the most costly disasters of modern times. “Additionally, over 50,000 people died of diseases: typhus, scurvy, dysentery […] Within a decade, the population of Ireland plummeted from over eight million to less than six million” (Irish Potato). Either the people that died during the famine were forgotten about from the surviving relatives, or there were no remaining survivors in a household there for, no was there to report it (Mokyr and O Grada 343). Sadly, death was one only of the effects of the Great Potato Famine.

Another thing that was an effect of the Great Famine was emigration. Many people moved to different countries, mostly America, to find new land and get away from the horrible famine. Soon the government passed the Poor Law Extension Act of 1847, which was approved to refuse any farmer help with over a quarter acre of land. This Act influenced emigration, increased land clearance, and the structure of rural society slowly decreased.

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