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Ireland
and the Potato Famine |
|
Ireland
and the Potato Famine |
The lowly potato was both a boon to a hungry population and a cause of starvation. Its importation into Europe from the South America by Columbus was first cultivated as a curiosity. When its flavor and sustaining abilities were finally recognized and promoted; it quickly became a staple of northern European communities. In the early 1500's English explorers brought the potato to Ireland. It was so productive and popular in Ireland that it became known as the "Irish Potato." It was dominantly grown in Belgium, Germany, Poland, Russia, England and Ireland where other hot weather crops such as corn, also an import, had difficulty. The potato was probably responsible for the population explosion in northern Europe after the Renaissance. It did eliminate the famines that had been a regular visitor to these communities. With the potato their abilities to sustain themselves along with uncontrolled birthrates simply produced more surviving individuals, which produced ever more children.
Ireland was used as an agrarian country to provide cheap food products to England until the nineteenth century. Much of the land was actually owned by the English lords. The people were kept in almost a feudal relationship to the land and their landlord. All the soil of Ireland was owned by British or Irish Protestants until 1793.[Durant, v.11, p.507] In the early 1800's about half the people lived on small farms that produced little income. Many others had to rent the land they farmed from landlords that charged them high rents.
Although England itself was becoming industrialized, little industrialization of Ireland happened until modern times. What did exist was a life of misery. "In the factory districts of Dublin poverty was even worse than on the land. Irish industry was choked by high duties that prevented the import of raw cotton, and by commercial regulations that to a large extent prevented Irish products, except linen, from competing with British products within the Empire. Shelley, seeing the condition of Dublin factory workers in 1812, wrote: 'I had no conception of the depth of human misery until now.' " [Durant, v.11, p.508]
Along with the crushing poverty, there were also religious discrimination and political injustice. Representation in the Irish Parliament was restricted only to Protestants. This lack of equal representation and religious freedom brought about a number of rebellions that were brutally put down. It wasn't until 1829 when Catholic men had the right to serve in the British Parliament. The Irish Free State wasn't created until 1920.
This life of poverty and injustice created an almost total dependence on the easily and cheaply grown potato. Beginning in 1845 through to 1847 a "potato blight" disease struck the potato fields and killed off most of the plants. Any plants that produced a crop were soon spoiled and replanting in the diseased fields continued the devastation for several seasons until all seed potatoes were either eaten or used futilely in plantings. About 750,000 people died of starvation or disease. Hundreds of thousands of Irish people left the country, many coming to the United States with what ever hope and money they could scrap together. Immigration from Ireland was continuous with the main wave of Irish immigration happening in the 1840's and 1850's when almost 1.5 million people came to the United States. Our James Doyle (b.1825) family came from Ireland on the ship Sarnak on 30 May, 1849 with his brother or cousin, Martin Doyle. They probably came with few if any skills but adapted to any opportunity. He, like many of the new immigrants, got a job building of a railroad.
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express permission of Cheryl and Elroy Christenson. Copyright Elroy
Christenson 1998-2008.