IRELAND 1845-1851

Mother IRELAND

“The Great Irish Hunger epoch changed the face and the heart of Ireland.

The Famine--yielded like the ice of the Northern Seas;

it ran like melted snows in the veins of Ireland for many years afterwards.”

--Edith Somerville, Irish Memories (1917).

Prior to 1845, Ireland was called “the breadbasket of the United Kingdom”. It was a major exporter of food to Britain, including vast amounts

of high quality grain products. Irish food fueled England’s industrial revolution.

“Ireland’s climate is salubrious, although humid with the

healthy vapours of the Atlantic; its hills, (like its history,) are

canopied, for the most part, with clouds; its sunshine is more

rare, but for that very reason, if for no other, far more smiling

and beautiful than ever beamed from Italian skies. Its

mountains are numerous and lofty; its green valleys fertile as

the plains of Egypt, enriched by the overflowings of the Nile.

There is no country on the globe that yields a larger average

of the substantial things which God has provided for the

support and sustenance of human life….

And yet, there it is that man has found himself for generations

in squalid misery, in tattered garment often as at present;

haggard and emaciated with hunger; his social state a contrast

and an eye-sore, in the midst of the beauty and riches of nature

that smile upon him, as if in cruel mockery of his unfortunate

and exceptional condition.”

--Bishop John Hughes, New York, (from Co Tyrone, Ireland) A Lecture on Antecedent Causes of Irish Famine - 1847

"IRELAND by a fatal destiny, has been thrown

into the ocean near England, to which it seems

linked by the same bonds that unite the slave to

the master….The traveler meets no equality of

conditions: only magnificent castles

or miserable hovels; misery, naked and famishing

shows itself everywhere …and the cause of it all? A

cause primary, permanent, radical, which

predominates over all others--a bad aristocracy.”

-- Gustave de Beaumont, colleague of Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book: IRELAND, after he had visited Ireland in mid-1830s. (Reprinted by Harvard Press 2006)

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote to his father from Ireland in 1835, ten years before the Famine began:

"You cannot imagine what a complexity of miseries

five centuries of oppression, civil disorder, and

religious hostility have piled on this poor people....

[The poverty is] such as I did not imagine existed in

this world. It is a frightening thing, I assure you, to

see a whole population reduced to fasting like

Trappists, and not being sure of surviving to the

next harvest, which is still not expected for another

ten days.”

Dependency on Potatoes

• Dependency of Irish people on a potato crop is primarily explained through the pre-famine land system and the result of colonization by the English.

• The Irish people were British subjects and supposed citizens at this time. (Act of Union 1800)

• By 1830s, 95 per cent of Irish land was owned by about 5000 English landlords, having been confiscated by conquest, colonization and plantation policies of British monarchs and governments, especially since time of Elizabeth I, “Queen regnant of England & Ireland” (1538-1603).

• Between one-half and two-thirds of Ireland's landowners were permanent absentees, who governed their Irish estates through agents and middlemen whose mandate was to extract the largest amount of profit from the land.

• By the late 17th century, the potato had become widespread as a supplementary rather than a principal food, as the main diet still revolved around butter, milk, and grain products.

• In the first two decades of the 18th century, however, the potato became a base food of the poor, especially in winter. The expansion of the economy between 1760 and 1815 saw the potato make inroads in the diet of the people and became a staple all the year round for farmers.

• The large dependency on this single crop was one of the reasons why the emergence of Phytophthora infestans had such devastating effects in Ireland, and had far less effects in other European countries (which were also hit by the fungus).

These unequal conditions, coupled with the

incompetence and greed of the landowners,

could only lead to a catastrophe for Ireland

when the potato blight struck in Ireland on 9

September 1845. _____________________

An Irish poet in 1849 gives his version of what happened:

God sent a curse upon the land because her sons were slaves;

The rich earth brought forth rottenness, and gardens became graves;

The green crops withered in the field, all blackened by the curse,

And wedding gay and dance gave way to coffin and to hearse.

English landlords and their agents despised the lower orders of Irish tenants and peasants and used the law and the occupying army to enforce their exploitation of the poor tenants.

“Undoubtedly it is the landlord’s right to do so as he pleases….If he choose to stand on his right, the tenants must be taught by the strong arm of the law that they had no power to oppose or resist…property would be valueless and capital would no longer be invested in cultivation of the land if it were not acknowledged that it was the landlord’s undoubted and most sacred right to deal with his property as he wished.” –Lord Broughman, 23 March 1846, House of Lords, London.

It was said that the……………..

“Irish peasant can live...

if his crop does not fail;

and he can pay his rent,

and if his pig, fed like himself

out of his garden-- does not die.”

Effect of Potato Blight

• The effect of the crisis on IRELAND was incomparable for the devastation it wrought, causing 1 million dead and another million plus refugees and spurring a century-long population decline.

• Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.

Mother IRELAND

DEATHS during FAMINE (1845-1852)

• Ireland – 1 million• Ireland: births fell by a third, resulting in

about 0.5 million "lost lives".

• Belgium - 40,000–50,000 • Prussia (Germany) - 42,000 • France - 10,000

Famine DiseasesStarvation and dietary deficiency diseases, e.g. scurvy and pellagra, accounted for some famine deaths but the vast majority were caused by one or other of a host of contagious or communicable diseases that raged during these years:

Typhus fever, relapsing fever, typhoid or enteric fever, dysentery, diarrhea, tuberculosis, smallpox, measles among children, and Asiatic cholera (which broke out in 1848.)

The Scattering

• Ireland – 1.5 million emigrated during famine years 1845-1851

• By the end of 1854 nearly two million Irish people - a quarter of the population - had emigrated to the United States in ten years.

• From 1820 to 1920

• Over 4,400,000 people emigrated from Ireland to USA.

• Scotland: Highland potato famine - 1.7 million people (1846–52) emigrated (removal by forced displacement of a significant number of people in the Scottish Highlands during 18th and 19th century, carried out by hereditary aristocratic British landowners.)

Greatest Tragedy since the Black Death- 2 and ½ million people fled Ireland by 1855 -

• “Part of the horror of the Famine is its atavistic nature—the mind-shattering fact that an event with all the premodern character of a medieval pestilence happened in Ireland [in 19th century] with frightening recentness. This deathly origin then shattered space as well as time, unmaking the nation and scattering Irish people and history across the globe.” --Terry Eagelton, literary scholar & critic.

• “The Irish famine was the greatest single peace-time tragedy since the [fourteenth century] Black Death.” --Joe Lee, Irish historian.

Britain’s laissez-faire policy:Response to Irish Famine

• Dominant economic theory - mid-19th century: It is not government's job to provide aid for its citizens, or to interfere with free market of goods or trade.

• Do nothing that might diminish the profits of the landholders and landlords in English society.

• Leave capitalism alone. laissez-faire = "let them do as they will".

• Some workhouses & soup kitchens provided, but discontinued.

• “Let Irish property pay for Irish poverty.”

Charles Trevelyn, British relief administratorwrites about Irish Famine:

• "The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated...The famine will produce permanent good out of transient evil.

• The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."

Charles Trevelyan’s PRAYER for the IRISH - 1847

Official view of British Government, in Edinburg Review & as a Pamphlet on THE IRISH CRISIS, published 1847, Trevelyan warned of need to eliminate “the canker of state dependency” manifest in the tendency of all Irish classes to “make a poor mouth”.

He concluded his report with this prayer:

“God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part, and that we may not relax our efforts until IRELAND fully participates in the social health and physical prosperity of Great Britain, which will be the true consummation of their union!’”

Abundance of food available in Ireland during the Famine years

In the long and troubled history of England and Ireland

no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered

relations between the two countries as the indisputable

fact that huge quantities of food were exported from

Ireland to England throughout the period when the

people of Ireland were dying of starvation.

Irish exports to England in 1847“The British government decided to leave food import and distribution

to free market forces and allowed vast amounts of foodstuffs to be exported from Ireland.” --Christine Kinealy, Famine Scholar

Shipments to British Ports from Ireland 1847 (worst year of famine)

• 4,000 ships carrying peas, beans, rabbits, salmon, honey, potatoes

• 9,992 Irish cattle

• 4,000 Irish horses and ponies

• 1,000,000 gallons of butter

• 1,700,000 gallons of grain-derived alcohol

Lady Jane Wilde, in poem: THE STRICKEN LAND - 1847

Weary man, what reap ye? -- "Golden corn for the stranger."

What sow ye? -- "Human corpses that wait for the avenger."

Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see ye in the offing?

"Stately ships to bear our food away amid the stranger's scoffing."

There’s a proud array of soldiers — what do they round your door?

They guard our masters’ granaries from the thin hands of the poor.

Pale mothers, wherefore weeping— would to God that we were dead;

Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.

Legacy & Loss after FAMINE GAELIC Language & Culture

• Colonization engendered sense of shame in traditional Gaelic culture & language

• Gaelic Language declined• Death & Emigration-large proportion of Irish speakers• Effect of loss of his father’s Gaelic language after the

famine: “He says they lost their language and now they’re all walking around like ghosts, following maps with invisible streets and invisible place names. He says the Irish are still in hiding in a foreign language.” (in The Sailor in the Wardrobe by Hugh Hamilton)

Legacy of Famine in MusicStory lives on in Song at Rugby

“The sheer strength and resilience of Famine narratives are sometimes most evidentin the unlikeliest of places. Any Irish sporting team playing in an international game(soccer, rugby, GAA) will be serenaded by supporters--homeland and diasporic--singing Pete St John’s popular and enduring Fields of Athenry” (Atlas of Great Famine, 2012)

By a lonely prison wallI heard a young girl calling Michael, they have taken you awayFor you stole Trevelyan's cornSo the young might see the morn. Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay….

CHORUS

Low lie the Fields of AthenryWhere once we watched the small free birds fly. Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to singIt's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry.

SKIBBEREEN -

One of the most famous and widely sung Famine songs was written by poet Patrick Carpenter of Skibbereen, Co. Cork. (The Irish Singer's Own Book, Boston, 1880)

http://www.youtube.com/v/GOX9BcUP2Rw&feature/youtu.be

George Bernard Shaw of Dublin wrote 50 years after the Potato Blight in Man and Superman:

• VIOLET: The Famine?

• MALONE: No, the starvation. When a country is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. Me father was starved dead; and I was starved out to America in me mother’s arms. English rule drove me and mine out of Ireland.

Great Hunger memorial, Cambridge Commons, MassachusettsDedicated by President of Ireland, Mary Robinson July 23, 1997

Andrew Greeley, sociologist writes about the IRISH Famine

• No Western country offers better evidence than Ireland for the conclusion that all human hopes are futile, all human passions vanity and all human effort useless.

• Nor does any country provide more fascinating proof of the obdurate refusal of humankind to give up in the face of tragedy.

Scholarship Today - 2012• 2012 Famine scholars today “give us a view of famine administration which is closer to

Cecil Woodham Smith’s [best seller book, 1962]” (Atlas of Great Irish Famine-March 2012). • 1962 “No issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries

[England and Ireland] as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation“, Woodham-Smith in The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849, best-seller book published 1962.

• 2012 ”Despite the overwhelming evidence of prolonged distress caused by successive years of potato blight, the underlying philosophy of the relief efforts was that they should be kept to a minimalist level; in fact they actually decreased as the Famine progressed… “Disease and starvation existed side-by-side with a substantial and flourishing commercial sector.” --Christine Kinealy, a leading scholar on the Great Famine. Irish America Magazine (July, 2012).

• 2002“Colonial Britain let millions of people die from starvation in India and Ireland to avoid paying for costly aid efforts.” --Simon Schama, British scholar, professor of art & history, Columbia University.

• 1997 "Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in

Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, and racial group known as the Irish People.” -- Francis Boyle, professor of international law at University of Illinois.

Scholars cont’d…• 1965 “In the late 1840s, 'all Ireland was a Belsen’, ” a sweeping reference

to the notorious German extermination camp. This Oxford scholar minced no words: 'The English governing class ran true to form. They had killed two million Irish people.' …And that the death toll was not higher 'was not for want of trying'. --A.J.P. Taylor, of Oxford University, distinguished historian of modern Germany; columnist in London Review of Books, in his review of The Great Hunger by Cecil-Woodham Smith in New Statesman.

• 1965 Taylor’s comment drew many responses: “Mr. F. H. Hinsley calls it a

“gaffe” when A.J.P. Taylor says that in the Great Famine ‘all Ireland was a Belsen’. I was with a Quaker relief unit at Belsen, and I have read Miss Woodham-Smith’s book about the Irish famine. I see no “gaffe”. --J. M. Hinton, Fellow/ Tutor in philosophy, Worcester College, Oxford. Letter in New York Review of Books.

Quinnipiac University, Hampden, Ct

announced October 2012 the opening of

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum