Ireland: The Great Famine and Emigration
Ireland: The Great Famine and Emigration
The exam asks for causes, the course of the crisis, the government response, and the human cost measured in deaths and emigration.
Causes Potato blight (Phytophthora infestans) reached Ireland in 1845 and returned in 1846, 1848 and 1849. Dependence on the Lumper potato, subdivision of holdings, cottiers depending on conacre, and a poor-law system funded from local rates made the failure catastrophic.
Response
- Peel: Indian meal imports and public works (1845–46).
- Russell: public works, then soup kitchens in 1847, then reliance on the workhouse under the Poor Law Amendment Act, whose quarter-acre clause denied relief to smallholders.
- Trevelyan's laissez-faire doctrine kept food exports flowing and placed relief costs on Irish ratepayers.
Consequences About one million died and over a million emigrated between 1845 and 1851. The population fell from 8.2 million (1841) to 6.5 million (1851) and to 4.4 million by 1911. Emigration became a permanent family pattern; the Encumbered Estates Act (1849) sold bankrupt estates and consolidated land.
Worked example Assess the government's role: relief came too late, was tied to wage labour, and was funded locally, so the poorest could not access it. Reasoning: compare the numbers destitute with workhouse places and wage levels on the works.
Traps Blaming overpopulation alone - blight was the trigger. Saying the Famine lasted a single year. Ignoring continued food exports and the fact that emigration long outlasted the crisis.