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- A heavy reliance on just one or two high-yielding types of potatoes greatly reduced the genetic variety that ordinarily prevents the decimation of an entire crop by disease, and thus the Irish became vulnerable to famine.
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The humble potato, a tuber native to South America, has played a pivotal role in the tapestry of Irish history and culture. This seemingly simple crop not only reshaped the agricultural landscape of Ireland but also became a cornerstone of Irish society, economy, and cuisine.
Today we’re going to chat about a staple of the Irish diet and the impact this food had on Irish culture and history – the humble Irish potato. The Potato Arrives in Ireland for the first time. “Can you see anything?”
As the population of Ireland grew, the potato became the primary source of sustenance for millions of people, particularly in the rural areas of the country. But the reliance on the potato also made Ireland vulnerable to crop failures and famine.
- Truth: The Irish Fed The English
- They Had No Warning
- Truth: The Exports Didn’T Stop
- The Irish Sat Around Starving While The Potatoes Rotted in The Ground
- Everyone Starved to Death During The Great Irish Famine
- Potatoes Barely Kept The Populace Alive
- The British Government Did Absolutely Nothing to Avert The Crisis
Instead, due to the system of land ownership in Irish, that had evolved over 200 years, much of the land was owned by wealthy landowners, many of which didn’t even live in Ireland, but in England. Large tracts of land were subdivided again and again into layers of small land plots, through a rental system. The wealthy landowners would rent parts of...
The time that the Irish called the Gorta Mor, “the great hunger,” or Droch Shaol, “the bad times,” began around October of 1845. Many people recount the beginning of the blight as if the farmers went out to dig their potatoes one day and to their great dismay, they found only black and rotten potatoes. They had no warning! The blight that struck th...
Of course, knowing that the people were starving and the potato crops were failing, the those foreign landowners, or their middleman landlords, let the farmers keep the other crops to see them through, right? Wrong. The exports, during all this devastation, continued for almost the entire period of famine. That’s right. Hundreds of thousands of peo...
The idea that the poor of Ireland would have just thrown up their hands in despair and awaited their fate, is yet another insulting and inaccurate picture of the famine. First, as said, they continued planting for export. In the first year of the blight, for example, there was a good oats crop. Second, it is not as if the land of Ireland had nothin...
Not everyone who died during the famine starved to death. Some may have been extremely malnourished, but not actually starving. Extreme malnourishment weakens our bodies and our immune system, making us vulnerable to disease. Therefore, many died from diseases that their bodies could not fight due to their weakened condition. One of these diseases ...
Along with the myth that nothing else was grown in Ireland but potatoes, came the myth that the potato was a terrible choice for a subsistence crop. The lowly potato is nothing but empty starch calories and was a horrible choice of food to subsist on. This is not true. The potato is, in fact, a good crop to pick if you want a good tradeoff between ...
The truth is that the British government did next-to-nothing to prevent or avert the crisis. During previous crop failures the British government had imported corn into the country as a relief. During the shortages of 1782 to 1784, the Corn Law, as it was called, was temporarily suspended and efforts were made to import more oats and wheat. By the ...
Apr 18, 2024 · The Great Hunger, or the potato famine, devastated Ireland, causing 1 million deaths and driving two million to flee, reshaping Ireland and the Americas. Cory turns into a potato to grasp its...
- 11 min
Oct 17, 2017 · The Irish Potato Famine, also known as the Great Hunger, began in 1845 when a mold known as Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans) caused a destructive plant disease that spread rapidly...
Great Famine, famine that occurred in Ireland in 1845–49 when the potato crop failed in successive years. The Irish famine was the worst to occur in Europe in the 19th century: about one million people died from starvation or from typhus and other famine-related diseases.
