Ireland Starves and Lives to Tell: The Effects of the Great Potato Fami

Ireland Starves and Lives to Tell: The Effects of the Great Potato Famine â€Å"It must be understood that we cannot feed the people† (Kinealy Calamity 75). The mid 1800s in Ireland were characterized by extreme poverty, death, and emigration. The Great Potato Famine, also known as â€Å"The Great Hunger,† first hit in 1845; however, its effects lasted into the 1850s and can still be seen today. Prior to the famine, Irish manufacture and trade was controlled and suppressed by British government, which made Ireland an extremely poor country. Farmers in Ireland were forced to export crops such as corn, wheat, and oats to Britain, which left the potato as the main dietary staple for the people, especially the poor. Therefore, when the fungus Phytophthora infestans caused some, and eventually all, of the crop to rot over the next couple of years, the reliance on the one crop made the people of Ireland extremely susceptible to the famine. The effects were devastating, and poverty spread across the nation causing a huge increase i n homelessness, the death-rate, emigration, and a change in the Irish people and country overall. One direct effect of poverty during the Great Famine was homelessness. â€Å"The total number of people who had to leave their property was around a half million† (Kinealy Calamity 218). Those who could not afford to pay rent to their landlords were evicted and had their homes destroyed (Kinealy Calamity 190). These people often resorted to â€Å"begging in the streets, wandering from house to house, or burrowing in bogs or behind ditches, till broken down by privation and exposure to the elements [such as cold and disease], they seek the workhouse, or die by the roadside† (Litton 98). Public ass... ...on: The Long View.† The American Economic Review 84.2: 303-308. JSTOR. 6 February 2004. . Kinealy, Christine. â€Å"How Politics Fed the Famine.† Natural History 105.1: 33-35. Academic Search Premier EBSCO. Roesch Library, Dayton. 30 January 2004. . Kinealy, Christine. This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52. Boulder: Roberts Reinhart Publishers, 1995. Litton, Helen. The Irish Famine; An Illustrated History. Dublin: Wolfhound Press Ltd., 1994. (98). Scally, Robert J. The End of Hidden Ireland: Rebellion, Famine, and Emigration. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, (212-215). Woodham-Smith, Cecil. The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849. London: Penguin Books, 1991, (226).