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The Great Famine, also known as the Great Hunger (Irish: an Gorta Mór [ənˠ ˈɡɔɾˠt̪ˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ]), the Famine and the Irish Potato Famine, [1] [2] was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole. [3]
Emigration was not uncommon in Ireland in the years preceding the Famine. Between 1815 and 1845, Ireland had already established itself as the major supplier of overseas labour to Great Britain and North America. [12] However, emigration reached a peak during the famine, particularly in the years 1846–1855. [12]
The legacy of the Great Famine in Ireland (Irish: An Gorta Mór [1] or An Drochshaol, litt: The Bad Life) followed a catastrophic period of Irish history between 1845 and 1852 [2] during which time the population of Ireland was reduced by 50 percent. [3] The Great Famine (1845–1849) was a watershed in the history of Ireland. [4]
The European potato failure was a food crisis caused by potato blight that struck Northern and Western Europe in the mid-1840s. The time is also known as the Hungry Forties . While the crisis produced excess mortality and suffering across the affected areas, particularly affected were the Scottish Highlands , with the Highland Potato Famine and ...
The Great Hunger is a 1962 book about the 1845–1849 Great Famine in Ireland by the British historian Cecil Woodham-Smith. It was published by Harper and Row and Penguin Books . The British broadcaster and journalist Robert Kee described it, "A masterpiece of the historian's art".
In 1925, the newly independent Irish Free State underwent food shortages. [1] [2] [3] The Irish War of Independence, the Irish Civil War and an economic depression had taken their toll on society, with over 100,000 unemployed in a population of three million. [4] The Executive Council of the Irish Free State denied that
Obviously, the causes of the Depression are still hotly debated, and popular understanding centers on the 1929 stock market crash, while the somewhat more informed will cite excessive easy credit ...
The growth of population inevitably caused subdivision. Population grew from a level of about 500,000 in 1000 AD to about 2 million by 1700, and 5 million by 1800. On the eve of the Great Famine the population of Ireland had risen to 8 million, most people living on ever-smaller farms and depending on the potato as a staple diet.