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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]
The Great Famine (1845–1849) was a watershed in the history of Ireland. [4] Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political and cultural landscape. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory [5] and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements.
In Ireland births fell by a third, resulting in about 0.5 million "lost lives". Declines elsewhere were lower: Flanders lost 20–30%, the Netherlands about 10–20%, and Prussia about 12%. [3] Emigration to escape the famine centred mainly on Ireland and the Scottish Highlands.
The Irish Famine of 1740–1741 (Irish: Bliain an Áir, meaning the Year of Slaughter) in the Kingdom of Ireland, is estimated to have killed between 13% and 20% of the 1740 population of 2.4 million people, which was a proportionately greater loss than during the Great Famine of 1845–1852. [1] [2] [3]
The Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315–1322) was the first of a series of large-scale crises that struck parts of Europe early in the 14th century. Most of Europe (extending east to Poland and south to the Alps) was affected. [ 1 ]
Famine memorial in Ballingeary, County Cork Ballingeary famine soup-pot Ballingeary famine plaque. Souperism was a phenomenon of the Irish Great Famine.Protestant Bible societies set up schools in which starving children were fed, on the condition of receiving Protestant religious instruction at the same time.
Subsequent negotiations between Sinn Féin, the major Irish party, and the UK government led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which resulted in five-sixths of the island seceding from the United Kingdom, becoming the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland), with only the six northeastern counties remaining within the United Kingdom.
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. By the 1840s, many farms had become so small that the only food source that could be grown in sufficient quantity to feed a family was potatoes.