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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]
A graph of the populations of Ireland and Europe indexed against 1750 showing the disastrous consequence of the 1845–1849 potato famine. Ireland commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine in the 1990s. It was a contrast, in many ways, with the 100th anniversary in the 1940s.
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 ...
An 1849 depiction of Bridget O'Donnell and her two children during the famine. The chronology of the Great Famine (Irish: An Gorta Mór [1] or An Drochshaol, lit. ' The Bad Life ') documents a period of Irish history between 29 November 1845 and 1852 [2] during which time the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent. [3]
The Ballinlass incident (Irish: Eachtra Bhaile an Leasa) was the eviction of 300 tenants on 13 March 1846 in Ireland, in the context of the Great Famine in Ireland (1845–1849). At this time, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , governed directly by its parliament in London.
The first known outbreak of the potato blight, Phytophthora infestans, occurred in the eastern United States in 1843. [4] As the blight spread to the north, it also crossed the ocean, reaching the potato fields of Ireland in September 1845, [5] three months before completing its journey along the American coast and arriving on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland.
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.
9–10 November – Peel orders the secret purchase of £100,000 worth of maize and meal from the United States for distribution in Ireland. [5] [7] [8] 15 November – scientific commissioners (appointed in October) report that half the Irish potato crop has been destroyed by the blight. [5] 20 November – a relief commission for Ireland ...