“The Famine emigrations represent one of the greatest population displacements of modern times, an exodus on a stunning scale that has no other nineteenth century parallel,” writes Dr Ciarán Ó Murchadha in his latest book, The Great Famine: Ireland’s Agony 1845 – 52, which was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Longman – History Today ‘Book of the Year’ international award.
“Between 1845 and 1855, approximately one-quarter of the inhabitants of an entire European nation, amounting to some 2.1 million persons, were permanently removed from their homeland.”
Over 95% of those who left Ireland during the Famine travelled across the Atlantic and about 70% of all emigrants who arrived in the United States settled – typically in cities of over 100,000 – in seven northerly states: New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Massachusetts.
The total numbers who died during passage is unknown, but Dr Ó Murchadha, who teaches history and Irish at St. Flannan’s College, Ennis in County Clare, estimates that it may have been more than 80,000. Fever – due both to the condition of those who embarked and the filthy conditions aboard – was the primary cause of death.
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The Great Famine includes a vivid description of life on these ‘coffin ships’ written by Stephen de Vere, son of a County Limerick landlord, who travelled steerage to Quebec in 1847. Passengers were “huddled together without light, without air, wallowing in filth and breathing a fetid atmosphere”. They were “sick in body, dispirited in heart…living without food…dying without the voice of spiritual consolation, and buried in the deep without the rites of the Church.”
However, surviving the voyage was not the end of the hardship for Famine emigrants. In fact, for most, it was just the beginning of a new chapter of desolation.
“A great number of these emigrants had never previously ventured outside their own local areas,” says Dr Ó Murchadha. “Suddenly, they found themselves transported thousands of miles away: from a rural to an urban landscape, to a very alien social environment where the inhabitants didn’t speak the same language and, frequently, showed a deep loathing for their Irishness and their Catholicism. This was bewildering and devastating to them.”
Gullible and unprepared for exile, many Famine emigrants were overwhelmed by their new surroundings and became easy prey for exploitation. In most cases, the book suggests, the predators were not unscrupulous Anglo-Saxons but, instead, fellow Irish who wielded their soothing, familiar tones – in Irish or English – to lull the new arrivals into trusting them.
Most of the Famine Irish struggled to improve their circumstances. “For all but a lucky few,” the author writes, “the lot of the Famine immigrants was grinding poverty, unemployment or backbreaking, dangerous work for little pay. Immigrants’ lives were shortened by work-slavery, psychological alienation and the alcohol with which many sought to obtain relief from both.”
Chief among the stigmas endured by the Famine Irish and inherited by their children, Dr Ó Murchadha suggests, was the “brand of their Irishness” and, consequently, their inferiority. But for them – and subsequent generations – this was eased by the succour of Irish neighbourhoods, particularly the trinity of the Catholic Church, Irish cultural societies and major political organisations, until demography, democracy and economic success enabled the Irish to tentatively assimilate within the majority society.
Those who remained in Ireland grappled with another kind of anguish. “As surviving inhabitants tried to come to terms with a significantly emptier landscape, they were also wrestling with a sense of guilt: that they had survived and a great number of their neighbours had not,” says the author. “In so many cases, their survival had been at their neighbours’ expense. This sense of survivor guilt was something that inevitably became embedded in the Irish psyche.”
Charting a monumental record of abject suffering, from the destruction of the potato harvests, through to the degradation inflicted by the relief programmes, the swell of fever pandemics through the workhouses, the mass clearances by landlords and the hemorrhaging emigration, The Great Famine climaxes with a sober analysis of the consequences and causes of this seminal event in Irish history.
Approximately 1.1 million died and over a million emigrated during the Famine. The population of Ireland plummeted from almost 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.5 million in 1851. Among its legacies were the physical and psychological disabilities of Famine survivors in Ireland and abroad, a deep-seated hatred of Britain, ruptured social and communal intimacy and rising conservatism in Irish society and a highly influential Catholic Church that met a gaping spiritual yearning and provided otherwise absent leadership.
The failure of private charity and state relief is central to explaining the extent of the Famine, insists the author. While contributions towards famine relief were received from the US president, the papacy and, most movingly, from the Choctaw tribe of Native Americans – the Famine resonated with the ‘Trail of Tears’ deaths during their forced population transfer from Mississippi to Oklahoma in 1841 – its impact was tempered by soaring international food prices. While Britain spent £8 million on relief programmes in Ireland during the Famine, most of it as loan advances, it spent £69 million on the Crimean War (1854 – 56).
Additionally, Dr Ó Murchadha argues that the prevalence of providentialism – the belief among the British government that the Famine was an opportunity to reform Ireland – is essential to accounting for the Famine and, controversially, he believes Britain may have been guilty of genocide.
“If you’re taking about a Jewish-style holocaust, a deliberate attempt such as by the Nazis to annihilate an entire people, then it’s not that kind of genocide,” he explains. “But there is a case for asking if the British deliberately used the Famine to thin out the ranks of the Irish by allowing mass death and emigration after 1847. Of course, it was never admitted at the time so it can’t be proven. But the question is certainly valid.”
The Great Famine: Ireland’s Agony 1845 – 52 is published by Continuum and is available on Amazon.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.Seanmor | Mar 28, 2012, 11:33 AM EDT
Records in the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, consisting of 5,800 pages, indicate that the vast majority of the Famine emigrants traveled to the U.S. from ports in G.B, especially Liverpool, and only about 14% came directly from Ireland. The records for 1948 show the number of ships from the following Irish cities: Dublin 29, Belfast 27, Cork 24, Galway, 15, Limerick 12. Speaking of "coffin ships", it is interesting to note that during the height of the Famine, there was a government official in Limerick whose surname was COFFIN and his function was to supervise the distribution of food to the distressed. On 23 August, 1851, the Victoria arrived in New York, having lost 5 children who died en route. Some children were also born on Famine ships from Limerick, The Betel docked on 4 Sept, 1849, with 2 babies born at sea. Any discussion on the Famine should mention that huge quantities of grain and livestock were exported from Ireland while over a mission died of starvation.
joycean | Feb 21, 2012, 09:59 AM EST
Considering that we have 24 hour travel channels, I don't understand why anyone would have incorrect views of what Ireland looks like. I just watched a recently filmed show on Kilorglin's Puck Festival and Dingle.the only misconception I've noticed is that Americans tend to assume the Irish like them. I think the dichotmy of living history museum and modern country is patently false. I live in Virginia with the most elaborate living history museum, Colonial Williamsburg, but also plenty of high tech, research and development, heavy and light industry.
AMWilson | Feb 20, 2012, 12:31 PM EST
PolinDeB, I've heard and read plenty of comments expressing the notion that emigrants "took the easy way out" or somehow forsook and foreited their right to a cultural heritage, and this argument has been used as a means of demeaning their descendants. But anyway, good post. I understand and appreciate your explanation.
Portia777 | Feb 20, 2012, 11:21 AM EST
There was no food shortage. It was GENOCIDE. To get rid of our culture, as was done to Native Americans. People might also be surprised when they learn the hidden hand ordering the British to carry out the genocide. The same hand behind Hitler and Nazi Germany. The last thing these souls needed was a man of god trying to console them- telling them "it is good to suffer" and be sacrificed.
Springfield9 | Feb 20, 2012, 09:42 AM EST
Nial - There's an unmarked mass grave of famine Irish on Staten Island .......why don't you find it and put up a cross. They were quarantined for disease and never allowed into the country proper.
sirpeter | Feb 20, 2012, 09:11 AM EST
Seano.You're spot on with those two words.It was "Social Engineering" It was years of manipulation by the British of the Irish nation forcing them to the edge of a cliff.Not quite pushing the people over but waiting for a strong wind to come to do the job for them.
IrelandNorth | Feb 20, 2012, 07:59 AM EST
"... dying without the voice of spiritual consolation, and buried in the deep without the rites of the Church." Rites of the Church (sic) which pacified their spirits and set them up for centuries of colonisation by the English-British. Some consolation. Would've preferred a crust o' bread m[e]self. Laissez-faire/free-for-all capitalism of British imperialism was responsible for exacerbating "black '47". Economics predominated over agriculature. But above them all was religious orthodoxy. And white European settlers, (some Irish?) deliberately extincted the stable buffalo diet of the Native American, to genocide them. But EIIR did chip-in STG£53m last Spring, perhaps to raise Vic. Reg.'s STG£2k.
PolinDeB | Feb 20, 2012, 01:08 AM EST
@AMWilson I think this is incorrect. There is a feeling that some American Irish want us to remain as one mentioned an all-Ireland heritage park ;0 What most Irish people want is a modern country that retains respect and care for it's natural, archaeological and built heritage. Of course, Irish don't blame the English for their governments actions, this would be as bad as blaming Irish people for their governments actions over the last ten years. People sadly are gullible and want to believe their governments myths. English people are confronted by their incorrect view of Ireland when they come over, and it comes as much as a shock to them as it does to many Americans who often feel a real sense of loss that the Ireland of their imagination doesn't exist. This is as annoying to Irish as to Americans who confront people believing the in TV version of their country. There is no survivor guilt, a little jealousy perhaps but I think reviled is a rather incorrect allegation.
dukmarshal@aol.com | Feb 20, 2012, 12:59 AM EST
@awoken32--It was not the royals that slowed the relief process, It was the House of Lords that vetoed or reduced the measures passed by the House of Commons.
PolinDeB | Feb 20, 2012, 12:31 AM EST
The fact that the Irish gathered at Tara with such 'determination and dignity' as reported by the London Examiner in 1943 asking for Repeal of the Act of Union and this was greeted by a call in the same newspaper that their 'requests should be considered'. Suddenly the people of Ireland were a threat to the very basis of the British Empire. Suddenly a very convenient famine, did what would have caused outrage if it had been done by it's soldiers. As threatened if they marched again. There was a very simple way to stop the potatoes, once picked, rotting in the pits by letting some air in. Despite calls and efforts by a Protestant Minister, the government would not help him to spread this information. Russell failed to cap the prices of essentials and thus save lives, saying he could not interfere with the 'Market economy'. Does anyone believe it wasn't deliberate policy of just letting people die?
seanomelb | Feb 19, 2012, 04:28 PM EST
Social engineering by starvation.
merefalow | Feb 19, 2012, 03:31 PM EST
AMAZING, amazing that there should be ignorance in our people and education system about this tragic period in our history.the facts should be taught and the reasons for it properly understood,was it a famine or was it genocide,i believe it was genocide because the people in charge well knew the extent of what was happening,there was no shortage of food in Ireland,WHEN THERE IS A FAMINE ITS CAUSED BY A SHORTAGE OF FOOD,THERE WAS NO F,,,,,,,,, SHORTAGE ,therefore by definition it has to be something else,it suited the governing class and their planter mentality to decimate the population.they also did it with considerable success in the concentration camps in Boer south Africa, that's another little bit of history people should be aware of.the wonder is we ever survived and emerged as an independent country,albeit divided, don't think that was part of the plan,as for aid from uk,it was abysmal,derisory,other wise 2.5million people would not have perished in such horrendous destitution.teach it.
AMWilson | Feb 19, 2012, 03:14 PM EST
Then there was the shutting down of the importation of Indian Corn which, God forbid, drove down the price of domestic grains and thereby "robbed" the grain merchants of their "just profits". The problem was not a lack of food (famine); it was that no one could afford food on the free market. That is, I believe, the natural consequence of unrestrained capitalism: it's an entirely darwinian model.
WarriorPoet | Feb 19, 2012, 02:28 PM EST
The 8 million was in loans primarily the Queen gave roughly 2,000 pounds and refused to allow the Sultan of Turkey to upstage her by sending more. You see it was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Irish people. Thus comparing them to Nazis, or at least to American treatment of Natives and Africans is apropos.
sirpeter | Feb 19, 2012, 02:10 PM EST
irishdjkevin.Because if they didn't call it a famine.The only other word you could use was mass murder by starvation.It was the British media called it a famine.Genocide is a new word.By definition a famine is known by the general scarcity of food.In Ireland there was no scarcity of food.Just a failure of the potato.The only crop that the Irish were allowed to eat.Wheat,Barley,Oats,Cattle,Pigs,Sheep,Butter ect were exported at the point of a gun to England.The blight was a potato fungus not a famine (Phytophthora infestans)
AMWilson | Feb 19, 2012, 01:40 PM EST
I think the "Survivor guilt" at home was eventually converted into blaming the emigrant, and must account somewhat for the widespread assertion that the emigrant somehow "took the easy way out". So while the descendants of the oppressor have now been embraced, the descendants of the emigrant are still largely reviled.
irishdjkevin | Feb 19, 2012, 12:04 PM EST
Why is it called a famine when , by definition, it was a blight?
dg.txcop | Feb 19, 2012, 11:39 AM EST
I am a native texan, My family came from Ireland and scottland in the late 1800's early 1900's. I have never been told or heard the hole story about the famine. I've learned something new from this article and all the comments. Thank you all!
Faha | Feb 19, 2012, 07:51 AM EST
dickmac knows history well. The potato famine actually affected most of Europe but other foods were substituted for the potato and there were no famines in other European countries. Ship ledgers during the Famine times showed large quantities of food exported from Ireland ( It is never a good policy to export food out of a country during a famine ). However, the British government's policy is not comparable to the Nazi's. The famine in the Ukraine in the 1930's is similar. During that time the harvest was less than normal but the Soviet Communist government ( Stalin ) exported most of the harvest to buy weapons for the military and to build of industry. Stalin also wished to destroy the Ukrainian peasant farms and millions died in this famine. The food exports from Ireland during the famine helped provide the funds for Britain's wars and colonizations .
kilfinnane | Feb 19, 2012, 02:03 AM EST
CitizenWhy, I don't believe it is immoral for the government to intervene on behalf of the hungry but it is immoral for the government to intentionally keep people in poverty in order to maintain power. England used military might and oppressive laws to do it in Ireland. America uses political patronage and a flawed social welfare system. Different methodologies - just as immoral.
welcaro | Feb 18, 2012, 10:45 PM EST
I've got to ask, I've seen estimates about those who died and emigrated at 2 million more than was quoted here, and I don't think I've ever seen 8 million pounds ever quoted in spending for charity. I could be wrong, but I had always heard the British were condemned by many governments for the famine and their handling of it, and in fact exported tons of food instead of helping the starving Irish.
LilPaddy | Feb 18, 2012, 07:38 PM EST
Hey 'ProudCanadian'... For the record, I'm a proud Dubliner AND I DON'T "HATE" THE ENGLISH; no more than I hate "Americans" for the inhuman/unlawful acts of some within the government (which I have been victimized by for the last 21 years). However, they are actions for which I have just this month submitted a request for a Federal Grand Jury investigation on (in L.A. Ca.). People themselves are not bad... But a few bad ones at the top of government can make it seem that way!! My intent is to give these locals a full measure of... "Who began it"!!
awoken32 | Feb 18, 2012, 07:07 PM EST
@dickmac,your 100% correct,there was a potato famine that came from america into ireland but like you said ireland had plenty of other foods such as cheese meats fish corn an the likes,the english in actual fact ate more potato in their daily diet,i dont blame the english people,its was the elites behind them,the prodestants escaped the holocaust aswell,the irish were given a chance to convert to the anglian faith an swear alligiance to the queen,and those patriots died in the thousands rather than do it,our anvestors,its a disgrace the those in power distort the history to suit their wicked agendas,the secret hand/bloodline/illuminati have always used the people as pawns in their game of power,the whole system is evil to the core,education destroys education,religon destroys spirituality,the media destroy the truth,politicans destroy democracy,they are evil bastards an the people need to wake up before it is to late for mankind,WW3 IS ON THE WAY
dickmac | Feb 18, 2012, 02:57 PM EST
I have been a "history nut" for many years. It still amazes me how many Irish and those of direct Irish decent how little the know about An Gorta Mor the Great Hunger. It waas called a FAMINE. Famine means a great scarcity of food. There was NO scarcity of food there was enough food in Ireland to feed 4 times the population. Which then was over 8 million. Unfortunately the potatoe was the main food for the Irish table Why did the population not get the food available! The English Government exported the food out of the country often at gunpoint as the people literally were dying in the streets and fields some even with grass stains on the face from eating the grass for food. The same blight that hit the potatoe crop in Ireland also did so in Europe but they also had other food available and they could eat. No doubt it was the greatest tragedy of the 19th Century where Ireland's population was reduced in half and never recovered. The Irish Government just reconized this officially 3 short years ago.
ProudCanadian | Feb 18, 2012, 01:45 PM EST
Just another English attrocity that was leveled on the Irish and people still wonder why the Irsh hate the English. All the good potatoes where sent to England. If the truth was only known the English probably had something to do with the blight on the potatoes.
murphy666 | Feb 18, 2012, 11:24 AM EST
George Dillon, actually, Queen Victoria contributed 2,000 quid out of her personal resources. By contrast, when she visited Ireland in 1849, Dublin Castle spent 5,000 pounds on ONE banquet. Incidentally, that propaganda visit was likened to "illuminating a graveyard."
OBPiper | Feb 18, 2012, 11:12 AM EST
Actually, the Germans (English) misruling Erie during the Irish holocaust presented a striking parallel to one of the practices of their German cousins in Imperial Germany during WWII in Continental Europe. Both sets of Germans practiced death my willfull indifference, the Nazis using that practice as well as homicide by bullets and gas. My great-grandfather Michael Burns was orphaned at age 3 this way and was vocally bitter about it his entire life.
GeorgeDillon | Feb 18, 2012, 10:07 AM EST
ripley838 --I never heard that quote, and assume it is apocryphal. The fact is that Queen Victoria gave quite a lot for famine relief, 5000 pounds, if I remember correctly.
awoken32 | Feb 18, 2012, 10:00 AM EST
Its a disgrace that the irish holocaust is still not regonised for what it is,the irish people starved to death by the royal family of england,(devils to mankind all over the world),still editors on pages that speak about it never can speak the actual truth on the matter,a holocaust swept under the carpet with no editor or any irish politican or president dare to speak the truth,for fear of the devil family an bloodlines,its a disgrace
ripley838 | Feb 18, 2012, 09:59 AM EST
Wasn't it England's Queen Victoria who said "Ah, if only Oliver Cromwell was alive to see this" ?
CitizenWhy | Feb 18, 2012, 09:49 AM EST
Sadly, many of the Irish Americans commenting here now support the same political/economic policies that led to the famine (as distinguished from the failure of the potato crop): libertarian/laissez faire beliefs that claimed it was immoral for government to intervene on behalf of the hungry in Ireland, to stop exporting from Ireland the abundant non-potato food and use it for hunger relief. Such a mov was considered an immortal interference in the "free market" and the law of supply and demand, and an immoral rewarding of society's "losers." The government finally relented and provided relief, but obviously after so much damage had been done. ... It would be good to spell out what areas were most hit, and why so many died and so many had to leave, and how so many could stay behind and survive and in many cases thrive. I have the impression that the Famine is the defining historical fact for most Irish-Americans while for those in Ireland, for a long time and even still for some, it has been the War of Independence. For the young in Ireland it appears to be the Tiger and then the boom and bust. Depending on which fact you start from, your imagination creates a very different image of Ireland and the Irish.
jamesjlavelle | Feb 18, 2012, 08:53 AM EST
Famine: an extreme scarcity of food. Slaughter: To kill in large numbers. Killing of great numbers of human beings. He who controls the language controls the thought processes. Was there an extreme scarcity of food or was food denied the Irish (as policy)?