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by Niall O'Dowd

New Irish famine data shows the horrific scale of the devastation of the Great Hunger

Posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 at 02:04 AM
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Recent statistics from the Irish Census about post-Famine Ireland are an extraordinary treasure trove.

Most important, however, the statistics also quote extensively from previous Census material, dating back to 1831.

Since practically every Census from the 19th century was destroyed by the authorities or in the great blaze that happened at the Four Courts in Dubin on the outbreak of the civil war in 1921, these are the only documents that can show an Ireland that was profoundly different to what we have today.

They reveal in cold numbers the impact of the Irish Famine, the greatest human disaster to afflict any country in Europe in the 19th Century.

Town by town, village by village, we can track the declining population, the death of communities and the rapid extinguishing of the Irish language as the first tongue of the nation's people.

Imagine America going from 300 million people to 100 million, and English dying out overnight as the first language -- and you get a sense of the scale of the catastrophe.

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From 1821 to 1831, the new figures show the population leaped by over 14 percent in what is now the Irish Republic. Ireland was approaching its all-time high total of 8 million people on the cusp of the Famine.

Ironically, it was the growth of the potato as the staple crop that created this incredible growth. The potato provides enough nutrients on its own to sustain large populations, and Ireland thrived on the alien import from the Andes first brought in as a luxury food for the rich, but soon adopted by the masses.

From 1831 to 1841 the population continued to grow, increasing by over 5 percent as the island reached the historic eight million mark. Then came 1845.

The Famine blight almost certainly came from an American ship. There had been similar crop failures in parts of America in the two years before, but nothing like what was going to befall Ireland. That winter was wet and extraordinarily long. In the spring the potato crop failed. The potatoes in the fields were black and rotten.

"A fearful malady has broken out among the potato crop... the fields are said to be completely desolated. There is hardly a sound sample in. As for cure for this distemper, there is none.." reported one newspaper. That year, one-third of the crop failed. In 1846 one half, and then in Black '47, the entire crop failed.

The Census from 1851 reveals the sad facts. The population had dropped by over 21 percent. Entire villages were depopulated, the countryside laid waste. The great trek to America is well underway.

It is the hinge of history.

Without the Famine, we would never have come to this land, no antecedents of John F. Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan, or Eugene O'Neill. We would have become a European people, with no far-flung outposts from Australia to Canada to the U.S . Our history as a people revolved around those four years from 1845 to 1848, the worst years of the Famine.

The decline begins in the Census figures. From 1861 to 1871 the population slumps a further 8 percent, followed by 5 percent in the following ten years to 1881 and then over ten percent to 1891 and over 7 per cent by 1901. All in all from 1851 to 1901 the population drops an astounding 63 percent.

In that same time the language dies, side by side with the harvest. The number of Gaelic speakers dropped by over 80 percent. A traveler who visited in 1844 and came back in 1900 would have seen an utterly different land.

What the British could not accomplish -- the death of the old Gaelic order -- the Famine did. The new Census figures are an extraordinary account of that historic and awful event.

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108 Comments

15 - 108 | See all comments

NYCsheridan | Feb 18, 2012, 08:00 PM EST
Joycean, my direct ancestor, Barney Sheridan, who fought in the Irish regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers during the American Civil war, was quoted as being "horrified" when seeing a Southern soldier bayoneted for no reason while he was trying to surrender. I doubt your "historical" rendering of Irish brutality has any basis in fact.

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Madeliene | Feb 12, 2012, 06:27 PM EST
jacersayagain, you seem to be the only one who has ever read our history

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Bailey2000 | Jan 21, 2012, 04:03 PM EST
The Dublin London air route is the busiest in Europe.We have just borrowed 10,000 million Euros from the British Government.There are approximately 1 million Irish born people living in London. Ireland and Britain are logically, historically and linguistic as close as Scotland and England. The surprise effect of the Famine was to drive us apart for 150 years. I think that threatened by a common enemy in Paris and Berlin we will soon be reunited, ready to fight the Euro Quango left.

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ciaradexy | Jan 05, 2012, 09:15 PM EST
Jacers, i cant lose my irishness. I AM Irish. Im living here 35 years. Im here for the longhaul. This country is part of me and Im part of it. Catholicism has nothing to do with modern ireland. People arent so superstitious anymore and send their kids to educate Together schools which arent religious at all and the sooner the church is gone from here the better. it has no place in a modern country.

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sirpeter | Jan 05, 2012, 05:56 PM EST
I wasn't saying the Irish were not brutal.Just that they were no more brutal then anyone else.You said they were VERY brutal.Kind of implying Irish soldiers were known for their extra brutality.I have read quite a bit on the Native American Indians.Plenty Irish in the US army.But I never read they were singled out as been extra brutal.That's all I was thinking.

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jacersagain | Jan 01, 2012, 06:14 PM EST
(...more) Anyways, I digress - My point in this discussion under Niall’s article above was that many Irishmen who fled the Great Famine went on to become soldiers in the US Army for want of a wage and a meal - and many fought in a brutal manner for that meal (as I said before: “kill to live or be killed”). But then, all wars are brutal – there is further irony in the fact that all of the men who died at Little Bighorn died unpaid, because the American Govt didn’t have any money to pay them at that time. >>> I digress again... The Great Irish Famine went on to have a great devastating effect on Native American Indians by these later events and the actions of survivors of the Famine in American History. In the wider context of history, I think the tragedies of the Irish Famines extended to effect and affect the tragedy of Native American history. The English Govt of the days and years during the Irish Famines would not have known that back then - would they? Hindsight, anyone? Lessons of war and history, anyone? - esp in today’s world. One could start by asking present-day 7th Cavalry descendants – still known the Garryowens.

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jacersagain | Jan 01, 2012, 06:09 PM EST
(... more) Native Irishmen and/or their descendants took part in the Sands Creek massacre of Native Indians. The post-Civil War US 7th Cavalry, for example, had many native Irishmen (but not exclusively so... some were English, German, Swedes) in its ranks (nick-named the Garryowens to this day, even in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the jolly Irish tune). Its main function back then was to clear a way across the Indian-inhabited Great Plains for pioneers, gold hunters and settlers moving westward. The 7th took part in the massacre of Indians at Waschita River (1868) and at Wounded Knee (1890). In between, famously, the 7th Cavalry under General George Custer, charged with hunting down Indians, were ambushed at the Little Bighorn. It had many native Irishmen in its ranks, one famous one being Capt Myles Keogh from Co. Carlow (killed that day) who also fought in the Papal Wars in Europe before emigrating to the US of A (maybe this is the Capt Keogh that joycean mentions below?). Capt Keogh’s horse, ironically named Comanche, was the only living thing found at the Little Bighorn battle site, standing beside Keogh’s body (and, ironically again, found by another Irishman soldier, a friend of Keogh’s). The 7th Cavalry took the horse in, retired, fed and cared for it until it died ard 1890 (at least that is what I was taught in school). (more...)

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jacersagain | Jan 01, 2012, 06:00 PM EST
@ sirpeter, it was indeed meself who first wrote below that it was disturbing for me to learn that Irishmen were brutal soldiers during the Indian wars. The first such acts of brutal massacres were in fact carried out by US settlers called Scots-Irish (who should properly be called Ulster-Scots) who were already-known to be fierce fighters, being of the ferocious Lowland Scottish clans that fought against the English and later settled in Ulster as part of the Plantation deals they were offered by the English (to get them out from under their own English noses: e.g. “Chieftain Campbell! Chieftain McLean! Chieftain McDonald! Chieftain Duncan! Stop fighting us nice English, take your Presbyterian viciousness to Catholic Ireland instead of us good English and we’ll give you 3000 acres apiece in Ulster!” The Campbells, McLeans, McDonalds, Duncans and others like them accepted - and the rest was sadly left to present-day Irish History). That was before they headed on to immigrate to the US, because the English in Ireland even turned on them too in Ulster (most Ulster-Scots fought against the English in America’s Revolution). But it could be argued that their massacres of Indians were revenge acts for Indian brutalities (I’m not an expert to argue on such matters). My main point was that many Irishmen, including those of Scottish-Ulster descent, who survived the 18thC famine and the later Great Famine, immigrated to the US, joined the fledgling US Army and took part in the early and later Indian Wars, before and after the American Civil War, solely to earn a wage and a daily meal. (More...)

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joycean | Dec 31, 2011, 09:43 AM EST
Sirpeter, Jacers made the original comment:"It was particularly disturbinge...." I simply acknowledged that there were certainly Irish in US- Indian conflicts between 1600-1890, and in the Civil War. and they were not necessarily grunts, Gen Custer, Gen Sheridan, Capt. Keogh. A relative of mine, Gen. Edward Logan, for whom Logan Airport is named, fought in the Spanish-American War. My I-A husband fought in Viet Nam. If you would like a jaundiced view of the Irish, Don Akerson's An Irish History of Civilization is one.If you want information about Irish-American soldiers, The Wild Geese website lists some.

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joycean | Dec 31, 2011, 08:56 AM EST
Sirpeter, I never did make any such comment.

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ciaradexy | Dec 31, 2011, 06:55 AM EST
Jacers-I have american cousins so Ive spent plenty of time with them.

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sirpeter | Dec 30, 2011, 11:48 PM EST
joycean.Where is the evidence that Irish soldiers were very brutal to American Indians ect?I can't find your original comment just Jacers repeating what you said.You do have evidence to back up this do you?You do have written evidence from reliable sources to make such a comment on IC's hallowed ground?As I said i didn't read your original comment.But I just can't see an Irishman writing about his brutality as a grunt in the US army.I know Colonel Chivington fancied a bit of brutality at the Sand Creek Massacre,but he was of English blood.We have written evidence of that.Also good old Georgie Washington he always fancied a good old Indian massacre.I could be wrong but where could I find this written evidence?

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AMWilson | Dec 30, 2011, 10:57 PM EST
... and, likewise, just because someone falls into the "Irish-American" catagory, does not automatically make them patronising, shallow, clueless, or completely lacking in social awareness/etiquette. I have no doubt that you have met a significant number of I-A morons - I know that I have - but we I-A's are not all members of the "plastic green hat" crowd, and I'm not sure why our love of traditional Irish culture, our participation in our local GAA clubs, and our dedication to the language seem to be such offensive traits to Native Irish. Is that what you find to be so patronising?

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joycean | Dec 30, 2011, 09:11 PM EST
Jacers, it is true that there were conflicts between the European settlers and Native Americans from the 1600s-1890s. Certainly Irishmen fought in those battles, as well as in the Civil War in the 1860s. My ancestors, however, did not arrive in this country until around 1900, after those conflicts were settled. And they lived in Massachusetts, far from the frontier. I would agree that Joseph Kennedy was a shrewd, successful businessman, but he was hardly effected by the Famine. He was born in this country and Harvard educated. His father-in-law, JFK's grandfather, James Fitzgerald was a successful politian, mayor of Boston and part of Boston's Irish political machine. I think the best explanation of Joseph Kennedy would be to say he made money by doing business in ways that were legal at the time, but on the edge. He became wealthy by using his friendship with FDR's son. so that he had advance knowledge of Prohibition's ending, and went to Scotland to get exclusive rights to distribute Scotch whiskey. He also made a number of profitable real estate deals, like buying the Chicago Mercantile Mart and getting into motion pictures at the very begining. Some people like to accuse him of bootlegging, but he was already a millionaire before the beginning of Prohibition. I am actually fascinated by what happened in Boston around 1900. The Irish took over the city government and helped each other. They built a complete social structure: Catholic parochial schools, churches, hospitals, and Catholic universities. My grandfather became a successful restauranteur. A great-aunt became an artist who taught school and worked on the decorative art in the newly built churches. My father's family were very poor. His father became terminally ill, and his mother made ends meet by renting our beds to laborers, including some of her Kerry relatives. But my father received a scholarship to Boston College and we joined the middle class.

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sirpeter | Dec 30, 2011, 08:01 PM EST
I have studied the Irish Famine for years in depth with many historians and like all history it is biased.In German schools they never refer to the death camps as Nazi/German death camps.Basically because ALMOST everyone in Germany was a Nazi supporter in one way or the other.They refer to them just as "The Polish Death Camps".It's called "The Selective George Dillon Educational System"Accidentally getting it wrong on purpose.It's important to any nation that you don't tell your children that empire and power is built on inhumane savagery and death.In Germany empire building was called Lebensraum (living space) and Special Treatment.In America they called it Manifest Destiny (destined to expand)and Reservations to be followed by modern day words like Freedom by Shock and Awe.The British used words like Laissez-Faire which can make a nation so poor you can die of starvation surrounding by food because you don't have the money to buy it.Been poor can get you killed every time starting with the first caveman down on his luck.Only the German genocide can be classed as genocide because it's wrong to write "special treatment of people" into a countries constitution.Accidental genocide on purpose is still allowed.Ask any tribe in the Amazon.

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