The Irish Potato Famine - Essay Example

For those studying history, perhaps one of the most challenging tasks is to be able to comprehend the meaning of historical events as perceived by people who lived when they were taking place. In this regard, it is really difficult to imagine some horrible episodes of which the world history is full. The Irish Potato Famine is one of such tragic episodes in our history. Nevertheless, this infamous famine is a given fact of history of Ireland and Great Britain, so it is no wonder that it has been carefully studied by historians, and that some quite different opinions have emerged as to what degree this famine was initiated by natural causes and to what extent the famine was a disaster waiting to happen. Let us try to overview the historical context which preceded The Irish Potato Famine, and on ground of this try to find out what principle factors provoked the famine. The Irish Potato Famine is the name of a famine that took place in Ireland between 1845 and 1849, but immediate effects of which were felt until 1851. If we refer to dry statistics, then we may learn that the total number of people who died from this famine is unclear because there were no exact historical records. However, according to different estimates it is supposed that the general number of victims that can be directly and indirectly attributed to the famine ranges from 500,000 to more than one million (Lyons, 1985, p.14). Aside from the enormous death toll, there were many other social and economic consequences of the famine. Among such consequences were several million Irish refugees who during and after the famine emigrated to Britain, America, Canada, and Australia (Scally, 1996, p.167). Also, as we shall see, the effects of the famine on Irish culture and economy were so great that it significantly changed them. At this point we may begin to wonder whether the very fact that such a profound historical event as the Irish Potato Famine took place can be explained purely by natural causes, or maybe there was an involvement of social, economic, and political factors which contributed to the famine To see if this was the case, let us firstly overview political and economic environment in which the famine happened, and then consider demographic and agricultural aspects relevant to the famine. Speaking of the political context of the famine, we of course must mention relations between Ireland and Great Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century. Since the Act of Union of 1800 Ireland was to be formally represented by one hundred members in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, which was merely a one-fifth proportion of representation of Great Britain. Moreover, in addition to the low level of Irish representation in the parliament of Britain the needs of Ireland were given a low priority. It was not surprising as most of the members of government had never even been in Ireland themselves. To better feel the situation of that time, we should add that the British dominance was as well fortified by the unification of the churches of Ireland and England, with the ensuing leadership in Ireland of the Anglicans and exclusion of Roman Catholics and Presbyterians from membership in governmental bodies. Only by 1829 was political equality restored in Ireland in certain spheres. This included the possibility to participate in free trade between the British Isles, and admission of Irish merchandise to colonies of Britain on equal terms with British goods (Otuathaigh, 1972). Now, on ground of the mentioned signs of oppression of Ireland it was suggested by some historians that the Irish Potato Famine was in fact a genocide initiated by the British against Ireland. However, this accusation is dismissed by most scholars as too radical, and instead it is thought that the policies of Britain during the famine can rather be blamed as fallacious, ignorant, and fatal, and that as a significant reduction of population of Ireland was deemed desirable by many British politicians they might just had decided not to intervene in the natural course of events (Scally, 1996, p.9). That this latter scenario is realistic is suggested by the fact that such a great crisis happened within the imperial territory and close to its centre of power, and at a time when the tendency towards prosperity emerged due to the Industrial Revolution. The reaction that the Britain had on the Irish Potato Famine rather resembled colonialist ignorance of troubles of native population, so from this point of view the famine may be viewed as lying at the intersection of principles of the old and modern world. So, as we may begin to see by now, the tragedy of the famine was intertwined with at least political problems of Ireland in the middle of the nineteenth century. But in addition to political troubles, one of the most urgent economic problems was the existing system of land-holdings. Since the Middle Ages, the possession of the land in Ireland by Irish owners was declining because settlers were taking control of large portions of land. At the same time, in Ireland the situation was aggravated by the discrimination of religions different from the Church of Ireland, while the dominant religion of most of Irish population was Roman Catholicism. Therefore, Irish Catholics were threatened with property confiscations, and as a consequence of all those circumstances before the famine most of the Irish Catholics held small and often impoverished tenantries, and had neither a fair rent and assurance in stability of their possession rights, nor the right for free sale. In addition to this situation, there existed a tradition in Irish culture which promoted subdivision of property and land. In accordance with this tradition, it was not only the oldest son who inherited property and land, but rather the family estate was equally allotted between all male heirs. This practice lead to the emergence of numerous small pieces of land in possession, and this constraint contributed to the dominance of potato as the only specimen which could be cultivated in quantities needed for nourishment of large families. But even with such a useful food as potato at hand, the degree of poverty before the famine was so great that, taking into consideration rental payments, around third of small land parcels in Ireland could not maintain families that possessed them. At the same time, due to earlier agricultural crisises many large estates were also experiencing financial difficulties. However, paradoxically, attempts of tenants to obtain the growth of productivity of their land were curtailed by the threat of the existing system that any increment of value of land would cause a significant increase of rental payment. As a result of the mentioned factors, in the 1840s the landholding system of Ireland was already hampered by inefficient laws and practises (Otuathaigh, 1972). Now, let us return to the topic of the advantages and drawbacks of the potato, which as we have indicated was the main food in Ireland. The potato has quite a high nutritive value, and is very convenient to cultivate. For example, to procure future crops it was sufficient after the first crop to merely leave some potatoes in the field, and the problems with weeding and irrigation were virtually non-existent. Because of those advantages, after its introduction around 1650 the potato since the end of the eighteenth century had turned into the major food crop in Ireland. Potentially, even relatively small parcels of land could procure food sufficient for both family needs and for feeding of pigs. However, the over-reliance on the potato quickly led to the loss of flexibility by the food system in Ireland as the nutritive energy was mostly gathered from the single crop. But while this fact alone was not peculiar only for Ireland, the mentioned Irish tradition of subdivision of plots into smaller ones among children added to this dependency though the following side effects - firstly, because of the available food the number children in families was rapidly growing, and, secondly, having the prospect to inherit land, even though a small parcel, instigated heirs to marry at a young age and produce families, thus laying ground for further subdivisions (Scally, 1996, p.73-75). So, it was in this social and economic environment that in 1845 a potato blight, which spread throughout Europe, turned potatoes in Ireland totally inedible, and by 1847 the overwhelming majority of crops was destroyed. While initially available food reserves compensated to a degree for losses, when the blight returned in 1849 there was no reserve available for solution of the problem, because even though in the time of the famine Ireland had its own resources to feed the whole population, the obligatory removal of food from the region lead to the huge human losses during the famine. The British policies which allowed for the tragedy of the famine to develop were formed after the Tory government headed by Sir Robert Peel, who had some notion about the situation in Ireland, was substituted by a Whig ministry under Lord John Russell. Russell supported a laissez-faire economic policy of non-intervention, and sought to support Ireland via an indirect system, which stipulated that aid be provided exclusively to those who possessed no more than one quarter of an acre of land. The effect of this law was that poor land holders had to choose between sacrificing their land and risking deadly starvation. To make things worse, the system of payments of taxes by landlords was so set up that taxes depended on the number of tenants within an estate. At the same time, local relief for impoverished was paid from those taxes. This system of reliance on the local relief funded by local landlords forced those landlords to evict impoverished land holders to balance their expenses, but as those evictees were relying on the local relief, the financial burden on landlords was further increasing, which only instigated them towards more evictions, because those who were unable to pay rent could turn landlords insolvent (Gray, 1995). In this way, laws aimed at support of people risking starvation were actually causing more starvation in the end. While it was clear that only centralised funding could solve this paradoxical situation, government of Russell was against this decision. This fact alone was a grave mistake of the British government, as the corresponding regulation of the rights of landlords would be initiated in Ireland only in the 1870s. In addition, during the time of the famine Irish and British large owners of land exported different crops and livestock, which, if left for local needs, could have saved many lives. While Peel realised that it was necessary to continue exporting in order to prevent the downfall of the economic system of landlords, he nevertheless used imported Indian maize as a means to nourish starving people. His successor Russell refused from import of maize which made the famine unavoidable (Lyons, 1985, pp.43-47). That the underlying causes of the Irish Potato Famine were not only natural is also suggested by the fact that even though potato blights would happen in Ireland again in the future, for example in 1872 and 1879, those events did not cause mass deaths. While those blights were not so severe as the Irish Potato Famine, the lesser death toll was mostly due to other factors. For one, the industrial development led to the advancement of agricultural tools, technologies, and railways, which facilitated production and transportation of food. The discontinuance of the practise of subdivision conjoined with the effects of mass emigration co-operated to increase the average size of farm lands, which allowed farmers to cultivate various crops. All this, coupled with the growth of well-being in urban regions, made agriculture of the 1870s much more efficient and less potato dependent. Finally, the system of Irish land possession totally changed and shifted to a better economic principles as it began to favour smaller owned farms instead of large estates with numerous tenants. Still, the effects of the famine were not completely overcome. During the famine, which was a culmination of earlier problems like economic stagnation, overpopulation, lack of land, and others, many Irish families had to leave their land (Scally, 1996, pp.159-160). On ground of this fact and our previous observations we may conclude that it is a wrong assumption to exclusively assign all the loss of population only to the famine, and to blame only natural causes in the emergence of the Irish Potato Famine in the first place. Rather, preconditions for the famine were accumulating for many decades, and the tragic interplay between economic policy of Britain, unproductive methods of agriculture, and the ill-fated strike of the destructive potato blight initiated the tragic Irish Potato Famine. And although we can hardly imagine the scope of suffering during the famine, the consequences of that event are alive today, at least for many generations of numerous Irish diaspora for whom that sad historical episode had served as a zero point of their new life beyond Ireland. Sources Gray, P. (1995). The Irish Famine. Gardners Books. Lyons, F., S., L. (1985). Ireland Since the Famine. HarperCollins Publishers. Otuathaigh, G. (1972). Ireland Before the Famine, 1798-1848. Irish Book Center. Scally, R. (1996). The End of Hidden Ireland: Rebellion, Famine, and Emigration. Oxford University Press. Read More