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purplecat ([personal profile] purplecat) wrote2008-11-17 09:30 pm
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How did the Irish Potato Famine end?

Everyone is terribly coy about the subject. Wikipedia, for instance, just says it ended.

I've found one web site which attributes the end to the reduced population but that doesn't really make sense to me. The small-holding population of Ireland was dependent on the potato as its one crop and the blight, as I understand it, was pretty pervasive especially in any damp season (which are not uncommon in Ireland).

So it seems to me you need a diversification of the basic diet, possibly to other varieties of potato or some other change in farming practices that limits the spread of the blight. Or, you need sufficient population decrease that potato fields are widely enough apart that the blight has difficultly spreading - even assuming a 20% decrease in the population (based on census records which most historians seem to agree are inaccurate) that seems unlikely to me. Or some sort of mutation in the potato, or the disease, or climate change (given the blight was worse in damp years)?

Or am I misunderstanding how the blight works? I mean it came back consistently four years out of five, only letting up in one dry season so it seems pretty pervasive to me, not the sort of thing that burns itself out?

Anyone have any idea how the famine ended?

[identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com 2008-11-17 11:17 pm (UTC)(link)
The first rule of Irish History always seems to be 'It was the fault of the feckin' English baastuds', so possibly the feckin' English baastuds decided to stop blighting the potato crop...

[identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com 2008-11-17 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
To be fair, this is also the first rule of Welsh History, Scottish History, Indian history, American History...

[identity profile] foradan.livejournal.com 2008-11-18 06:39 am (UTC)(link)
I have gathered that the relaxation of the 'Corn Laws' was instrumental in providing alternative food sources to the Irish population.

Possibly a year off from growing potatoes, and then not growing them as intensively as previously (due to reduced population) will have reduced the hold of the blight.

Given that it wasn't the entire population of Ireland that depended on potatoes (those on the coast ate fish, and the richer farmers in the east grew other crops), and the very large population decrease, I expect that the number left of the potato dependent population segment was actually very small.

[identity profile] foradan.livejournal.com 2008-11-18 10:11 am (UTC)(link)
We learned about the famine in school, I thought we learned about the end as well, but it was a long time ago. My memory of the Irish history course was that it was very concentrated on the violent and peaceful resistance to English rule, to the exclusion of any other events*, but it didn't go as far as blaming the English for causing the famine.

* ie the English Army was always seen as the people putting down the rebellions, it was never mentioned that a large number of the soldiers who fought in India and in the Peninsular War were Irish. And never mentioned that the Duke of Wellington was born in Ireland (Dublin obviously didn't really count as Ireland).

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[identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com 2008-11-18 10:38 am (UTC)(link)
NMP, but I understand there is a view that the repeal of the corn laws didn't help much because the people in Ireland who had been living off potatoes had no income at all, so even cheap corn was not much help, as they had no money to buy it with.

That said, if British political moves such as the repeal of the corn laws, relief aid, workhouses, and the various work creation schemes actually did have any effect, then you may find that people are a bit reluctant to write about that. It might be a bit politically charged.

(Anonymous) 2010-02-02 12:01 am (UTC)(link)
"Corn" can refer to any grain back in those terrible times
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[identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com 2010-02-02 01:08 am (UTC)(link)
...? Yes, I know corn referred to a mix of grains. In fact, in the UK, where I and the other people posting on this thread live, 'corn' is still a generic word for grain.

I believe that it is largely in the USA that the word 'corn' is used to mean maize, and maize only? We say 'maize' in general food manufacture, or as flour, or 'sweet corn' for the tinned stuff or fresh cobs.

Of course none of that helped the Irish. They had no money at all, and no potatoes, so it didn't help that much that the repeal of the Corn Laws applied to lots of different grains!

(Anonymous) 2009-04-10 08:52 am (UTC)(link)
'God brought the blight but the English brought the famine': John Mitchell
'Just because I was born in a stable doesn't make me a horse' Duke of Wellington on being called an Irishman