'The Great Famine, 1845-1852, Baile na nGall, 30 June 2013 Significance: The Great Famine, which occurred between

1845 and 1852, was neither the first nor the last of Ireland's famine experiences but it was the most profound. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was the most catastrophic event in modern Irish history. The Famine was central to the modern Irish experience, to shaping Ireland as a nation in the modern world. Professor Joseph Lee has described the Irish Famine as 'the greatest single peacetime tragedy in the history of any western European country since the Black Death'. Background: Pre-Famine Ireland In the century before the Great Famine (1845-1852) the Irish population had more than trebled, from approximately 2.5 million in 1750 to about 8.5 million in 1845. The country was very poor by contemporary European standard. The vast majority of the people, some 85 per cent of them, lived in the countryside where they attempted to eke out a living on tiny plots of land or as agricultural labourers. Between one-half and two-thirds of the pre-Famine Irish population were exclusively or heavily dependent on a single source of food, potatoes, a situation that was fraught with danger. Sequence of crop failures in the mid and late 1840s In the autumn of 1845, a fungal disease, phytophtora infestans, commonly referred to as potato blight, appeared in Ireland for the first time, and affected about one-third of the main crop of potatoes. The 1846 crop was a total failure and it was in the winter of 1846 and spring of 1847 that the real impact of the Famine began to be felt. The 1847 potato crop was sound but the yield was small, as only a fraction of the normal crop had been sown. In 1848, there was again a complete failure, compounded by a very poor grain harvest. In 1849, there was a partial failure. It was the repeated failures of the potato crop over a period of years that made the situation so catastrophic. Impact or consequences: Demography The most immediate and startling impact of the Famine was the demographic one. There was a massive population loss through death and emigration. At least 1,000,000 people died of starvation and disease, the vast majority succumbing to one or other of the many infectious diseases that ravaged the country with great malignity during these years. If we take 'averted births' into account, that is the number of children who would have been born in normal circumstances had the Famine not intervened, mortality would have been closer to 1,500,000 people. Emigration: In addition to those who died, another 1 million people fled the country in the immediate Famine years, and in the decade 1845-1855 some 2.1 million emigrated. The vast majority, some 75 per cent, went to the United States, while the remainder scattered throughout various

parts of the British empire. The Irish population continued to decline after the Famine because of a rise in the marriage age, a decline in marriage and birth rates, and, above all, emigration. Chronic emigration continued to drain Irish society of many of its most enterprising
members for a century and a half after the Famine.

Social impact: The Famine marked the real beginning of a fundamental change in the class structure in Ireland. Many landlords found themselves in extreme financial difficulties because of the Famine, mainly because of a sharp increase in taxation at a time when income from land ownership was decreasing because tenants were unable to pay their customary rents. Many property owners were driven to the verge of bankruptcy and a vast amount of Irish land changed hands in the decade after the famine. Many of the new owners were land speculators, out to make a quick profit from improved agricultural undertakings. This led to
larger farms, increased evictions and conversion from tillage to less labour intensive livestock farming.

The financial losses suffered by members of the middle and upper classes were insignificant compared to the calamitous impact of the Famine on the lower classes. It was the bottom onethird of Irish society, the small farmers, poor cottiers and agricultural labourers, who were disproportionately ravaged by hunger, disease and death. Successive years of potato failure from 1845 onwards, with their horrific consequences, all but decimated this class. Many of these people had been Irish-speakers, so that the Famine had a massive impact on the use of Irish as a spoken language, and on the old Gaelic way of life. As the cottiers and labourers disappeared so did their miserable hovels and their garden plots. This resulted in the consolidation of sub-divided land holdings into larger farms, which in turn led to the strengthening of the middle class, and, eventually, to an increase in the power and influence of the Catholic Church. Political consequences: The political consequences of the Great Famine were momentous. The massive population loss through death and emigration, and the inadequacy of the official response to the disaster had a profound influence on the political history of modern Ireland. Many Irish nationalists came to regard the Famine as a crime committed by the British government against the Irish people and this perception fuelled a hatred of British rule in Ireland. More significantly, Irish emigrants carried this hatred of Britain with them to the new world. In their view, British misrule in Ireland was the root cause of all Irish misfortune. Many of these exiles and their descendants involved themselves in ending Britain's role in Ireland. The appeal of the Irish Republican Brotherhood or Fenian organisation, a movement that was simultaneously launched in New York and Dublin in 1858, came in large part from the politicisation of the Famine in the Irish popular consciousness. In all subsequent phases of the Irish struggle for independence, the financial and propagandist support of the Irish in America was of crucial importance.

Government response and relief measures Under the Act of Union, which came into effect on 1 January 1801, Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Successive Tory and Whig governments, under Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell respectively, pursued four basic famine-relief policies: The government response and relief measures: 4 basic initiatives 1. Peel/Tories (autumn 1845-summer 1846): Food imports and public works 2. Russell/Whigs (summer 1846 - end of famine): public works to spring-summer of 1847 3. Soup kitchens (summer 1847) 4. Amended poor law system until end of Famine The Basis of the Nationalist Charge of Genocide against the Government: The relief policies implemented by the Whig government throughout the Famine were obviously and grossly inadequate, given that more than one million people died, and led to the accusation of genocide or race-murder by extreme Irish nationalists. The individual who did most to propagate the charge of genocide against the British was John Mitchel. In The last conquest of Ireland (perhaps), which was published in 1860, Mitchel stated that a 'million and a half of men, women, and children were carefully, prudently, and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance, which their own hands created'. In a continuation of this extract, Mitchel set out his central thesis: 'The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine'. Mitchels charge set the agenda for all subsequent writing on the Famine. The accusation against the British government by Mitchel and other Irish nationalists was based on a number of grounds, one being the continued export of food from Ireland throughout the Famine years. Irish nationalists insisted that in spite of the repeated failures of the potato crop more than enough food was produced in Ireland to feed its people, and if this food had been kept in the country it would have prevented mass mortality. In this interpretation, the Famine was an artificial event, caused not by a shortage of food but by the failure of the British government to close the ports and, secondly, by the need to export food to
pay rents to profligate, absentee landlords. If tenants refused to pay their rents, landlords were legally entitled to seize their crops and livestock, and had the full backing of the state, including the police and army, in doing so. Nationalists regarded the 'forced export' of food as largely responsible

for the deaths of 1,000,000 people through starvation and disease. The second key area on which the charge of genocide is based is that of mass evictions. The relentless eviction of impoverished and helpless tenants, at a time of unprecedented natural disaster, became enshrined in the nationalist consciousness and historiography as 'the great clearances'. These famine evictions came to be regarded as genocidal, as great crimes against

humanity. Many Irish nationalists regarded eviction as an act of deliberate and murderous collusion between Irish landlords and the British government. The impact and legacy of these clearances fuelled Irish revolutionary nationalism at home and among the diaspora for generations. There is no accurate tally of the number of people who were evicted during the Famine, but the most recent research suggests that it may have been in excess of 700,000. These mass evictions were closely associated with mass mortality. For many, eviction was nothing less than a death sentence. Assessment of Government Response and the Charge of Genocide Excess mortality during the famine was unavoidable but a less rigid, less dogmatic response by government would have lessened considerably the number of lives that were lost. Recent work by Irish historians on the links between ideology and Famine relief show that the government's minimal-interventionist policies cost many lives. The Whigs inflicted a massive amount of suffering and death on the Irish people, but for a charge of genocide to stick there must be evidence that British statesmen and their agents in Ireland were knowing and willing collaborators in a deliberate campaign of extermination. With the exception of preIndependence Irish nationalist writers like John Mitchel, and, more recently, Tim Pat Coogan, in his book The Famine plot, Irish historians generally would not support the view that the Famine was an act of deliberate extermination or genocide against the Irish people. However, it is undoubtedly the case that the response from government was inadequate and was unduly influenced by political concerns at home and by prevailing economic theories, linked with ideas of providentialism, that the Famine was an act of God, and as such man should not interfere. The great failure of the Whig government under Lord John Russell was to put principles and doctrines above human lives. Ultimately, the state could and should have done more to preserve life. Famine Memory and Remembrance For the survivors and their descendants the memory of the Famine was both powerful and enduring. It was seared on their very consciousness. Famine memory was preserved in folklore and in folk consciousness. The archives of the Irish Folklore Commission contain a considerable body of material relating to the Great Famine, much of it collected as a centenary commemoration project in 1945. The commission circulated a short questionnaire on the Famine and accumulated some 3,500 pages of testimony in both English and Irish, adding to the material that had previously been collected in the 1930s and early 1940s. In addition to this act of national institutional commemoration of the centenary of the Famine, the Irish government commissioned a history of the event in 1944 and provided a substantial grant of 1,500. Editorial mismanagement and a series of mishaps delayed the appearance of the work until late 1956, more than a decade after its intended publication date. Apart from these two initiatives, the Famine was almost completely overlooked in its centenary years in the mid and late 1940s. Instead, the country commemorated the centenary of the death of the Young Irelander Thomas Davis in September 1845; centenaries of the birth of Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell in 1846; the centenary of the death of

Daniel O'Connell in 1847, and the centenary of the failed but symbolically significant 1848 rebellion. These events were marked by elaborate official and unofficial ceremonies. The Famine was largely ignored. The absence of ceremony has been attributed to Ireland's economic and social stagnation in the mid and late 1940s. The Famine centenary coincided with the ending of the Second World War, and the immediate post-war years brought scarcity and distress. By September 1946, the Irish grain harvest appeared to have been ruined because of poor weather conditions. Bread rationing was introduced in January 1947 - the centenary of 'Black '47' and the turf ration was reduced shortly afterwards, at a time when Ireland was suffering the most severe winter conditions for many years. In late February 1947, almost 100 years to the day after the establishment of public soup kitchens to feed victims of the Great Famine, the Dublin City Manager asked the Minister for Defence to set up public food kitchens to help people cope with the shortage of fuel. These and other shortages, and continuing high levels of emigration, were not the most auspicious circumstances for recalling the Famine of a century earlier. The lack of commemoration suggests that the centenary of the Famine conveyed some uncomfortable messages, such as the failure of the independent Irish state to reverse a century of emigration and population decline, or its difficulty in feeding and heating its citizens adequately in 1947. All of this is in sharp contrast to what happened in the 1990s, when the 150th anniversary of the Famine came round. The sesquicentennial commemorations in 1995 and subsequent years were marked by lectures, conferences, famine walks, radio and television broadcasts, and a variety of other events of greater or lesser crassness. The sesquicentennial captured the popular imagination and stimulated interest in famine research at local and national level, which resulted in a huge outpouring of material. Underpinning all of this interest and activity was the sense that the memory of the Famine was incomplete, that the event had been forgotten or suppressed, and that there was a 'silence' about it as a result. Various reasons have been put forward for this 'silence', if indeed there has been such a silence. One maintains that the state ignored the Famine in order not to disturb Anglo-Irish relations. This was particularly the case after the eruption of the Northern Ireland conflict in the late 1960s. A second argument attributes the lack of memory to the severity of the event, that memory was suppressed either because of the trauma of the period or the guilt of those who survived at the expense of others' lives. A third explanation relates to what is seen as the absence of literary treatments of the Famine, maintaining that the trauma exceeded the capacity of literary forms and frequently of language itself to deal with it.
(Conventional: newspapers and other contemporary accounts, poetry etc.: language was not strong enough, words not powerful enough to convey the meaning of the Famine) The 'silence' surrounding the Famine was shattered at the time of its sesquicentennial. Most recent publications on the Great Famine have tended to re-establish the centrality of the event in Irish and European history. They have addressed the ideological and economic contexts in which the Famine occurred, and they have given due scope to its catastrophic dimension. As such they have tended to

restore the older nationalistic perspective, which had been dimmed by a half century of revisionist interpretation. Historiography is one of the ways in which historical memory is captured and preserved and it is possible to discern three distinct phases in Famine historiography 1. Nationalist: Mitchel (genocidal, with a propagandist intent) 2. Revisionist: perhaps from the 1940s to the 1980s; intention was to play down the catastrophic dimensions of the Famine 3. Post-revisionist: coinciding, perhaps, with sesquicentennial, and restoring the older nationalist perspective. However, there is one essential difference between the current historiographical interpretation and that of John Mitchel and other nineteenth-century nationalist polemicists and propagandists, and that is that the vast majority of current writers would not regard the British response to the Great Famine as deliberately genocidal, although they would lay a full measure of responsibility at Britain's door.