Ireland was in the middle of the 19th century an agricultural nation and had 8 million inhabitants who were among the poorest in the western world; most of them were living in single-roomed windowless cabins (as in the picture in the document). Their lands were owned by affluent protestant landlords. The potato, was introduced in Ireland at the end of the 16th century, by the 19th, it became the staple crop for the Irish, because it was easy to grow and the yields were high enough to feed Ireland’s rapidly increasing population: The Irish had large families and the Irish population increased from 5 million at the beginning of the 19th century to 8 million in the middle of the 19th century. The majority of the Irish were, according to the document, “relied on the potato as their sole source of food”.
Ireland was already economically late compared to the rest of the United Kingdom, when the Great famine began in 1845. It lasted 6 years. The main cause of the Famine was that a disease struck the potatoes so the crops were not enough to feed Ireland’s growing population as potato was the staple diet of the country. The crops were significantly decreasing as well as the reserves of potatoes, the peasants started to feel hunger. More and more people starved. As an answer to the low harvest’s crops, the landlords evicted some of the peasants working on their land who couldn’t pay the rents. London thought it wasn’t that serious and that the disease will leave by itself. Yet some help was brought by Britain, settings of soup kitchens, Food aid (import of £100,000 American corn), voluntary committees; but people were still dying from starvation.
As for economic and demographic issues: About 1.4 million Irish died from starvation. There was no employment of any kind. Public works projects had been shut down. Most of the factories and industries were closed. Local agriculture had been utterly disrupted. Soup kitchens were also shut down; the Irish with no money, no job,