The Great Famine: Ireland 1847 to 1851

By Brian Igoe

This is a Litebite Book, about 6,000 words long. The Great Famine which afflicted Ireland between 1846 and 1851 is perhaps the most studied, the most commented upon, the most reviled, and yet the most formative event in modern Irish History. Many books have been written about the famine, most recently The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy (2012) by Tim-Pat Coogan. What was the Famine? What caused it? Why did so many die, or leave if they could? I look at these questions beginning with a brief look at the background to the famine, chiefly the social and political state of Ireland before the famine hit, involving a brief outline of the Landlord and Tenant set-up and in particular the agricultural infrastructure. I then go on to describe the potato blight which was the direct cause, and examine its origins and effects. This leads to that much vexed and little understood topic, the reaction of the Government to the spectre of death by starvation of so many people - what they did to help, what they didn't do, and why. Was it nineteenth century genocide, as has been claimed? Was it beurocratic bungling? Or was the scale of this Act of God just too great for the machinery of Government at the time to recognise and address? I give my take on all this, and then I look at those notorious evictions, and finally comment on the long term impact on Ireland, how it was changed, and changed forever. Finally bear in mind that this is, deliberately, a short book, a summary if you like. My book on Daniel O’Connell, for example, is a little over 75,000 words. This one is just over 5,000. A LiteBite, in fact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Igoe
• Release date: Sep 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311529299

Brian Igoe

You don’t need to know much about me because I never even considered writing BOOKS until I was in my sixties. I am a retired businessman and have written more business related documents than I care to remember, so the trick for me is to try and avoid writing like that in these books…. Relevant, I suppose, is that I am Irish by birth but left Ireland when I was 35 after ten years working in Waterford. We settled in Zimbabwe and stayed there until I retired, and that gave me loads of material for books which I will try and use sometime. So far I have only written one book on Africa, “The Road to Zimbabwe”, a light hearted look at the country’s history. And there’s also a small book about adventures flying light aircraft in Africa. And now I am starting on ancient Rome, the first book being about Julius Caesar, Marcus Cato, the Conquest of Gaul, (Caesar and Cato, the Road to Empire) and the Civil War. But for most of my books so far I have gone back to my roots and written about Irish history, trying to do so as a lively, living subject rather than a recitation of battles, wars and dates. My book on O’Connell, for example, looks more at his love affair with his lovely wife Mary, for it was a most successful marriage and he never really recovered from her death; and at the part he played in the British Great Reform Bill of 1832, which more than anyone he, an Irish icon, Out of Ireland, my book on Zimbabwe starts with a 13th century Chief fighting slavers and follows a 15th century Portuguese scribe from Lisbon to Harare, going on to travel with the Pioneer Column to Fort Salisbury, and to dine with me and Mugabe and Muzenda. And nearer our own day my Flying book tells of lesser known aspects of World War 2 in which my father was Senior Controller at RAF Biggin Hill, like the story of the break out of the Scharnhorst and Gneisau, or capturing three Focke Wulfs with a searchlight. And now for my latest effort I have gone back to my education (historical and legal, with a major Roman element) and that has involved going back in more ways than one, for the research included a great deal of reading, from Caesar to Plutarch and from Adrian Goldsworthy to Rob Goodman & Jimmy Soni.

Book preview

This is a LiteBite Book, the equivalent of up to fifty pages of a Paperback or Pocket Book. This one is around 7,000 words.

THE GREAT FAMINE

A Survey of Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy

By BRIAN IGOE

Copyright © 2014 by Brian Igoe

Smashwords Edition.

Contents

Introduction

Background

The Potato Blight and its impact

The Government Reaction

Evictions

Impact on the United States of America

Impact on Ireland

Introduction.

So much has been written on ‘The Famine’ that I write this survey with great diffidence. In my opinion it is the most studied, the most commented upon, the most reviled, and yet the most formative event in modern Irish History.

What was the Famine? What caused it? Why did so many die, or leave if they could? What was the impact in the end? Two works I have seen, part of a series of books written on Irish History by Desmond Keenan, PhD, presents a most unorthodox view, contrary to otherwise current perceptions. They were published in 2001 and 2006 and are entitled Pre-Famine Ireland (Social Structure) and Post-Famine Ireland (Social Structure – Ireland as it really was. Was it?

Another more recent view is The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony 1845-1852 by Ciarán Ó Murchadh, published in 2011. This is actually his second book on the subject, the first being an earlier study of the Famine in and around Ennis, Sable Wings Over the Land, published in Ennis in 1998. Best known, I suppose, and arguably still the best, is Cecil Woodham-Smith's monumental 1962 work The Great Hunger. Mrs Woodham-Smith was a Fitzgerald of the Kildare family, and one of her ancestors was the Nationalist Lord Edward Fitzgerald. She took a balanced view of England’s rôle, recognising and emphasising the sharp distinction of the opposing approaches of Peel and Trevelyan. The most recent (I think), and so far as I can ascertain the only one available as an eBook, is The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy (2012) by Tim-Pat Coogan. This is Tim-Pat’s latest book as I write, and like much of what he writes and says, it tends to be