What are the main points of the Irish potato famine?

Question

What are the main points of the Irish potato famine?

Answer 1

yeah the dude above has it fairly well covered, there is more to it than that, the population still has not recovered to 1845 numbers,( there was about 8 million people in Ireland in 1844, today we have about 4 million here, including alot of migrant worker's), we are about half way there, English indifference played no part in the actual potato blight( blight is the name of the disease that killed the potato.It rotted the potatoes in the ground, the indifference was that they did not help feed us and that killed many millions of us. they hunted us of our land when we in turn could not pay the " rent" ( on our own land). between 1845 and 1847 2 million died and a further 2 million fled the country, mostly to America, a further 300,000 died in the following 2 years with 700,000 leaving for America in what was known as coffin ships( chilling). this is just a guess, so many people were buried in mass graves with no documentation, so we are unsure of how many actually died, estimates from america put the figure of between 2-3 million, ellis Island had not been established at this point. so the death toll could be as much as 3 million, all we know is that in 1848 there was 3.1 million in the country.

      The potato was our main source of food for the simple reason that planting one potato yields about 10-15 potatoes, most of our land was used to grow grain and food stuffs for England, leaving only a small patch of land to support a family. by the time england decied to help, it was to late, and the only help they did give was to import what was known as indian meal, that was it, even though the fields were full of cattle, sheep, fruit, vegetables and grain, all this was for the english market. so you see why the Irish resent the english so much, even though it happened over 150 years ago, it has left a scar that has not completely healed... hope that helps

Answer 2

It wasn't the 'English indifference'...

It was UK governing body (though largely English and landowning) that ignored the blight and the plight, but still kept taking other food crops away from Ireland.

Whilst the population has not recovered to its peak of 8 million it is now just under 6 million for the whole island (not 4 as stated above).

The church did its best against a rising tide of apathy from the rest of the UK and to this day the phrase 'took the soup' remains for those who leave behind their RC calling for the Protestant religion - as protestant churches would provide food for those catholics who would 'turn'.

Answer 3

English indifference

Irish reliance on one main crop

Land inheritance system

Potato blight

Huge number of deaths

Population did not recover for over 100 years

Apalling loss of potential

Answer 4

Ergot W got it in a nutshell, but he didn't mention that the population of Ireland (no partition yet at that time, so it was both North and South) was halved from 8 million to 4 million, and no-one knows for sure how many died and how many emigrated.