Potato Famine
Ireland 1845-1851
Synopsis
The Irish potato famine killed one million people and led 2.5 million people to emigrate, making it one of the worst famines in modern European history. The Irish potato famine dealt a devastating blow to landless labor in Ireland but contributed an important element to the wage-labor force in the rest of the English-speaking world. In Australia, the United States, and England, famine refugees assumed a large role in the casual and domestic labor force. With their arrival, nationality and religion—most of the new migrants were Catholics—began to play a much more important role in working-class politics in the English-speaking world.
"Famine" refers to mass starvation stemming from a failure of food entitlements. In Ireland in 1846 and early 1847, there was a genuine food shortage, but hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if Irish resources had been used more efficiently. Most importantly, the food resources of the United Kingdom, of which Ireland was a component part, were more than adequate for famine relief. The fact that hundreds of thousands starved in a United Kingdom successfully emerging from the era of the Industrial Revolution must be seen as a triumph of the principles of political economy over the idea that governments are responsible for preserving the lives of those whom they rule.
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