The Irish Memorial / Leacht Cuimhneachain Nan Gael
The Great Famine (Irish: An Gorta Mór[1] or An Drochshaol, lit: The Bad Life) was a calamitous period of starvation, disease and mass emigration between 1845 and 1852[2] during which the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent.[3] The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as late blight.[4] Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.[5][6]
The famine was a watershed in the history of Ireland.[7] Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political and cultural landscape. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory[8] and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements. Modern historians regard it as a dividing line in the Irish historical narrative, referring to the preceding period of Irish history as "pre-Famine."
The Irish Memorial / Leacht Cuimhneachain Nan Gael
The Great Famine (Irish: An Gorta Mór[1] or An Drochshaol, lit: The Bad Life) was a calamitous period of starvation, disease and mass emigration between 1845 and 1852[2] during which the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent.[3] The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as late blight.[4] Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.[5][6]
The famine was a watershed in the history of Ireland.[7] Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political and cultural landscape. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory[8] and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements. Modern historians regard it as a dividing line in the Irish historical narrative, referring to the preceding period of Irish history as "pre-Famine."