Historical Back Drop: Potatoes and Immigration

During the early 1800s the everyday diet of the people of Ireland depended largely on their potato crop. Potatoes could be readily cultivated in the marginal soils available to most farmers. When successfully grown, they provided an abundant food source for large families owning or renting small plots of land. Tragically, a water-borne fungus known as the “potato blight” made the crop’s annual yield unpredictable. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, in particular the 1820s through the 1840s, various regions of Ireland suffered full or partial loss of their crop due to this fungus. The large crop losses caused great hardship and famine conditions, as potatoes were Ireland’s primary food staple.

In 1839 the potato crop failure occurred throughout Ireland causing many starvation deaths. The scope of crisis became a full-blown calamity, called the Great Irish Potato Famine, during the period of 1845 – 1852. These were years of successive and total crop failure across the whole of Ireland. The combination of blight and inadequate humanitarian policies of the governing British Empire caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Some historians have written that over one million died from hunger or from the consequences of hunger during the famine years. Between 20 and 25 percent of Ireland’s population died.

The famine caused many families to make the difficult decision to leave Ireland and start new lives in new lands. Perhaps up to a million and a half Irish immigrated to Australia, Canada, and the United States during the 1800s.