Great Famine (1845-52)

By the time of the Great Famine, also called the Great Hunger, Ireland had been governed by Great Britain for forty-four years. Scholars believe that the largely apathetic British leadership worsened the severity of the famine conditions. That is, if the government had mobilized its resources, the consequences of the blight could have been completely or largely mitigated. Ultimately, this is what Sinn Fein will argue in their evocative propaganda decades later.

The Famine itself was caused by the transfer of phytophthora infestans—a fungus that attacks the potato plant. The blight was first recorded in the eastern United States in the summer of 1843 and was later transported to Belgium in a cargo of seemingly healthy potatoes. During the summer of 1845, the fungus rapidly reproduced and laid waste to the potato crop in Flanders, Normandy, Holland, and southern England. By August of that same year the blight was recorded at the Dublin Botanical Gardens; a week later, a disastrous harvest was reported in County Fermanagh. The blight began its demolition of the potato crop in Ireland and panic spread.

In 1845, the blight was believed to have been localized, but early reports in 1846 revealed that potato crops throughout Ireland had been destroyed. Whereas the reports of the previous year found that the blight was spread over a number of months, the 1846 reports revealed a comprehensive loss. Unlike the other countries affected by the blight, Ireland depended extensively on the potato—at least two-thirds of the population’s diet consisted of the nutritious potato and for laborers, the crop was the basis of their wages. To say that the Famine dismantled the social order of the country is an understatement. The instability, panic, and total population loss (from emigration and hunger) would impact Ireland’s culture and politics for the next century. [1]

[1] “Ireland’s Hunger Museum,” Quinnipiac University, accessed March 8, 2026, https://www.ighm.org/learn.html.