Great Hunger: Irish Potato Famine

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THE BACKDROP

A contemporary comment by John Mitchel polarizes how many people felt then and now:

The Almighty Indeed sent the Potato Blight but the English Created the Famine.

In 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged the British government failed to effectively help. On the 150th anniversary of what the Irish call An Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger), Blair said:

Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy. We must not forget such a dreadful event.

The Irish aren’t likely to forget.

At the time, in 1845, people in Ireland no longer owned most of their land. Hundreds of years before, Queen Elizabeth I finished what her father, Henry VIII, had started. The Irish countryside, with its green pastures and wonderful farmland, had been turned into English plantations. Land-owning Irishmen who worked for themselves became English tenants overnight. The only money that changed hands, of course, was the rent that was now paid to the new landlords.

Worse, "Penal Laws" governing the conduct of Irish Catholics were enacted. Over the years, those restrictive laws diminished the ability of the Irish people to flexibly manage their own affairs. Perhaps the laws were not enacted to render an entire population "ignorant." But the list of what was forbidden makes one wonder how the English expected the Irish to function as a cohesive nation.