Irish Potato Famine essays

Irish Potato Famine essays There have been many enormous tragedies throughout the history of this world, and its staggering to think about how many people lost their lives because of these events. There are some such events, such as the Holocaust, where it is easy to pin the blame down on someone or a certain group, in this case being Hitler and the Nazis. There are however tragic events in history without such a clear single party to blame. One such event is the Irish potato famine where from 1845-1860 one million people died and two million people emigrated from Ireland. (Lecture 11/10) In this paper I hope to give an unbiased view of the human element involved in creating this enormous loss of life and displacement of millions. I will examine such factors as the social conditions of the time, behaviors of the peasants, behaviors of the English landlords and hopefully create an accurate picture of how such a horrific event could and did take place. In order to understand the social situation of the Irish people during and leading up to the famine we must understand their past. The most important thing to understand is that Ireland had been fighting for its independence from Englands rule for the entire duration of its existence. So basically there was a lot of fighting going on during the 17th and 18th centuries leading up to the famine, which did not allow a significant population of Irish to be established in order to resist the English. In 1801 The Act of Union, annulled the semi-independent Irish Parliament and transferred political power definitively from Ireland to London. This meant that the English owned and distributed the Irish land amongst the wealthy Englishmen of their country leaving the Irish with no control in their own country. These landowners then hired farmers to manage their land meanwhile they could live back in England reaping the benefits without any effort. The farmers then rented tiny individua l plots of lan...