Troubled Geographies: A Spatial History of Religion and Society in Ireland

4. The Famine and Its Impacts, 1840s to 1860s

36 The Famine and Its Impacts, 1840s to 1860s It has almost become a cliché to argue that Ireland’s population development over the last 150 years has been unique. It is the only developed nation in the world with a current population below that in the mid-nineteenth century and the only European country to have suffered a century of demographic decline in its recent history.1 However, spatiopolitical qualifications must be applied to this assertion. The population decline of the area that is now the Republic has been remarkable, but the area that is now Northern Ireland was able to arrest its population decline at a much earlier stage. Furthermore, at the time of the Great Famine all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and what might be described as a long-term regional population decline seems less spectacular when it is considered within the context of the U.K.’s rapid urban population growth, to which Irish migrants made a significant contribution.2 Still, the impact of the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century on the shaping of modern Ireland cannot be trivialized. More than any other event it has defined both the literal and the metaphysical places of the Irish in the world. It has sent shock waves down through the centuries that are not only demographic but also socioeconomic, cultural, and political. An Gorta Mór—the Great Hunger When the potato crop first became infected with blight in the autumn of 1845, it did not signify an unprecedented event; there had been previous crop failures, and there had been famines as a result of these failures.3 What turned a crisis into a catastrophe were the peculiar circumstances that pertained in Ireland. For three million people the potato was the food on which they depended for survival—the average male laborer consumed up to 14 lb. (6.3 kg) of the tuber per day.4 It is easy to see why such a huge mass of the Irish population became dependent on the potato. It was a hardy and highyielding crop, perfectly suited to Irish climatic conditions and economic circumstances. The dramatic increase in the rural population described in chapter 3 meant that farm sizes decreased through subdivision, resulting in the potato becoming the best means of sustaining life on a wet and windy marginal holding.5 More recent research shows the nutritional advantages of the potato, and contemporary commentary on the physical appearance and general health of the rural poor appears to support this research.6 Joel Mokyr’s statistical analysis of the background to the Famine has found that dependence on the potato actually had a positive effect on the high rates of Irish fecundity in the pre-Famine period.7 The British government failed to 4 37 The Famine and Its Impacts, 1840s to 1860s foresee the impending disaster, and the limited efforts that the government made to counter that disaster’s impact proved impotent. It is also likely that previous smaller crises that Ireland had weathered had led to a sense of complacency among the highest levels of the central administration.8 From the point of view of the pre-Famine Irish peasantry, within their limited terms of economic reference they were behaving in a perfectly logical manner in opting to exploit the one food resource capable of sustaining a rapidly growing population on a finite and difficult terrain. In 1845 only about half the harvest had actually been lost. Had this been an isolated incident, Ireland might have come through the winter with relatively few excess deaths. However, the almost complete collapse of the 1846 crop signaled the start of what was to become a crisis of unparalleled proportions. During the severe winter of 1846–47 the death toll began to climb rapidly. Hunger was compounded by rampant disease brought on by lowered levels of immunity. “Famine fever,” a combination of typhus and relapsing fever, dysentery, and its more virulent form known as the “bloody flux” spread through the population.9 Even scurvy, a result of vitamin C deficiency, which had been largely unheard-of prior to the Famine, became rife among those who were compelled to eat the maize imported by the British government at the Famine’s outset.10 In 1847 only a fraction of the usual acreage of potatoes was planted because in desperation people had resorted to eating the seed potatoes that were essential for the following year’s harvest. This resulted...