The Great Famine

by Bazza1972 in History, June 1, 2009

Ireland’s history and its political, economic, and social development was strongly linked to what happened in England, and after the English union with Scotland in 1707, what happened in Great Britain. The English and later the British believed that controlling Ireland was vital for their own national security.

The British government actually acted to counter the worst affects of the famine, yet unfortunately delays in providing that help meant it was insufficient to support the Irish population. In reality it was too little, too late. The famine decreased the population by two millions and the agricultural lands were thus left uncultivated. After the famine, the British government introduced reforms that came into effect. However the main impact of the potato famine was to strengthen the desire of many Irish people to gain independence, or at least home rule, thus many societies were formed secretly to struggle for the establishment of an Irish Republic towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Therefore to conclude many people in Ireland lived in poverty before the onset of the potato famine. Ireland was not as economically well developed as the British mainland in general and England in particular. Ireland had the potential to be a wealthy nation, a variety of reasons meant that the majority of its population found it difficult to get by. It was the unequal distribution of wealth worsened but not exclusively caused by British rule that had made a majority of the Irish population reliant upon the potato crop for its survival and expansion in numbers.