Freelance Writing Jobs | Today's Articles | sign in

The Great Famine

The Origins of Ireland's Potato Economy

Aug 15, 2008 Andrew Hopskotch

From 1845 to 1849, a fungus destroyed Ireland's potato crop, with disastrous effects for Ireland's poor. How did the potato become so important for Ireland's peasants?

The Great Famine removed as many as two and a half million people from Ireland’s population within ten years of its beginning in 1845. Recent estimates suggest that one million of these—the poorest of the poor—died from starvation and disease, while the rest chose to emigrate. A persistent fungus caused the potato crop to fail, but how did the Irish poor come to rely so heavily on the potato in the first place?

Napoleonic Wars, the Act of Union, and the Corn Laws

Disruptions in European markets because of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars led Britain to search for alternative sources of grain. Ireland, as a British colony and next-door neighbor, presented a logical opportunity. Irish landlords embarked on an extensive infrastructure campaign to improve Irish roads so that agricultural commodities could be easily moved to market. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Ireland had arguably the best roads in Europe. Because of increased British demand and improved transportation, Ireland became a major grain exporter.

Ireland became an integral part of Great Britain with the Act of Union in 1801. After the Napoleonic Wars ended, European commercial ties reopened and cheap grains flooded the British market. In response, the British Parliament passed the Corn Laws in 1815 which restricted the importation of grains from foreign nations unless domestic prices reached high targets. The Corn Laws improved Ireland’s position as the primary source of Britain’s imported grains.

Rising Rents, Subsistence Agriculture, and the Potato

Two factors combined to produce an Irish peasantry heavily reliant on the potato. Irish absentee landlords often had no direct connection with the peasants on their lands and, naturally, desired higher cash incomes. Irish peasants customarily subdivided their plots for successive generations and desired secure rights to the land for subsistence agriculture. This created an upward rent spiral as landlords demanded—and in some cases peasants offered—increased rents from the late eighteenth century onward.

Through increased rents and relentless subdivision, peasants were forced to devote greater portions of their plots to cash crop grains in order to pay the rent. The potato became an ideal staple food. When supplemented with small amounts of milk and oats, potatoes provide excellent nutrition for both humans and animals. Its ease of cultivation meant that peasants could devote more time to their cash crops or travel abroad for wage work. The potato’s high yields meant that families could grow almost all of their food on very small plots. By the time the Famine hit in 1845, three million Irish out of a total population of eight million depended almost entirely on the potato for sustenance.

Sources: R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600-1972; Cormac O Grada, The Great Irish Famine

The copyright of the article The Great Famine in UK/Irish History is owned by Andrew Hopskotch. Permission to republish The Great Famine in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Potatoes