A Short History of Ireland's Famine

Ruán O'Donnell

• Editorial: The O'Brien Press
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781847178299
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: Irish History

This condensed history examines why the Great Famine was so catastrophic, and explores its effect on Irish society and culture. It explains the circumstances surrounding the period and addresses issues and characteristics of the time.

Aspects covered include the spread of disease, the experiences of those on public works projects and the disagreements between political leaders regarding the distribution of what little food was available.

Featuring new material on the Irish Famine which has never been published before, this is an accessible and comprehensive history of the period surrounding the famine, as well as the horrors endured by the people of Ireland.

Chapter 1: Population

The years 1770 to 1840 witnessed a major shift in the way in which the Irish lived. Sustained population growth was the main engine of change with significant repercussions for work practices, habitation patterns and standards of accommodation. Ireland’s population mushroomed from an estimated 4.75 million in 1791 to a minimum of 8.17 million recorded in the imperfect census of 1841. The limitations of this national audit meant that the real figure was probably at least 8.5 million.2 This revealed that Ireland had the highest level of population growth in the western world. The social implications of this were considerable, particularly when coupled with the concurrent fall in death rates. Dietary improvements meant that more persons reached adulthood and advanced age than during any previous generation. Birth rates and increased longevity transformed the country which, unlike parts of England and Belgium, remained overwhelmingly rurally located. While the 1820s and 1830s witnessed a slight decline in the unusually prodigious growth rate, arising from emigration and later marriages, a demographic threshold had been surpassed.3 The strength of this dynamic may be discerned from the fact that it occurred notwithstanding the departure to North America of 65,000 persons per year after 1831.4

Underinvestment by the Imperial government in London ensured that while the cities of Dublin, Cork and Belfast continued to grow in size from the 1820s, urbanisation lacked the capacity to absorb the human surplus on the land. The expansion of Guinness brewery in the capital and the healthy linen trade in Belfast concealed a general lack of industrial invigoration. Employment in Ireland’s manufacturing sector actually diminished by 15 per cent between 1821 and 1841 despite a linen-export boom centred on Antrim.5 This overarching negative trend contrasted with the positive experience in Britain and the Continent where mechanisation and urbanisation permanently recalibrated the relationship between town and countryside. In the twenty years preceding 1841, Kerry, Clare, Galway and Mayo registered population surges in the range of 31-38 per cent with the expansion of industry in Antrim boosting its growth rate to 33 per cent. Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, Roscommon, Leitrim, Cavan and Tyrone increased in population by 20-26 per cent. The Irish economy initially managed to withstand the pressures accruing from accentuated social distortion in the provinces. Moreover, official statistics understated the level of population growth as they pertained to the non-emigrated population and those who could be located for enumeration. Lax port administration meant that many of those who departed went uncounted.

As before, the sustained transatlantic exodus and the employment opportunities available in Britain’s new cities attracted hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants. Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, London and other English centres gained substantial numbers of Hibernian workers and their dependents. Yet even this productive and sustained transfer did not alleviate the mounting social and economic challenges to Irish stability. Unsurprisingly, the new pressures on Irish society created new lifestyles and contingent threats. During the period in question over five times more dwellings were built on the formerly disfavoured uplands than on the more fertile, accessible and familiar lowlands. Tangible developments had occurred by 1841 when overall habitation density on the hillsides was double that of traditional low-lying farms. A virtual migration had taken place from the ancient farming belts into regions which had remained sparsely populated due to the marginal status of the soil, local climate and the lack of urgency in peopling such terrain. The rural poor of mid-nineteenth century Ireland were strongly in evidence on high-ground sites and throughout the barren west of the country where comparatively few had ventured in modern times. Transgressing the altitude barrier, an early manifestation of agrarian distress, occurred without significant hindrance by landlords.6

POTATO SUBSISTENCE

A major contribution to this phenomenon was the availability of the potato throughout Ireland’s thirty-two counties. The potato was established in southern Munster in the late 1600s and was initially classified as a useful winter crop. The inconvenient hiatus of supply out of season was typically overcome by eating a higher proportion of green vegetables during the summer months whilst utilising potato waste to feed pigs and other livestock. From the mid-1700s the genetic adaptations of the plant to Irish conditions made it available for human consumption all year round. Animals also derived benefit from the root crop which, in the case of cattle, was reputedly an accidental discovery arising from a discarded glut proving its value in Limerick. The main strains grown in Eighteenth century Ireland were the ‘Black’, ‘Apple’ and ‘Cup’, although several other types were cultivated by estate gardeners for their aesthetic and novelty qualities. The ‘Lumper’, predominant by the early nineteenth century, had evidently been introduced to Connacht by migrant lumber workers returning from England. While the hardy Lumper strain was intrinsically inferior to others previously sown in terms of nutrition, it answered many of the needs of small farmers across the island. The generation confronted by the Great Famine in 1845 was consequently the first in which the potato was the staple diet of the rural poor. It has been estimated that country men of working age consumed as much as fourteen pounds of potatoes a day in three equal meals. Turnip, the other significant root crop, could not rival the potato in terms of nutrition and fertility. Cabbage, also popular, was unsuitable as a mainstay of diet, but provided an important supplement.

The exponential rise of the potato occurred for many reasons. These included the increased use of the Lumper variety after 1810, which provided farmers of modest means with a highly efficient food resource. While requiring tiring spade work and some ongoing care, Lumpers maximised yields from small holdings. As much as six tonnes of potatoes could be taken from one acre of poor land. Remarkably, the strain thrived in acidic, sodden and otherwise low-grade soil, which could not sustain healthy cereals. It also acted as a highly efficient reclaiming agent and proved its utility in this regard in a country where commonage, highlands and bog were generally underused. Potato cultivation improved marginal land due to its innate biological characteristics and the ancillary practices of spreading ash and manure on ‘lazy beds’. Fields were frequently dug, aerated and reseeded. Whereas arable lowland farms proved comparatively stable in terms of size and demographic profile in the mid-1800s, the clearest signs of land pressure and escalating population density were to be found in the casually regulated and more remote uplands. Whilst road building and other facets of modernisation were obviously in play, the potato played a critical role in colonising the once sparsely-inhabited Atlantic coast of Ireland and its harsh Connacht hinterland. The potato made the agricultural exploitation of the landlocked and non-alluvial interior more viable than ever before. Those without the capital and inclination to emigrate were gifted the option of remaining on the land in Ireland.

Unlike grain, the potato did not require milling or complicated processing prior to consumption. It was easily and quickly prepared and, while no exotic seasoning was required, it benefited the inexpensive addition of salt. Potatoes were a good source of Vitamin C and scurvy was comparatively rare in Ireland. When supplemented with milk, high in Vitamin A, the basic diet of the Irish working poor was superior to most ‘peasant’ contemporaries in western Europe. This was particularly true of coastal counties where fish and edible seaweeds broadened the otherwise monotonous diet. Oatmeal was also commonly consumed in eastern Ulster. Travellers frequently observed that Irish people were taller and more athletic than most Europeans and this was generally attributed to the centrality of the potato in their diet. The record of the crop was overwhelmingly positive in that it did not have a reputation for unacceptable vulnerability to disease and parasitic infestation. This was not the case with more delicate cereals. The Lumper strain was so highly regarded that a critical error was made by failing to emulate the Andean practice of simultaneous planting a variety of species as a precaution against disease. This complacency was partly owing to lack of agricultural education and the estrangement of the Imperial parliament from Irish administration. It was also a testament to the strong faith in the sturdy crop. There was no persuasive evidence that a catastrophic level of dependency had developed and certainly no sense of impending crisis in the early 1840s.7

Popular belief attributed the appeal of the potato to the fact that it was an underground crop for an underground people. Few decades passed in Ireland without some form of subversive challenge to the state by agrarian or political mass movements. Reasonably secure prior to digging, potato fields could be left untended at particular stages of the season and the produce stored for up to nine months after harvest. The vegetable was easily hidden in pit caches making it an ideal food supply for guerillas during times of conflict with the British and their proxies in Ireland. Potatoes were more commonly required for non-violent forms of popular resistance to authority; the sizeable illicit cottage industry of poitín distilling in nineteenth-century Ireland. Supply of ingredients was rarely problematic, notwithstanding the threat of confiscation and destruction of distillation paraphernalia by the constabulary. While it is doubtful that such factors significantly boosted the attractiveness of the crop in the early 1840s, its versatility imbued folk traditions with enduring positive connotations.8

Food shortages and related hardships were not unknown in the 1800s but the near total failure of a major crop was unprecedented. The terrible Famine of 1740-41 was a distant memory after the lapse of a century and its unusual characteristics offered no lessons to the descendants of those who survived.9 There was, in any case, virtually nothing that could be done to guard against a crop-killing ice freeze. Given appropriate government management, the crop had the potential to facilitate urbanisation of a society which had been retarded by prolonged under-investment. An export business was feasible had the political will been in evidence to encourage large-scale specialist production with appropriate road, canal and port infrastructure. This required far more expenditure and strategic planning than could be carried out by the county Grand Juries and Dublin Castle. As matters stood in the early 1840s, the gradual emergence of a dangerous over-reliance on potatoes passed without any form of state intervention.

LAND AND PEOPLE

By the mid-1800s approximately a third of the population depended on the potato for subsistence. Many more used the crop as an important part of their diet, as was the case in mid-and eastern Ulster and the towns. Potato cultivation encouraged subdivision of farms in a country where the requirement for land reform attained chronic dimensions before it was finally addressed. The removal of sectarian legislation between 1778 and 1829 ensured that Catholics were no longer obliged to divide lands in a manner prescribed by the detested ‘penal laws’ but property division and alienation remained a vital concern. The rural poor could not acquire farms by purchase and consequently turned to traditional alternatives when impelled by population pressure. The plant was essential to the survival of the semi-formal co-operatives or ‘clachans’ which continued to proliferate on the coasts of the north-west, especially in western Ulster and Connacht. Communal farming facilitated ‘rundale’ holdings where labourers divided a shared allotment into non-contiguous rectangular strips.10

Moreover, the social tier for whom the potato was the staple food was also the least well resourced, educated and housed in Irish society. Many lived in shack-like dwellings, an impermanent and low-impact lifestyle which left virtually no traces on the landscape. Such persons typically paid their rent by offering their labour to landlords, an arrangement which militated against the accumulation of the capital and surplus necessary for significant advancement. In Connacht and Munster this ‘conacre’ system often required transfers of grain, flax and hay to landlords. In general, access to marginal land, turf and potato beds was all that was necessary to start families. While emigration beyond the Atlantic and Irish Sea remained a constant feature of Irish life in the 1830s and 1840s, the rate of population growth was consistently high by international standards.11

‘Cottiers’ engaged in small scale co-operative manufacturing and, owing to this wage-earning occupation, were heavily reliant on potatoes. Those who worked outside agricultural primary production were dependent on the surplus food harvested by those who were. Paying for food was not a problem when the economy was stable, but the narrow profit margins of the cottiers left them vulnerable to inflation when potatoes became scarce. Part-time fishing was not an option for such men. Migrant labourers or ‘spalpeens’ were also subject to economic vagaries and eking out a living in pre-Famine Ireland and Britain was always difficult. There was a strong correlation, however, between the availability of paid work and population growth. Cottiers existed in the first instance because the Anglo-Irish economy could sustain their presence with mutual benefit and dividend. This, in turn, was predicated on the merits of potato cultivation which enabled the manufacturers to easily acquire cheap food. Fixity of place, if not also tenure, was sufficient for the cottiers to gain purchase as a distinctive subclass in rural Ireland.

‘Spalpeens’ played a niche role in servicing the temporary requirements of farmers for non-resident assistance during the harvest season. Prolonged absence from their native localities and families was an accepted part of the arrangement. The virtual eradication of cottiers and migrant labourers from the Irish countryside by 1850 provided retrospective proof of their precarious social position. When matters were not acute, however, the advantages of high population density were readily evident, not least in that the presence of co-operating local workers optimised yields from the labour intensive cultivation of misnamed ‘lazy beds’.12 Landlords tended to facilitate the discredited practice of subdivision as the small holders it created were self-sufficient and useful for reclaiming marginal land. They were also an immediate source of revenue and available for casual labour on the estate farms. Responsible landlords and estate managers had been discouraged from forming potentially unviable smallholdings, but the short term attractiveness of turning a blind eye to the practice proved tempting in Ireland.

The wider context for the rise of the potato utilisation in Ireland was the emergence of Britain as an advanced industrialised economy. England, in particular, lacked the agricultural primary production required to feed its newly relocated and rapidly expanding urban workforces. Consequently, Irish food and livestock exports to Britain steadily increased in volume and importance. The centralisation of political power following the Act of Union ensured that Westminster could regulate this outflow as it saw fit. Parliament had devastated the Irish textile sector in the early 1800s to protect and advantage English competitors and the House of Commons was historically disinterested in redressing economic imbalances in Ireland. Irish trade, therefore, had a requirement for a potato-dependent underclass whose cheap labour permitted the over-production of exportable cereals, butter, beef and bacon.

In the west of Ireland, the region most dependent on potato consumption, a grim spiral of impoverisation was apparent in the early decades of the 1800s. Excessive subdivision and insecurity of tenure combined to threaten the best interests of migrants and locals. The farmed plots were simply too small and open to landlord manipulation to assure long-term stability. The environment was not only ecologically fragile but the mono-cultural exploitation of the new local economies left the inhabitants with very little room for manouevre in the face of unforeseen adversity. Furthermore, key traditional safeguards were beginning to disappear. Oatmeal, once a typical accompaniment to a potato diet, was increasingly required to fulfill rent rather than nutritional imperatives. Regional circumstances favoured the retention of the oatmeal supplement in the north east of the country, but it declined sharply elsewhere. Whereas pigs remained reasonably common and cost-effective animals, more valuable dairy cows moved beyond the reach of the poorest small farmers, along with access to their milk. For such persons, possibly as many as three million, over 90 per cent of nutritional needs were met by potatoes. They were the core of the 2.3 million people the Poor Law Commissioners reported were living in dire poverty in Ireland in 1835.

The Commissioners were by no means oblivious to the fact that an increasing proportion of the Irish nation was edging towards the precipice of disaster. However, the nature of the problem, let alone viable solutions, eluded them in the 1830s. Their viewpoint was essentially benign, but this was not shared by all commentators. Economist Nassau Senior was quick to apportion blame where he believed it was warranted. In answer to the Third Report of the Commissioners in 1836 Senior claimed: ‘I cannot admit that they are in want not from any fault of their own. If the Irish labourers allow their numbers to increase without any reference to the means of subsistence, a portion of them must every year, or a...