The Irish Potato Famine and the British Response

In 1845, one of the worst disasters in Ireland's long and turbulent history struck. A terrible strain of potato blight wiped out a much of the crop, leaving the majority of Erin's people without food. In the years following, blight struck again and again, coupled with devastating epidemics of disease caused by starvation and close quarters. All this occurred under the very nose of the British Empire, one of the most powerful in the world at the time. Yet, because of their prejudice and general misunderstanding of the Irish people, the British Government failed to respond sufficiently to avert disaster. The British, in fact, exacerbated the effects of the famine in their ignorance of the Irish culture.

The people of prefamine Ireland were the product of a varied history, rich with culture. They were descendants of the ancient Celts; they had been ruled by the Vikings. In 1014, Brian Boru, the only native king to unite all Ireland under his rule, crushed the Vikings in battle. The country was subsequently ruled in parts by various native rulers until the Normans invaded. By the end of the 1100's, Ireland was under the eye of the British, and they continued to attempt to draw their fair sister island under their power until finally succeeding by passing the Act of Union in 1801.

The inhabitants of Ireland rapidly settled into distinct classes; the landowners and tenant farmers, mostly wealthy British, and the cottiers, or peasantry. The landowners held large estates, growing grain for export to Britain, and other European countries. The cottiers and laborers were hired to work the land. In exchange, they were rented a patch of their own land on which to build a house and plant potatoes. Unfortunately, the rent on such plots was often so exorbitant; the laborers frequently lived on nothing but the potatoes they raised. Any livestock or other crops were used to pay the rates that kept them alive, however meagerly. This lifestyle came largely because of a population boom near the end of the eighteenth century. By the eve of the famine, the Irish population was hovering between seven and eight million people, and was the most densely populated country in all Europe. Because the potato was such a nutritious food, and easy to wean young children on, it was easy for the Irish to raise large families. This population eventually grew to depend almost solely on the potato for their well being (Clarkson 33). The Irish peasantry lived a difficult existence. That isn't to say that they were any worse off than most of Europe's peasantry at the time, however, compared to the landowners, their existence was rough (Clarkson 31). They lived in cottages built of mud or rock, most of the time with no chimney. Their homes were unfurnished, and they slept on piles of straw with the cows and pigs that would eventually pay their rent and end up in some British nobleman's stomach instead of their own. They spent their days farming the land of the tenant farmers, then their own, cutting turf for their fires, and eating the one food they could afford, the potato. During the prefamine years, it was said that Irish men frequently ate 14 pounds of potatoes every day (Clarkson 32). The existence was difficult, yet rewarding. For though the average Irish peasant family was close to starvation, even in the good years, they were unwilling to give up their way of life. Many Irish peasants farmed the same land their ancestors had for centuries. Being the close knit people they were, they loved their ancestral lands and this tie to their ancestors was more than enough incentive to stay. They were bound to the land and their way of life by bonds of family, friends, and the earth itself.

The landowners, however, lived a much richer life. Most of them were British or Anglo-Irish, and lived on estates of about fifteen to twenty acres. They rented out their land, usually in one or one-half acre plots to laborers or cottiers. The laborers could set up their home there, with a patch of land to spare for growing potatoes. The rest of their time was devoted to growing grain. Grain prices in the 1800's were relatively high, and so was the rent charged by landowners. By the time of the Great Famine, there was a vast gap between the landowners and the peasants that labored for them. Many rich landowners exploited their laborers, charging exorbitant rent on tiny plots of land, but there were some who treated their workers quite well, especially when the famine knocked at the peasants' doors. Landowners raised grain for export to Britain. In fact, during the famine itself, grain continued to flow out of Ireland to feed Britain's population, when it might have been better used to save Irish lives. Much of the reform of the Irish farming system was put into effect by these landowners, and their wish for a more organized, structured environment.

The lowly potato, though appearing so simple at first, is much more complex than it seems. The potato is rich in carbohydrates as well as protein. As a matter of fact, if you eat a lot of them, they will supply the body with almost everything it needs. The only thing potatoes seriously lack in is fat and vitamin A. For the Irish, even the poorest laborers and cottiers, all that was needed to supplement their diet was buttermilk. And although a steady diet of potatoes and buttermilk is dreadfully boring, it is also extraordinarily healthy. Despite the extreme poverty of the country, it was said that the "abhorrently uncivilized" Irish peasants frequently looked healthier than their "civilized" British neighbors. Of course, there are many varieties of potato, and at one time or another, several were being raised by the Irish peasantry, each with varying levels of nutrition. However, by the eve of the famine, the majority of the peasantry was consuming what was referred to as the "lumper" potato. This was a coarse, low quality, late blooming potato that was cheap to raise. But the inexpensive cost of raising them did not negate their coarse taste. Nor did it make up for the fact that, when blight struck the potato crop in 1845, it was the late blooming potatoes that were hardest hit, wiping out nearly the entire harvest (Percival 45).

The Irish almost completely depended on the potato for their well being. This crop not only fed their families, but also their cows, pigs, chickens, and horses. For centuries, the preferred living arrangements for the Irish cottiers were to lump the houses of several families together, and farm random plots of land. No one expressly owned any particular patch, but the same families used the same squares of earth year after year. The Irish were rooted in their ancestral lands, however small the plot may have been.

When the British saw the state of the Irish cottiers' existence, they were appalled. Many landowners attempted to assign the Irish families a specific plot of land, fenced in and even, but the Irish resisted. They did not like the idea of being separated from their neighbors by a stone wall. However, the landowners persisted, and soon the Irish laboring families were all neatly boxed up in their stone- walled parcels. In addition, the British also saw the need to improve conditions for Ireland's impoverished and landless. They implemented a system of work houses, styled somewhat in somewhat the same manner as a labor camp. Men were separated from women, children from their parents, brothers from sisters. The point was not so much to give the people a place to go to get work as it was a last resort for those who had no other way. The children were schooled and fed, and the adults had an honest day's work, but one never saw his family or children except in church (Percival 63). These camps had been quite a success in Britain; however the Irish were inherently very different. Much more family oriented, some Irish men would rather see their family and themselves starved than enter such an environment. It was just another cultural difference that the British failed to understand.

The British were seemingly ignorant of their western neighbors. They labored for centuries under the mistaken impression that the Irish were lazy and uncivilized. The potato was even termed the "lazy crop" by the British, who did not understand the Irish method of cultivating them. Another British opinion during the famine years was that it was the fault of the Irish that they had no other means of providing their own aid to starving families, and that they were getting what they deserved. However, in all fairness, most of the British had absolutely no idea how destitute things had become for their sister island. Most of the British had never been to Ireland, and most of what the people were told about her came from the government. The main problem that the British government seemed to have with Ireland was that they were of similar racial background, yet were sufficiently different as to be called racially inferior. The question became, how to subjugate the Irish to British rule, attempting to make it seem as though there were no prejudice, all the while keeping the Irish in their place. It was unthinkable to the British of the time to consider the Irish equals. The Irish, after all, were nothing like the British. The Irish were wild, uncivilized. Irish women could divorce their husbands if they so chose, they were able to preside over festivities or meetings, they drank alcohol. The Irish loved to be together. They were (and still are) extremely gregarious. They loved to gather together to drink, dance, tell stories, and sing. And they definitely weren't the proper, upstanding citizens the British wanted in their society. "...The English regarded Ireland as a colony, useful as a supplier of food, but full of idle, turbulent, and racially inferior people, who might be helped a little if the need arose, but not at too great a cost" (Percival 180).

In 1845, a terrible wave of Phytophthora infestans, potato blight, swept Ireland. Blight is a fungal infection of the potato plant, though no one knew it at the time. It is a hearty disease, able to lie dormant in the ground during the winter, and infect another crop the next year. Potato plants infected with blight may seem fine one day, but the next, the leaves will have all withered away and turned black. Upon unearthing the tubers below, they will "bruise" extremely quickly, eventually collapsing into an oozing black mass of foul-smelling material, entirely inedible, and incredibly disgusting (Percival 55). The already impoverished peasants were left with nothing to eat, and they didn't dare touch the grain they farmed, because it went to pay their rent. A hungry family with a roof over its head is better than a hungry family living in a ditch any day. The blight returned to plague the island again in 1846, 47, and to a lesser extent stretched well into 1851 (Kinealy 3). The early years of the famine also crippled the poor with harsh winters, and when families were too weak or sick to work and pay their rent, some landlords went so far as to evict the starving people, essentially condemning them to death. Diseases also ran rampant during the famine years. Typhus, Dysentery, and a condition known as "relapsing fever" were extremely common due to the close conditions created by relief solutions. The workhouses, soup kitchens, churches, even the fever hospitals themselves only served to spread the diseases. In this case, the deaths were not particular. Priests, relief workers, upper-class citizens willing to help the poor all succumbed to fever just as easily as the peasantry. It has been estimated that more people died of disease during the famine than of starvation itself.

During the famine, the British view of the Irish shifted greatly. At the beginning of the famine, the Irish were seen as a culture that could be "redeemed," restructured, and given British guidance. It was not popularly believed, at the time, that the Irish were terribly inferior, just in dire need of re-education. It was true that the agrarian way of life that the Irish led was extremely unstructured, and the British believed that this could be helped. By the end of the famine, however, the British perception was that the Irish were, in fact, irredeemable. A race of people that was doomed to lack civilization, and could only be kept in its place through militarized intervention (Lengel 98). And this opinion was formulated after the British government, in they typical laissez-faire style, demanded that Ireland be responsible for her own relief programs; the British weren't going to waste any more money on starving people in their own country, simply because they were "inferior." In the British mind, "The famine exposed Ireland's lack of general social cohesion and exposed the resentment and suspicion that lay not far below the surface" (Boyce 110). This opinion came largely because of the change in political parties. When the Whigs came into power in the British Government, Charles Trevelyan was placed in charge of Irish relief. He had never set foot on the island, but was already confidant in his opinion that they were a lazy and ignorant people. It was under his eye that opinion of the Irish began to shift.

When the famine first struck, the British were enthusiastic to help their hungry neighbors. Robert Peel, the Tory Prime Minister ordered two shipments of Indian corn from the Americas to sell at low enough prices to aid the hardest hit areas. But despite the efforts, in the end the corn was still often too expensive for the impoverished to afford. Many who were able gave what they could to help the situation. Under the laissez-faire government, however, the British government was not allowed to provide free aid to the starving. So the Irish had to depend on private aid. The Catholic Church, as well as the Church of Ireland (Protestant) began setting up soup kitchens. Even the Society of Friends (Quakers) began setting up soup kitchens. The Protestants, however, were quickly suspected of Souperism, the selling of soup in exchange for souls. There were instances of the Church attempting to gather converts by offering soup only to those who would promise their spiritual self in service in exchange. Some Protestant ministers even alleged that God was raining down vengeance from heaven upon Ireland to crush the Catholics (much of the peasantry was Catholic). But despite this, there were many other instances of Protestant and Catholic ministers working together, the Protestants offering the food, and the Catholics administering to the ill.

The marked change came when Peel's Tory government collapsed in 1846. After this, Charles Trevelyan was put in charge of famine relief. Trevelyan, a Whig, had never been to Ireland, but it didn't matter. It seems his mind about the people of Eire was already made up. He believed that the Irish famine was a product of their own laziness and any aid should come directly from themselves. He was even quoted as saying "The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse, and turbulent character of the people" (Percival 83). Though many attempted to convince Trevelyan of his error, he did not budge. He left the handling of relief efforts directly in the hands of the Irish landowners. For some, this was all well and good, the landowners were more than happy to give their last penny to help the people who had so faithfully worked the land. Some of the landowners even risked their lives, turning their beautiful estates into fever hospitals, and nursing the sick themselves. Others, however, evicted their tenants by the dozen, burned down their hovels, and fled Ireland altogether. One famine legend says that Queen Victoria gave only five pounds to help the Irish in their suffering, though in reality she donated 2000 (Percival 92). Not only that, but in response to the British decree, unions were set up in every county to collect money for relief. But poor counties like Mayo, who were also hardest hit, were the least able to pay for relief, and the richer counties surrounding them were unwilling to give what little they had to spare to aid them. The system was a catch-22. In the end, it was the more selfless landowners, the church, and wealthy visitors to Ireland who made the biggest impact on famine relief.

The handling of the famine could have been better. Had the British not come into the situation convinced that they had to reform the Irish way of life, and instead committed themselves to aiding the victims until the country could regain its feet, I believe the outcome would have been very different. For example, had the British not built the work houses, where dozens of people were living in close proximity, disease would not have run so rampant. Of course, it is also feasible to say that had soup kitchens not been established, the same diseases might have been averted. But during the years of the famine, people packed the work houses to capacity and beyond. People swamped the work houses when landlords became greedy and evicted their starving tenants. People swarmed to the work houses because doing so would give their children at least one good hot meal every day. I believe the work houses themselves could have been better designed not only to accommodate for Irish cultural differences, but also to help stave off disease. In addition, many of the measures implemented by the British were too little, too late, such as Peel's shipment of corn. By the time it reached Ireland, no one could afford it, even at reduced prices. Not to mention that corn was a grain foreign to the Irish. Most of the peasants wouldn't eat it, or else they didn't know how. Their local priests had to teach them how to prepare it, and still it was looked upon with a wary eye.

What the British didn't do to help the Irish is the real sticking point, however. Erin's nearest neighbors were too blinded by their view of her and her children to be able to reach out an objective hand and help. In 1847, Charles Trevelyan decided that it was a waste of British government money to save people whom he deemed worthy of the fate that they had been given. He halted what little public relief had been offered, shut down public works programs, and ceased to build work houses. He left the Irish to their own devices, and he was supported by his government in doing so. Effectively, he decided to "Stop wasting English money on Irish lives" (Percival 95). And the real irony? Trevelyan was knighted for the service he offered to Ireland during the famine years. The British also made one other crucial decision about what not to do for the Irish. They did not stop the exportation of grain. This can be viewed as a positive, because it kept the economy of Ireland alive, but the decision was made chiefly to appease both the Irish grain merchants and the British grain suppliers (Kinealy 2).

In my opinion, the British government exacerbated the situation of the famine, both in the measures they took, and those they did not. They could have gone to great lengths to save the hungry people of Ireland, but because of their tradition of laissez-faire policies, their prejudice towards the Irish, and their general ignorance of the situation, they did not.

Works Cited

Boyce, George D. Nineteenth- Century Ireland: The search for Stability. Maryland: Barnes and Noble, 1991.

Clarkson, L.A. and Margaret Crawford. "A Non-Famine History of Ireland?" History Ireland Summer 2002: 31-35.

Kinealy, Christine. "How Politics Fed the Famine." Natural History Jul. 1996: 33-35.

Lengel, Edward G. The Irish Through British Eyes: Perceptions of Ireland in the Famine Era. Connecticut: Praeger, 2002.

Percival, John. The Great Famine 1845-51. New York: Penguin, 1995.