Causes of the Irish emigration

Ireland may be the country, which is most famous for its emigration of all European countries. This is probably a result of the emigrations wide extent as Ireland produced most emigrants of all the emigrant countries. For these people America wasn’t seen as land of opportunities. They just fled as soon as they could, wherever they could to avoid poverty, starvation and diseases, which seemed to have existed in Ireland for decades.

      Though there were many causes of the mass exodus from Ireland during the 19th-century, the most significant was the Great Famine that spread across the island. The Famine, which resulted from the failure of the necessary potato crop, caused many deaths due to starvation.
      To fully understand the Great Famine, one has to examine events as far back as 1793. It was in this year that Great Britain started fighting a war with France. This war affected Ireland greatly, as the English had to become close trading partners with the Irish in order to sustain their population. Britain was dependent on Ireland as a provider of foodstuffs, which in turn resulted in an Irish agricultural boom at the beginning of the 19th-century. This great period of prosperity eventually led to a higher birth rate, and Ireland was now able to support a growing population. However, this changed when Britain and France reached a peace agreement in 1815. Now Britain no longer had to rely on Ireland as a supplier, as they could now trade with other European countries. The Irish peasants despaired as their economy declined. Ireland was still dependent on their now reduced exports to Britain.
      By the late 1820s, the situation had worsened. The generation that had grown up during the agricultural boom now wanted to start farms of their own. In order to start their own farms, however, these young adults needed land. Land, which was usually inheriting from parents, unfortunately had became very scare. As families had grown, it had become impossible for the inherited land to be split among the children. Consequently, the soil became divided into smaller and smaller pieces as generations passed. A piece of land that in the late 1700's only had to support a family of six, now had to feed six families. Striving to feed the growing population, more and more poor, stony soil was tilled by the ploughs of Irish farmers. As the amount of stony soil used increased, the hardy potato crop became the only plant that people could rely on. Even so, there were also other reasons for Ireland's reliance on the potato crop.
      Since the invasion of Ireland in the middle of the 17th-century, orchestrated by Britain's then-ruler Oliver Cromwell, much Irish land was owned by the British. The invading army had confiscated land from many wealthy landowners since they refused to abandon their Catholic beliefs. Because Ireland was still a feudal society at this time, and because the wealthy landowners ruled the majority of Irish peasants, many of the poorer residents became tenant farmers for the British. They worked the land and paid rent to the English for the small piece of land that they used to support their family. But as time went on, it became more profitable to graze sheep and cattle than to grow crops. The Irish peasants were therefore left with little hope as the British landowners took back their land. Many more evictions followed as the landowners feared that their tenants wouldn’t be able to pay their rent. Though there were some peasants that weren’t evicted, these tenants were left with less and less land. The many thousands of evicted peasants, on the other hand, had to live together in crowded and disease infested workhouses. Some of these peasants were actually fortunate enough to have the opportunity of immigrating to America, as their landlords paid their journey.
      As less and less land was used to grow crops, the potato became a popular foodstuff. Less land was needed to produce the same larger quantities of food, and the potato didn’t leave the soil without nitrogen. By 1845, it had become the most significant source, if not the only source of food, for over three million people. Unfortunately, it was this abundant crop that led to such great starvation. <PAR>A fungus, which easily spread among potatoes, appeared in Ireland for the first time in 1845. Before anyone realised the danger the fungus posed, it started to attack and destroy the potato crops. In the first year, not the whole of Ireland was affected. However, by the following autumn, the blight had spread throughout the entire island. “There is hardly a district in Ireland in which the potato crops at present are uninfected, -- perhaps we might say, hardly a field.”2

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References
1 Maldwyn A. Jones "Chapter 4 - Flight from Hunger" Destination America . London - UK, Thames Television Limited 1976. p.67-70

2 "The Potato Disease, October 18, 1845" The Illustrated London News, 1996-08-08 <http://vassun.vassar.edu/~sttaylor/FAMINE/ILN/PotatoDisease.html> (1999-05-14)

3 David McDowell "Chapter 20 - The years of self-confidence" An Illustrated History of Britain, . UK, Longman Group UK Limited Copyright 1989. p.149-150

4 Bryn O’Callaghan "Chapter 18 - The Golden Door" An Illustrated History of USA . UK, Longman Group UK Limited Copyright 1990. p.76-79

5 John Bodnar "Immigration" 1991 <http://www.historychannel.com> (1999-03-25)

6 Ann McVeigh, "The Homeland" <www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/emigration/homeland.htm> (1999-05-13)

7 Liz Szabo "Interpreting the Irish Famine, 1846-1850" 1996-05-02 <www.people.virginia.edu/~eas5e/Irish/Famine.html> (1999-05-14)

8 Mary Johnston "Irish emigration" 1998-02-24 <www.gober.net/victorian/reports/irish2.html> (1999-05-14)



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