The Great Irish Famine (also known as the Great Hunger and, in Irish, An Gorta Mór or An Drochshaol) was a famine, and its aftermath, in Ireland between 1845 and 1849. The famine was caused initially by potato blight, an oomycete that almost instantly destroyed the primary food source of many Irish people. The blight explains the crop failure but the dramatic and deadly effect of the famine was exacerbated by other factors of economic, political, social, and religious origin. Its immediate effects continued until 1851. Much is unrecorded but estimates are that around one million people, about 12% of the population, died in the three years from 1846 to 1849.[1] Most of these deaths were the result of famine-related diseases rather than starvation. Another one million people are estimated to have fled as refugees to Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia during the same period, increasing the Irish Diaspora.
The famine occurred within the British imperial homeland at a time well into the modern prosperity of the Victorian era of the Industrial Revolution during a time when Ireland was, even during the famine, a net exporter of food. The immediate effect on Ireland was devastating and its long-term effects proved immense, changing Irish culture and tradition for generations. The population of Ireland continued to fall for 70 years, stabilising at half the level prior to the famine. This long-term decline ended in the west of the country only in 2006, over 160 years after the famine struck
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The Great Famine is still remembered in many locations throughout Ireland, especially in those regions that suffered the greatest losses, and also in cities overseas with large populations descended from Irish immigrants.
In Ireland
- Strokestown Park Famine Museum, Ireland
- Custom House Quays, Dublin, Ireland. Painfully thin sculptural figures, by artist Rowan Gillespie, stand as if walking towards the emigration ships on the Dublin Quayside.
- Murrisk, County Mayo, Ireland. This sculpture of a famine ship, near the foot of Croagh Patrick, depicts the refugees it carries as dead souls hanging from the sides.
- Donaghmore Famine Museum - set in Donaghmore Workhouse in County Laois.
- Doolough, County Mayo. A memorial commemorates famine victims who walked from Louisburgh along the mountain road to Delphi Lodge to seek relief from the Poor Board who were meeting there. Returning after their request was refused, many of them died at this point.
- Doagh Island, Inishowen, County Donegal, Ireland. Doagh Visitor Centre and Famine Museum has exhibits and memorial on the effects of the potato famine in Inishowen, Donegal.
- Ennistymon, County Clare, Ireland. This was the first memorial in Ireland to honour those who suffered and were lost during the Great Famine. It is erected across the street from an abandoned workhouse where an estimated 20,000 Irish died and a mass graveyard for children who perished and were buried without coffins