Blight Infection

Lore & Background

The proximate cause of the famine was the infection of potato crops by blight throughout Europe. The impact of blight on food supply caused 100,000 deaths outside Ireland, and influenced much of the unrest that culminated in European Revolutions of 1848. Longer-term reasons for the scale of the famine's impact included the system of absentee landlordism and single-crop dependence. Initial government actions to alleviate famine distress, which were constructive but limited, were ended by a new Whig administration in London that pursued a laissez-faire economic doctrine.

Additionally, some members of the British government believed that the famine was divine judgement or that the Irish lacked moral character. Aid resumed only to some degree at a later stage. Large quantities of food were exported from Ireland during the famine, and the refusal of London to bar such exports, as had been done on previous occasions, was an immediate and continuing source of controversy.

Reader's Guide

The famine is considered a defining moment in the history of Ireland. Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political, and cultural landscape, producing an estimated 2 million refugees and spurring a century-long population decline. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine became part of folk memory. Strained relations between many Irish people and the then ruling British government worsened further because of the famine, heightening ethnic and sectarian tensions and boosting nationalism and republicanism both in Ireland and among Irish emigrants around the world. This controversy contributed to the exacerbation of the Irish issue in British politics, the intensification of anti-British sentiment, the intensification of Irish nationalism and the campaign for independence.