I would like a point clarified re the Irish Potato Famine. The sort of general information that I have gathered on the topic over the years is something like this: the famine occurred because there was a potato blight that ruined the potato crop, which was the main thing that common people were allowed to eat, and this was because they were in a quasi-feudal relationship to their Anglo-Irish landlords, who kept various good other crops and farm products for sale / for their own use, while the peasants were only allowed to keep potatos for themselves. Is this exactly what happened?
And if so:
-Were the landlords so heartless that they couldn’t spare some other crops for the people in an emergency situation to keep them from starving? Did no one even have basic things like wheat for bread or cows for milk anywhere around for their own use?
-Did people keep working on the farms and planting the other crops all the while starving because they couldn’t have any potatos?
-Were there any rebellions where people tried to take some of the other foodstuffs for themselves? Did any violent altercations with the authorities result?
People were allowed to eat pretty much anything. They often didn’t because they couldn’t afford to do so, which is hardly unknown today, even in developed nations.
Tenant farmers often didn’t have a lot of land, and potatoes were often the only crop that would sufficiently feed their families - it didn’t take a lot of land compared to other crops and grew relatively fast. They were also often too poor to buy food they did not grow themselves.
These weren’t large plantation tracts. They were more often small plots farmed by individual families. Their money crops went to pay taxes and rent. They could eat those crops, but they’d be kicked out not long after by their landlords after failing to pay rent.
The people who bought those crops from the farmers often exported them, where they could fetch a better price. I think there were export bans eventually, but food was still too expensive to buy for a lot of people.
Plots had been sub-divided, and sub-divided again. So small that the potato was the only crop which could be grown in sufficient quantity to sustain subsistence farming for that number of people. Over-reliance on a single crop, and a single variety within that crop, was a disaster waiting to happen.
Before the Great Famine, the traditional Irish peasant meal consisted mainly of potatoes, milk, oats, beans, barley, and bread. Potatoes were the mainstay. As the years grew leaner, dairy products largely disappeared from the Irish diet, since poverty forced many farmers to sell their milk to pay rent. By the time the famine hit, the peasants were eating pretty much just potatoes, supplemented with some salt fish and oatmeal.
Oats and barley normally being lesser crops (Wheat often being a main cash crop), so as others have stated, it was what they could grow easily and on their own, in addition to anything to pay their costs was what they had to eat. Not that they were forbidden to eat other things, they just couldn’t afford to vary their diet much and still support themselves, thus the comment of even dairy becoming minimalized.
They owed rent, they weren’t really confiscating goods directly. Potatoes were worth much less on the market and don’t really prevent you from growing other saleable crops as much as another. They couldn’t not pay or they wouldn’t be able to grow anything. So it was sustainable for a time if at meagre levels.
The archetypal landlords lived in England or elsewhere in the country, and relied on overseers, so they didn’t necessarily know, even if they cared. The government was much criticized for it’s response though it’s debated about the relative role of callousness vs. incompetence.
Grain would be stored before export. Theft happened, and would be prosecuted. Famously in the song “the Fields of Athenry”, which was written in the 1970s so it’s artistic license if not based on real accounts.
There was also a strong commitment to laissez-faire economics and a belief that you interfered with the operation of the market at your peril. Some efforts were made to relieve distress - the notorious public works program providing employment by building useless roads to nowhere was one. The problems were so big, and so difficult for nineteenth century philanthropy to solve, that many people found it easier to believe that they were incapable of being solved, that land reform only could solve the problem, that Ireland had too many people for its agriculture to support, and that the starving millions must somehow be made to disappear, and if that meant them starving to death, sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind.
There was no actual prohibition on the common people eating other crops, but An Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery, passed in 1704, prevented a Catholic from leaving an intact farm to one child (unless the eldest son converted to Protestantism to inherit it).
The result of having to divide farms equally among all children resulted over time in smaller and smaller plots (which was exactly the aim of the law). So a large percentage of the population had to grow the one crop that could feed a family on such a small farm: potatoes.
As for heartless landlords, the situation varied. There are some accounts of landlords who bankrupted themselves in trying to aid the starving. Others were quite as heartless as you’re imagining. At first direct food distribution was opposed by merchants and initiated only in counties where merchants were few.
In the British Parliament were two opposing parties, one whose primary loyalty was to the landlords, the other firm in their belief that the workings of the market place would take care of everything in time.
Thus, even in the worst of the famine, Ireland exported meat and grain to England. The Corn Law remained in place for a disastrously long time, preventing the import of grain to Ireland. And the focus of relief efforts was on providing work, rather than direct nutritional aid. Those who were starving were unable to work enough to earn enough to not starve, etc.
And about million moved to other countries. Mainly to Britain, the US, and Canada, but also other countries like Argentina and Australia. And they kept on emigrating even after the Potato Famine was over.
It is also worth noting that potatoes are an important source of some vitamins. They may seem a bland and unassuming vegetable but they are nutritious and, surprisingly, a good source of vitamin-C. Something oats and such could not replace.
Among other issues scurvy was a big problem during the famine. I do not know that it was a primary cause of death but it certainly added to the problem.
Here’s a side question … did all the death and emigration affect the profits of the landowners and such to the point they said … wait something’s wrong?
I do remember reading something in an old magazine article that was reprinted in book form that by 1900 there were more Irish in NYC and Boston than Ireland itself.
Some landlords themselves went broke, without anyone able to pay rents and they had bills to pay themselves. But the clearance of the land was, in general, reckoned to be a Good Thing that allowed it to be reconfigured and improved for other purposes than just subsistence farming by numerous families, something that is neither efficient or profitable.
They also have a lot more protein than you’d think. Not enough to get all of your protein needs from a diet of only potatoes, but it doesn’t take much supplementation from high-protein sources like eggs or dairy.
See the SD post above. It’s one I still remember years later because how many opportunities to have useless facts about molybdenum deficiency in your head do you have?
Yep, as @Chronos and @thelurkinghorror pointed out the earlier column I linked noted that potatoes were pretty complete, especially with oats and dairy, although you’d probably be tired of spuds. That was the main focus of the article, but felt that it was helpful for the discussion of this topic as well.
Aside to TLH - yeah, the weird molybdenum thing was one of the reasons it sprang to mind for this thread as well.
Which is why the time of the greatest population of Ireland was in (the census of) 1851. The island (both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) dropped down so low in population because of the deaths and the emigrations that it’s still not as high as it was back then. Like many countries today, the population isn’t increasing very fast even now, so a reasonable guess is that it will never reach the population in 1851.
Um. Don’t you have the exact same problem even before the ‘can’t leave the whole farm to one person’ law? I mean, if SonA gets the whole farm, it can probably support him, his wife, and his kids. But what happens to SonB, SonC etc? Did they just starve? Never get to marry? Were there enough other available professions that they could all support themselves? Prior to that law, did they all join the army or become sailors or emigrate or what?
I think you mean census of 1841. 1851 was after the Famine and much emigration. Indeed, data from Wikipedia has the population in 1841 as 8.18M and 1851 as 6.55M, a 20% drop (a really incredible change in only 10 years).
