Interesting fact I learned today: There are 34 million people in the United States that have Irish heritage. Ireland has only about 4 million people. Interesting! 
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34 million drunk Irish? Whoa!
anonynous,
33,999,999. My wife doesn’t drink.
Apparently by the way I spelled your title, I do.
And may you never go hungry!
The Great Famine or the Great Hunger , known more commonly outside of Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, is the name given to a famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1850. The Famine was at least fifty years in the making, due to the disastrous interaction of British economic policy, destructive farming methods, and the unfortunate appearance of “the Blight” —the potato fungus that almost instantly destroyed the primary food source for the majority population. The immediate after-effects of The Famine continued into 1851. The number of deaths is unrecorded, and various estimates suggest totals between 500,000 and more than one million in the five years from 1846. Some two million refugees are attributed to the Great Hunger (estimates vary), and much the same number of people emigrated to Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia (see the Irish Diaspora).
The immediate effect on Ireland was devastating, and its long-term effects proved immense, permanently changing Irish culture and tradition. The Irish Potato Famine was the culmination of a social, biological, political and economic catastrophe, caused by both Irish and British factors, which would have sharp and lasting influences on the world.
No-one knows for certain how many people died in the Famine. State registration of births, marriages or deaths had not yet begun, while the Roman Catholic Church’s records, where they exist at all, are understandably incomplete, given the sheer scale of deaths. Many of the Church of Ireland’s records (which included records of local Catholics, who paid tithes (local taxes) to their local Church of Ireland), were destroyed when the IRA blew up the Irish Public Records Office in 1922.
One possible estimate has been reached by comparing the expected population with the eventual numbers in the 1850s. Earlier predictions expected that by 1851, Ireland would have a population of 8 to 9 million. This calculation is based on numbers contained in the ten year census results compiled since 1821.
In 1851, the actual population of Ireland was at least 7 million people. Making straightforward calculations is complicated by a secondary effect of famine, a key side-effect of malnutrition, namely plummeting fertility and sexual activity rates. The scale of that effect on population numbers was not fully recognised until studies done during African famines in the twentieth century. As a result, corrections based on inaccuracies in census returns and on the previous unrealised decline in births due to malnourishment have led to an overall reduction in the presumed death numbers. Modern historians and statisticians estimate that between 500,000 and 1,100,000 died. Many historians suggest the death-toll was in the region of 700,000 to 800,000. A few early historians claimed a figure of over five million though most modern historians have dismissed this claim and the reliability of its calculations. In addition, in excess of one million Irish emigrated in the notorious coffin ships to the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, while more than one million emigrated over following decades; by 1911, a combination of emigration and an abnormally high number of unmarried men and women in the population, had reduced the population of Ireland to 4.4 million.
Potato blights continued in Ireland, especially in 1872 and 1879-1880. These killed few people, partly because they were less severe, but mainly due to a complex range of reasons. The growth in the numbers of railways made the importation of foodstuffs easier; in 1834, Ireland had 6 miles of railway tracks; by 1912, the total was 3,403. The banning of sub-division, coupled with emigration, had increased the average farm holding, enabling tenant farms to diversify in terms of produce grown. The increasing wealth in urban areas meant alternative sources of food, grain, potatoes and seed were available in towns and villages. The 1870s agricultural economy thus was more efficient and less dependent on potatoes, as well as having access to new farm machinery and product control that had not existed thirty years earlier.
Of particular importance was the wholesale re-organisation of the agricultural sector, which had begun after the famine with the Encumbered Estates Act and which in the period (1870s-1900s) saw the nature of Irish landholding changed completely, with small owned farms replacing mass estates and multiple tenants. Many of the large estates in the 1840s were debt ridden and heavily mortgaged. In contrast, estates in the 1870s, many of them under new Irish middle class owners thanks to the Encumbered Estates Act, were on a better economic footing, and so capable of reducing rents and providing locally organized relief, as was the Roman Catholic Church, which was better organised and funded than it had been in 1847-49.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!
golden manna,
Thank you for sharing that. Sobering