[January 17, 2017] This is not a history lesson. Neither is this a lesson in botany. What many of us were taught about the Irish Potato Famine was that the Irish were ignorant (drunk and lazy) and that led to the potato (and the crops demise) being used for most of the population’s nutrition needs. The famine, however, is more likely the result of one of the biggest leadership failures in human history.
A potato blight led to this Great Hunger, as it is known in Ireland, killing over a million people and causing the out-migration of another million from Ireland. Between 1845 and 1852, the country’s population fell by approximately 25%, causing additional social disruption on an unprecedented scale. Superficially, we seem to only focus on the Irish social character and potato blight.
Land acquisition, absentee landlords, and the British Corn Laws each contributed to the disaster and while there is some debate about this, one thing stands out … the failure of British governmental leadership to help the Irish people at a critical time in their history is not in doubt. One historian wrote, regarding various committees studying the problem, that disaster was on the horizon for Ireland.1
The effects of the famine resonate today throughout Europe and the Americas as it reshaped Ireland’s demographic, political, and cultural landscape.2 Ireland at the time was a part of Great Britain and what those in the British government failed to correct known problems, widespread at the time, that were pushing the Irish population toward disaster.
Growing ethnic and sectarian tensions had been rising before the famine due to these factors. Those problems that the British government failed to correct gave a boost to Irish nationalism and republicanism in Ireland and among the Irish emigrants in the United States and elsewhere. This was the result of the failure of British leader to both prevent the famine and then to act appropriately to adequately assist a starving population.
The Irish Potato Famine was the result of government failure, not unlike the 20th Century Communist-inspired famines in Russia, China, and North Korea. In these modern-day famines, government was the cause of the famine; one that adhered to a strict ideology that didn’t work. In the case of Ireland, it was neglect and indifference but failed leadership nonetheless.
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- Cecile Woodham-Smith wrote that “without exception their findings prophesied disaster; Ireland was on the verge of starvation, her population rapidly increasing, three-quarters of her labourers unemployed, housing conditions appalling and the stand of living unbelievably low.”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29