Irish Famine Mapped

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The Irish Potato Famine was a period of mass hunger n Ireland from 1845 to 1852. The most rigorously touched territories in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was prevailing.

The severest year of the period was 1847, called “Black”. About one million people died throughout the famine. Over one million more left Ireland, causing the country’s population to fall by approximately 20 percent. In some settlements, the population decreased by as much as 67 percent. From 1845 to 1855, more than 2 million people left Ireland.

The famine’s supposed cause was a Phytophthora infestans that infected potato crops everywhere in Europe during the 1840s, causing an extra 100 thousand deaths outside Ireland and influencing much of the widespread European tension Revolutions of 1848. From 1846, the Phytophthora infestans’ impact was intensified by the British Whig government’s financial policy of laissez-faire capitalism. Additional reasons include the system of absentee landlordism and single-crop dependence.