In 1845, a potato blight arrived in Ireland that would lead to the deaths of over a million people and the emigration of even more. John Crowley tells the story
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The potato was the staple diet of the Irish poor. How did it become so important - and what happened when blight struck? Helene O'Keeffe explains.
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Great Famine, famine that occurred in Ireland in 1845–49 when the potato crop failed in successive years. The Irish famine was the worst to occur in Europe in the 19th century: about one million people died from starvation or from typhus and other famine-related diseases.
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The Irish Potato Famine, also known as the Great Famine or An Gorta Mór in Irish, was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. Between one and two million people emigrated from Ireland during the Great Hunger. Engraving by Henry Doyle (1827–1892), from Mary Frances Cusack’s Illustrated History of ...
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The Irish Potato Famine, also known as the Great Hunger, began in 1845 when a mold known as Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans) caused a destructive plant disease that spread rapidly...
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But in the Irish famine of the late 1840s, successive blasts of potato blight - or to give it its proper name, the fungus Phytophthora infestans - robbed more than one-third of the population of...
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From sexual behaviour to agriculture to religion to the diaspora, the Great Famine had effects on Irish society that are still being felt today. Kevin Whelan explains.
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Irish Potato Famine, (1845–49)Famine that occurred in Ireland when the potato crop failed in successive years. By the early 1840s almost half the Irish population, particularly the rural poor, was depending almost entirely on the potato for nourishment.
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