Going medieval food storage11/17/2023 No matter what they tried, the potatoes became diseased: “six months provisions a mass of rottenness.” Farmers were told to try drying the potatoes in ovens or to treat them with lime and salt or with chlorine gas. Scientific commissions were set up to investigate the problem and recommend ways to prevent the decay. Within a few days after they were dug up, the potatoes began to rot. But when the main crop was harvested in October, there were signs of disease. ![]() In the summer of 1845, the potato crop appeared to be flourishing. In the years before 1845, many committees and commissions had issued reports on the state of Ireland, and all predicted disaster. If the potato crop failed, there was nothing to replace it. Potatoes could not be stored for more than a year. More than half of the Irish people depended on the potato as the main part of their diet, and almost 40 percent had a diet consisting almost entirely of potatoes, with some milk or fish as the only other source of nourishment. All they needed was a spade, and they could grow potatoes in wet ground and on mountain sides where no other kinds of plants could be cultivated. And families did not need a plough to grow potatoes. Potatoes were nutritious and easy to cook, and they could be fed to pigs and cattle and fowl. An acre and a half could provide a family of six with enough food for a year. Large numbers of them could be grown on small plots of land. With no employment available, the only way that a laborer could live and support a family was to get a patch of land and grow potatoes. By 1835, three quarters of Irish laborers had no regular employment of any kind. The farms became too small to require hired labor. Their property was managed by middlemen, who split up the farms into smaller and smaller sections to increase the rents. Many owners visited their property only once or twice in their lifetime. Most of the large and productive farms were owned by English Protestant gentry who collected rents and lived abroad. The fisheries were undeveloped, and some fishermen could not even buy enough salt to preserve their catch. The few industries that had been established were failing. they may help each other.”Ī major cause of Irish poverty was that more and more people were competing for land. ![]() When asked why they married so young, the Bishop of Raphoe (a town in Ireland) replied: “They cannot be worse off than they are and. They would build a mud hut, and move in with no more than a pot and a stool. Boys and girls married young, with no money and almost no possessions. Pigs slept with their owners and heaps of manure lay by the doors. A census report in 1841 found that nearly half the families in rural areas lived in windowless mud cabins, most with no furniture other than a stool. In most of Ireland, housing conditions were terrible. paupers may be discovered, but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland.” ![]() He compared the conditions of the Irish to those of “the Indian in his forest and the Negro in chains. A Frenchman named Gustave de Beaumont traveled the country in the 1830s and wrote about his travels. But most managed to survive, and their descendants have become a vibrant part of American culture.Įven before the famine, Ireland was a country of extreme poverty. The immigrants who reached America settled in Boston, New York, and other cities where they lived in difficult conditions. ![]() The Potato Famine killed more than 1 million people in five years and generated great bitterness and anger at the British for providing too little help to their Irish subjects. They left because disease had devastated Ireland’s potato crops, leaving millions without food. Most were desperately poor, and many were suffering from starvation and disease. The Potato Famine and Irish Immigration to Americaīetween 18 more than 1.5 million adults and children left Ireland to seek refuge in America. The “Black Death”: A Catastrophe in Medieval Europe | The Potato Famine and Irish Immigration to America | The Debate Over World Population: Was Malthus Right?
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