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Legacy of the Great Irish Famine

Impact of 1845–1852 mass starvation

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The Great Famine is widely regarded as a turning point in Irish history and is often treated as the dividing line between pre-Famine Ireland and modern Ireland. Its effects reshaped landholding patterns, contributed to the decline of the Irish language in many regions, and intensified political tensions surrounding British rule in Ireland.

Large-scale emigration during and after the famine contributed to the growth of Irish communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain. Many emigrants and their descendants remained closely connected to Irish political causes and later played an important role in movements for Irish independence. Historians and political commentators have continued to debate the British government's response to the famine, including whether its policies amounted to genocide.

From the late twentieth century onward, the famine became the subject of extensive commemoration, scholarship, literature, music, and film in Ireland and among the Irish diaspora.

Political and cultural impact

In Ireland

Political reaction resulting from the Great Irish Famine was muted, because of the extremely limited electoral franchise that existed at the time. Irish politics in the 1820s to 1840s had been dominated by the Catholic Emancipation and "Repeal" movements under Daniel O'Connell. (The Independent Irish Party, formed in June 1852, disintegrated within four years, but it was in major decline from 1853 when tenants benefited from a recovery in agricultural prices.)

Outside the mainstream, too, reaction was slow. The 1848 Young Ireland rebellion under Thomas Davis, though occurring at the start of the Famine, was hardly impacted upon by the Famine, as much as by the clash between the "constitutional" nationalism and Catholicism of O'Connell and the pluralist republicanism of Davis. Another rebellion would not occur again until the 1860s under the Fenians/Irish Republican Brotherhood. Historians have speculated that, such was the economic and social impact on Ireland, the nation was numbed into inaction for decades afterwards; in other words, that politics mattered less to people than survival after the traumatic experiences of the late 1840s and early 1850s.

Though its electorate was a small part of the population (as elsewhere in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland), those Irish privileged to vote continued until the mid-1870s to vote for the two major British political parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, with more votes and seats going to the latter, even though it had been the party of government during the Famine. The introduction of the secret ballot in 1872 enabled the Home Rule League to largely replace the Liberals in Irish politics in 1874. The Home Rule League was reconstituted as the Irish Parliamentary Party, under Charles Stewart Parnell in the 1880s; Parnell was also instrumental in establishing the Irish Land League, to achieve land reform. A large body of voters continued to vote for unionists, who wished to maintain the Union that joined Britain and Ireland.

The British Royal Family avoided some censure, due to their perceived impotence in political affairs. Although some believed the myth that Queen Victoria (known in Ireland in later decades as the "Famine Queen") had only donated a miserly £5 to famine relief, in fact the sum was £2,000 (equivalent to £217,000 in 2026 measured by Purchasing power from CPI), from her personal resources.This £2000 compares to £170,000 raised by the general public. The Ottoman Sultan,Abdülmecid I,is reported to have offered £10,000 in aid but was requested to reduce this to £1000 to avoid embarrassing the Queen. On instruction of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Victoria made what was largely seen as a propaganda visit in 1849. However, this visit was conducted under stringent security measures and was not free from protests or controversy. The celebrations associated with her visit just after the famine were compared to "illuminating a graveyard" in a newspaper editorial at the time.

An additional social impact due to the high numbers of children orphaned was that for some young women, prostitution was one of few options available. Some of these young women became known as Wrens of the Curragh.

Linguistic consequences

It is estimated that one and a half million people died during the Famine and that a million emigrated between 1846 and 1851. A large proportion of these were Irish speakers, and the poorest districts, from which emigration continued to flow, were generally Irish-speaking. The Famine was not the only reason for the decline of the language (the general exclusion of Irish from public life and the influence of the English-speaking clergy and middle classes also played a part) but it was a conspicuous element. This led to the creation of an Ireland which thought of itself as essentially English-speaking, though with a persistent and influential reaction in the form of organisations such as the Gaelic League and the growth of a network of urban Irish-speaking activists from the late nineteenth century on.

In pre-Famine Ireland Irish was the language both of a rich folk culture and a strong literary tradition. The latter persisted in the form of Irish language manuscripts containing both prose and poetry: a single collection would give the reader access to a substantial part of the literature. Many such manuscripts were taken to America by emigrants in the 1840s and after.

The emigration of numerous Irish speakers to America as an immediate or long-term result of the Famine led to a movement there for the maintenance of the Irish language. This was marked in part by the foundation of Philo-Celtic Societies and the founding of the monthly journal An Gaodhal in 1881, the first such publication anywhere in which Irish was extensively used.

Irish emigrants abroad

If the political elite in Ireland remained tolerant of British political parties and the monarchy, emigrants were not so. Many Irish emigrants to the United States quickly associated with separatist republican groups and organisations like the IRB. The political liberties and freedom of opportunity they encountered in the States confirmed for them the potential of an independent Ireland and often made them more passionate and optimistic than some of their brethren at home.

The Famine and its causes became a major platform for emigrant anger, as it was the main cause for most of them being emigrants in the first place. John Mitchel, a journalist by trade (who had written for Thomas Davis's newspaper, The Nation before leaving to set up his own paper, only to be arrested, tried for sedition and transported to the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land) who continued to campaign against British rule in Ireland after moving to the United States. Analysing the famine, he wrote:

The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine... a million and half men, women and children were carefully, prudently and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created.
John Mitchel

Mitchel's commentary expressed the anger felt by many emigrants, who saw themselves as the dispossessed, forced from Ireland by a famine they blamed on British government policies. The famine became a constant issue with Irish Americans, who to an extent unrivalled among other emigrant communities in the United States, remained emotionally attached to their native land. Leaders such as John Devoy in later decades came to play a major role in supporting Irish independence. It was no accident that the President of Dáil Éireann, Éamon de Valera in 1920 chose to travel to the United States, not elsewhere, in his efforts to get the Irish Republic recognised and accepted, or that when Michael Collins launched special bonds to fund the new Republic, many were sold to Irish Americans.

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