Famine in Ireland 1879
The Irish Famine of 1879 was the last famine in Ireland . It was not a question of famine in the strict sense of the word, since hunger increased, but hardly starvation . This famine is often referred to as the “Little Famine” ( An Gorta Beag in Irish ), in contrast to the Great Famine of 1845–1849 .
causes
Ireland was at that time under British rule, the soil in Ireland belonged to the English landlords ( landlords ). The Irish farmers worked the land as tenants, often had to pay high rents and lived in abject poverty, which culminated in the Great Famine. Little had changed in these circumstances since then.
famine
Like the Great Famine, the 1879 famine was immediately triggered by the failure of the potato harvest, which eliminated the staple food of the poor Irish population. This led to food shortages and hunger, as well as to population movements from the affected areas to the cities.
On the other hand, the number of deaths from hunger was limited - unlike the Great Famine, which killed at least 1,000,000 people. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that the crop failures in 1879 were relatively local. As in 1845–1849, the province of Connacht in the west of Ireland, which was also the poorest province, was hardest hit.
This time many of those affected could count on the support of relatives living in emigration who had emigrated as a result of the Great Famine. The British government reacted to the emergency much more quickly and efficiently than in 1845–1849. This prevented mass extinction. Many who had fled to the cities returned to the countryside after the successful harvest in 1880.
consequences
Although the immediate consequences were limited, the famine of 1879 had much more far-reaching consequences. Many of the farmers affected by the crop failure had experienced the Great Famine in their childhood and feared that the same fate would happen to them and their children. This fear contributed to increasing the willingness to, if necessary, militant resistance to poverty and oppression.
When Michael Davitt (born in Connacht County Mayo in 1846 , moved to England with his family in 1855, grew up there and became a political activist) returned to Ireland in 1879, given the conditions he encountered there, he concluded that it was attractive hadn't changed anything in Ireland's problems. He then founded together with Charles Stewart Parnell the organization Irish National Land League , which campaigned for land reforms in Ireland and for the rights of tenants. In the following years, the Land League agitated in the so-called " Land War " for their concerns, with which they finally had success. With the Land Acts and the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903, Irish peasant ownership returned to Irish land.
In Ireland's collective memory, the "Little Famine" of 1879 is far less present than the Great Famine. Often this famine is seen more as a footnote to the “Land War”.