Did the English cause the potato famine?
Blair’s statement draws attention to the question of what caused the famine. In fact, the most glaring cause of the famine was not a plant disease, but England’s long-running political hegemony over Ireland. The English conquered Ireland, several times, and took ownership of vast agricultural territory.
What protist caused the Irish potato famine?
Scientists have long known that it was a strain of Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans) that caused the widespread devastation of potato crops in Ireland and northern Europe beginning in 1845, leading to the Irish Potato Famine.
How did the potato blight get to Ireland?
The cause was actually an airborne fungus (phytophthora infestans) originally transported in the holds of ships traveling from North America to England. Winds from southern England carried the fungus to the countryside around Dublin.
Why did the Irish eat so many potatoes?
Soon many people in Europe were using the potato as food, including the Irish. Because the potato grew easily, even in poor conditions, it soon became the food staple of Irish life. It seemed that the Irish would be able to survive for a time despite the tyrannous burdens placed on them by the British.
What was the disease that caused the Great Potato Famine?
A disease called late blight destroyed the leaves and edible roots of the potato plants in successive years from 1845 to 1849. Read more about late blight, the disease that destroyed Ireland’s potato crops. What were the effects of the Great Famine?
When did the Irish Potato Famine start and end?
By the time Ireland achieved independence in 1921, its population was barely half of what it had been in the early 1840s. Victims of Ireland’s Great Famine (1845–49) immigrating to North America by ship; wood engraving c. 1890. …in the case of the Irish Potato Famine in the late 1840s.
What was the cause of the Great Famine in Ireland?
In 1845 a strain of Phytophthora arrived accidentally from North America, and that same year Ireland had unusually cool moist weather, in which the blight thrived. Much of that year’s potato crop rotted in the fields.
Why did the poor build walls during the Potato Famine?
As with the famine roads, many of the lengthy rock walls snaking their way up hillsides (especially in the Burren) were also built by the poor such that they could work for sustenance instead of simply being looked after by charities. Once again the result was a series of unnecessary walls criss-crossing the west coast.
