The Blight Bites

Causes

In 1861, John Mitchell wrote: “The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine” (www.historyplace.com).  The enormity of the famine had two main causes.  The blight was caused by a fungus called Phythophthora Infestans, which was “so powerful that it destroyed entire potato fields within hours” (Bartoletti, 36).  The political cause was English overlords of Ireland.

Phythophthora Infestans came from South America in cargoes of guano fertilizer that Irish farmers used on crops.  “Once the fungus reached Ireland, the wet climate helped the blight to spread.  Wind and water transported its spores across the island, at a rate of 50 miles a day.  When the spores fell, they germinated on the leaves and stems of the potato plants.  The rain washed the spores into the soil, and as the potatoes were dug, the spores spread” (Bartoletti, 36-38).  The blight caused potatoes to turn black and, sometimes overnight, turn into disgusting slime.  The fungus spread quickly; by 1848 not one crop was left alive.

The famine became a crisis due to English lordship over Ireland and their unwillingness to help the starving Irish.  During the famine, Ireland was under control of Britain.  Most Irishmen were tenants and did not own their homes.  They had to give food and money to the English, leaving little of either for themselves.  Families used what money they had to buy food or passage on ships.  Tenants were unable to pay their landlords.  They were evicted from their homes, leaving them without money, food, or shelter.  Meanwhile, British landowners continued to ship tons of wheat, corn, oats, barley, and rye to Britain each year —   “enough wheat alone, claimed one observer, to have fed the entire Irish population” (Dolan, 25). Irish native Diarmaid O’Donovan, said landlords were “…as great a curse to Ireland as the archfiend himself” (Bartoletti, 11). When the Irish first pleaded for aid, the government claimed reports were exaggerated.  They went as far as to say the Irish brought it upon themselves.  “They said that the Irish didn’t work hard enough to improve their lives.  They blamed the Irish for marrying too young, having too many children, depending too much on potatoes, and listening to the poor advice of their priests. One Kerry landlord even called the potato destruction ‘a blessing to Ireland’, while others claimed that the crop failure was an act of God, designed to reduce the Irish population to realistic levels” (Bartoletti, 35).  Relief efforts were inconsistent.  “For the Irish, British rule and English landlordism remained the greatest curse” (Bartoletti, 16).

(Kissane, 157)

“Numbers of those poor creatures who were thus cruelly exterminated are now living in huts erected by them on the roadside, the victims of famine and fever...  The monstrous conduct of the landlords here and in every other locality throughout the country has considerably added to the extreme mass of human suffering.  -- April 1948 Waterford Chronicle”
(Poirteir, 167).

Phythophthora 
infestans (www.bbc.co.uk)

The Great Famine...An Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger)...The Great Starvation...God's Visitation... The Great Calamity... Irish Holocaust