This Week in People’s History, Sep 10–16, 2025
Starvation in the Midst of Plenty: Deadly Landlordism During the Potato Famine in Ireland
(This week’s column is devoted to a single event due to lack of time available for the author to produce a regular multi-anniversary production.)
SEPTEMBER 13 IS THE 180TH ANNIVERSARY of one of the first published descriptions of the potato blight that was beginning to produce a deadly famine in Ireland. On this day in 1845 the weekly Gardeners’ Chronicle published, “We stop the Press with very great regret to announce that the potato Murrain has unequivocally declared itself in Ireland.”
The parasitic organism that was beginning to destroy Irish potato crops was known to have originated in North America, where it had destroyed Eastern U.S. potato crops in 1843 and 1844. It is thought that the organism had crossed the Atlantic via food for passengers on eastbound ships.
In Ireland, the potato blight, which destroyed about 85 percent of the potato crop by 1847, continued until 1852. Even though the blight affected only potatoes and Irish farmers grew large quantities of other potentially nourishing crops, the landlords exported the crops that continued to flourish, leaving almost nothing for the poor to eat.
During those seven years at least a million Irish people (about nine percent of the population) died from starvation or one of the many diseases caused by malnutrition. During the famine and several years thereafter more than two million left the country, never to return.
In addition to the decimation of Ireland’s poor, the famine had a profound effect on Irish politics, greatly strengthening anti-landlord and anti-colonial (that is, anti-British) sentiment. It also accelerated the already substantial diaspora to North America, where about a million Irish refugees settled between 1846 and 1851. For a thorough introduction to all aspects of the Irish potato famine and its repercussions, see Paddy’s Lament, Ireland 1846-1847: Prelude to Hatred by Thomas Gallagher, which is reviewed here: https://portside.org/2014-03-17/real-irish-american-story-not-taught-schools
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