Great Hunger

Ireland is a beautiful island country located off the northwestern coast of Europe in the Atlantic Ocean. Approximately eight million Irish people lived there in 1845. The country was governed and ruled by England at the time. Many of the Irish lived in abject poverty often living as renters to landlords. They were virtually reduced to eating one crop as their main source of food-the potato. Suddenly, a disease infected the potato crop in 1845. Approximately one million Irish children, women and men (some historians estimate an even greater number) subsequently died of starvation and disease over the next five years. Ireland's Great Hunger had arrived with devastating impacts. Many other poor Irish were evicted from their meager homes for falling behind in their rent. 

Yet, the appalling and incredible reality was that the government continued to permit the exportation of tons of food from Ireland to other countries while the Irish died in massive numbers. Dr. Christine Kinealy wrote in her book, This Great Calamity, 1995: "There was no shortage of resources to avoid the tragedy of a famine. Within Ireland itself, there were substantial resources of food which, had the political will existed, could have been diverted, even as a short-term measure, to supply a starving people." Indeed, British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated in 1997 "That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy." And so began in 1845 a massive and sad emigration of Irish people who escaped death by fleeing to the shores of the United States. As history would bear out, Ireland's tragic loss was America's tremendous gain.