“The Great Famine: Ireland’s Potato Famine” Ireland has a long, and very interesting history. A very interesting and important partof this history is the great potato famine. This famine was a turning point in Irish history. Itwas the cause of the great flloods of immigrants into the United States and into England, andwas the origin of the stereotype of Irish people being poverty ridden. The history of Ireland is important in understanding the famine. The conditions whichturned the failure of a single crop into a national disaster were a product of a turbulentrelationship between the Irish people and their English rulers (Percival 15).The English took Ireland over slowly, through a series of invasions. Then EnglishBarons were granted lands in Ireland. Occasionally, Irish lords would rebel. In many cases,the descendants of the earliest settlers became so assimilated into Irish life that they joined therebels(15). They were rebeling because the English lords had the richest and best farmlands(16).In the sixteenth century, England went through a Reformation, and became aProtestant country. The Irish people however, remained true to their Roman Catholic faith(16). Later, around the seventeenth century, land became limited in availability (27). The richfarmland was kept for the English settlers, and the poorest lands were leftover for the Irishpeople (28). During the nineteenth century, the price of grain and other crops was high, and so werethe rents. When the prices of grain and other crops fell, so did rents, but not enough to helpthe very poor (33).The poorest members of the community, about one third of the population, could onlyafford very small land plots, not large enough to grow grain, so they had to give up growinggrain, and start growing potatoes. Potatoes were the only crop that ould support a largefamily on a very small acreage. This dependancy on one crop, for prosperity as well assurvival, w...
