According to Daly, in pre famine Ireland, the Irish population had basically reached the physical capacity of the Irish economy. The collapse of a largely home-based textile industry, due to the advent of a factory based textile industry, exacerbated the situation in some rural areas, particularly in north Connacht and south Ulster. In Kerry and Cork, small holdings, which had been rented as part industrial, were now reduced to depending exclusively on farming. Perhaps the greatest problem concerns the number of days worked by the average labourer. The Poor Inquiry Report estimated that the number of people unemployed for 30 weeks annually was 2,385,000. An examination of pleas for relief during the years 1815-45 reveals a concentration along the western seaboard from Donegal to Kerry. These reports suggest a crisis in the economy of the West of Ireland, mostly due to the pressures of a rising population.
The most conclusive change in Irish demographic behaviour in the 30 years prior to the famine is the steady rise in emigration levels. Most of the early migrants were from Ulster as well as Leitrim and Sligo. From 1815 to 1845 approximately 250,000 left Ireland for North America. Emigration was the most obvious demographic reaction to the difficult economic circumstances in the pre famine decade. However, a rising emigration rate and a falling birth rate offered only partial relief to increasing population pressure. Added to that, demographic adjustment was weakest in the western and southern areas most at risk. The result of this was increasing dependence on the potato. By the 1840s, poverty had reduced one-third of the population to almost exclusive dependence on it for sustenance. Indeed, Ireland's moist climate gave it a comparative advantage in potato cultivation, and potato yields were high. Its importance in the Irish diet, coupled with an inadequate policy response from the authorities, made the consequences of repeated shortfalls in the 1840s devastating.
The mortality statistics of the 1851 census show that the Irish famine killed about one million people, making it a major famine, by world-historical standards as stated earlier. A regional analysis of famine morality by Mokyr reveals that the excess death rate was least in east Leinster, Dublin and Northeast Ulster. The population before the famine was estimated at 8.2 million, according to the census. Between 1841-1851, the population fell by 20% to 6.5 million. The highest death rate occurred in Connacht with Mayo the most affected county of all. Daly suggests that this was due to the breakdown of the poor law system and the high level of eviction in Clare, Tipperary and Roscommon. Urbanised areas didn’t neccessilary fare much better than rural areas as the flight of the destitute and starving to the towns brought infection and spread disease. The timing of excess mortality varied too, even in some of the worst hit areas. In west Cork, a notorious black spot, the worst was over by late 1847, but the deadly effects of the famine ranged in Clare until 1850 or even 1851. Infectious diseases – especially typhus and diarrhoea – rather than literal starvation were responsible for the bulk of mortality. Many who were not abjectly poor and starving died of famine-related diseases.
The famine also resulted in emigration on a massive scale. Mokyr estimates that there were approximately 420,000 emigrants during the decade 1841-51, with the majority during the Famine years. Canada became the most common destination, as Canadian vessels were subject to fewer regulations. The death rates on some of the famine ships were over 50 per cent. The heaviest levels of emigration during the 1840’s occurred from the north midland and the northwest, from counties such as Mayo and Sligo. Most of those who emigrated relied on their own resources, though some landlords helped through direct subsidies or by relieving those who left of their unpaid rent bills. For the most part, the landless poor simply could not afford to leave.
The famine had a massive effect on the country and while it is natural to focus on agriculture and on the countryside, no sector of the economy was unscathed. Strong Farmers also found their effective land endowment reduced, since their holdings could no longer yield the same quantity of potatoes as before. Donnelly claims that their rental income plummeted by as much one-third while the crisis lasted. There were thousands of empty houses and abandoned fields around the country, examples of this particularly in Connemara. The famine marked a turning point in the volume and structure of agricultural output as Irish farmers adjusted from tillage farming to raising livestock for the expanding British market. According to Donnelly, the contribution of Irish livestock to the British market rose by almost 20 per cent from 1850-1880. Thus, dependence on the potato declined in the Irish diet. However, the area worst hit by the famine, the West, records the least shift from tillage to pasture. Cormac O’ Grada puts this down to the fact that the West proved less adept at increasing livestock investment because of the persistence of small farms and lack of capital. The switch to livestock led to a consolidation of agricultural holdings in the second half of the 19th century and the emergence of a self-confidant class of tenant farmers, within a transformed landlord system.
In conclusion, the Great Irish Famine was one of the worst human disasters of the nineteenth century. Partial failures of the potato crop were nothing new in Ireland before 1845, but damage on the scale wrought by the ecological shock of potato blight was utterly unprecedented. It had a huge effect on the shaping of Irelands future. It had a major effect on Irish culture and led to a major decline in the Irish language. As stated earlier, it had an effect on Irish family life and heralded an age celibacy. This essay shown how the famine has shaped the geography of 19th century Ireland.
Bibliography
Nolan, W (ed), The shaping of Ireland, Dublin, 1986
Daly, M, The Famine In Ireland, Dublin, 1986
Graham, B, Proudfoot, L (ed), A historical Geography Of Ireland, San Diego, 1993