The five-year Great Potato famine proves to…
1851 CE
The five-year Great Potato famine proves to be a watershed in the demographic history of Ireland.
As a direct consequence of the famine, Ireland's population of almost eight million four hundred thousand in 1844 has fallen through starvation, disease and emigration to six million six hundred thousand by 1851.
The number of agricultural laborers and smallholders in the western and southwestern counties undergoes an especially drastic decline.
About one million one hundred thousand people have died from starvation or from typhus and other famine-related diseases.
The number of Irish who emigrated to North America and Britain during the famine may have reached one and a half million.
Ireland's population will continue to decline in the following decade owing to overseas emigration and lower birth rates.
Political agitation continues to be subdued, while emigration steadily reduces the population every year.
The landowners have also suffered severely from inability to collect rents, and there is a wholesale transfer of estates to new owners.
Evictions are widespread, and cottages are demolished at once by the landlords to prevent other impoverished tenants from occupying them.
The flow of emigrants to the United States is encouraged by invitations from Irish people already there.
In England, also, the new industrial cities and shipping centers attract large settlements of poor migrants from Ireland.