The Great Famine

The Great Famine (Irish: an Gorta Mór meaning "the great hunger" or an Drochshaol meaning "the bad life") was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 during which the island's population dropped by 20–25 percent. Approximately one million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.

The famine was a watershed in the history of Ireland. Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political and cultural landscape. For both the native Irishand those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements. Modern historians regard it as a dividing line in the Irish historical narrative, referring to the preceding period of Irish history as "pre-Famine."