A famine is defined as a shortage or scarcity of food and it can affect many people in negative ways and lead to many tragic events. The Irish Potato famine was one of the worst famines to occur in Europe.The Irish Potato Famine affected Irish society and it’s people immensely. The famine affected society through the people, through the government, and through economics. The famine began due to a bacteria that attacked the crops and destroyed them. Potatoes were the easiest crop to grow, which is why people depended on it the most. Many people died, and others were struggling to survive. Struggling to survive encouraged people to leave Ireland by any means possible. The population was decreasing very quickly. “The disaster caused immigrants
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The majority of the people who were left in Ireland were elders; the young people with families were trying to find any means necessary for their children to survive. “Famine turned children against parents and the strong against the weak, making liars, thieves, and even cannibals of decent people” (The Historian). Therefore, survival was the only thing on people’s mind, there was nothing that was most important to them. While they struggled to survive, the British were trying to make profits out of their suffering. The people were in such a bad place that they became almost unrecognizable. “Seeing a cabin standing somewhat by itself in a hollow, and surrounded by a moat of green filth, we entered it with some difficulty, and found a single child about three years old lying on a kind of shelf, with its little face resting upon the edge of the board and looking steadfastly out at the door as if for its mother. It never moved its eyes as we entered, but kept them fixed toward the entrance. It is doubtful whether the poor thing had a mother or father left to her; but it is more doubtful still whether those eyes would have relaxed their vacant gaze if both of them had entered at …show more content…
Farmers could no longer provide for anyone, the bacteria had left them with nothing. Potatoes were what most Irish farmers relied on as well as the consumers. The consequences were inescapable. “But just as the result on a fundamental human level was the same--a natural trigger moving subsistence farmers to the wrong side of a tipping point, the slide into starvation and social breakdown, the eventual collapse of basic morality (the aged and very young abandoned, isolated cannibalism)--so too was the common litany of folly and malice that made preventable human disaster unfold like inescapable natural catastrophe” ( Maclean's). Farmers were left empty handed,they had to experience the trauma of watching their crops die. Many people were so devastated that they would burst into tears. ”Many families now saw their earnings collapse and were thrown into greater dependence on the one subsistence crop that they could grow in sufficient quantities in their cottage gardens, or "conacre" land plots rented from larger farmers” (Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture). Once the crops were infected, their financial situation would be changed drastically. Life was practically over once the potato blight came to Ireland. It was difficult to see crops die, especially when the people worked so hard to try to make their farms successful to profit off of as well as to
The majority of the people who were left in Ireland were elders; the young people with families were trying to find any means necessary for their children to survive. “Famine turned children against parents and the strong against the weak, making liars, thieves, and even cannibals of decent people” (The Historian). Therefore, survival was the only thing on people’s mind, there was nothing that was most important to them. While they struggled to survive, the British were trying to make profits out of their suffering. The people were in such a bad place that they became almost unrecognizable. “Seeing a cabin standing somewhat by itself in a hollow, and surrounded by a moat of green filth, we entered it with some difficulty, and found a single child about three years old lying on a kind of shelf, with its little face resting upon the edge of the board and looking steadfastly out at the door as if for its mother. It never moved its eyes as we entered, but kept them fixed toward the entrance. It is doubtful whether the poor thing had a mother or father left to her; but it is more doubtful still whether those eyes would have relaxed their vacant gaze if both of them had entered at …show more content…
Farmers could no longer provide for anyone, the bacteria had left them with nothing. Potatoes were what most Irish farmers relied on as well as the consumers. The consequences were inescapable. “But just as the result on a fundamental human level was the same--a natural trigger moving subsistence farmers to the wrong side of a tipping point, the slide into starvation and social breakdown, the eventual collapse of basic morality (the aged and very young abandoned, isolated cannibalism)--so too was the common litany of folly and malice that made preventable human disaster unfold like inescapable natural catastrophe” ( Maclean's). Farmers were left empty handed,they had to experience the trauma of watching their crops die. Many people were so devastated that they would burst into tears. ”Many families now saw their earnings collapse and were thrown into greater dependence on the one subsistence crop that they could grow in sufficient quantities in their cottage gardens, or "conacre" land plots rented from larger farmers” (Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture). Once the crops were infected, their financial situation would be changed drastically. Life was practically over once the potato blight came to Ireland. It was difficult to see crops die, especially when the people worked so hard to try to make their farms successful to profit off of as well as to