1845-1852: IRISH POTATO FAMINE

In Ireland, the Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852. It is also known, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine.
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 one-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.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, there were harsh British laws that restricted the rights of the Irish, particularly Catholics (who made up 80% of the Irish population), forcing them into extreme poverty.

During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.

Widespread suffering, as families died of both the slow process of starvation, as well as rampant disease (cholera was especially common).
There was a widespread view at the time that the treatment of the famine by the British was a deliberate murder of the Irish.

Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political and cultural landscape. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements as Ireland was then part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.