The European potato failure was a food crisis caused by potato blight that struck Northern and Western Europe in the mid-1840s. The time is also known as the Hungry Forties. While the crisis produced excess mortality and suffering across the affected areas, particularly affected were the Scottish Highlands, with Highland Potato Famine and, even more harshly, Ireland, which experienced Great Famine. Many people starved due to lack of access to other staple food sources.
In 2013, researchers analysed biological collections in museums with DNA sequencing techniques to decode DNA from the pathogen in stored samples from 1845 and compare them to modern genetic types. The results indicated the "strain was different from all the modern strains analysed". [1]
After the blight, strains originating in the Chiloé Archipelago replaced earlier potatoes of Peruvian origin in Europe. [2]
| Potatoes | Rye | Wheat | Oats | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| arable land | consumption | 1845 yield | 1846 yield | ||||
| (%) | (kg/capita daily) | (% change on normal) | |||||
| Belgium | 14% | 0.5/0.6 kg | −87% | −43% | −50% | −10% | n/a |
| Denmark | 3% | 0.2/0.3 kg | −50% | −50% | −20% | −20% | n/a |
| Sweden | 5% | 0.5/0.6 kg | −20–25% | −20–25% | −10% | −10% | n/a |
| France | App. 6% | 0.5 kg | −20% | −19% | −20% | −25% | n/a |
| Württemberg | 3–8% | n/a | −55% | −51% | −15% | −24% | n/a |
| Prussia | 11% | 1.0/1.1 kg | n/a | −47% | −43% | −43% | n/a |
| Netherlands | 11% | 0.7 kg | −71% | −56% | −47% | −6% | n/a |
| Spain | 2% | low | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Highlands of Scotland | n/a | high | n/a | −80% | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Ireland | 32% | 2.1 kg | −30% | −88% | n/a | n/a | −33% |
| Source: Cormac Ó Gráda et al., 2006 [3] | |||||||
The effect of the crisis on Ireland is incomparable to all other places, causing one million deaths, [4] up to two million refugees, and spurring a century-long population decline. Excluding Ireland, the death toll from the crisis is estimated to be in the region of 100,000 people. Of this, Belgium and Prussia account for most of the deaths, with 40,000–50,000 estimated to have died in Belgium, with Flanders particularly affected, and about 42,000 estimated to have perished in Prussia. The remainder of deaths occurred mainly in France, where 10,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of famine-like conditions. [3]
Aside from death from starvation and famine diseases, suffering came in other forms. While the demographic impact of famines is immediately visible in mortality, longer-term declines of fertility and natality can also dramatically affect population. In Ireland births fell by a third, resulting in about 0.5 million "lost lives". Declines elsewhere were lower: Flanders lost 20–30%, the Netherlands about 10–20%, and Prussia about 12%. [3]
Emigration to escape the famine centred mainly on Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom and on the continent, conditions were not so harsh as to completely eradicate the basics of survival so as to require mass migration of the sort experienced in Ireland and Scotland. Over 16,500 emigrated from the Scottish Highlands (out of a population affected by famine of no more than 200,000), many assisted by landlords and the Highland and Island Emigration Society, mainly to North America and Australia, this forming part of the second phase of the Highland Clearances. [5] : 481 [6] : 307 The global consequence of this was the creation of a substantial Irish diaspora.
| Annual population change | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1840–45 | 1845–46 | 1846–47 | 1847–48 | 1848–49 | 1849–50 | 1850–60 | |
| Belgium | +1.1% | +0.9% | +0.9% | +0.0% | +0.5% | +0.2% | +0.7% |
| Denmark | +1.1% | +1.0% | +0.8% | +1.0% | +1.0% | +1.0% | +1.2% |
| Sweden | +1.1% | +0.8% | +0.6% | +1.0% | +1.3% | +1.2% | +1.0% |
| France | +0.5% | +0.7% | +0.4% | +0.1% | +0.3% | +0.0% | +0.5% |
| Germany (total) | +1.0% | +1.0% | +0.5% | +0.2% | +0.1% | +0.9% | +0.7% |
| Prussia | +1.3% | +1.4% | +0.8% | +0.5% | +0.4% | +0.9% | +1.0% |
| Netherlands | +1.1% | +1.1% | +0.3% | −0.2% | +0.1% | +0.3% | +0.7% |
| United Kingdom* | +1.2% | +1.2% | +0.7% | +0.7% | +0.7% | +0.7% | +1.3% |
| Ireland | +0.4% | −0.2% | −4% | −4% | −4% | −4% | −1.7% |
| Notes: *excluding Ireland | |||||||
| Source: Cormac Ó Gráda et al., 2006 [3] | |||||||
The widespread hunger and starvation is commonly thought to be a cause of political changes during the mid 19th century. The Revolutions of 1848 saw widespread dissatisfaction among European peasants who saw a decline in their standard of living and so, along with other reasons, led many to join revolutions in various countries.[ citation needed ] Similarly, in Ireland, the potato famine saw a rise in Irish nationalism, exemplified in the 1848 Young Irelander Rebellion, again partly caused by discontentedness with hunger and the British government's perceived role.[ citation needed ]
The Great Famine, also known as the Great Hunger, the Famine and the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole. The most severely affected areas were in the western and southern parts of Ireland—where the Irish language was dominant—and hence the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as an Drochshaol, which literally translates to "the bad life" and loosely translates to "the hard times". The worst year of the famine was 1847, which became known as "Black '47". During the Great Hunger, roughly 1 million people died and more than 1 million more fled the country, causing the country's population to fall by 20–25% between 1841 and 1871. Between 1845 and 1855, at least 2.1 million people left Ireland, primarily on packet ships but also on steamboats and barques—one of the greatest exoduses from a single island in history.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete or water mold, a fungus-like microorganism that causes the serious potato and tomato disease known as late blight or potato blight. Early blight, caused by Alternaria solani, is also often called "potato blight". Late blight was a major culprit in the 1840s European, the 1845–1852 Irish, and the 1846 Highland potato famines. The organism can also infect some other members of the Solanaceae. The pathogen is favored by moist, cool environments: sporulation is optimal at 12–18 °C (54–64 °F) in water-saturated or nearly saturated environments, and zoospore production is favored at temperatures below 15 °C (59 °F). Lesion growth rates are typically optimal at a slightly warmer temperature range of 20 to 24 °C.
Blight refers to a specific symptom affecting plants in response to infection by a pathogenic organism.
A Scottish clan is a kinship group among the Scottish people. Clans give a sense of shared heritage and descent to members, and in modern times have an official structure recognised by the Court of the Lord Lyon, which regulates Scottish heraldry and coats of arms. Most clans have their own tartan patterns, usually dating from the 19th century, which members may incorporate into kilts or other clothing.
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Potato famine may refer to:
Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, was a British civil servant and colonial administrator. As a young man, he worked with the colonial government in Calcutta, India. He returned to Britain and took up the post of Assistant Secretary to the Treasury. During this time he was responsible for facilitating the government's response to the Great Famine in Ireland. In the late 1850s and 1860s he served there in senior-level appointments. Trevelyan was instrumental in the process of reforming the British Civil Service in the 1850s.
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The islands of Newfoundland and Ireland, in addition to sharing similar northern latitudes and facing each other across the Atlantic Ocean, also had in common, during the middle of the 19th century, a heavy dependence on a single agricultural crop, the potato--a dependence that allowed the same blight that precipitated the Great Famine in Ireland to wreak havoc on this former British colony as well. Though acute, and the source of great suffering, the famine in Newfoundland lasted for fewer years than its Irish contemporary, which extended from 1845 to 1849. Beginning a year later, in 1846, it ended with the return to prosperity of the local fisheries in the spring and summer of 1848.