Quick Facts: 1
- The Irish Famine stretched between 1845-1852
- A death toll generally agreed upon at 1 million deaths
- 1 million additional emigrants
- Total population dwindled somewhere between 20-25% and has never recovered to pre-famine numbers
- Ireland was a British colony between 1801-1922
- Natural disaster caused by the fungus Phytophtora infestans, artificially exacerbated by the British government’s lack of effective response
- Created a deep strain in Anglo-Irish relationship and became a rallying point from Irish independence 2
- Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml. ↩
- Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irish_potato_famine_Bridget_O%27Donnel.jpg ↩
Make sure to click on the links for the videos on pages 2 and 4! I couldn’t properly embed them because of their size.