Irish famine

Author: (French) Peter Gray
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: Most of the 19th-century Irish people were farmers and were the poorest residents in Europe. Potatoes were their only source of sustenance, yet the landlords, who were British, were only concerned with the export of grain and livestock. In the autumn of 1845, an unknown disease struck the potatoes. Natural disasters and political oppression forced people to rebel, but eventually failed. Peter Gray exposed this unreasonable phenomenon: over a million Irish people died of famine, and this tragedy, however, awakened the national consciousness of the Irish people, leading to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. On the road from Cork to Dublin, I saw this crop in full bloom, suggesting a good harvest. On August 3, during my return journey, I only saw rotten crops covering vast fields. In many places, poor people sat despondently on the fences of their ruined vegetable gardens, wringing their hands in grief, as the disaster had just taken away their food supply.