Irish Potato Famine Research Paper

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Pages: 13

The Irish Potato Famine began in 1845, lasted for more than six years and; took its toll on the daily lives of millions of people, resulted in the loss of millions of lives, and caused another million people to leave the country for their own well being and the hope of finding a better life. Ireland was very agricultural in the mid 1800s, and 8 million of the poorest people in the Western World lived there. Only about a fourth of the people in Ireland could read or write. The life expectancy was was very low, a man would be lucky to hit 40 years of age. Irish married quite young, girls at just 16 years of age and boys only 1-2 years older. Mortality rates were quite high in Ireland, and the people were known to have large families. Throughout Ireland, Protestants who were knows as middlemen, rented large areas of land which they then in turn rented out to Catholic …show more content…
During the famine, (1845-50) Ireland's population went down by the millions, not all due to starvation, but also to disease, and just from people leaving and emigrating to North America and England. By 1851, the population of Ireland was just 6,552,385. “In the absence of famine, likely population growth would have resulted in just over nine million inhabitants. Based on this assumption, about 2,500,000 persons were lost during the Famine, with an estimated million having emigrated and the resulting 1,500,000 having died from the effects of the famine (http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/after.htm).” Death was most commonly seen in children under the age of 5 years old, and the elderly. After the famine, Ireland's slow economic progress made it so the talented, hardworking people were always being drained. Between the years of 1851 and 1921 there was roughly 4,500,000 Irish residents who left Ireland and traveled mainly to the United States to live their