The Irish Potato Famine: The Immigration, Genocide, and Deaths of Ireland

From 1845 to 1852, the Great Hunger, also referred to as the Potato Famine, was a period of a lot of starvation and illness in Ireland. The period was known in Irish at the time as a Drochshaol, loosely translated as 'the hard days,' with the most badly affected districts in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was popular (or actually 'the bad life').

The year 1847, at times called 'Black '47,' was the absolute worst year of the period. Around 1 million people died and over a million left the nation throughout the Great Famine, triggering the nation's population to come by 20% to 25%, with certain cities coming by as much as 67 percent between 1841 and 1851. And between the years 1845 and 1855, about 2.1 million people were leaving Ireland, primarily aboard package ships but also on steamboats and barks. This actually made it one of the biggest mass migrations from a single isle in all of history.

Let’s explore this tragic event in history, and let’s see what led up to this, what happened afterwards, and how historians look at it now.