The British Involvement in the Famine

One of the major factors in the Irish Potato Famine is the involvement of the the British government. Many people believe that the British (who had control of Ireland at the time) did not help the Irish people survive the famine or help prevent the loss of so many lives.

Although many feel the British had no involvement during the famine, they did take some actions. The Prime Minister (Peel) at the time did not believe conditions in Ireland were severe enough to warrant British actions, he was forced to do something by 1845. Here he decided to spend £100,000 on American corn to import into Ireland as another food source. Although this plan was good in theory, a major problem with this was that the mass majority of the starving Irish were poor and could not afford the expensive new commodity. Another unexpected issue was that corn was not previously popular in Ireland and many of the Irish did not know how to prepare it, use it in their recipes, or even like the taste of it. To help with the price of the corn, Peel removed the Corn Laws in 1846, which had previously enacted a high duty on imported corn. However, this action did not help the Irish living in poverty.

Peel also tried to help the poor by providing jobs in Ireland such as building roads, filling valleys, and leveling hills. Under this system, men would work and at the end of the week be paid their wages. However, oftentimes men would die of starvation before they were able to collect the weeks wages.

In the spring of 1846, Peel was replaced in office by Lord John Russell. When left with no other options, in 1847 he tried to slow the effects of the famine by providing work houses, loans, and soup kitchens in the major cities and towns. This lead to wide spread migration of people from the country to the cities which became inundated with citizens. Here, food quickly ran out and the work houses had more people than they could handle. With the rapid increase in population, typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery reached epidemic proportions and killed more than starvation.

In the fall of 1847, Lord Russell demanded that the money the British spent on Ireland be repaid. He accomplished this by increasing taxes and imparting fees on various items on the Irish people. This lead to increased death and violence in Ireland.

Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/famine.html