Irish potato famine
Also called: Great Famine of Ireland · Topic: The Making of a Global World · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 3 "The Making of a Global World"
Meaning
The Irish potato famine was a famine in Ireland from 1845 to 1849. Ireland's poor had come to depend almost completely on the potato for food. When a plant disease (potato blight) destroyed the crop, they had nothing else to eat. It shows how a new crop can help people but can also make them dangerously dependent on it.
Example
During the famine of 1845–49, around 1,000,000 people in Ireland died of hunger. About twice that number left the country to escape starvation, and many went to America.
Don't confuse with
- Bengal famine of 1943: this was a later famine in British India during the Second World War. It was mainly caused by wartime shortages and government policy, not by a crop disease.