potato famine
Tuber harvest collapse
The potato famine refers to the catastrophic crop failures in Ireland from 1845 to 1852, when a blight destroyed the potato harvest that most of the population depended on.
Over a million people died of starvation and disease, and another million emigrated.
The term sometimes appears in broader contexts for any agricultural disaster causing mass hunger, but usually means the Irish famine specifically: My great-grandparents fled the potato famine.
- blightPlant disease causing decay
- rotOrganic breakdown process
- starvationExtreme nutritional deprivation
- British colonialismUK's historical empire-building
- diasporaScattered population sharing origins
field · hunger · emigration · soup kitchens · relief efforts · 19th century · monoculture · workhouses · tenant farming · economic inequality · population decline · food exports · land reform · subsistence farming · root rot · Ireland · America · crop rotation
- Celtic DiasporaIrish diaspora, Irish Americans, Celtic heritage, Irish ancestry, Irish immigrants
- Irish cultureshamrock, shamrocks, leprechaun, leprechauns, Celtic cross
- Irish-AmericanIrish-American, Irish American, Irish heritage, Irish diaspora, Irish immigrants
- 1840sQueen Victoria, Treaty of Waitangi, daguerreotype, telegraph, Oregon Trail
- faminestarvation, mass starvation, hunger, crop failure, food scarcity
- farm disasterscrop failure, crop blight, failed harvest, drought, locust plague
potato faminebumper crop
Unusually large harvest
abundance · feast · plenty · food security · surplus
potato faminepopulation boom
Rapid increase in people
economic miracle · baby boom · prosperity · golden age · settlement