From Cork To America: The Irish Immigration

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From Cork to America: The Irish Immigration
To understand the reasons why millions of Irish people to immigrate to America, we must know the "push and pull" factors, starting from the situation of Ireland before the Great Famine. Unfortunately these factors appear as a chain of causes and consequences that could have been stopped at any point but neither Britain, the landlords, nor the poor classes did anything to prevent this. Irish emigration wasn't restricted to the famine years of 1845 to 50, but it did take a dramatically sharp rise during this period. People had been leaving since the 1700's in search of a better life. But the focus will concentrate on the period of the Great Starvation because the greatest Irish emigration was recorded in that period.
To understand the Great Famine, one must focus on the expanding Irish population of the early 1800’s and the growing dependency on a single crop -- the potato. To realize why the famine lasted for five years, one must understand the politics, cultures and economics of the time, since full crop failures did not occur every year between 1850 and 1900. In fact, while the blight provided the catalysts for the famine, the calamity was essentially man-made, a poison of blind politics, scientific ignorance, rural suppression and enforced poverty. Not only religious matters and prejudices against the poor Irish Catholics were key elements that led to the catastrophe.
In 1800 some four and one-half million people lived in Ireland. By autumn 1845, when the Great Famine struck Ireland, there were more than eight million. This was the largest increase of the population in Irish history. In addition, Ireland’s poverty stricken population was very high, and the numbers of landlords were very low. Most Irish landlords were Protestants, simply because the law forbade Catholics from owning land. The Irish peasants themselves, who were both Protestant and Catholic, ate potatoes almost exclu...