An Gorta Mór — The Great Famine
Potato blight strikes a population of 8.5 million, a third of whom depend on the crop entirely. A million die of hunger and fever. Well over a million more leave in the coffin ships. Ireland's population starts a decline that will not stop for a hundred years, and the emptied west never refills.
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When was An Gorta Mór — The Great Famine in Ireland?
An Gorta Mór — The Great Famine spans 1845 to 1852 in this atlas. Potato blight strikes a population of 8.5 million, a third of whom depend on the crop entirely.
Who ruled Ireland during An Gorta Mór — The Great Famine?
United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland held the whole island in this atlas's reckoning. After the 1798 rising, the Act of Union (1801) abolished the Irish parliament. Ireland sent MPs to Westminster — and O'Connell, Parnell and Redmond fought there to loosen the knot.
What is a lesser-known fact about An Gorta Mór — The Great Famine?
In 1847 the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, sixteen years after their own Trail of Tears, collected $170 for Irish famine relief. Ireland never forgot: a sculpture in Cork honours the gift, and Irish donors repaid it during Covid to the Navajo and Hopi nations.
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