This is the first of three or four threads about an episode in Irish history.

I am not an expert on Irish history by any means, and none of my ancestors are Irish. So I might not have all of the pertinent facts. I might get some stuff wrong, but that's what you guys are here for. Let me know.

This thread is about the potato famine.  For decades English and Scottish Lords had pushed the Irish people off of their land. They took the land that was considered best for growing wheat and grazing sheep and cows. The native Irish were left with lots of people but little land, and the only way they could sustain themselves was growing potatoes. The potato produced a lot more calories per acre and was a much better source of vitamins and minerals than what they had before. By the 1840s, the potato had actually prevented famines all over Europe many times, and there were poor farmers all over Europe, just like the Irish, who were totally dependent on the potato. When the potato blight struck, potato crops failed not just in Ireland but also France and Germany and Poland and Italy.

But the starvation was much worse in Ireland. The wheat crop and the barley crop in Ireland did not fail. Neither did the oats. In fact these grains were shipped to Southampton and Liverpool nearly every day from Ireland. Nearly everyone in Ireland, except for the large landowners who lived most of the year in Great Britain, could see the injustice.

English Parliament considered the question of whether to close Irish ports to food exports. Ireland had representatives in London's Parliament, in proportion to the population of Ireland. And the ordinary Irish men had the right to vote for them.  In earlier times, Catholics did not have the right to vote, but by this time they did. Some of these representatives were Catholic and some of them were Protestant.  All of the representatives that Ireland sent to represent them in London voted to close the ports. But the motion did not pass because ultimately great Britain did not care either way.

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