What caused the Irish Famine?

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. In the 1840s, famine hit Ireland with devastating consequences. Ireland wasn't the only country to experience a potato blight in that decade. So what were the circumstances in Ireland at that time that turned this agricultural issue into a catastrophe that shattered social structures and caused more than a million deaths? Pedrick Scanlon's new book, Rott, examines the causes and impact of the famine, linking the disaster to the economic structures of the British Empire.

And I spoke to him to find out more. Thanks so much for joining me today to talk about your new book, Rott, which is a history of the Irish famine. For anyone listening who isn't familiar with what happened in Ireland across the 1840s or maybe doesn't know too much, can you very briefly just introduce us to this dark chapter in the country's history. Yeah, so in 1845 a novel pathogen, and I always mispronounce it, but it's Pythoptera infestans, P.

infestans, spread from the Americas to Europe, and it's a pathogen of nightshades, so of potatoes and tomatoes. and it spread really quickly across much of Western Europe and Ireland. But in Ireland it destroyed potato harvests more or less every year between 1845 and 1851, leading to widespread famine across Ireland and the deaths by famine-related causes of about a million people. and the emigration of about a million and a half people or perhaps more. So that was the Great Irish famine.

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