The years 1782–84 are barely remembered as years of distress. The outcome of this humanitarian and imaginative policy was successful. During the subsistence crisis of 1782–84, an embargo was placed on the export of foodstuffs from the country. The policy of closing ports during periods of shortages in order to keep home-grown food for domestic consumption had on earlier occasions proved to be effective in staving off famine within Ireland. Within Ireland itself there were substantial resources of food that, had the political will existed, could have been diverted, even as a short-term measure, to feed the starving people. There can be no doubt that, despite a short-term cyclical depression, the resources of the United Kingdom could have either completely or largely mitigated the consequences of consecutive years of potato blight in Ireland. Yet the Famine occurred in a country that, despite concurrent economic problems, was at the center of a still-growing empire and an integral part of the acknowledged workshop of the world. The Famine was a disaster of major proportions, even allowing for statistical uncertainty as to its estimated effect on mortality. Of the 32 counties that make up the island of Ireland, 26 eventually became the independent Republic of Ireland in the wake of 1948 legislation, while the 6 counties that make up Northern Ireland, remain part of the United Kingdom.
As a result, all of Ireland was governed by the British parliament in London during the Great Hunger (1845–52) and the years following, until 1921 when the Anglo-Irish Treaty divided Ireland.
Ireland’s Gaelic language also was outlawed.įinally, the 1801 Act of Union abolished the independent Irish Parliament and officially made Ireland part of the United Kingdom.
#I DONT WANT TO GROW UP SONG IRISH SERIES#
In 1695, England enacted a series of Penal Laws that denied civil and human rights to Irish-Catholics, and for all practical purposes outlawed the Catholic religion in Ireland, the religion of more than 90 percent of the Irish population. This policy created a sizeable group of Protestant settlers in Northern Ireland loyal to the British government. The land taken from the Irish-Catholics in Ulster was offered to Protestants from Scotland and England to entice them to relocate to Ireland.
0 kommentar(er)
