irish patato famine Essay -- essays research papers

Ireland in the 1500s was a very unstable country. The countrys face rulers foughtwith the local Irish civilians and the Irish nobles. The Irish nobles as well as fought among themselves.The English landlords owned the land that the peasants lived and farmed on. As a result of thiscontinual fighting, it was hard for the peasants to grow enough food to feed themselves. TheBritish passed laws to deny the Irish peasants freedom. They were require to speak theirown language, to practice their own religion, to own a horse worth more than ten dollars, to go toschool, or to hold a existence office.Potatoes were first introduced to Ireland around the 1600s. Some say that Sir Walter Raleigh, an English explorer brought the potato to Ireland to see if it would survive.Another belief is that the potato came to Ireland when some potatos washed ashore from a Spanish Armada ship that had sunk off the coast of Ireland.The white potato is thought to have originated in the Andean Mountains. The S panishdiscovered it in northern Peru and brought it back to Europe. It was first considered poisonousby the Europeans because it was classified in the same family as the poisonous nightshade.Potatos became popular and somewhat of a fashion statement later on Marie Antoinette wore potato blossoms in her hair. Once the royalty learned of the potatos nutritional value they ordered the peasants to start to grow it.1 A potato, also called a tuber, is an underground stem that is short, thick, and fleshy. Thepotato was such a good crop because it has nutrients, such as protein, carbohydrate, andvitamin C. It only lacked vitamin A and calcium. If it was combined with milk than it would deem all of the elements required for a healthy diet. For nutrition in the mid 1800s a personwould have to eat around six and a half pounds of potatoes. The potato was also good because when there were wars going on in Ireland, the soldierswould go and burn all of the farmers crops. Since the potatoes were underground, theywould not be affected by this and could still be dug up afterwards. Irelands mild, cloudy, anddamp climate allows root crops, such as the potato, to thrive and to be bounteous successfully intheir peaty soil. Many of the p... ...reatened the volume of Irelandwith another famine. The National Land League was formed so that the poor live farmersland could not be taken away, and they could not get thrown into the streets by the greedylandowners. The National Land League organized communities together. Together they hadmore power, they refused to sell goods or provide labor to landlords who were guilty of evictingor running the tenant farmers off their land. In 1881 the parliament passed the Land Act of1881 . This act made sure that the tenant farmers paid fair rent, had protection from eviction(being thrown out), and had the right to sell his farm lease to another tenant farmer. Thesedramatic changes were more important to the people in the south than the people i n northernIreland. The north used to depend widely on farming, but now they started to depend more oncommercial businesses. Tenant farming was becoming less and less important. There are still other famines going on in this world today. Potatoes insubordinate to potatoblight are being developed through genetic engineering, and some varieties of potatoes seem to have natural immunities.5