Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Fionn Davenport [15]
The most important moderate was a Kerry-born Catholic called Daniel O’Connell* (1775–1847). In 1823 O’Connell founded the Catholic Association with the aim of achieving political equality for Catholics. The association soon became a vehicle for peaceful mass protest and action: in the 1826 general election it supported Protestant candidates who favoured Catholic emancipation. Two years later, O’Connell himself went one better and successfully stood for a seat in County Clare. Being a Catholic, he couldn’t actually take his seat, so the British government was in a quandary. To staunch the possibility of an uprising, the government passed the 1829 Act of Catholic Emancipation, allowing some well-off Catholics voting rights and the right to be elected as MPs.
* * *
For the Cause of Liberty: A Thousand Years of Ireland’s Heroes by Terry Golway vividly describes the struggles of Irish nationalism.
* * *
O’Connell continued to pursue his reform campaign, turning his attention toward the repeal of the Act of Union. His main weapon was the monster rally, which attracted hundreds of thousands of people eager to hear the ‘Liberator’ (as he was now known) speak. But O’Connell was unwilling to go outside the law, and when the government ordered the cancellation of one of his rallies at Clontarf, he meekly stood down and thereby gave up his most potent weapon of resistance.
* * *
THE GREAT FAMINE
As a result of the Great Famine of 1845–51, a staggering three million people died or were forced to emigrate from Ireland. This great tragedy is all the more inconceivable given that the scale of suffering was attributable to selfishness as much as to natural causes. Potatoes were the staple food of a rapidly growing, desperately poor population and, when a blight hit the crops, prices soared. The repressive Penal Laws ensured that farmers, already crippled with high rents, could ill afford the few subsistence potatoes provided. Inevitably, most tenants fell into arrears with little or no concession given by the mostly indifferent landlords and were evicted or sent to the dire conditions of the workhouses.
Shamefully, during this time there were abundant harvests of wheat and dairy produce – the country was producing more than enough grain to feed the entire population and it’s said that more cattle were sold abroad than there were people on the island. But while millions of its citizens were starving, Ireland was forced to export its food to Britain and overseas.
The Poor Laws, in place at the height of the Famine, deemed landlords responsible for the maintenance of their poor and encouraged many to ‘remove’ tenants from their estates by paying their way to America. Many Irish were sent unwittingly to their deaths on board the notoriously scourged ‘coffin ships’. British prime minister Sir Robert Peel made well-intentioned but inadequate gestures at famine relief, and some – but far too few – landlords did their best for their tenants.
Mass emigration continued to reduce the population during the next 100 years and huge numbers of Irish emigrants who found their way abroad, particularly to the USA, carried with them a lasting bitterness.
* * *
* * *
AMERICAN CONNECTIONS
Today more than 40 million Americans have Irish ancestry – a legacy of successive waves of emigration, spurred by events from the Potato Famine of the 1840s to the Depression of the 1930s. Many of the legendary figures of American history, from Davy Crockett to John Steinbeck, and 16 out of the 42 US presidents to date are of Irish descent.
Here’s a list of places covered in this guide that have links to past US presidents or deal with the experience of Irish emigrants to the USA:
Andrew Jackson Centre, County Antrim
Arthur Cottage, County Antrim
Dunbrody Heritage Ship, County Wexford
Grant Ancestral Homestead, County Tyrone
Kennedy Homestead, County Wexford
Queenstown Story Heritage Centre, County