ABSTRACT

At the onset of the nineteenth century, Ireland was already poverty-stricken, but throughout the century matters only grew worse, as several smaller famines and explosive population growth caused greater pressures on land and increasing hunger. However, none of these crises would compare to the Great Famine of 1845-1851. The Famine was caused by a fungus which infected the potato harvest in several consecutive years and partially destroyed it. During earlier decades, the Irish had become predominantly dependent on the potato as their main source of sustenance (Harris 2). The decimation of the potato harvests led to much poverty, hunger, sickness, and death. The Famine changed Ireland beyond recognition, as the following remark made by Alexander Sullivan in 1877 illustrates:

The Irish famine of 1847 had results, social and political, that constitute it one of the most important events in Irish history for more than two hundred years. It is impossible for any one who knew the country previous to that period, and who has thoughtfully studied it since, to avoid the conclusion that so much has been destroyed, or so greatly changed that the Ireland of old time will be seen no more. (67)

Until that time, the Irish had defi ned themselves as a traditional rural community, which put them in opposition to the English, whom they negatively defi ned as a modernized, urbanized, and industrialized people (Deane 54). The Famine demonstrated that the traditional rural life could no longer be upheld within a thoroughly modernizing society. Consequently, the Famine led to a crisis of identity for the Irish, and they were forced to reconsider that identity, but at the same time were heavily traumatized. Unable to reshape their cultural identity during the second half of the nineteenth century, the Irish seemingly downplayed the Famine period by reaching back to pre-Famine history, myth, and folklore to (temporarily) be able to hold on to their traditional identity (Deane 51). This e ort was not only visible within Ireland, but even more common among the Irish in diaspora, which becomes clear when viewing the impressive number of guidebooks, didactic novels, and letters written by diasporic Irish writers concerned with showing the Irish how to live a virtuous, Catholic, and Irish life, when abroad.