The consequencies of the famine - the influence of the Irish in America

From Ireland - a Concise History by Maire and Conor Cruise O'Brien
Thames & Hudson, 1972

The famine is the great dividing-line in modern Irish history. Before it, Ireland had been a country of notably early marriages; after it, late marriages are the rule, and the most conspicuous social feature of contemporary Ireland. The only method of birth control practicable in Catholic Ireland was being applied. There was a change in language also. Before the famine Ireland was to a great extent Irish-speaking; after it, English was soon spoken almost everywhere, except in some parts of the western seaboard. One may also feel that there was a certain change in the character of the people. The picture of a happy-go-lucky Irishman may well have been partly mythical - like its Negro equivalent - but seems to contain some truth for, say, the contemporaries of O'Connell. After the famine one senses a new quality , something grimmer and tougher, among the survivors and their children, the Irish of the later nineteenth century.

The political consequences of this were not to e felt in full for another generation: until the children who experienced the famine and immediate post-famine years had reached maturity, in Ireland and in America. The great new factor in Irish politics was to be the growth of this Irish community in America - for a long time it remained more Irish than American. Poor as it remained by American standards, by Irish standards it was soon rich and it was generous in support of any movement for Irish independence that looked at all promising. This new factor was to bring about a great weakening of England's control over Ireland. From now on, as an English Home secretary was to complain in the stormy 1880s, an important section of the perennially rebellious Irish nation was 'out of reach'.

With the increase of the relative importance of America in world politics, the Irish in America, with their well-organized voting strength, could begin to apply pressure on Britain through their own government. By the 1920s, the government of Lloyd George could no more afford to ignore the Irish in New York, in relation to implementation of its policy in Ireland than Ernest Bevin at a later date could ignore the reaction of the Jews of New York to his policy in Palestine.

The famine may not have been a threat to the security of England, but it carried within itself the seeds of the destruction of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.