In my new Amazon Kindle release, The Physician’s Irish Lady, the heroine, Keara Fagan, lived in Ireland until she was falsely accused of insurrection against the British and condemned to indentured servitude in Australia. She escaped long before her sentence was served onto a ship bound for America.
The nineteenth century ‘Irish Problem’ had sowed it’s seeds in the mid-seventeenth century. At that time, Britain was a republic ruled by Oliver Cromwell. He detested Roman Catholicism and believed that the Irish could not be trusted. In order to solve the Irish problem, he sent his New Model Army to coerce the Irish into obedience. He laid siege to Wexford and Grogheda, executing defenders from both towns. They’d been offered clemency only if they surrendered to Cromwell’s forces. Cromwell also planned to export children from Ireland to work in the sugar plantations in the West Indies, leading to a population loss to make the island less of a threat to Britain.
By the eighteenth century, farmland in Ireland became the property of English landlords. These absentee landlords showed little compassion to the people working the land. The rural Irish population lived in extreme poverty.
Europeans visiting Ireland were shocked by what they saw. “Now I have seen Ireland, it seems to me that the poorest among the Letts, the Estonians and the Finlanders lead a life of comparative luxury.” (Kohl, a German visitor to Ireland in the early 19th century)
Even into the nineteenth century, those who lived in rural Ireland were compared to peasants in Medieval England. The Irish had no rights with power resting in the hands of landlords.
Potatoes were the staple food of the Irish at this time, but the crop was susceptible to disease and famines, due to a failed crop, occurred often during the century.
Population growth exploded during this time, more than the growth in China. This likely was caused by the impact of the Catholic Church, which ruled against contraception and abortion and preached about the value of large families. And in this time period, people relied on many children to look after them in old age. However, feeding a large family when food was scarce, was a huge problem.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish formed secret organizations that wanted the British out of Ireland so the island could be self-ruled. The tactics of these groups were brutal, including murder. Victorian England was horrified and the actions of these groups confirmed that the Irish could not be trusted.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/ireland_in_the_nineteenth_centur.htm
The Irish were severely mistreated. When we visited there, I loved the land and the people. So many Irish emigrated to the US that those left feel connected to Americans.
I visited Ireland many years ago, too, Caroline! It’s a beautiful country with a brutal history. And even the Irish who came to America in that century were mistreated by Americans.
And now Ireland is again in crisis, but this time it’s an economic disaster. Again they are losing their brightest and bravest to emigration. I was educated in Ireland and my roots are there. There’s a reason it’s a melancholy place of great beauty.
Some of my ancestral roots are in Ireland but, sadly, I’ve never been able to take a trip there. It is on my bucket list. Ireland’s history is so rich and interesting. albeit unsettled. One of my early forays into Irish history was a Disney movie called The Fighting Prince of Donegal, even though I now know the movie was certainly romanticized in a Hollywood sort of way.
Thank you for this information about Cromwell. He certainly gave new meaning to the word “evil” in a time that was already harsh.
Hi, Gemma, Kaye and Ashantay! My maternal grandmother was Irish, so I have roots there too and was glad I had the opportunity to visit. But Irish history as well as life there now, is full of sadness.
I have two great-grandmothers and one great-grandfather who were Irish. Tweeted.
Hi, Ella! Sounds like you’ve got a lot of Irish in you. It was because of my grandmother’s ancestry that I became so interested in Irish history. And of course, having been to Ireland myself.
The Irish have the same doomsday mentality of the French Canadians, and lived similar events, though in different eras. My grand-mother used to say – in French, of course – when one is born to eat small bread, one eats small bread.
It’s sad, Carole.