March 17

The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People
By John Kelly

The Irish potato famine resulted in ~1 million deaths and ~2 million emigrations, reducing the country's population by one third.  Kelly shows that the famine, although based on a potato crop failure in 1845-46, could have been prevented had the British government not used food as a tool to try to change Irish work habits, had the British government not exported so much grain from Ireland, and had the British landowners let the Irish stay on their land rather than evict them from their homes when they were unable to provide payment in crops to the English lords who had taken over their land a couple of centuries earlier.  A truly tragic story.

Today, many of those who immigrated to America make up one of the largest and most successful ethnic groups in the United States.

When I visited Ireland in 2010, I was awed by the number of ruins that still dotted the countryside, mostly stone cottages whose thatched roofs had long ago been eroded by the elements when their occupants fell victim to starvation.