USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Great Famine, also called Irish Potato Famine, Great Irish Famine, or Famine of 1845–49, famine that occurred in Ireland in 1845–49 when the potato crop failed in successive years. The crop failures were caused by late blight, a disease that destroys both the leaves and the edible roots, or tubers, of the potato plant.

Detailed explanation-2: -The potato late blight pathogen was introduced to Europe in the 1840s and caused the devastating loss of a staple crop, resulting in the Irish potato famine and subsequent diaspora.

Detailed explanation-3: -The proximate cause of the famine was a potato blight that infected potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, causing an additional 100, 000 deaths outside Ireland and influencing much of the unrest in the widespread European Revolutions of 1848.

Detailed explanation-4: -Sporadic potato crop failures had plagued Ireland in the 1700s and early 1800s. In the mid-1840s, a blight caused by a fungus struck potato plants across all of Ireland. The failure of essentially the entire potato crop for several years led to unprecedented disaster. Both Ireland and America would be changed forever.

Detailed explanation-5: -There was not one food crisis but several as the potato crop failed in 1845, 1846, 1848 and 1849. The rural Irish poor, many of whom were subsistence farmers renting small plots of ground, were reliant on the potato for their staple diet.