The Great Famine

In September 1845, a devastating new plant disease swept across Ireland, destroying the potato crops on which the majority of the people depended. Aid from the British government was too little and too late. Over the subsequent six years, a million Irish people died of starvation and a more than a million others fled abroad in order to escape the ravages of hunger and disease.

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Created By

Status

Ended

Original Name

The Great Famine

First Air Date

September 4, 1995

Last Air Date

September 11, 1995

Seasons

Episodes

Language

English

Production Companies

Networks

BBC Two

S01E02

Emigration

In the second of two programmes, Dublin-born writer Ian Gibson tells how thousands of the Irish poor died on board the "coffin ships" that carried them across the Atlantic to the fever sheds of Quebec and the slums of New York. He explores some of the myths of famine history, finding them to be more complicated than on superficial examination, and explains how the bitter experience of the mass emigration has shaped Irish-American support for nationalist causes, from the Fenians to the Irish Republican Army.

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