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Session 1: Panel 1: Presenter 1 (Paper) -- “To Hell Or Connaught:” How British Colonizers Both Caused And Benefitted From The Irish Potato Famine, Ruby Lewis

Young Historians Conference

The Irish potato famine is well-known for the suffering and death it inflicted upon the masses of Irish peasantry between 1845 and 1848. The famine is often remembered and mourned as the tragic but unavoidable result of natural circumstances, and the blight that swept through the potato crop year after year is attributed as the sole cause of starvation. This misrepresentation of the famine’s history ignores the role of the British colonizer state in establishing conditions in Ireland that led to famine and exacerbating the suffering of the Irish through neglect. This paper explores the role of the British colonial …