The Great Hunger: The Irish Diaspora of the 19th Century
Sun, Mar 02
|Staten Island
The Voices of Diaspora Program is a yearlong initiative, launching in late 2024 and concluding in May 2025. This program will explore five cultural heritages that have experienced diaspora, both past and present.
Time & Location
Mar 02, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Staten Island, Building D, 1000 Richmond Ter #8, Staten Island, NY 10301, USA
About the event
The Great Hunger: The Irish Diaspora of the 19th Century
The scholarly consensus is that about one million died of famine-related causes between 1846 and 1851, making the Great Hunger exceptional in relative terms. it was Europe’s greatest natural disaster of the nineteenth century. Most deaths were due to diseases like typhus rather than starvation per se, although diseases like dysentery and scurvy are related to lack of food.
Dr. Stack will discuss conditions leading up to the failure of the potato and why that had such devastating consequences for some of the population of Ireland. She will examine the response of the British government and the landlords, as well as testimonies from eyewitnesses. American charity in Ireland and the mass migration, including life on board the so-called coffin ships, will also be covered.
