The Irish Holocaust

Published: March 17, 2021, 4 p.m.

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The\\xa0Great Famine\\xa0(Irish:\\xa0an Gorta M\\xf3r\\xa0[an\\u02e0 \\u02c8\\u0261\\u0254\\u027e\\u02e0t\\u032a\\u02e0\\u0259 \\u02c8m\\u02e0o\\u02d0\\u027e\\u02e0]), also known as the\\xa0Great Hunger, the\\xa0Great Starvation, the\\xa0Famine\\xa0(mostly within Ireland) or the\\xa0Irish Potato Famine\\xa0(mostly outside Ireland),[1][2]\\xa0was a period of mass\\xa0starvation\\xa0and disease in\\xa0Ireland\\xa0from 1845 to 1852.[3]\\xa0With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the\\xa0Irish language was dominant, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as\\xa0An Drochshaol,[4]\\xa0loosely translated as "the hard times" (or literally "the bad life"). The worst year of the period was 1847, known as "Black \'47".[5][6]\\xa0During the Great Hunger, about 1 million people died and more than a million\\xa0fled the country,[7]\\xa0causing the country\'s population to fall by 20%\\u201325%, in some towns falling as much as 67% between 1841 and 1851.[8][9][10]\\xa0Between 1845 and 1855, no less than 2.1 million people left Ireland, primarily on\\xa0packet ships\\xa0but also\\xa0steamboats\\xa0and\\xa0barks\\u2014one of the greatest mass exoduses from a single island in history.[11][12]

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Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you\\u2019d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.\\xa0 Be sure to check our website for more details.

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