In 1796, the Joint Irish Association invited French army expedition to Ireland; to help Ireland to get rid of the British rule to make the Irish had Independent autonomy, but the French navy fleet did not go well on the way. Ultimately, the French navy fleet could not arrive the Ireland successfully. Then, the British government began a bloody fight against the Joint Irish Association. Even though, a riot happened in Ireland after the bloody crackdown of British government, the actions also failed finally in 1789. In 1800, the British and the Irish parliaments enacted the Acts of Union, because of the Irish Rebellion. This action made these two counties come together to create a new political pattern called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland started at 1 January 1801. In fact Ireland ruled by the British Parliament in London.
In the subsequent 40 years, the British government has been to deal with many problems in the Ireland; the situation in the Ireland looked like better than before. In 1841, the population statistics show that Ireland's population was already over 8 million. However, in this 8 million population, there were two-thirds of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood. They work for the landlord to exchange a small piece of land to farm to make sure their family could survive. Due to the higher yield of potatoes, most of Irish peasants basically rely on this crop to live. In 1844, a kind of unknown bacteria spread to Europe. This pathogen spread very fast, this unknown virus has spread to Central Europe and some part of the northern Europe in the late summer of 1845. By mid-August, the crops of northern part of Belgium, the Netherlands, France and southern England have been violated too. On September 13, the periodical of British Gardener said," potato plague has already appeared in Ireland. " However, the British authorities still was very optimistic about this disaster in the next few weeks. Dublin City Council presented a petition to Queen Victoria, and to beseech the Queen to convene parliament as soon as possible. They also recommended Queen to expropriate the public funds to help the poor of Ireland to survive. However, British government didn't think of Ireland as a part of British obviously. They were all indifferent about the Great Famine in Ireland. By the end of 1845, the Irish potato losses of up to one-third. In the second year, potato cut three-forth. The disaster inevitably came to Ireland
In the fall of 1845, the British Prime Minister Robert Peel bought £ 100,000 worth of Indian corn and cereal secretly from the Americas, but the first batch of corn and cereal arrived in Ireland until early February 1846, because of the bad weather. However, these foods were not free to provide to Irish. The sales price of these foods was one penny. Nobody had money to buy these foods. Except this, the British government has nothing to help Irish refugees. Incredible, the British government not only dont support Ireland, and also to hinder foreign aid groups to support the Ireland. In 1845, the Ottoman Turkish Empire Sultan Abdullah Mejid â… announced that they would offer £ 10,000 to Irish farmers, but the Queen Victoria request Abdullah Mejid â… just offered £ 1000, because she only donated £ 2000 to disaster area, and she also ordered army to try to stop every rescue boats which would arrived Ireland.
In the other hand, the poor Ireland still needed to export large quantities of food to the United Kingdom in the whole period of the Great Famine. We can image, when a large amount of food were transported to British from these victims, the anger and hatred of the victims reached the limit. In July 29, 1848, the "" Young Ireland" movement who advocated to stop the export of food and closed ports Launched an uprising against British rule in Temporary County. Even though the intifada has repressed by British police, it opened the prelude to fight for independence of Ireland.
Personally, the Great Famine of Ireland is more like genocide, and the plague more like a tool, because this unprecedented famine make the population of Ireland dropped 20%-25%. There were 1 million people starved and died, and another 1 million migrated to the foreign country, especially to North America. Because of this great famine, it made the conflict between Ireland and the British become extremely sharp. Therefore, I consider that the rule of British in Ireland was failed.
