origin of the failure was in America, where in 1843 on the eastern seaboard a blight destroyed the potato crop (Quinn 37). That potato blight "crossed the Atlantic from America in 1845. Within five years the potato famine had claimed almost a million Irish lives, over twenty thousand of them dropping in the fields from starvation" (Cooke 274).
While the potato famine can be pointed to as a reason for mass migrations out of Ireland and toward the alleviation of hunger, British public policy aggravated the situation in a variety of ways. The initial policy response was to increase imports of Indian corn from America for famine relief (Lennon). The fact that famine relief was a success prompted British officials to pronounce the famine over, although that was not the case. What was over, rather quickly, was government enthusiasm to provide a safety valve for those affected by the famine.
While in 1845 and 1846 the UK government attempted to provide social services, such as soup kitchens and work houses, to those whom the famine had dispossessed, public opinion in England began to shift in a way that blamed the Irish for their plight. MacManus comments that the same year Parliament voted £200,000 "to beautify London's Battersea Park" it voted £100,000 "for the relief of the two million Irish people (out of a total of eight million) who were suffering keen distress" (602-3). MacManus acidly calculates that this worked out to twelve pence per capita. Meanwhile, foodstuffs continued to be exported from Ireland, to maintain the "natural course of trade" (MacManus 605).
Queen Victoria made a royal visit to Ireland upon being warned that "the state of Ireland was 'alarming' and that the country was so full of 'inflammable matter' that it could explode in rebellion" (Cooke 275). Victoria's reaction included a comment about "more ragged and wretched people here than I ever saw anywhere else," but an attitude of pity gave way to a politi...