Why They Left
No one kept careful track of how many people left Ireland in the nineteenth century, but it certainly was a large number. People started leaving long before the Great Famine began in 1845; in the thirty years that preceded it, at least 1 million people left Ireland. Between the start of the famine and 1870, another 3 million or so emigrated. A decreased population and a lower birthrate decreased the flow of emigrants in the following years, but a significant proportion of the population continued to leave well into the twentieth century.
The two overpowering causes for emigration were hunger and poverty. The Great Famine and the half-dozen other potato failures of the nineteenth century sent millions of Irish people overseas. People saw the death and suffering around them; rather than wait for death in a land with no food, they picked up everything and sailed across the Atlantic.
What is the difference between an emigrant and an immigrant?
An “emigrant” is a person who leaves a country; an “immigrant” is someone who moves to a new country. Therefore, an emigrant from Dublin would be an immigrant in New York. In this chapter, we use the term “emigrant” when looking at people from the perspective of Ireland, and “immigrant” when speaking about them in their new country.
But long before the famine struck and years after its end, young Irish people were leaving their homeland. The basic economic facts of Ireland were not promising: the island was small, with few natural resources beyond farmland; most of the best land was tied up in the hands of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, and the rest was split up among more people than it could support; and English policies inhibited the development of Irish industries, which might have provided a way off the farms. Young Irish men and women realized that if they wanted any hope of a better life, they had to go overseas. If families were lucky enough to own land, younger sons often emigrated in order to clear the way to inheritance for the oldest.
Some young people left Ireland as seasonal migrants. Instead of setting up a new home in the New World, they would travel to another country for seasonal work, in agriculture or the fisheries, and then return home when the work was done for the year. The sons of small farmers were especially likely to do this; their periodic wages helped the family hold on to its property.
There were also noneconomic reasons to leave Ireland. Some people, particularly a number of Nationalist revolutionaries, emigrated to avoid legal trouble and to drum up support for their cause in the New World. Others left to join family and friends overseas.
The only significant non-English-speaking destination for Irish emigrants was Argentina. From 1840 to 1885, around 11,000 families moved to the Rio Plata area in Argentina and Uruguay. They were known as
