Mrsm K.klawang - Potato People Info 1

The Science of the Disease By Alexis Olson The Irish potato, Solanum tubersum, is a very important food crop world wide. If was first found in the Andes Mountains of South America. In 1537, the Spanish conquistadors found the Incas growing papas, or potatoes; they later introduced the potato to Spain, where Italy, Europe, Germany, Russia, and Ireland caught on to the cool new food source. Although the potato can be grown in many different climates and is a main food source to many countries, it is susceptible to over 160 diseases and disorders. The horrible disease that caused this tragic famine was called the late blight, this is to separate it from the early blight, though both names are misidentifying. It is also referred to as potato blight, downy mildew, and "rust". The late blight is one of the oldest, well known, and serious potato diseases. The first case was found in Europe and the United States in about 1830. Over time, it became worse and worse in Western Europe until 1845 when it caused the Irish Potato Famine. Since Potatoes constituted the main diet of the Irish and the disease was extremely serious in Ireland, thousands of people died of starvation and others immigrated to the Unites States, Canada, and other countries. Some people thought that if you would eat a potato infected with the late blight you would get infected with spina bifida and anencephaly. Tests on animals proved that this was not true. About forty years later, scientists accidentally discovered the Bordeaux mixture; a mixture made up of copper sulfate, hydrated lime, and water. This mixture helped suppress the late blight. It was used all over until more efficient and less toxic fungicides were discovered. The late blight can be found in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, Central America, and South America; pretty much everywhere. In Western Europe, the eastern United States, and Canada, where cool, humid conditions are present, the late blight is at it's best. These areas take most of the impact of this destructive disease. In 1946, the late blight began to affect tomatoes during an unusually cool, wet growing season.

The late blight is caused by Phytophthora infestans D By. Phytophthora infestans D By is a member of the Phycomcetes. The older name is Botrytis infestans. It is related to the downy mildews which it gets one of it's names. In the decade of 1840 to 1850, questions aroused as to how the late blight was caused. The majority of the people said it was simply the weather. When the fungus was found on the dead foliage it was thought to be saprophytic organisms, meaning organisms that ate dead matter. Rev. M.J. Berkeley was the man of whom invented the fungus hypothesis, Dr. Montagne was the first to describe the disease in 1845, he called it Botrytis infestans. In 1846, the late blight was renamed Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) D By by De Bary. This ended the spontaneous generation theory, and began the germ theory. The spontaneous generation theory basically says that

there is really no beginning to disease, it just becomes. The germ theory states that germs are the cause of all disease. The late blight affects all parts of the plant; the leaves, stem, and tubers, or roots. The first sign of the late blight is light green water soaked spots or lesions, that later turn brown, on the top of the leaves; these would appear during cool, wet weather. These lesions may have a yellowish halo around them. If the weather remains wet or humid, then white conidiophores and conidia, fungus, develops on the under part of the leaves around the halo. The disease spreads rapidly all over, attacking petioles and stems. The disease can destroy whole fields of potatoes, and when it does so, it can put off a decaying odor. The spores are washed down into the soil and attack the roots of the plant causing a thin, reddish brown dry rot. If the plant is stored in cool, dry conditions, the infection will progress incredibly slowly if it progresses at all. Apposing this fact, if they are stored in warm, humid conditions the fungus will continue to kill the plant. Signs of the disease are fungus around the infected areas and fungus protruding from the stomata of the plant cell. This bacteria is called conidia. Conidia is thin walled and oval shaped. This fungus can penetrate into the plant cell either by going in through the stomata of by forcing itself through the cuticle. The etiology of the disease if fairly simple, it is like a mass take over. If the infected seed of a potato or a potato itself is planted or dumped on the ground, it starts to reproduce a suitable host for the agent, the disease, to grow off of. The fungus starts to reproduce and if the weather is favorable to it, the rain and wind can spread it over whole fields. Each cell of the fungus reproduces 812 of itself, this is a pretty fast reproduction rate. To prevent the late blight from occuring or to help get rid of the late blight, many potato cultivators use fungicides to protect their potatoes from the late blight. Also, keeping formerly infected plants and seeds away from their fields helps considerably. There is a wide variety of fungicides used against the late blight: Bordeaux mixture, Phygon, Maneb, Zineb, and many more. The Bordeaux mixture was the first to be discoved as mentioned earlier. It has been partially replaced by other less toxic fungicides. More research is being conducted as you read on the subject to help absolve the late blight fungus.

Emigration of Ireland There were two ways out of this Irish nightmare, death and emigration. People were leaving from every port in Ireland. In 1847 a quarter of a million Irish men, woman and, children left Ireland and the rate of emigration was to continue at the same level and sometimes higher for the following four years. This massive emigration rate not only permanently changed Ireland's population structure but also helped develop an Irish nationalist feeling against English government. Many of the poorest emigrating Irishmen never got beyond the English port. By mid-May 1847 there were one thousand plus Irish wondering, begging and filling the streets of Liverpool and other towns north of England. The poor classes were n ot the only Irishmen migrating. On board the emigrant ships, conditions were sometimes shocking. These ships came to be known as Coffin Ships because of the conditions the emigrants are forced to live in. There was little air in these over crowded below decks, which carried the poorest class. There were extreme cases of fevers, little water, low abundance of food, few cooking and sanitary facilities. Most of the Irish emigrants went to the United States, but the emigrants with the worst conditions went to Canada. Almost every ship had a third of their passenger's die at sea or upon their arrival. By August 1847 half the passengers from 10 ships had died while the others were sick with fevers. On the shores of Quebec eyewitnesses saw hundreds literall y flung on the beach, left in the mud, dying like fish out of water. Emigration has been an on going feature of Irish life since the famine. The large amounts of emigration before independence were streams of criticism towards the British government by the Irish nationalists. Population continued to fall a fter the independence and the government stopped recording emigration statistics. Towards the end of the 1870s the alarming realization broke on Ireland that there was once again the dangers of Famine on something like the scale of the terrible tragedy of 1845-9. That tragedy, apart from bringing death to possibly as many as a million of the Irish people had started an outpour of emigration from Ireland, mainly to America, which had continued for many years. In the ten years after the start of the Famine some two million had left - about a quarter of the entire population of Ireland in 1945. The emigration had helped the larger farms. This was because the smaller farm farmers immigrated to America and Canada making the population food supplies demand smaller. The larger farms flourished because of the fall in numbers of sma ll farms. But the small tenant farmers, though decreased in numbers, still lived very much as they had lived at the time of the Famine, which meant that they were dependent on the potato crop. In the mid-1970s farm prices went up, these were good times , both the large farm owners and small tenant farmers prospered though this time. Emigration before, during and after the Famine brought a better life to those few lucky Irish people, but also gave a slow death to others. Emigration has it good points and bad. If I were an emigrant I would hope that I was rich so th at I would have a better chance of survival. That is what emigration is all about, don't you think, survival!?!

History of Ireland By Audrey Larson Stone Age inhabitants were the earliest personal signatures of an Irish identity. We know this because they decorated and carved burial grounds with their work. These people came as invaders and they were followed by many, such as: the British, Europeans, French and Spanish. They helped develop sophisticated ornaments of civilization: Bronze Age, Celtic Iron Ages create jewelry, and Iron Age decorated weaponry. The Gaels arrived in 100 BC and set the Irish Identity. Everyone shared the common language, a common code of law (the Brehon Law), a common code of tradition of oral poetry and music, and a common history adapted from ancient legend. Then a RomanoBritish missionary, St. Patrick introduced Christianity, canceling out pagan. Irish monasteries provided the setting for a Gaelic golden age. Here, the details of an already ancient Irish society were first written down making: The Book of Durrow (7th Century transcription of the gospel), the Ardagh Chalice (8th century Gospel), Book of Kells, another gospel. Irishmen set out to strengthen European monasteries. Then in 795, the Noresmen's invaded Ireland. They ransacked the island a century later more and more. Dane's and pirates invaded the land also. In 1014, a king from County Clare named Brian Bory brought his army to fight the Irishmen, but he lost at Clontarf. With these brutal invaders the Irish decided to make watch towers, round tall ones. In time, the Norsemen (or Vikings) built cities on the coast, in places such as Arklow and Wexford. They began inter-marrying with the Irish and ending up becoming Irish themselves. But the Normans sailed across form Wales and landed in Wexford in 1170. Pembroke, a friend of the king of Leinster sent them, to fight his own high king. These advanced soldiers wanted a reward for helping the king of Leinster. Strongbow arrived in Ireland with more soldiers and they captured Dublin and killed Brian Boru for Macmurrough. Then Strongbow married the king 's daughter and became king of Leinster after Macmurrough's death. Normans upset their king of England in 1366; they were becoming "more Irish than the Irish." A self-isolating defensive frontier of a few hundred square miles around Dublin was known as ''The Pale." England's writ did not apply to the West of "The Pale." The people shunned King Henry VIII. So he reclaimed every man's land and showed Ireland he was the High power. Elizabeth I came into power in 1558. Officials of Elizabeth state, "A barbarous country must first be broken by a war before it were capable of good government." Ireland was under English rule. Queen Elizabeth made Hugh O' Neil the Earl of Tyrone and in 1598 he and Ally O' Donell fought and beat the English army for theGailec in him. This was a mahor disaster for the new English government in Ireland. In 1601, the final battle for Gaelic Ireland occurred. Spaniards helped Tyrone and Ally O' Donnell in defeating British Protestant Montjoy. They brilliantly invaded English forces and in 1603, James I came to rule.

In 1608, the Plantation of Ulster was created. It was the idea of planting colonies of settlers (mainly from England and Scotland) in Ireland with the specific aim of stabilizing English government rule. In 1641, there was a Great Catholic-Gaelic rebellion. They wanted their land back from the Protestants. At Portadown, 100 men, women, and children were striped and drowned or brutally stabbed and beaten. Many doubt that such things happened. The most atrocities occurred in Ulster. Later the old English Catholics joined the great Catholic-Gailics. Fifty-nine percent of land in Ireland was held by Catholics. In 1641, Cromwell attacked Drogheda (inside the English Pale); he terrorized the placeburning towers, bombing the city with artillery superior to anything in Ireland. He also attacked Wexford, killing 2,000 people. Catholic land east of Shannon were distributed among Cromwell's soldiers and the Catholics were moved to a barren province of Connaught. Charles II replaced the Cromwellian regime in 1660. By 1685, Charles' Catholic brother, James II, succeeded to the throne. He appointed Catholics to high offices of State in Ireland and a Catholic dominated Irish parliament passed an act revoking the Cromwellian land settlement. But before it could come into implemented, the kingdom's England and Ireland were split temporarily. There was another massacre between Catholic and Protestants in Londonderry. Catholic King James II sent troops to siege Londonderry. Citizens starved behind their gate unwilling to surrender to the troops. The troops stopped goods from coming into the town and even held other Protestants captive so the town would surrender. With the help of the British the siege of Londonderry was over. This lead to the final defeat of JamesII in Ireland,at the Battle of Boyne against William of Orangein 1690. And in 1691 Catholic armies surrenderd to the protestants at Limerick. The percent of land of Ireland was decreasing 22%- 14%. After the Triumph of William III, a series of laws had penalized the majority of the Irish population just because they were Roman- Catholics. These 'penal laws' that a Catholic could not hold any office of state, nor syand for parliament, vote, join the army or navy,or buy land. Barely 10% of the land of Ireland remained in Catholics hands. Some of the 'penal laws' were made so that the Catholic Religion would die out. They tried to ban any kind of Catholic practice, but the religion was kept alive by secret friars. The Irish people were being deprived by the 'penal laws'of political and social rights and living in extreme povery. They reserved their loyalties for organization outside politics, for their church and the secret societies. By 1714 7% of the land of Ireland was held by Catholics. In 1720, Jonathan Swift, Dean of Saint Patrick's Cathedral wrote a pamphlet rejecting everything wearable that came from England. The english parliament had no right to legislate for ireland. And in 1782, the Irish Parliament won Legislative independence from Britain.

In 1796, a secret society was formed by a Protestant, Wolfe Tone, because his United Irishmen idea failed in government. This secret society joined with a fleet of French solders to create a republican revolution, to unite Catholics and Protestants as one Irish Nation. This failed and from 1796-98 this secret society with French help was plotting a rebellion. The Leinstor Directory of United Irishmen was arrested. Almost the entire National Directory was arrested in one swoop in March 1798; Lord Edward Fitzgerald was arrested and later died. A rebelion occurred in theleast expected place, Wexford, violence spread through the country like a sort of disease. Protestants were being sloughtered and burned. Why was this happening? The point of this rebellion was to unite Catholics and Protestants together. 50,000 men and woman died during these rebellions. Wolfe Tone was dead by the end of these rebellions (he was captured by the French). In 1800, the Act of the Union united the two kingdons of England and Ireland, abolishing the Irish Parliament. In 1823, Daniel O' Connell's Catholic Association was founded. This man inaugurated two freat political campaigns. The first was for Catholic Emancipation, or the removal of the remnants of legal discrimination against Catholics surviving from the penal laws. Basically, Catholics wouldn't get off easily anymore. With the strength of this organization behind him, O' Connell was elected for Clare. The Catholic Emancipation passed the next year in 1829. He had made Irish popular opinion a force in British politics for the first time. Queen Victoria came to power and O' Connell's Repeal Association was founded. For a partnership between kingdoms, each with independent legislatures, united by historyical blood ties and common intrests. O' Connell hosted Monster Meetings for repeal of the Union, byt the fovernment called the bluff of these meetings and banned one planned for Clontarf; this is when O' Connell step down. In 1845, the potato famine began and funnelled much intrest to the destruction of Ireland's people.

The 19th Century: The Great Famine By: Karis Wright During the early years of the 1800's, Irish landlords enjoyed the successful times because the prices for agricultural products were high, due to war. After the French at Waterloo were defeated however, the prices fell. The landlords quickly found that they could get more money by turning their land of small farming plots into grazing lands. There was a small problem though...what would they do with the hundreds of tenant farmers living on their estates? But this was a very small problem with a simple answer. They just merely kicked the families out and off of their land (even if their rent was fully paid up) and destroyed the huts the workers lived in so they could not return. There was a lot of these homeless tenant farmer families wandering aimlessly about on the highways, begging for food just to keep alive because of these unjustly acts.

The Irish reply to this outrage was the making of more secret organizations to carry out midnight raids. Some of these organizations were called Rightboys, Thrashers, Ribbonmen, and Whitefoots. The English response to the Irish response was quick. They set up a program of shipping offenders to Australian prisons. Little crimes that today would only get a warning from a judge concluded in severe sentences--for example, one man named Martin Kinsella from Wexford was caught stealing glue. Because of his crime

he was sentenced to Australia for seven years. Any crime that was even a little serious received a life sentence. One might assume that through all the years of depression, nothing worse could happen to the Irish, but then came "The Great Famine". As the nineteenth century progressed, the Irish became very dependent on the potato for their main food source. In fact, a majority of rural people lived on it completely (the potato is one of the few foods that has all the basic vitamins necessary to maintain a human life). Several English committees that studied the economic situation in Ireland warned that if there was a major failure of the potato crop, extensive starvation would result. All these warnings were ignored. In 1845 it happened, the biggest fear hit Ireland and suddenly became reality. A disease attacked the potato crop and half of the crop was destroyed. People harvested the few potatoes they had and prayed that the next years crop would be an abundant one. But the crop of 1846 suffered even more than the previous year. To add to the misery, that winter was the "severest in living memory". When the 1847 crop failed also, the Irish population of the whole nation was faced with starvation. This is when the first wave of immigrants escaped their starving homeland. The majority of this first group went to Canada because prices were very low--ships bringing lumber to England were glad to receive paying passengers instead of returning to Canada empty. Unfortunately, many of these people carried typhoid and many other diseases with them on to Canada. Ironically, during these tragic years it was only the potato crop that failed in Ireland. Wheat, oats, beef, mutton, pork, and poultry were all in excellent supply but the IrishEnglish landlords shipped these to the European continent to soften the starving there and receive a very good profit in return. When people today wonder about the hatred between the Irish and the English, they don't recognize the fact that Irish peoples memory is a long one and that stories are still being told about those ships leaving Irish ports loaded with food at the same time that their ancestors were eating grass to live. All throughout the years of the horrific famine, which continued past 1847, the English government was unwilling to give any money to Ireland to help with the famine because, as they said, "the Irish will use it only to buy guns to revolt against them." They were also reluctant to provide material aid such as soup kitchens because, "they will get used to the free food and never become of be self-sufficient." As an sign of how bad things were, when Americans (primarily Quakers) offered to send food to Ireland, England demanded that the food be first landed in England and then transferred to English ships--to assure that the English's shipping interests were fully employed. The American press so taunted this law, asking how greedy could England be at a time when hundreds of thousands of their people were starving, that England finally backed down and let the American ships sail directly to Ireland. Author C.W. Smith, an Englishwoman herself, was dumfounded by the way her countrymen were behaving during the famine years. As she says, "It is not characteristic of the English to behave as they behaved in Ireland. As a nation, the English have proved

themselves of generosity, tolerance, and magnanimity, but not when Ireland is concerned. The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots." In 1849, Queen Victoria decided to visit Ireland. Press stories reported the pomp and circumstance escorted her arrival in Cork harbor. They described the great variety of troops and bands as she arrived by ship and it was this day that William Kindles became a local hero. A huge Union Jack was flying over the dock directly above the spot where the Royal parade was to pass. Somehow, William was able to get near the flagpole and cut the ropes so the flag dropped on the heads of the lead marching band (he promptly emigrated to America). During the Queen's visit no expense was spared to make the tour a success. At one banquet, $5,000 was spent on food and wine alone. The Duke of Leinster, one of the better Irish-English landowners and landlord over the area where many of the Chinless lived, was disgusted with the overwhelming spending. He wondered how in this land where hundreds of thousands were starving, where a family of six could be kept alive for a week for less than $1, the Queen's government could justify spending thousands of dollars to entertain a privileged few for one night! It is estimated one and a half million people died of starvation and disease in The Great Famine. Another million people emigrated, the people that had bitter feelings about the land they loved. Some cut off all ties with the motherland and never looked back. The majority however, never lost their love for the land they left. They continued to follow what was happening in Ireland. They talked and sang about it as they gathered together at social events. It was said of this immigrant generation that few found success and prosperity in America...this had to wait for their children's and grandchildren's generations. "For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the Men that God made mad. For all their wars are merry For all their songs are sad."