The Great Hunger: The Irish Diaspora of the 19th Century

Scholars agree that in Ireland about one million died of famine-related causes between 1846 and 1851, making the Great Hunger Europe’s greatest natural disaster of the nineteenth century. Dr. Stack will discuss conditions leading up to the failure of the potato and why that had such devastating consequences for some of the population of Ireland. She will examine the response of the British government and the landlords, as well as testimonies from eyewitnesses. American charity in Ireland and the mass migration, including life on board the so-called coffin ships will also be covered.

Elizabeth Stack, PhD, is the Executive Director of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City. Previously the executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, she has also taught Irish and Irish American History and was an Associate Director at Fordham University’s Institute of Irish Studies. She completed her PhD at Fordham, writing about Irish and German immigrants in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, as they grappled with the immigration restriction movements of that time