Charity And The Great Hunger In Ireland The Kindness Of Strangers

the long version

The Great Irish Famine was one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the 19th century. In a period of only five years, Ireland lost approximately 25% of its population through a combination of death and emigration. How could such a tragedy have occurred at the heart of the resource-rich British Empire? This work explores this question by focusing on a particular, and lesser-known, aspect of the Famine: that being the extent to which people throughout the world mobilized to provide money, food and clothing to assist the starving Irish.