The Great Famine

Name: The Great Famine
Genre: Documentary
Released: 1995-09-04
Cast: Ian Gibson

TV Show1995•49dk•star0.0(0)•trending_up0

Documentary

Creator:

In September 1845, a devastating new plant disease swept across Ireland, destroying the potato crops on which the majority of the people depended. Aid from the British government was too little and too late. Over the subsequent six years, a million Irish people died of starvation and a more than a million others fled abroad in order to escape the ravages of hunger and disease.

Details

StatusEnded

First AiredSeptember 4, 1995

Last AiredSeptember 11, 1995

Episode Runtime49dk

Seasons1

Episodes2

TypeMiniseries

Origin CountryUnited Kingdom

Original LanguageEnglish

Spoken LanguagesEnglish

Networks

Last Episode

S1 E2 • 9/11/1995

Emigration

In the second of two programmes, Dublin-born writer Ian Gibson tells how thousands of the Irish poor died on board the "coffin ships" that carried them across the Atlantic to the fever sheds of Quebec and the slums of New York. He explores some of the myths of famine history, finding them to be more complicated than on superficial examination, and explains how the bitter experience of the mass emigration has shaped Irish-American support for nationalist causes, from the Fenians to the Irish Republican Army.