In Ireland, the Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852.

It is also known, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine. In the Irish language it is called an Gorta Mór, meaning "the Great Hunger") or an Drochshaol, meaning "the bad times").

Throughout the Potato Famine, from 1845 to 1947, more than one million people died of starvation or emigrated.  Additionally, over 50,000 people died of diseases: typhus, scurvy, dysentery.

Despite the famine conditions, taxes, rents, and food exports were collected in excess of £6 million and sent to British landlords 

Although the blight infected crops in the United States, Canada and Europe in the years of 1845-1846, the overpopulated subsistence farmers of Ireland were forced to export corn, wheat, barley, and oats to Britain, which left the potato as the sole dietary staple for people and animals.