This page was created by John Huebner.  The last update was by Dawn Duncan.

Star of the Sea : A Postcolonial/Postmodern Voyage into the Irish Famine

Tenants' Response to the Way Landlords Treated Them

The question that arises from the fact that tenants were so poor might be why were they poor if they had, at least, a piece of land to grow crops on? The answer to this question, first, lies in the notion that has already been discussed-exploitation that was done by the landlords to their tenants. Even though tenants tried their best to grow a variety of crops on their small pieces of land, the rents were so high that tenants could not themselves afford to eat well. Rita Kennedy, in her newspaper article titled "How Did the British Hurt Irish During the 19th Century?" says that “tenants had few rights and often no formal lease agreement; they could be evicted or have their rents increased at any moment.” For this case, when landlords raised rents, tenants had no choice but to pay those rents. In order to be able “to pay the rents, Irish tenants had to export, [to the European markets], immense quantities of the marketable grain they were able to grow. This need to pay rent forced tenants to rely on potatoes as their sole means of subsistence” (Anbinder 479). Therefore, to continue growing crops and sustaining themselves, even though they were much exploited, tenants obeyed their landlords’ treatments of them.

Works Cited
Anbinder, Tyler. “From Famine to Five Points: Lord Lansdowne's Irish Tenants Encounter North America's Most Notorious Slum”. The American Historical Review 107.2 (2002): 351–387. Web.

Kennedy, Rita. "How Did the British Hurt Irish During the 19th Century?" Newspaper. London: Demand Media, n.d. Web.
Researcher/Writer: Kalai Laizer
Technical Designers: John Huebner and Ashley Hacker

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