Depopulation of Ireland

InTheTrees wrote: »

Its an interesting question that I dont know the answer to.

I'd be fascinated to know the population numbers at the various pivotal times in Irish history.

I think I remember reading once that the population was under a million at the time of the black death.

Check it out for yourself, here are estimates by Angus Maddison:

http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_02-2010.xls

from:

http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/

I probably don't need to mention that estimates are not fact.

Anyway, the estimate for Ireland in 1500 is 800,000 people.

Graph of the above data.

Anyway, I'm sure there are many other sources for that 8.5 million figure. It seems to be accepted fact.

SlabMurphy wrote: »

I've heard that one of the effects of gross poverty is that the parents tend to have larger families in the thought that their will be some/more to look after them as they get older. This is common in today's third world countries and was the norm in emerging countries like India and Brazilian a few decades ago.

My point been that this maybe the reason for the huge increase of population in Ireland from the passing of the Act of Union in 1800 which destroyed whatever economy we had and means of keeping some wealth in the country, to 1847 ?

No, it's a bit more nuanced than that. I recommend looking into Malthusian Population Mechanics and any research done on the effect of introducing the potato to Western Europe.

existential wrote: »

The graph is flawed as it seems to show Ireland 32 counties before 1920 and 26 counties after that date.
The real population of Ireland (32 Counties) is currently slightly over 6 million similar to what it was in 1850 after 2.5 million died and emigrated.

Yeah, but sure the XLS file is there, so feel free to update it and provide a more accurate graph.

SlabMurphy wrote: »

Done a google on it and found this which is well, a bit technical for a simple taxi driver to be bothered discyphering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_growth_model

Ok, well it really isn't that hard to get. Let's start with an agrarian population, growing just one crop. They are all living on subsistence level, meaning that they grow enough to feed themselves, and that's about it. So now we introduce a new technology to this community (a new seeding technique) which increases the yield of food they produce each year. So now everyone has a bit more to eat, and move beyond subsistence living. But increasing health might also decrease infant mortality, reduce miscarriages, increase life expectancy, etc. This will cause the population to grow. We still have a fixed amount of land, with our new technology and our one type of crop. So as the population increases, everyone's share of the food decreases, until we are back at subsistence level again, birth rates drops, death rates increase, but we still have levelled out at a slightly higher population.

SlabMurphy wrote: »

You also mention " the effect of introducing the potato to Western Europe ". How come the other countries of Europe where the potatoe was introduced didn't appearently experieince the same as Ireland ?

So, taking the above into account, in Ireland's case, the vast majority of the rural poor relied on just one "technology", and that was the potato. For around 40% of Ireland's pre-famine population the diet mainly consisted of potatoes and some dairy (sometimes a little meat, but not regularly), both providing enough nutrients to live on comfortably. An acre of land can hold a family of 8, growing just potatoes and a dairy cow, and this is exactly the type of situation we see happen in pre-famine Ireland.

Remember from above, introducing the potato would have increased the living standards of those who grew it, and the population would have expanded greatly due to this. But as the model shows, this is short-lived, and soon this expanded population will return to subsistence.

It was like a bomb, waiting to go off.

SlabMurphy wrote: »

Good point, it does indeed seemed to be flawed. That big dip around 1920 seems to be due to considering only ' Ireland ' population in the 26 counties.

But is it fair to exclude the six counties in the whole graph?

SlabMurphy wrote: »

Ah yes, it's blame the victim time again :rolleyes: and sure no one deserves more than the Irish. Interesting, in his whole analysis he didn't once mention Britain, it's landlord system, it's laws, unfair trading practises etc as a cause of the famine. Nor that Ireland was an exporter of food to the ' mainland ' before, during and after the famine.

" For around 40% of Ireland's pre-famine population the diet mainly consisted of potatoes and some dairy (sometimes a little meat, but not regularly), both providing enough nutrients to live on comfortably. "
Well now, doesn't this just about sum up his agenda :rolleyes:

Because the graph ( did you develop it BTW ? ) gives the misleading appearence that all 32 counties of Ireland population rapidly declined with the superior, benevolent British leaving the 26 to the natives. Ah yes, your agenda is quite clear now Mr. Paisley.

Yawn.

If any reasonable person would like to know more about the literature behind such logic, a paper is linked below:

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/nunn/files/Potatoes.pdf

A snippet from Section 2A:

From a nutritional standpoint, there are two primary reasons why the potato is superior to other staple crops. First, because potatoes contain nearly all important vitamins and minerals, they support life better than any other crop when eaten as the sole article of diet (Davidson, Passmore, Brock, and Truswell, 1975, Reader, 2008). Humans can subsist healthily on a diet of potatoes,
supplemented with only milk or butter, which contain the two vitamins not provided for by potatoes, vitamins A and D (Connell, 1962, Davidson et al., 1975). This, in fact, was the typical Irish diet, which although monotonous, was able to provide sufficient amounts of all vitamins and nutrients (Connell, 1962).

Enjoy reading!.

InTheTrees wrote: »

And how about the numbers from before 1500?

For instance what were the effects of the various plagues on population?

I provided a link to the data I used. I am unaware of any other dataset online.

bog master wrote: »

Thanks for the links, but seeing as there appears to be nil people in Ireland in 1 AD up to 1000AD, what happened to those who built Newgrange, Loughcrew, Ceide Fields etc?

1) Does it say zero?

2) Why are you asking me?

bog master wrote: »

Good evening! You posted the link, and would assume you would be reasonably familiar with what you posted.

No, does not say zero, just not data in the box for Ireland!

Sorry, I am a tad tired and cranky. No data in the box just means there is no estimate for that time/country. The data doesn't suggest that 800,000 people just popped out of nowhere in 1500. As far as I can see, any population figures before the 1800s are simple, rounded figures, making them educated guesses, at best. But like I said, I know of no other population database.

CDfm wrote: »

that is a very interesting topic in its own right

was there contraception in those days

I presume people had worked out what was getting them pregnant?

Are there any recorded mass graves? I know a lot of people were buried pretty much where they fell, but did the towns have mass graves?

I read a paper which showed that English females started to have children two years later than French females, on average. Perhaps there was a cultural difference for protestants to wait longer?

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Weren't the priests telling everyone to go forth and multiply as well? I thought that had a big hand in the population boom as well.

They may well have been. I've heard that their was a short song by Irishmen working in England regarding WW2 when poor old grandad Tommy was locked up in a German or Japanese POW camp etc that went like this -

The English are a funny lot, they try to put down us Paddy's
But little do the bastards know, the Paddy's are their Daddy's !!!!

( So maybe the soccer team could call on a few more of Irish ancestery over there. Obviously the Yanks were having their share of crumpet at the time too )