Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy was substantial.
Irish immigration to the United States during the Great Famine in Ireland was substantial and had a lasting impact on the economy of the United States. In 1990, 44 million Americans claimed Irish ethnicity. Many of these citizens can trace their ancestry to the Great Famine from 1845-1852 when 300 Irish would disembark daily in New York City. By 1850 the United States had 961,719 Irish citizens, 42.8% of whom were born in Ireland. This comprised 43% of all foreign born population of the United States at the time. New York saw the largest amount of Irish immigration and by 1855, 26% of population in Manhattan was Irish and by 1900 that percentage had risen to 60%. The key component affected by this immigration was the laborer force.
Additionally, this rise in population also helped decide the outcome of the Civil War. The Irish emigrants who found their way to the South during the Great Famine saw the situation between the North and the South not unlike their previous situation between Ireland and Britain where they had felt exploited because while there was free trade between Ireland and Britain, Ireland provided potatoes and beef to England while receiving manufactured goods in return.
“Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Great, Irish and Famine's can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Great, Irish and Famine's provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q5599174. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1845, 1852 and 1850.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy primary sources, Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy archive and Great research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Great Irish Famine's effect on the United States economy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.