Born Then1845–1852
Life during the Great Famine in Ireland
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
Potato blight destroyed the main food of the Irish poor for several years running. About one in eight people died, mostly of typhus, dysentery and hunger, while food exports continued and relief was slow and grudging. Over a million emigrated, and Ireland's population kept falling for a century.
Deaths: about 1 million dead, and more than 1 million emigrated.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Atlantic slave trade, final decades 1800–1866
- Slavery in the United States 1800–1865
- Slavery in Brazil 1800–1888
- Serfdom in the Russian Empire 1800–1861
- Spanish American wars of independence 1808–1826
- British emigration to the colonies and America 1815–1913
- Java War 1825–1830
- Cultivation System in Java 1830–1870
- Abolition of slavery in the British Empire 1834–1838
- Indian indenture system 1834–1917
- First Opium War 1839–1842
- German emigration to the Americas 1840–1893
- Great Famine in Ireland 1845–1852
- Chinese emigration from Guangdong and Fujian 1845–1913
- Third cholera pandemic 1846–1860
- Mexican–American War 1846–1848
- Taiping Rebellion 1850–1864
- Victorian gold rush 1851–1869
- Irish emigration after the Famine 1852–1913
- Crimean War 1853–1856
- Third plague pandemic 1855–1930
- Indian Rebellion of 1857 1857–1858
- French conquest of Vietnam 1858–1887
- American Civil War 1861–1865
- January Uprising 1863–1864
- Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance) 1864–1870
- Meiji Restoration 1868–1889
- Polish emigration "za chlebem" 1870–1913
- Persian famine of 1870–1872 1870–1872
- Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871