European potato failure

Extensive emigration was a result of these famines, but even so large numbers in Ireland died as they had almost no access to other staple food sources.

The remainder of deaths occurred mainly in France, where 10,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of famine-like conditions.

While the demographic impact of famines is immediately visible in mortality, longer-term declines of fertility and natality can also dramatically affect population.

Elsewhere in the United Kingdom and on the continent, conditions were not so harsh as to completely eradicate the basics of survival so as to require mass migration of the sort experienced in Ireland and Scotland.

The widespread hunger and starvation is commonly thought to be a cause of political changes during the mid 19th century.