In 1845, Europe was struck by a devastating famine. The crisis was triggered when a deadly fungus, having originated in South America and escaped in the holds of cargo ships, destroyed potato crops throughout northern Europe. As food grew scarce and prices soared, 100,000 poor people died of starvation and disease in France, Belgium, Holland, Scotland and the Kingdom of Prussia.

In Ireland, where half the population relied on the potato as their primary source of food, the famine caused the deaths of over a million people and, between 1845 and 1855, the flight of a further two million to north America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Today Ireland is the only country in the western world with a population lower than it had in the 1840s. The crisis had far reaching repercussions: it triggered the downfall of the British government led by Robert Peel in 1846, was a catalyst for the revolutions that rocked Europe in 1848, became the root for the exponential rise of the Irish Diaspora that today numbers 70,000,000 and was among the causes that would ultimately lead many in Ireland towards the cultural revival and the quest for independence.