It is well known that the Irish consider the potato a marvelous food.  It has every essential nutrient humans need except vitamins A and D, and since those two vitamins are supplied by milk, for centuries the Irish diet was basically milk and potatoes.  As a result, even though Irish peasants were among the poorest people in Europe, they also were among the best nourished.

And then this week (Sept. 13) in 1845, it was reported to Irish officials in Dublin that the Irish potato plant was infested with “bruise-dark” spots and that potatoes themselves were shriveling and rotting.  The phytophthora infestans fungus had found its way to Ireland.  The Irish Potato Famine — The Great Hunger” — was about to begin.

At first it was thought that it was another temporary, weather-related crop failure — a common occurrence in Ireland.  But this was very different.  The moist summer weather had been ideal for the fungus’ spread, and in no time the blight had destroyed much of the country’s potato supply.  By 1846 Ireland became post-apocalyptic, with people eating dogs, rats and even each other.  Mobs of beggars roamed the countryside, as did gangs of thieves.  Whole families died in their homes, most from starvation-related diseases.  And, of course, hundreds of thousands fled the country.

When news of the blight reached London, British Prime Minister Robert Peel advocated repealing England’s longstanding Corn Laws, which had propped up the price of British-grown grain by imposing heavy tariffs on imported grain. Peel’s goal was to reduce grain prices to make it an affordable substitute for the Irish potato crop, but English grain producers passionately objected, and although Peel eventually got a measure of repeal, it cost him his job.

At that point the British response was to set up various relief programs, all of which were badly administered.  Then again, London’s attitude toward the famine was, essentially, laissez faire — “It’s not our business; we don’t want the Irish dependent on the British government; let Irish landowners take care of the problem.”  And, finally, “Nothing should interfere with our system of private enterprise.”

As a result, during the two worst famine years, 1846 and 1847, farms in Ireland, especially British-owned farms, actually exported 430,000 tons of grain from Ireland to foreign markets, including England.

Which rankles the Irish to this day.  Indeed, in estimating the casualties resulting from “The Great Hunger” — approximately 1.2 million Irish dead (in a population of 8 million), and several million desperate Irish leaving the country over the next decade — there is one casualty that stands alone and continues to fester:  Irish-English relations.

“The Almighty sent the blight,” said Irish leader John Michael, “but the English created the famine.”

It isn’t every day that the U.S. Congress passes legislation that encourages and protects American access to bird excrement, but the Guano Islands Act did just that.  It passed this week (Aug. 18) in 1856.

Obviously, some background is in order.  In the mid-1800s the world’s population — America’s especially — was growing significantly, meaning nations had to grow more crops to feed their people. Unfortunately, constant farming exhausted the soil.  In particular it depleted the nitrogen in the soil, which is a critical component in supporting plant life because (as we all learned in high school) plants need nitrogen to complete the photosynthesis process that makes plant life possible.

A fertilizer was needed that would restore nitrogen, and guano — which is essentially bird droppings — was discovered to be an excellent nitrogen source.

Its first large supplier was the Chincha Islands off Peru, where large populations of large seabirds fed on the anchoveta fish in the waters around the islands.  Over the years the resulting bird droppings produced layers of guano hundreds of feet thick, and soon the Peruvian government was exporting guano as a highly effective fertilizer.

Guano was slow to gain popularity in Europe, mostly because transporting large quantities of bird excrement across the Atlantic Ocean did not strike many shipping companies as an exciting prospect.  But as European harvests declined and farmers searched desperately for an effective fertilizer, guano eventually came to the attention of the European agricultural community.   And when its use resulted in the doubling and tripling of European harvests, guano became in such demand that the Peruvian government nationalized the Chincha Islands and began charging exorbitant prices for guano.  By some estimates in the four decades Peru was the major guano supplier, it earned $200 million dollars.

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Interesting, isn’t it, that throughout its long history England did its best to ensure that kings, not queens, ruled the country — elevating younger princes to the throne ahead of older female siblings, or even, on occasion, inviting foreign (male) royalty to assume the throne rather than be ruled by a native princess.  Yet the two greatest monarchs in English history — at least the only two so consequential as to have entire “ages” named after them — are both women. Elizabeth and Victoria.

The former, Elizabeth I, was crowned this week (Jan. 15) in 1559, even though her chances of gaining the throne had been more remote than most English princesses. That is because before she finished childhood her father, Henry VIII, had her mother, Anne Boleyn, beheaded for adultery and treason, and then invalidated the marriage. That made Elizabeth illegitimate.

Even then, she was a distant third in line to the throne, after her younger brother Edward and her older sister Mary, although Edward’s untimely death in 1553 did bring her one step closer. But she still had a ways to go given that (“Bloody”) Mary’s crowning put in power a fanatic Catholic who distrusted Elizabeth’s Protestantism. What’s more, Mary never forgot that Papa Henry had divorced her mom, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Elizabeth’s mom, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth continually faced imprisonment and death at Mary’s hands.

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