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With the serial failure of the potato crop (a staple of the Irish diet), over 1,000,000 Irish citizens died. A further 1-2,000,000 emigrated (mainly to Britain and the United States). The potato famine was not confined to Ireland but, because of a massive population explosion in the previous fifty years, her rural economy had come to rely on the potato too heavily as a cheap and available source of food. The crisis was not helped by poor weather, epidemic disease and a slow response from the British government
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