D2.Geo.12.9-12: Evaluating the Consequences of Catastrophes: The Irish Famine and Chernobyl

Overview

Lesson Procedure

65-70 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction15 minutes
3. Guided Practice20 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure10 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Think of a disaster you have studied or read about, anywhere in the world. Name one effect it had on people who lived far away from where it happened."

   List answers and sort them into three columns: trade (what is bought and sold, and where), politics (laws, governments, relations between countries) and migration (people moving). Ask which effects lasted days and which lasted decades. Tell students that today they will judge consequences, not just name them.

2. Direct Instruction15 minutes

   Part 1: Terms. A blight is a plant disease. A famine is a severe shortage of food that causes widespread hunger and death. Duties are taxes on goods; Britain's Corn Laws placed duties on imported grain ("corn" in British usage meant grain of all kinds, and "Indian corn" meant maize), and its Navigation Laws limited the carrying of goods by foreign ships. Freight is the price of shipping goods. A remittance is money that migrants send home. An evacuation is an organized removal of people from danger, and an exclusion zone is an area people may not enter or live in.

   Part 2: Four tests for a consequence. Write on the board: Size (how many people or how much trade?), Duration (weeks, years or generations?), Reach (local, national or global?), Evidence (what source shows it, and who wrote it?). Students apply the tests to every consequence today. Then show Table 1 and Diagram 1.

   Table 1. People born in Ireland living in the United States (real data: U.S. Census Bureau, Working Paper No. 29, Table 4)

   Census year	Born in Ireland	All foreign-born residents
   1850	961,719	2,244,602
   1860	1,611,304	4,138,697
   1870	1,855,827	5,567,229
   1890	1,871,509	9,249,547
   1930	744,810 (Irish Free State only)	14,204,149

   • Natural or human-made?

     Classify the event that began each case, using the first paragraph of Source 4 and the last paragraph of Source 1.

     Result: Chernobyl began with a human-made event: "a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test." The Irish case began with a natural event: the potato blight of 1845. Whether the famine that followed was only natural is a separate question, which Sources 1 and 3 answer differently.

   • Measuring a migration

     Use Table 1. What share of all foreign-born U.S. residents in 1850 had been born in Ireland?

     Result: 961,719 ÷ 2,244,602 ≈ 0.428, about 43%. People born in Ireland were the largest group from any single country among the immigrants counted in 1850.

   • Measuring a shock to trade

     Source 1, paragraph 1, says shipping flour from the United States usually cost 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. a barrel, but in winter 1846-7 it rose to 9s. Using the higher usual rate, how many times as much was that? (1 shilling = 12 pence.)

     Result: 3s. 6d. = 42 pence and 9s. = 108 pence; 108 ÷ 42 ≈ 2.6, so freight cost about 2.6 times the usual rate. A catastrophe in one country raised shipping costs on routes across the Atlantic.

   • Measuring a forced move

     Source 4, paragraph 3, says officials closed the area within 30 kilometers of the plant. About how large is a circle with a 30-kilometer radius?

     Result: π × 30² ≈ 3.14 × 900 ≈ 2,827 square kilometers, larger than the state of Rhode Island (about 2,700 square kilometers of land). Everyone without official business had to leave it.

3. Guided Practice20 minutes

   Read Sources 1 and 3: two views of the Irish catastrophe. Source 1 is by Charles Trevelyan, the British Treasury official in charge of famine relief, writing in 1848. Source 3 is by John O'Rourke, an Irish priest and historian writing in the 1870s, who quotes resolutions passed by a committee of prominent citizens meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin in November 1845. Words to know: exigent means urgent; freights are shipping charges; relaxation of duties means lowering them; the sanction of the Legislature is Parliament's approval; to arraign is to accuse formally; culpable means deserving blame; efficacious means effective; pecuniary means having to do with money; convoys are groups of carts or ships traveling together. Paragraph numbers count only the paragraphs shown.

   1Among the numerous causes which enhanced the difficulty of obtaining adequate foreign supplies at moderate rates during the most exigent period of the winter of 1846-7, one of the most embarrassing, was the sudden and extraordinary advance in freights, which occurred simultaneously in the ports of the United States of America, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea. Vessels were not obtainable in the Black Sea and the Danube at less than 18s. and 22s. per quarter for corn, whereas the usual rates are 9s. and 11s.; while in the United States, where large shipments of grain, flour, and Indian corn, were going forward to Europe, the comparatively limited number of vessels caused the rates to run up to 9s. per barrel for flour, and 16s. and 18s. per quarter for Indian corn to British ports, the rates usually given being 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per barrel of flour, and 8s. and 9s. per quarter for Indian corn.

   2On the 27th January, 1846, Sir Robert Peel proposed his measure for the relaxation of the duties on the importation of foreign corn, by which the scale of duties payable on wheat was to range from 4s. to 10s. per quarter, and Indian corn, which had previously been charged with the same duty as barley, was to pay only 1s. a-quarter. This was to last till February 1849, when an uniform duty of 1s. a-quarter was to be charged on every description of grain. The bill passed the House of Lords on the 29th June, 1846; and Sir R. Peel announced his resignation in the House of Commons on the same day.

   3Immediately on the meeting of Parliament in January, 1847, Lord J. Russell introduced bills to suspend until the 1st September, 1847, the duties on foreign corn, and the restrictions imposed by the Navigation Laws on the importation of corn in foreign vessels; and he at the same time moved a resolution permitting the use of sugar in breweries; all which measures received the sanction of the Legislature. At the close of the same session, the suspension of the Corn and Navigation Laws was extended to the 1st March, 1848.

   4On the first appearance of the blight in the autumn of 1845, Professors Kane, Lindley, and Playfair, were appointed by Sir Robert Peel to inquire into the nature of it, and to suggest the best means of preserving the stock of potatoes from its ravages. The result showed that the mischief lay beyond the knowledge and power of man. Every remedy which science or experience could dictate was had recourse to, but the potato equally melted away under the most opposite modes of treatment.

   1Meantime the accounts of the progress of the disease were every day more disheartening; the Government appeared to do nothing except publish a few reports from those "Scientific men sent over from England," alluded to by the Viceroy in his reply to the deputation of the 3rd of November. The Mansion House Committee met on the 19th of that month and unanimously passed the following resolutions, Lord Cloncurry being in the chair:--

   [...]

   25. "That we arraign in the strongest terms, consistent with personal respect to ourselves, the culpable conduct of the present administration, as well in refusing to take any efficacious measure for alleviating the existing calamity with all its approaching hideous and necessary consequences; as also for the positive and unequivocal crime of keeping the ports closed against the importation of foreign provisions, thus either abdicating their duty to the people or their sovereign, whose servants they are, or involving themselves in the enormous guilt of aggravating starvation and famine, by unnaturally keeping up the price of provisions, and doing this for the benefit of a selfish class who derive at the present awful crisis pecuniary advantages to themselves by the maintenance of the oppressive Corn Laws.

   36. "That the people of Ireland, in their bitter hours of misfortune, have the strongest right to impeach the criminality of the ministers of the crown, inasmuch as it has pleased a merciful Providence to favour Ireland in the present season with a most abundant crop of oats. Yet, whilst the Irish harbours are closed against the importation of foreign food, they are left open for the exportation of Irish grain, an exportation which has already amounted in the present season to a quantity nearly adequate to feed the entire people of Ireland, and to avert the now certain famine; thus inflicting upon the Irish people the abject misery of having their own provisions carried away to feed others, whilst they themselves are left contemptuously to starve.

   [...]

   4[...] At Youghal two ships laden with corn for exportation were stopped by the people, and for some time prevented from sailing. [...] Horses engaged in carrying corn to the coast for exportation were sometimes shot. In a few places, especially in Connaught, convoys of meal and flour were seized and carried off.

   1. Trade. In Source 1, paragraph 1, students list the three sea regions where freight rates rose and explain why higher freights mattered to a country that needed to import food.
   2. Politics. In Source 1, paragraphs 2 and 3, students mark each government action and its date, then decide which tests (size, duration, reach) each action passes.
   3. Two viewpoints. Students compare what Source 1, paragraph 4, says about the blight with what Source 3, paragraphs 2 and 3, say about the government. Prompt: what is each writer's position, and how might it shape what he emphasizes?
   4. Conflict at home. Students find the events in Source 3, paragraph 4, and explain how they connect a food crisis to trade.
4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Read Sources 2 and 4: migration from Ireland, and Chernobyl. Source 2 is from the same 1848 book as Source 1. Source 4 is from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency that regulates nuclear power plants. Words to know: apportionment means dividing up; absorb means take in; destitute means without money or food; small holders are farmers renting small plots; boron is an element that slows nuclear reactions; the sarcophagus is the concrete shell built over the reactor; NUREG is the name of an NRC report series.

   Students write an evaluative paragraph of 6-8 sentences: "Which had the larger consequences for human migration, the Irish Famine or the Chernobyl accident? Judge size, duration and reach." They must use Table 1 or Diagram 1, Source 2 and Source 4, and cite paragraphs.

   1In the autumn and winter of 1846 efforts were made to induce the Government to take an active part in assisting emigration by an apportionment of the expense of passage and outfit between the public, the landlords, and the emigrants themselves; but, on a full consideration of the subject, it appeared that the emigration about to take place in the ensuing season to Canada and the United States, without any assistance from the public, was likely to be quite as large as those countries could properly absorb [...]. It is also a point of primary importance, that those persons should emigrate, who, from age, health, character, and circumstances, are best able to contend with the hardships and difficulties of a settler’s life, and it was considered that this object would be most fully attained if the emigration were entirely voluntary. [...] For these reasons Her Majesty’s Ministers determined to confine themselves to taking increased securities for the safety of the emigrants during their voyage, and their early and satisfactory settlement after their arrival abroad. [...]

   2Early in the year 1847 the roads to the Irish sea-ports were thronged with families hastening to escape the evils which impended over their native land. The complaint in Ireland, at the time, was, that those who went belonged to the best and most substantial class of the agricultural population. The complaint afterwards in Canada was that those who came were the helpless and destitute. The fact was, that the emigrants generally belonged to that class of small holders, who, being somewhat above the level of the prevailing destitution, had sufficient resources left to enable them to make the effort required to effect their removal to a foreign land; and the steps taken by them to convert their property into an available form, had for months before been the subject of observation. Large remittances, estimated to amount to 200,000ℓ. in the year ending on the 30th March, 1847, were also made by the Irish emigrants settled in the United States and the British North American provinces, to enable their relations in Ireland to follow them. The emigration of 1846 from the United Kingdom, which was the largest ever known up to that time, amounted to 129,851 persons; the emigration of the first three quarters of 1847 was 240,461; and almost the whole of it was from Ireland to Canada and the United States.

   3Even this does not represent the full extent of the outpouring of the population of Ireland which took place in this eventful year. From the 13th January to the 1st November, 278,005 immigrants arrived at Liverpool from Ireland, of whom only 122,981 sailed from that port to foreign countries. [...]

   1On April 26, 1986, a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test destroyed Unit 4 of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. The accident and the fire that followed released massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment.

   2Emergency crews responding to the accident used helicopters to pour sand and boron on the reactor debris. [...] A few weeks after the accident, the crews completely covered the damaged unit in a temporary concrete structure, called the “sarcophagus,” to limit further release of radioactive material. [...] The Soviet nuclear power authorities presented their initial accident report to an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna, Austria, in August 1986.

   3After the accident, officials closed off the area within 30 kilometers (18 miles) of the plant, except for persons with official business at the plant and those people evaluating and dealing with the consequences of the accident and operating the undamaged reactors. The Soviet (and later on, Russian) government evacuated about 115,000 people from the most heavily contaminated areas in 1986, and another 220,000 people in subsequent years (Source: UNSCEAR 2008, pg. 53).

   [...]

   4The Chernobyl accident contaminated wide areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine inhabited by millions of residents. [...]

   [...]

   5The NRC published the second phase’s results in April 1989 as NUREG-1251, “Implications of the Accident at Chernobyl for Safety Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power Plants in the United States.” The agency concluded that the lessons learned from Chernobyl fell short of requiring immediate changes in the NRC's regulations.

5. Closure10 minutes

   Exit ticket. "Of the three areas in the standard (global trade, politics, migration), which did today's sources show most clearly for each catastrophe, and which was hardest to judge from these sources? Give one reason."

   Teacher note on sensitive history. The Irish Famine caused very great loss of life, and writers have disagreed ever since about how much the British government's policies made it worse; the question is still debated, so present it as an interpretation and attribute each view to its source. Some historians stress that relief policy, continued food exports and the belief that private trade should supply food deepened the disaster; others stress the unprecedented scale of crop failures repeated over several years and the limits of what a government of the 1840s could do. Students may argue either side; score the evidence and reasoning, not the position. Source 1's author directed the relief effort. In the closing pages of the same essay (not quoted here), Trevelyan wrote that Ireland's "deep and inveterate root of social evil" had been "laid bare by a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence," a "sharp but effectual" remedy. Historians often cite this passage when criticizing his outlook, and many readers, especially those with family ties to the famine, find it callous. Treat it as evidence of how Trevelyan understood the famine in religious and economic terms, without debating the belief itself. Source 3, resolution 6, uses "Providence" differently, to give thanks for a good oat harvest. Source 3 was written by an Irish historian a generation later, and the resolutions it quotes were political protests: imported grain was taxed, not banned, so "keeping the ports closed" was the protesters' phrase for keeping the grain duties, and the size of the grain exports is the committee's own estimate. Neither source is neutral. On dates: Source 1 puts the House of Lords vote and Peel's resignation on the same day, 29 June 1846. Parliamentary records show the Lords passed the bill on 25 June, the same night the Commons defeated Peel's Irish coercion bill, and Peel announced his resignation on 29 June. For Chernobyl, Source 4 gives official evacuation figures (the fact sheet's health-effects section is left out here) and does not cover trade; note that gap rather than filling it with guesses. Avoid connecting either case to current conflicts.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which of these is a natural catastrophe?

   AA plant disease that destroys a country's main food crop BA fire that spreads from a factory to the whole surrounding district CA war that closes a busy shipping route for a year DA dam that fails because it was poorly built

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which of these is a human-made catastrophe?

   AAn earthquake beneath a large coastal city BA drought that lasts three summers in a row CA chemical tank that bursts because of a faulty valve DA hurricane that floods a major port

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 1, paragraph 1, what made it hard to get foreign food at moderate prices in the winter of 1846-7?

   AThe United States had stopped all of its grain and flour exports to Europe BShipping charges rose sharply in several regions at the same time CIreland's ports were closed by ice for most of the winter DBritain had just raised its duties on imported Indian corn

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Use Table 1. About what share of all foreign-born U.S. residents in 1870 had been born in Ireland?

   A300% B44.8% C20.1% D33.3%

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 1, paragraph 2, what happened on the day the House of Lords passed Peel's bill on grain duties?

   APeel announced his resignation in the House of Commons BRussell suspended the Navigation Laws for foreign ships CScientists first reported the blight in Irish fields DParliament banned the export of grain from Ireland

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 1, paragraph 3, what did Lord John Russell's bills of January 1847 do?

   ARaised the duties on foreign grain to protect British farmers BSuspended the duties on foreign corn and limits on foreign ships CPaid the passage of Irish families who wished to emigrate DBanned the use of grain and sugar in breweries

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 3, paragraph 2, what does the Mansion House Committee blame for "aggravating starvation and famine"?

   AThe potato blight, which no one could have stopped BIrish tenants who refused to plant other crops CKeeping the ports closed to foreign food, which kept prices high DAmerican merchants who charged too much for Indian corn

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which events does Source 3, paragraph 4, describe?

   ALandlords exporting grain to pay their debts in London BSoldiers escorting relief ships into the harbor at Youghal CFamilies walking to the ports to board emigrant ships DCrowds stopping grain ships and seizing convoys of food

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which statement best compares the viewpoints of Source 1 and Source 3?

   ASource 1 calls the blight beyond human power; Source 3's resolutions blame the government BBoth sources blame the Corn Laws and say the government should have done more CSource 1 blames Irish landlords, while Source 3 blames the weather of 1845 DBoth were written by neutral observers living outside Ireland and Britain

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Source 2, paragraph 2, says 129,851 people emigrated from the United Kingdom in 1846 and 240,461 in the first three quarters of 1847. About how many times as many emigrated in those nine months of 1847 as in all of 1846?

    AAbout 110,610 times BAbout 1.85 times CAbout 0.54 times DAbout 2.47 times

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Source 2, paragraph 3, says 278,005 people arrived at Liverpool from Ireland between January 13 and November 1, 1847, and only 122,981 sailed on to foreign countries. How many did not sail on from Liverpool?

    A400,986 B122,981 C155,024 D44%

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    According to Source 2, paragraph 1, why did the government decide not to pay for emigrants' passage in 1846?

    ACanada and the United States had closed their ports to Irish ships BLandlords had already paid the passage of every tenant family that asked for help CParliament had spent its emergency funds on the Corn Law changes DIt expected unassisted emigration to be as large as those countries could absorb

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Use Table 1. By about what percent did the Irish-born population of the United States grow from 1850 to 1860?

    AAbout 67.5% BAbout 40.3% CAbout 649,585% DAbout 167.5%

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    According to Source 4, paragraph 3, about how many people did the Soviet and later Russian government evacuate in all, in 1986 and the years after?

    AAbout 115,000 BAbout 335,000 CAbout 220,000 DAbout 105,000

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Was the Irish Famine a natural or a human-made catastrophe? Evaluate, using Source 1 and Source 3.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Evaluate the consequences of the Irish catastrophe for global trade, using Source 1. Which consequence reached farthest, and which lasted longest?

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17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Compare the political consequences in Source 1 with those in Source 4. Which catastrophe had the larger political consequences, according to these sources, and why?

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18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    The government decided not to pay for passage and to keep emigration "entirely voluntary" (Source 2, paragraph 1). Using paragraph 2, evaluate one consequence of that decision for who was able to leave.

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19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Source 2, paragraph 2, says Irish emigrants in America sent "large remittances" in 1846-1847 "to enable their relations in Ireland to follow them." Using Table 1 or Diagram 1, evaluate how remittances could make a catastrophe's effect on migration last longer than the catastrophe itself.

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20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Source 4 does not describe any consequences of Chernobyl for trade. Suggest two possible trade consequences, and for each, name the kind of evidence that would show whether it really happened.

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These standards connect to D2.Geo.12.9-12: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.