In the 1840s, Ireland was plagued with a blight in their most important crop, the potato. This event was a major travesty as millions of Irish people emigrated or died of starvation. Since this event, many different viewpoints have arisen to explain the deaths, the blight, the overall effect, and many other specific occurrences that became a staple of the potato famine. In the article by Hubert Nusteling, “How Many Irish Potato Famine Deaths? Toward Coherence of the Evidence”, it takes a stance on the miscalculation of the deaths during the famine by using models, predictions, and records accounting the population (Nusteling). On the other hand, “ The Great Potato Famine and the Transformation of Irish Peasant Society” by Dean Braa, assess the change in peasant lineage population resulting from the potato famine, and how British Colonization had first caused the dependency on the potato (Braa). The two articles take varying approaches in quantifying the …show more content…
He states, “ As previously observed, in 1851, almost 6 percent of England’s population, including the newborn-to-nine-year-old children, were Irish immigrants who arrived during the previous ten years. I estimate that only one-third of their children were born in England and that the remainder had been born elsewhere. However, all female children, wherever their place of birth, figured in the group of newborn-to- nine-year-old girls, which implies that the birth totals in 1841–51 in relation to the conversion factor for 1841–51 are about 4 percent too low, because my method assumes that all children younger than ten years old who lived in England in 1851 were born there.” (Nusteling 62). Many of Nusteling’s methods use his own estimates, and he disregards information that contrasts his points by using equations (Nusteling). The analysis of the population decline of the Irish potato famine is biased towards his views in his