سؤال قراءة ستيب محلول — نبرة الكاتب (تدريب 6281)

(1) Under British rule, three quarters of Irish farmland was used to grow crops that were exported. The potato was the main source of food for most of the Irish people. In 1845, disaster struck. A blight or disease destroyed the potato crop. Other crops, such as wheat and oats, were not affected. Yet British landowners continued to ship these crops outside Ireland, leaving little for the Irish except the blighted potatoes. The result was a terrible famine that the Irish called the ‘Great Hunger’. In four years, about one million Irish men, women and children died of starvation or disease. Many more emigrated to the United States and Canada. The Great Hunger left a legacy of Irish bitterness toward the English. (2) In the 1850s, some Irish militants organized the Fenian Brotherhood. Its goal was to liberate Ireland from British rule by force. In the 1870s, moderate Irish nationalists found a rousing leader in Charles Parnell. He rallied Irish members of Parliament to press for home rule, or local self-government. The debate dragged on for ages. (3) The ‘Irish question’ disrupted English Politics. At times, political parties were so deeply split over the Irish question that they could not take care of other business. As prime minister, Gladstone pushed for reforms in Ireland, he ended the use of Irish tax money to support the British and tried to ease the hardship of Irish tenant farmers. New laws prevented landlords from charging unfair rents and protected the rights of tenants to the land they worked. (4) Finally, in 1914. Parliament passed a home rule law. But it delayed putting the new law into effect when World War 1 broke out that year. The southern counties of Ireland finally became independent in 1921. What does Paragraph ((1) say about the Great Hunger?