If there is a potato famine. Plus the British government of TTL is slightly different from OT because of the length of time from the POD. While I'm sure many of the laws restricting Irish rights may still be in place, the government may actually heed the call for helping out the Irish people.
I think some sort of crisis is virtually inevitable because of the system with so much dependent on a single crop with a pretty low level of genetic diversity.
The key thing will the British reaction would be the nature of the government in London. Would they largely be working on laisse-faire as OTL Liberals or more interventionist as the Tories were at the start of the crisis. In the latter things might be resolved with far less deaths and suffering, at least in the short term as it would stop some of the market fluctuation that caused a lot of the problem. It would also make more government intervention likely rather than the reliance on public charity and on local landowners in Ireland, which deepened the rift between them and the ordinary people.
The other factor would be how completely and quickly London realised the size and nature of the problem. I did read in one source that when the 1st reports came out an agricultural organisation in Dublin was approached and reported there was no problem. This was because the type of potato they were growing, in the dryer eastern provinces was fine but the type grown by the ordinary peasant in the western western and southern provinces was rotting in the field. This sort of mistake meant time was lost as the magnitude of the problem was mis-read.
Besides, if there is a famine, more Irish may move to the CSA than Oceania in TTL. It is a shorter trip, meaning cheaper to pay transport. The same could be said for the trip to British Patagonia. The USA is also larger and many would go there still.
Very true on all accounts. I think there would still be a move to Australia as OTL but other locations are likely to get more people [Britain, N America and possibly Patagonia]. Not sure if any numbers went to S Africa as that would appear to be another option but can't remember reading about any/many going there.
I see Oceania as having the lowest amount of emigration to its shores. It will be more of a penal colony than OT. Yet, I don't think it will just be the Irish being shipped to Oceania. I could see all the British controlled territories using it to ship off their criminally undesirable. Whether of European decent, African, Indian or the Americas it just might be easier to ship the so called disruptive elements to the most isolated place on Earth at the time. This would make the future culture of Oceania quite interesting and if you add in the possibility that there would be a higher presence of British troops in Greater Australia, due to the French controlling a portion it, may make this place a powder keg more so than OTL.
Probably largely true but there will be growing settlement as farms take off and also when gold is discovered that will be a big boost. Also with the French in Australia and N Zealand you can expect a greater military presence, which will attract some traders and possibly also more efforts to encourage more settlers to secure the regions Britain controls.
Steve