Is the Irish famine considered a genocide?
To my understanding only the irish call it a genocide. Everyone else calls it the irish potato famine.
>>479804
Didn't the British government contine to export food from Ireland through the entirety of the famine?
>>479815
Yes. From what ive read they even had military escorts to make sure starving people wouldnt attack the shipments. Usually when theres a famine in a country they ban exporting food. Of course during the famine no such ban was put because the merchants were being whiny about profits.
>In 1845, Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid declared his intention to send £10,000 to victims of the Irish potato famine, but Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send only £1,000, because she herself had sent only £2,000.[1][2][3] The Sultan sent £1,000 along with five ships full of food. The British administration allegedly attempted to block the ships, but the food arrived secretly at Drogheda harbour and was left there by Ottoman sailors.
perfidious albion strikes again!
It was criminal negligence at best and genocide at worst
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the native Irish had been prohibited by the British Penal Laws from purchasing or leasing land in Ireland, from voting, from holding political office, from living in or within 5 miles of a corporate town, from obtaining education, from entering a profession, and from doing many other things necessary for a person to succeed and prosper in society.
In the 1840s, Irish Catholics made up 80% of the population of Ireland, the bulk of whom lived in conditions of poverty and insecurity. At the top of the social pyramid was the ascendancy class, the English and Anglo-Irish families who owned most of the land, and held more or less unchecked power over their tenants.
Many of these landlords lived in England and were called "absentee landlords". The rent revenue was sent to England, collected from impoverished tenants who were paid minimal wages to raise crops and livestock for export.
24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 1–5 acres in size, while 40% were of 5–15 acres. Holdings were so small that no crop other than potatoes would suffice to feed a family, nor could ranching be a possibility due to the limited land.
The 1841 census of Ireland showed a population of just over eight million, half that of Great Britain. Two-thirds of those depended on agriculture for their survival, but they rarely received a working wage. They had to work for their landlords in return for the patch of land they needed to grow enough food for their own families. This was the system which forced Ireland and its peasantry into monoculture, since only the potato could be grown in sufficient quantity. The rights to a plot of land in Ireland could mean the difference between life and death in the early 19th century.
>>479846
There were over half a million peasant farmers, with 1.75 million dependants. The principal beneficiary of this system was the British consumer. The British had colonised Ireland, transforming much of the countryside into an extended grazing land to raise cattle for the British consumer market.
The British taste for beef had a devastating impact on Ireland. The peasantry were pushed off the best pasture land and forced to farm smaller plots of marginal land. The Irish turned to the potato, a crop that could be grown abundantly in less favourable soil. Eventually, cattle took over much of Ireland, leaving the native population virtually dependent on the potato for survival.
Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food to Britain. Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population.
In 1847, Almost 4,000 ships carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London, when 400,000 Irish men, women, and children died of starvation and related diseases.
Irish exports of calves, livestock, bacon, and ham actually increased during the Famine. This food was shipped under British military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland.
When Ireland had experienced a famine in 1782–83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. British merchants lobbied against the export ban, but the Irish Parliament in the 1780s overrode their protests. No such export ban happened in the 1840s partially because Ireland's Parliament was abolished by Britain in 1800.
>>479804
the Irish don't call it a genocide
>>479849
Sir Charles Trevelyan, the administrator the British Government put in charge of famine relief described the famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population" and said: "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."
Trevelyan wrote in a letter to the “Morning Post”, after a trip to Ireland, that he heartily agreed with the sentiment that there were at least a million or two people too many in the benighted land and that the eight million could not possibly survive there.
In 1849, the Chief Poor Law Commissioner, Edward Twisleton, resigned in protest over the Rate-in-Aid Act, which provided famine relief funds. Twisleton testified that "comparatively trifling sums were required for Britain to spare itself the deep disgrace of permitting its miserable fellow subjects to die of starvation."
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Clarendon, wrote a letter to the British Goverment on 26 April 1849, urging that the government propose additional relief measures: "I don't think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination."
>>479859
But it was outside of their control pham. An act of God. A freak of nature. :^/
>>479859
But the lazy Irish were too poor to afford the grains and meats they were exporting. If only they would have taken advantage of the generous soup kitchens and public work projects!
>>479797
No but the minute some high ranked figure of authority hinted at or explicitly said so then yes it is.
Then again Cambodia was by a government that was criminally negligent with policies against non-khmer that were worse then what the khmer had which was shit enough already.
Genocide implies that they were people, Irish aren't people
>>480802
Neither are you faggot
Back to pol
>>480809
/pol/ wouldn't use the word genocide in any context, they hate jews, a jewish man coined the phrase genocide to describe the holocaust and the armenian genocide
>>479797
>basing your whole country's food supply on a single non genetically diverse potato.
basically as retarded as brits getting rekt by cholera because they kept drinking their own shit .
>>480809
>Implying the Irish aren't people makes someone /pol/ now
Fuck off reddit
>>479815
They turned over aid of Ottoman Sultan. It was clearly an intended genocide.
http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/Little-known-tale-of-generous-Turkish-aid-to-the-Irish-during-the-Great-Hunger.html
>>480840
How silly of them to willfully chose this path despite having so many other options, such as...
>>480840
As if they had any other choice
>>479898
Some families would sell their names (for a more anglicised one) for a bowl of soup.
>>479846
Wow, the brits were dicks.
>>481363
>were
>>481363
Eternal Anglo is a well deserved meme, lad
>>479856
this is actually pretty sad, combined with Satie
>>480840
It's not your fault. You're just copying what you saw on r/4chan
Live on island. Don't fish. Starve. How's that Britian's fault?
>>479815
the british government didn't control the potato farms. the landowners exported the food from ireland, not the british government.
>>481872
>>479846
>In the 1840s, Irish Catholics made up 80% of the population of Ireland, the bulk of whom lived in conditions of poverty and insecurity. At the top of the social pyramid was the ascendancy class, the English and Anglo-Irish families who owned most of the land, and held more or less unchecked power over their tenants.
>Many of these landlords lived in England and were called "absentee landlords". The rent revenue was sent to England, collected from impoverished tenants who were paid minimal wages to raise crops and livestock for export.
>>480880
You're just a fuck retard. Calling your fellow Europeans subhumans. I hope Europe falls to Islam.
It's not technically a genocide. The proper definition of a genocide is when an ethnicity (or other group) has been specifically targeted, and actions have been made to specifically to eliminate the population or reduce a specific population. The Irish famine was terrible and due to willful negligence, but the intent was not to reduce population, just shameless resource exploitation.
>>481998
White/European Solidarity was never a thing and never will be.
>>482048
>The proper definition of a genocide is
debated amongst scholars and states.
Idealist much?
>>482048
It's dodgy, but given the cavalier attitudes of the British at the time it could arguably be genocidal.
But I tend to agree that as far as being a gov't policy the Irish Famine doesn't meet the targeting criteria for genocide.
Though who knows? Words do change afterall and "genocide" is particularly recent and very charged.
>>482114
>But I tend to agree that as far as being a gov't policy the Irish Famine doesn't meet the targeting criteria for genocide.
Cambodia was government policy.
>>482201
Right.
But that's the problem with "genocide", it's a completely politicized word. What happened in Cambodia was genocide, but nobody wants to have that label so the word suddenly gets fuzzy when it comes to international politics.
i think of it as a passive genocide, the british didn't give the potatoes the disease which caused the famine, but neither did they introduce any countermeasures to protect the irish from the famine.
>>482211
Because when it gets labeled genocide it's everybody's back to the wall in regards with accountability and their actions with regards to responsibility and interaction in the conflict. Like genocide has a much bigger impact then war or conflict
Imagine if you and your siblings when young broke a glass bowl that was a giftwrapped while a guest was in the house 3 different scenarios could occur in the aftermath.
>The bowl was a cheap ass gift and since it broke the guest has no way to see that it was bought at the dollar store.
>The gift was expensive and thus the parents get mad since it was an investment.
>The glassbowl was an antique and your parents were gonna trade it with the guest for a lost family heirloom that is a trade 95% in your parents favour since without glass bowl he'd only sell it for $2 million.
3 different levels of uh-oh with varying levels of "I'm gonna beat you pale because I smacked your blood out", "who did it finger pointing and blaming/begging" and "I'll tie your legs so much you'll have to hop to take a shit".
>>482260
Yup, hence the increasing ambiguity about what constitutes "genocide". The flip-side of that development is that it broadens the definition so that as the Cambodians weasel away from accusations of genocide the Irish Famine turns into the Irish Genocide.
Stalin takes the food out the Ukraine
Ukrainians starve
Genocide
England takes the food out of Ireland
Irish starve
Genocide
>>479797
No because the English wrote all modern history.
>>479822
Capitalist countries don't have artificial famines.
>>479825
That's not entirely true. The English wanted the Irish dead. The Irish population has exploded and the English were using Malthusian theory to justify the intentional policy of depopulation. They believed it was the Irish own fault and even that the famine was punishment for their sinful Catholic level of breeding.
>>479797
No, because it was due to crop failure.
>>484306
India, Ireland, Thanks UK
>>484322
India and Ireland weren't artificial you fucking moron, they were the result of crop failure.
Daily reminder that the 1932 ukrainian harvest was the best one on record since the russian revolution.
>>484341
>retard
>doesn't know the English actively enforced the growth of cash crops in the midst of famine, shipped food out of famine stricken regions, and justified the deaths on the sinfullness and laziness of the regions.
>>484306
No, they just have ones where the harm is greatly exacerbated le magical Free Market skydaddy will fix it XD or even pure amoral disregard for the populace.
>>484347
[citation needed]
>>484644
[too retarded to even check wikipedia]
>>484644
Just look up English policy during the famine in Ireland. You won't find anything refuting it.
Also the cash cross thing supplies to India, not Ireland, FYI.
>>481363
You have no idea.
The Brits have probably gotten away with more horrible, loathsome inhumane shit than any other nation on earth. It's not even particularly well hidden. Just no one bothers to call them out on it.
>>479797
No, because only Hitler can do genocides.
>>479841
You know its bad when Muslims feel bad for you.
>>484860
>Just look up English policy during the famine in Ireland. You won't find anything refuting it.
I probably will, which is why I'm asking you to provide sources.
>>481833
There was no wood to make boats out of. Ireland is still the most deforested country in Europe to this day.
And coastal areas didn't fare so badly in the famine, but the majority of the population lived inland
>>482061
And it's a goddamn shame.
>>484350
>government policies exacerbate famine
>le freemarket
The free market is just nornal people doing what they do.
Normal men could have stopped the famine, but they were prevented by le gubbermint regulactions.
Kill yourself controlled economy fags.
>>484921
Their Jewish allies take a lot of heat off them with the holocaust.
>>484298
To qualify as "genocide" I think intentionality is important. Was it actually the British intent to starve the Irish? (I doubt it; it just worked out that way). Rather, the British ruling class were just ruthless extractive capitalists, who really didn't care one way or the other whether the Irish starved.
>>485204
Another way to think about it: if Ireland was independent at the time, but ruled by its own aristocracy, would things have turned out any different? Probably not: their priority would still have been export earnings.
Lots of countries in the modern era have been run into the ground, to the point of famine, by native ruling elites focused on enriching themselves. That's not "genocide", it's just greed.
>>485231
see>>479849
>When Ireland had experienced a famine in 1782–83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. British merchants lobbied against the export ban, but the Irish Parliament in the 1780s overrode their protests. No such export ban happened in the 1840s partially because Ireland's Parliament was abolished by Britain in 1800.
>>485178
>but they were prevented by le gubbermint regulactions.
literally what?
read up a few posts. the reason people starved were because merchants were allowed to keep doing as they pleased /instead/ of government regulations
>normal people doing what they do
making the most profit for themselves aka letting people starve who can't pay
>>485178
>Normal men could have stopped the famine, but they were prevented by le gubbermint regulactions.
they weren't prevented by any regulations and they did fuck all. In fact they deliberately made it worse because livestock is more profitable than peasants.
In 1782, the last time the potato failed, muh evil government regulations were enacted stopping food exports and famine was much milder. Then the bongs in their infinite wisdom decided Ireland didn't need a government.
>>479797
Is the Ukrainian Famine considered a genocide?
The Chinese?
Bengal?
Cromwell's invasion of Ireland was more of a genocide. He set out with intent to slaughter as much of the Irish culture and people as he could. The Irish Famine was poor governance and lack of care but it wasn't a blight placed there by the British nor was it 100% their fault that so many Irish people died, but they certainly could have helped more.
>>479856
>2 million Irish arrive in America
>30+ million americans claim "I'm Irish"
muhh heritage
>>485332
>The Irish Famine was poor governance and lack of care but it wasn't a blight placed there by the British nor was it 100% their fault that so many Irish people died, but they certainly could have helped more.
I agree. I don't know why people are so obsessed with this shit.
>>485353
>I am completely unaware of how genetics or breeding works
Also there was constant emigration until at least the 1990s.
>>485358
People want the genocide victim label because it autowins political arguments.
Once ginger niggers get it they will never shut the fuck up about it.
>>479797
Well, I would call it a genocide if the Empire's intention was to exterminate the Irish but it seems that the cause of the famine was the extreme lack of empathy and contempt of British farm owners towards the Irish
>>479856
The Irish population is actually far larger since a lot of them emigrated out of Ireland
>>485324
The first two were failures of bureaucracy.
India is notorious for famines out of nowhere, so it's hard to say.The Brits could have probably done more than should have though.
>>485358
Because a million died and a million left, the population now is only half of what it was before.
Most importantly, it happened on the doorstep of Britain
>>479841
And people ask me why I'm not worried about immigration.
>>479841
>Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send only £1,000, because she herself had sent only £2,000.
That's a special kind of assholery.
>>485360
>Or how Irish People work.
That'll happen when you have 9 kids.
>>485353
Fun fact: population growth
>>485413
I'm not denying that either.
>>485413
And they each have 9 kids.
>>482218
Laissez Faire has to be one of the most retarded ideas going.
>>479846
>>479849
>>479852
>>479856
That's it.
Britain has to die.
>>485178
So Laissez Faire (praise be) returns food to famine stricken areas by ordinary market forces of supply and demand, high prices in suffering areas are an inducement to import food, food prices then reach an equilibrium at market value, it's a nice thought.
How does the Free Market skydaddy then help people that have already sold everything to try and get through 3/4 consecutive years of famine ?
>>479852
>Sir Charles Trevelyan
>Cornish
Figures.
>>486234
>Wanting to hold people accountable for something that happened over 100 years ago.
Ah, progress.
The church in Ireland secretly had lots of potatoes during the famine, and they hid the potatoes in pillows and sold them abroad in potato fairs. And the Pope closed down a lot of the factories that were making the potatoes and turned them into prisons for children.
>>482218
Didn't they actively turn away ships with food and refuse to give breeds of potato that would have necessarily been affected by the fungal infection killing the harvest?
I think allowing a thirsty man to die of thirst by refusing anyone to give him water counts as murder.
Ireland remained a net exporter of food during the Great Famine. The British were reluctant to supply aid, as they believed that the Irish were inferior to the British and many believed the famine was God's will.
>"The famine has been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson. The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the Irish people." - Charles Edward Trevelyan (in charge of relief for the famine)
Most of the victims of the famine were tenant farmers who rented tiny plots of land, barely large enough to allow subsistence farming. Plots so small that the only crop which was calorie-dense enough to allow survival was the potato.
These farmers were the descendants of the original owners who had had their land confiscated during the British conquest and handed over to government officials as reward for service. This land was carved up into the smallest possible plots to maximize profits, and re-rented back to the original owners at extortionate rates.
The Irish were to give a large percentage of their harvest to their landlord, and what remained was allowed for themselves. Once the famine hit, that obviously meant less potatoes. But the landowners continued to require their allotment of their tenants' harvests, so the police and security forces were used to seize these crops from starving families.
Some illustrative quotes from British public officials:
>Ireland is like a half-starved rat that crosses the path of an elephant. What must the elephant do? Squelch it - by heavens - squelch it - Thomas Carlyle
>Being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure had been applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence in a manner as unexpected and as unthought of as it is likely to be effectual. - Charles Trevelyan
>[existing policies] will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 and that will scarcely be enough to do much good. - Nassau Senior
>>486822
Why in the hell don't we call that genocide? It sounds just like the genocides going on in communist countries. Bad harvests hit and the government chooses to ship as much food as possible out of regions full of people they determine to be undesirables.
>>486856
The same reason we don't call putting Boers into camps and letting them starve to death genocide.
>>486856
Anglos are on top right now, so they get to write the dominant historical narrative.
That is why Anglo war crimes and crimes against humanity are downplayed an rationalized.
See for example the genocides in Ireland and India, the extermination of the native Americans, the mass firebombing of German civilians at the close of WW2, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc.
>>486234
There's a reason the Irish killed the British out of their country.
>>486856
Because Anglos wrote modern history.
All the non anglos in this thread hating.
Sorry guys but dont hate the success.
>>486912
Get back to work, Nigel.
Jamal's welfare account won't pay itself
>>485412
Eternal Anglo
>>486919
Isn't it time to get fucked by father O'Malley again taig?
Say hi to Aoife for me laddy on the way, tell her I'm not giving her anything for the baby.
>>486912
Anyway you're the pussies needing more German money to keep you afloat. Hows independence working out for you.
>>479815
That was mostly due to Malthusian economic thought that were prominent in the era. The idea was that such events were natural; the planet could only support so many so it is only logical to assume that when we reach capacity people are going to starve until the population reach sustainable levels again. To interfere would be only delay the inevitable and do more harm than good.
Also note that it was private landowners exporting food, not the government and the fact that most people in power had no idea how truly bad the famine was (plus a mild disdain for the Irish).
>>479841
>Ottomans sneak food into Ireland to save Irish lives and for no other reason than human decency
Based Turks.
>>486950
Malthus was a bishop in the Cult of Antihumanism.
>>486972
He was a total asshat, yes. His whole philosophy sprung up because when he was alive many farmers across Britain were being forced into cities due to landowners buying up what was traditionally shared farmland. His rationale was literally, "Hmmm, I'm seeing a lot of starving poor people as of late, it must be natural, let me draft up some bullshit statistics and models confirming my bias and have people ea tit up since I'm an economist."
I know people who still subscribe to his ideas today.
>>485119
Same here. We went from Niall to Neal.
If the Irish weren't European it would be widely acknowledged as a genocide
>>487023
>I know people who still subscribe to his ideas today.
I doubt you know any hard Malthusians.
While I subscribe to the idea that there are limits to the Earth's capacity and resources, and that the problem was offset from food to energy, I'd still agree that Malthus himself was an asshat.
>>487070
I mean Malthusian in the fact that they spout memes like, "People are dying? Good, we're overpopulated. Muh survival of the fittest." And they fail to realize only certain places in the world are over populated while others can support plenty more people and also fail to realize that famines are less a result of not enough food to go around than it is not being able to get food where people need it.
>Came in here expecting /pol/-esque BRITANNIA DID NOTHING WRONG replies
>Mostly people just looking at the cause and effect of what happened, drawing their own conclusions, and saying "yeah, it's not exactly a glowing review of British governance"
Huh, maybe there's hope yet for /his/
>>487055
Not its because the brits would be very sad that they would be held accountable for the shit they do.
>>487055
That's absurd.
It's probably the least deliberate of all British genocides, but given that members of the British governing class decided that helping wouldn't benefit anyone that mattered to them and it would be better to just let hundreds of thousands of people die, I'd say it's still up there.
At the very least it was a crime against humanity by one or more individuals within the British government.
Do their descendants still have estates? Gib reparations before Abdullah takes it all from you, limeys.
I'm starting to think this board shouldn't be allowed to call itself /his/. I've encountered far less historical ignorance on both /int/ and /pol/
Where do we even begin? Well, for starters
>>479846
>In the 17th and 18th centuries, the native Irish had been prohibited by the British Penal Laws from purchasing or leasing land in Ireland, from voting, from holding political office, from living in or within 5 miles of a corporate town, from obtaining education, from entering a profession, and from doing many other things necessary for a person to succeed and prosper in society.
>the native Irish had been prohibited
>the native Irish
This is utterly untrue. There were never any laws that distinguished between native Irish and other the inhabitants of the British isles. All the laws described applied only to Catholics, and contrary to what some people would have you believe Irish /= Catholic. There were plenty of Irish protestants - the national myths created by a post-Independence Republic keen to emphasise national unity largely glosses over how many of the 'English' Protestant Ascendency were Irish nobles who had simply converted and kept their positions (the Guinness family being a prime example). And for that matter there were plenty of English Catholics to whom the laws also applied. Now you could call this 'oppression', but let's not forget that Catholics were discriminated against for damn good reasons - religious wars had torn Europe apart in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Catholics had come very close to wiping out the 'heretical' English protestants. The Catholic attempt to assassinate the entire ruling class of England is still celebrated every year on November 5th.
>>487251
More to the point however,
>In the 17th and 18th centuries
the great famine happened in the middle of the 19th century. The anti-catholic laws had mostly been repealed decades earlier. It had been legal for Catholics to own land for half a century before the famine hit. Catholics had been able to vote and serve in parliament since the emancipation act of 1829 (although since there were still property qualifications this did little to enfranchise the poor of Ireland. But then, you could say exactly the same about the poor of England.) Land ownership may have been concentrated in the hands of a few, but the majority of these were not English 'absentee landlords'. Most landowners lived on their estates, and a sizeable chunk of land was owned by Catholics (land ownership was split about 50/50 between Catholics and protestants about a generation after the famine). Although there were of course English landowners who didn't live on their estates, the idea of 'absentee landlord' as a class, who owned Ireland and oppressed its people, is largely a myth promulgated by the Irish to avoid the narrative of 'freedom from the English imperial oppressor' being spoilt by the fact that in many cases it was their own people screwing them over. If the 'absentee landlord' existed at all he was largely a feature of the 17th/18th centuries not the 19th.
>>487251
>There were never any laws that distinguished between native Irish and other the inhabitants of the British isles.
Yes there were, but not the penal laws he was talking about, you're right.
>the national myths created by a post-Independence Republic keen to emphasise national unity largely glosses over how many of the 'English' Protestant Ascendency were Irish nobles
The "national mythos" does quite the opposite. Trying to deny the ethnic and religious links in Ireland is revisionism of the highest order, whether coming from nationalists emphasising unity or british apologists trying to downplay the ethnic nature of the Penal laws. To this day, Catholic and Protestant are used interchangeably with Irish/British, especially in Northern Ireland, by both communities.
>And for that matter there were plenty of English Catholics to whom the laws also applied.
The laws didn't apply in England, and the Norman families had been amalgamated into the general Irish culture for centuries, and were considered Irish, not English.
>let's not forget that Catholics were discriminated against for damn good reasons
no they weren't. the gunpowder plot has fuck all to do with Ireland. Catholics were discriminated against because of English colonisation.
>>479797
No because the British cover up anything shitty in their history, which is a lot.
>>487253
as for why the famine happened and the nature of the British government's response, it can mostly be summed up like this:
Ireland picked an extremely bad time to have a famine.
To understand the British government's response to the famine you have to understand who was in office at that time and what the politics of the era was. The Prime Minister at the beginning of the famine was Sir Robert Peel, and the core issue he had been elected on was the issue of Free Trade. Peel was a driven reformer fighting for the common man. In the decades after the Napoleonic war the landed gentry of Britain had manipulated the tariffs system to make imported food more expensive and keep the profits from their own land high. Needless to say, this was at the expense of the poor, who had to deal with higher food prices because of it. An entire social movement, like the suffragists of later decades, had grown up around the repeal of the Corn Laws, and Peel was their man. Peel had to fight tooth and nail to get into office and get the Corn Laws repealed (the resistance from the landed gentry would eventually end his political career), but he attacked the issue with all the zeal of an evangelist. Because Peel, his acolytes in the Tory party, and those who supported them, genuinely believed that the ordinary people were served best when the government did not interfere in the economy.
And then the Irish famine came along.
>>487361
What's also important to remember is that the scale of the famine wasn't fully understood at first. In the 1840s the government bureaucracy that we take for granted today, which collects up-to-date figures for things like crop yields, simply didn't exist. There was a once-a-decade (or something like that) census, and that was it. So what Peel's government first heard was that there would be food shortages in Ireland, which given Ireland's rapidly expanding population and extreme poverty was hardly anything new. However, Peel's first reaction was not, in fact, to brush it off. Contrary to the image of the British government as being callous to the point of being genocidal, Peel's first response was to purchase £100k (a lot of money in those days) worth of food from America and ship it to Ireland (which didn't work out quite as planned due to unfortunate details like Irish mills unsuitable for milling American cornmeal, but still, Peel was trying).
However, the one thing that might have made a real difference was the the end to food exports, as had been done in the famine of the 1790s. And this was the very thing that Peel's entire raison d'etre didn't allow him to do. It wasn't all about ideological blindness, there was logic behind it - the assessment of the government was that Ireland's main problem was that it wasn't industrialising like the rest of Britain (which was a perfectly valid point of view). In order to industrialise, Ireland needed capital to invest in industry. And Ireland's main source of capital was its food exports. Thus the British government reasoned that stopping Ireland's exports would collapse its nascent industry and only deepen Ireland's poverty in the long run. And the worst part is, this may well have been true - the world doesn't always present you with easy choices.
>>487370
However, had the government not been ideologically skewed towards a certain perspective they might have considered that development in the future would to little good to those starving to death now.
>>479797
It's not considered one though it is one. If a imperial or capitalist nation is responsible it's not a genocide.
So, the conclusion of this thread was that the Potato Famine was a genocide perpetrated by the English.
>>479841
damn it.
And just when I thought the english might not be completely irredeemable, it turns out they're literally worst than the fucking Turks.
>>487253
>the great famine happened in the middle of the 19th century. The anti-catholic laws had mostly been repealed decades earlier.
Penal laws, cromwell and plantations were the direct causes of the situation described above. They're entirely relevant.
>It had been legal for Catholics to own land for half a century before the famine hit. Catholics had been able to vote and serve in parliament since the emancipation act of 1829
not nearly enough time to reverse centuries of colonialism, especially without a government.
>But then, you could say exactly the same about the poor of England.
Poor of the Scottish highlands maybe. No similar situation existed in England.
>Land ownership may have been concentrated in the hands of a few, but the majority of these were not English 'absentee landlords'. Most landowners lived on their estates,
The majority were English and Anglo-Irish, and many were absentee. Absenteeism was an immense problem. In 1782 800,000 pounds in rent was sent to England annually. This is immense.
>and a sizeable chunk of land was owned by Catholics (land ownership was split about 50/50 between Catholics and protestants about a generation after the famine).
This is ridiculously disingenuous. A generation after the famine there was the "land war", a period of intense civil unrest where Catholics attempted to transfer control of the land from landlord to tenant. That 50/50 number is far from representative of the famine era. Catholics didn't own a "sizeable chunk", and catholic land was usually small family farms and not the large tenant holding farms which were the cause of the famine.
>If the 'absentee landlord' existed at all he was largely a feature of the 17th/18th centuries not the 19th.
exactly the opposite, the problem was made worse by the relocation of parliament to London in 1800.
>>487317
>To this day, Catholic and Protestant are used interchangeably with Irish/British, especially in Northern Ireland, by both communities.
But not 'Irish/English'. It's more about who considers themselves part of the greater whole as well as being irish and who considers themselves just Irish. And frankly, the communities in N. Ireland hardly have the most nuanced understanding of history anyway.
>The laws didn't apply in England,
it depends on the law, given that the two governments were technically separate until 1800, but there was a huge amount of discrimination against English catholics. Certainly they only were able to vote after the 1829 emancipation act. And I'm pretty sure there were periods where it was basically illegal to be a Catholic in England (attendance at CoE services were mandatory on pain of death by pressing), so in some ways English Catholics faced even more discrimination than Irish Catholics.
>the gunpowder plot has fuck all to do with Ireland
the gunpowder plot was only an example.
>Catholics were discriminated against because of English colonisation.
you just said the gunpowder plot had nothing to do with Ireland. Are you trying to say that the gunpowder plot, where catholics tried to stage a catholic coup, couldn't have had anything to do with the resentment towards catholics?
>>486732
>the Pope closed down a lot of the factories that were making the potatoes
>>487100
>/pol/-esque BRITANNIA DID NOTHING WRONG
eternal anglo is a /pol/ meme
The Ireland threads on /pol/ are actually split between the
>irish
>white
posters who are almost without fail Brit flag and the ones that btfo anglo swine and post IRA songs and shit.
>>487419
>It's more about who considers themselves part of the greater whole as well as being irish and who considers themselves just Irish. And frankly, the communities in N. Ireland hardly have the most nuanced understanding of history anyway.
It's about what "tribe" you are, people in NI are a good example of how ethnicity was tied to religion in Ireland, regardless of what they know.
>but there was a huge amount of discrimination against English catholics
That's not entirely relevant. The situations in Ireland and England were very different.
>couldn't have had anything to do with the resentment
sure it could have, but the ethnic tensions in Ireland are much older and the dynamics were much different. I'd hardly call a plot in England "good reason" to persecute Catholics in Ireland.
>>479797
I'm from the North and a lot of the guys I know (who consider themselves either British or Irish) call it "The Hunger". Mainly because there was plenty of food. Cross-community wise, everyone knows it was horrific.
>>487397
>Poor of the Scottish highlands maybe. No similar situation existed in England.
the situation in England was a little different due to the growth of industry (in Ireland the poor were overwhelmingly peasant farmers) but to suggest that there was no real poverty in England is just so unbelievably false that I'm surprised you had the gall to say it. The cities of England were packed with impoverished industrial workers, many of whom would have lived in far worse conditions than anyone living out on the land (not only were they half-starved most of the time, they also had to deal with all the by-products of industries who had yet to be introduced to the idea of environmental regulations)
>A generation after the famine there was the "land war"
the situation immediately before the land war started was ~55/45% split in land ownership between protestants and catholics. There had probably been in increase in Catholic ownership since the Great Famine, because the crop failures bankrupted a lot of the landowners. But it certainly didn't go from 0% to 45% in 20 years, and the point I was making was that a reasonable chunk of the land was in catholic hands. And the Catholic landowners, while not on average as rich as the protestant ones, were still wealthy landowners in a very poor society.
>In 1782 800,000 pounds in rent was sent to England annually. This is immense.
This is over half a century before the events in question.
>exactly the opposite, the problem was made worse by the relocation of parliament to London in 1800.
I can't remember where the source is, but I'm pretty sure the majority of landlords lived on their estates at the time of the famine, even accounting for the movement of landowners to London. however, I can say that by the 1870s less than a third of landlords were 'absentee' so again, I doubt there was that huge a drop off over the course of a single generation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_War#Land_League.2C_1879
>>487464
>I'd hardly call a plot in England "good reason" to persecute Catholics in Ireland.
it's a good reason for the English to persecute catholics wherever they might be. And as I said, it was only an example. As I said, the 16th and 17th centuries were defined by Catholic/Protestant wars all across Europe. Extremely bloody, savage wars - maybe a quarter of the population of Germany was wiped out, and England while not as hard hit as that certainly felt the bite. The discrimination against Irish catholics was simply a facet of this very common phenomenon. Again, as I said there were plenty of ethnic Irish who avoided all the persecution by simply converting. It was only in the 19th century, when religious conflicts were seen as somewhat medieval and nationalism was on the rise, that Irish nationalists recast the old religious divisions as an ethnic struggle.
>>487492
>but to suggest that there was no real poverty in England
That's not what I'm saying at all. There was famine in Scotland and Ireland. There wasn't in England. The blight came to all three countries.The situation in Rural England was completely different to rural Ireland, so the blight didn't really matter. I'm aware of the awful conditions of industrial workers but that's not relevant to the famine. I would say that english industrial workers were victims of the same negligent rulership as Irish peasants.
>55/45% split in land ownership between protestants and catholics
That shows the number of proprietors, not the amount of land owned. Protestant estates were much, much larger. Crop failure didn't bankrupt landowners, as the potato was not a cash crop. Food exports increased during the famine.
>This is over half a century before the events in question.
The situation hadn't changed that much, except that after 1800 that money couldn't be taxed.
>I can't remember where the source is, but I'm pretty sure the majority of landlords lived on their estates at the time of the famine, even accounting for the movement of landowners to London. however, I can say that by the 1870s less than a third of landlords were 'absentee' so again, I doubt there was that huge a drop off over the course of a single generation
29% is massive, even higher than I remembered, and probably lower than during the famine itself.
>>487519
>Again, as I said there were plenty of ethnic Irish who avoided all the persecution by simply converting. It was only in the 19th century, when religious conflicts were seen as somewhat medieval and nationalism was on the rise, that Irish nationalists recast the old religious divisions as an ethnic struggle.
I have to translate 17th century Irish manuscripts in college, this is wrong. The divisions had been an ethnic struggle for a long time. Catholicism and Gaelic nationalism were entwined. It's not until the United Irishmen that Irish civic nationalism eclipsed Gaelic/Catholic ethnic nationalism and this is still the dominant form of nationalism.
>>487361
>>487370
>>487371
Peel might have been ideologically handicapped but at least he was a capable leader with some idea of what he was doing. Unfortunately, Ireland's luck managed to get even worse. Peel might have been Prime Minister at the start of the famine, but he wasn't able to hold onto that position for long after that. The political wrangling over the repeal of the Corn Laws tore his party apart and forced his resignation. In its place came a government from the party which had lost the previous election, and was crippled by infighting and disunity. Thus the critical years of the famine passed while the government in London was deadlocked over almost every issue.
Which is not to say that relief efforts weren't organised. Work programs were started to provide jobs in road building and other infrastructure projects for Ireland's mass of displaced peasants. Out of Ireland's population of 8 million, almost three quarters of a million men were employed by the government - a massive number considering the tiny size of the state then relative to what it is today. But that still left millions with no support - it was simply the scale of the problem that overwhelmed whatever solutions the government was capable of putting together.
Part of the problem was the general Victorian mindset with regards to the poor. Poverty was generally regarded to be the result of sloth and bad morals. Incidentally, this rationale was applied just as harshly to the poor of England as of Ireland - the work houses built to support the poor still stand in many English towns and cities (albeit repurposed nowadays), deliberately designed to make poverty as miserable as possible. Simply handing out money and food was felt to create a culture of dependency and not solve the underlying problem. It was also a question about the role of government - most people felt that government shouldn't have much role at all, but that private charity should be responsible for the poor.
>>487656
This was by no means the only opinion in British society, but it was, unfortunately, the attitude of the man appointed to oversee the British government's relief efforts in Ireland - Charles Trevelyan. But although many histories paint him as a Malthusian monster (not entirely unfairly), his letters back to England show that he was not simply letting the Irish peasants die out of sheer callousness. Much of his correspondence contains invectives against the Irish aristocracy, who Trevelyan rightly saw as being incredibly callous and totally useless. Trevelyan's view was that tenants were primarily the responsibility of their landlords, not the government's - in England there was a certain amount of paternalism from employer to employee, at least in the agricultural sector, and trevelyan's inherent worldview meant that he expected the Irish landowners to take charge of solving the crisis. And possibly it was a means of absolving his own responsibility for the crisis. But either way, the British government neither thought the famine was a good thing or blamed the peasants themselves - it was recognised for the tragedy it was and the blame was pinned not on the peasantry but on the Anglo-Irish aristocracy.
>>487492
>I can't remember where the source is, but I'm pretty sure the majority of landlords lived on their estates at the time of the famine
They didnt really, but the ones who did mostly moved to England after the famine because they knew the game was up and they didnt want to wake up in a burning house. A lot of those who remained until the Irish war of independence and didnt leave were shot, pretty much wiping out that class of people outside of small enclaves in south Dublin and Wicklow where some of their decendants remain.
If you look at wiki pages for Anglo-Irish nobility, you will see most of them were born in London after 1800 and probably never visited Ireland, their estates were run by agents.
>>487656
>it was simply the scale of the problem that overwhelmed whatever solutions the government was capable of putting together.
Doubt.jpg
Closing the ports wouldn't have been that hard.
>>487615
I'm not saying that people didn't recognise the division between those who were ethnically Gaelic and the English before the 19th century, or the association of a particular religion with a particular ethnic group. But nationalism is very much a post-18th century feature.
Ultimately it comes down to this: who would you side with, a person of your religion but from a different ethnic background, or a person of the same ethnicity but from a different religious background. In the 16th, 17th, and most of the 18th centuries any English protestant would unequivocally have sided with an Irish protestant over an English catholic. This isn't just theoretical: this is what happened, on many occasions. During the English civil war Irish Catholics fought alongside Catholic sympathising English Royalists against English Parliamentarians (who were heavily Protestant) and Irish protestants.
The same conflict, more or less, repeated itself a generation later when James II tried to retake the throne. It was only in the 19th century that you started to see Irish Catholics making common cause with Irish protestants against the English.
>>487656
>Which is not to say that relief efforts weren't organised. Work programs were started to provide jobs in road building and other infrastructure projects for Ireland's mass of displaced peasants. Out of Ireland's population of 8 million, almost three quarters of a million men were employed by the government - a massive number considering the tiny size of the state then relative to what it is today. But that still left millions with no support - it was simply the scale of the problem that overwhelmed whatever solutions the government was capable of putting together.
These "work programs" consisted of marching men to the top of hills with rocks and making piles. Men who hadn't eaten for days. Bodies fell along the sides of the hill, the lucky ones were sent to my village, which is one of the few places around with enough soil for a burial. They didn't get a proper burial though they were mostly dumped in mass graves of which there are four within walking distance of my house.
>the work houses built to support the poor still stand in many English towns and cities
The work house in my village has it's very own mass grave
>>487687
Actually given the political position of the Russell government it would have been flat out impossible for them to force through such a controversial measure. The thing is in big historical cases like this everything gets reduced down to The British Government (as if its a faceless monolithic entity) vs. Ireland. In reality politics then was much like politics today, and it didn't stop just because something that would later be considered Historically Important was happening. The were plenty of people in Britain who said the government should close the ports, plenty who said they shouldn't, and plenty more who were more concerned with trade with the Americas, or with the return of the Napoleonic dynasty to the French throne, or with whether the Factory Acts that limited the hours children could work in factories went too far, or didn't go far enough, or whether it was time to get rid of income tax, or whatever.
also, see>>487370
for why closing the ports was a problem given the prevailing political climate.
>>487722
>No Gulag in England.
>>479797
There was no famine, it was a genocide intentionally caused by the British.
>>487694
>Ultimately it comes down to this: who would you side with, a person of your religion but from a different ethnic background, or a person of the same ethnicity but from a different religious background. In the 16th, 17th, and most of the 18th centuries any English protestant would unequivocally have sided with an Irish protestant over an English catholic. This isn't just theoretical: this is what happened, on many occasions. During the English civil war Irish Catholics fought alongside Catholic sympathising English Royalists against English Parliamentarians (who were heavily Protestant) and Irish protestants.
Before the nationalism that you rightly stated emerged in the 18th century, there was tribalism, "Irish" didn't mean that much because a non-Gaelic Irishman was seen as foreign. The majority of protestant Irishmen were anglos or scots and your point here
>During the English civil war Irish Catholics fought alongside Catholic sympathising English Royalists against English Parliamentarians (who were heavily Protestant) and Irish protestants.
Fails to take that into account.
Catholicism was intertwined with Gaelic culture, to the point where formerly Catholic gaels assimilated into anglo culture on converting and vice versa.
>>487722
>The work house in my village has it's very own mass grave
as if every workhouse didn't come with a pit to dump the paupers in
>These "work programs" consisted of marching men to the top of hills with rocks and making piles
that is generally what work like road building involves. Most of the roads didn't even go anywhere really, the government was just making up jobs for people. You think they should have just cut out the middle man and handed out the food? Maybe that's the obvious answer to us, but that wasn't how the Victorian mindset worked. And they provided a means of support to hundreds of thousands of irish poor, even if it didn't help all of them.
>>486287
>>Wanting to hold people accountable for something that happened over 100 years ago.
Wanting to hold people accountable for something that happened over 1 minute ago.
>>486856
>>Why in the hell don't we call that genocide?
because there is only one genocide in western europe.
two genocides means that people will think less of the genocide which matters most.
>>487674
>If you look at wiki pages for Anglo-Irish nobility
which is only relevant if they held the majority of land at the time of the famine
I don't suppose anyone has any actual stats relating to what land distribution was like at the time of the famine and how much was owned by 'absentee landlords'? Because the only stats so far have been the ones I've provided to back up my argument, which are from 20-30 years after the famine. Unless anyone has more actual sources this discussion is going to quickly get very circuitous.
>>487773
>that is generally what work like road building involves. Most of the roads didn't even go anywhere really, the government was just making up jobs for people.
They're not roads, they're piles of rocks. Literally. I see them every day. They're just piles of rocks on the tops of hills.
>And they provided a means of support to hundreds of thousands of irish poor, even if it didn't help all of them.
It was remarkably uneffective given that everyone around here died or emigrated. It didn't help at all, and usually it did more harm than good.
>as if every workhouse didn't come with a pit to dump the paupers in
From all I've read about British workhouses, horrible and all as they are, they don't have close to the death toll of the famine houses. Practically everyone in them died within a couple of months.
>>487370
>Thus the British government reasoned that stopping Ireland's exports would collapse its nascent industry and only deepen Ireland's poverty in the long run. And the worst part is, this may well have been true - the world doesn't always present you with easy choices.
So much british apologetic bullshit ITT, perfect example right here of "how Britain never did anything wrong ever, and when they did it was not their really fault".
I'd say the famine is totally the fault of the British government since in the preceding 200 years they put in place the laws and restrictions which created the sitution, and during the situation they purposefully prevented it from being alleviated because it suited them for Irish people to die so that country could be used as an agricultural colony to feed Britain without the hindrance of a pesky native population eating said food.
There is nothing more to it, simply put it was pure naked genocide in the style of Adolf Hitler...but this does not agree well with British peoples own self-mythologised and reverential view of their empire/history and the cognitive dissonace must be blocked out at all costs because their present view of themselves and their sense of self is based on this creation myth.
>>487370
>There was a once-a-decade (or something like that) census, and that was it.
yes, so it was an explicit refusal from britain to monitor the situation, precisely with the hope that having no information would disqualify them for genocide.
>>487801
>Unless anyone has more actual sources this discussion is going to quickly get very circuitous.
No shit, you have an agenda to push and everything else is [citation needed].
Pic related is a map it took 1 second to find.
This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws_%28Ireland%29 has already been posted, the relevant parts:
>no catholic may own land
>no catholic may go to school
>no catholic can be employed by the government
Slowly repealed after the famine, but unsuprisingly after 200 years of these laws the Catholic Irish couldn't actually afford to buy back the land which had been confiscated, and as serfs they had a piece of land each about the size of your bedroom on which to grow their own food for the year.
>>487811
>>487821
if you're going to make stuff up at least make up something that's vaguely convincing. You do realise that these aren't just 2-dimensional bad-guys in some shitty action movie we're talking about, right? They may be faceless monsters if you only bother to skim through the histories, but you realise we have all their letters, diaries, official documents, etc, etc. The British government wasn't out to genocide the irish (and lets face it if they were they probably could have done a much better job)
>>487807
>They're not roads, they're piles of rocks. Literally. I see them every day. They're just piles of rocks on the tops of hills.
kind of just proves my point - the government weren't trying to squeeze more labour out of starving men, they were just trying to provide relief in a way that didn't clash with their in-built convictions about how poverty should be handled.
>It was remarkably uneffective given that everyone around here died or emigrated
Probably true (although I doubt that it did more harm than just doing nothing), but what do you expect? 90% of the main food crop failed in several consecutive years, and the government suddenly found itself with virtually an entire island of 8 million people that couldn't feed itself. In a society where poverty relief had traditionally been based around collecting rates on a parish-level basis which would then manifest itself as a few pennies handed out by the local priest every week to the local widows and orphans.
>>487860
>Slowly repealed after the famine,
a lie. as I have repeatedly stated (along with the link that you presumably think no one will read), these laws were repealed 50-100 years before the famine. The pic you provided is 140 years before the period we're talking about.
but sure, I'm the one with an agenda to push
>>487886
>kind of just proves my point - the government weren't trying to squeeze more labour out of starving men, they were just trying to provide relief in a way that didn't clash with their in-built convictions about how poverty should be handled.
I didn't realise that was your point. I was just demonstrating the callous disregard they had for the lives of the people they were supposed to be helping.
>Probably true (although I doubt that it did more harm than just doing nothing), but what do you expect? 90% of the main food crop failed in several consecutive years, and the government suddenly found itself with virtually an entire island of 8 million people that couldn't feed itself. In a society where poverty relief had traditionally been based around collecting rates on a parish-level basis which would then manifest itself as a few pennies handed out by the local priest every week to the local widows and orphans.
It was worse than nothing in a few respects, firstly the work killed a lot of people, secondly it caused a huge amount of anger. The only relief group that is respected are the quakers.
>90% of the main food crop failed in several consecutive years, and the government suddenly found itself with virtually an entire island of 8 million people that couldn't feed itself.
Ireland was a remarkably fertile province of the richest empire on earth. There was ample warning, there were countless suggestions from Irishmen even before the famine on the proper precautions to take, and they had five years to get their shit together. The relief effort was worse than doing nothing.
>>487253
There were always Catholics in the Commons, though. At least since the middle of the 18th century.
>>479841
>Even t*rks are better than bongs
>>479797
You cant genocide animals
>>479841
>tfw get no love from ireland on /int/
>>488656
Turkey is not as likable since nationalism.
>>487957
>I was just demonstrating the callous disregard they had for the lives of the people they were supposed to be helping.
except that by the standards of the time it wasn't callous disregard. If the people in charge had genuinely not given a single fuck about the lives of the irish then they wouldn't have bothered organising the work schemes in the first place. It isn't fair to look at this from a modern perspective; we're used to having a welfare state around us. You have to judge history in context.
>firstly the work killed a lot of people
How many is 'a lot'? because if the if the work really was that lethal then 1) why did the irish bother with it. If you're going to die, why die tired? and 2) why would the authorities continue paying for it? The work would have finished off some of those who had already been severely weakened by hunger, but when someone gets to that state then they were probably pretty close to death already. I'm sure in Ireland the emphasis is put on the people killed by the work programs (because British = evil), but the truth is that hundreds of thousands were supported by these programs during the famine, which was unprecedented for the time given that there wasn't even the vaguest conception of welfare provision by the national government.
>Ireland was a remarkably fertile province
Not after the potato blight hit, obviously. When you get right down to it this was a natural disaster. You can criticise the government for incompetence, but it was a fungus that damaged the potato crop that was ultimately to blame. Tens of thousands of people elsewhere in Europe starved to death due to the failure of the potato crop.
>>484315
>The Irish population has exploded
>>488656
That is a crime. Based Sultan was our friend in our time of need, along with Cherokees and Quakers.
Also, this.
Tbh I just wish our Government would just apologize for the past atrocities. I feel awful about all of it even though I did nothing.
>>488793
Dude, Malthusian theory was just an excuse for the English to diminish the growing problem of the Irish Catholics. Plenty of other people during the time who didn't want the Irish dead tried to help despite the supposed belief that "helping was bad". The English turned away relief efforts!
Work camps created by the English in famine stricken areas, at least in India, didn't give post enough food for workers to simply survive off of let alone work off of. Instead of heading the Indian workers' cries for more food and dimpling giving them more food to see if it helped the English literally called the incomprehensibly lazy for not working off of 1400 Calories per day. They didn't care to find out how much food a human needs to survive because they didn't care about the lives of Indians. Modern theory/ignorance was just a tool for apathetic genocide.
That isn't too say I hold the English today responsible, but don't you dare sugar coat it.
>>488793
>except that by the standards of the time it wasn't callous disregard.
It was though, that's the whole point. The only other place you saw shit like this is russia. People in the 19th century were appalled.
>How many is 'a lot'?
thousands
>because if the if the work really was that lethal then 1) why did the irish bother with it. If you're going to die, why die tired?
Desperation.
>and 2) why would the authorities continue paying for it?
The relief efforts were a complete farce. The relief effort was gutted by indifference and ideology. Public works projects were designed to be useless because of laissez faire ideology. then in 1847 they were cancelled under Russell's new government, despite it being the worst year of famine. After thousands died they were reinstated, but were left to landlords who evicted tenants rather than pay them. This was made easier by laws passed in parliament.
> I'm sure in Ireland the emphasis is put on the people killed by the work programs (because British = evil),
You have a poor perception of Irish people and what they think.
>but the truth is that hundreds of thousands were supported by these programs during the famine
They were not enough. Not nearly enough, and they shouldn't have been necessary in the first place.
>which was unprecedented for the time given that there wasn't even the vaguest conception of welfare provision by the national government.
The British relief effort was indifferent and incompetent by the standards of the time. People were shocked. It was an outrage. There were many famines in Ireland, some were as bad as the great famine but none are as infamous, because they weren't as horrendously mismanaged
>Not after the potato blight hit, obviously.
Food exports increased during the famine. Ireland was a breadbasket, but none of the food produced in Ireland stayed there.
cont.
>>489424
>>488793
>Not after the potato blight hit, obviously.
Food exports increased during the famine. Ireland was a breadbasket, but the food went to England. There was enough food in Ireland to feed the people twice over. Parliament could have ended the famine the same way the Irish parliament ended the famine in 1782. Food prices were kept artificially high by the Corn laws which parliament refused to repeal.
>You can criticise the government for incompetence, but it was a fungus that damaged the potato crop that was ultimately to blame.
No, the system established by British rule is to blame. The blight was just a catalyst, the groundwork had been set and hadn't been corrected after the year of slaughter in 1741 or the famine in 1782.
>Tens of thousands of people elsewhere in Europe starved to death due to the failure of the potato crop.
And a million died in Ireland alone. Like I said the situation in Ireland was unique, and not comparable to anything else in Europe except the Scottish highlands. This situation was the cause of the famine.
>>488898
>Tbh I just wish our Government would just apologize for the past atrocities.
Nobody in Ireland expects or wants an apology, really. An end to revisionism like you see in this thread would be nice but that's a minority anyway.
>I feel awful about all of it even though I did nothing.
Don't, it's not your fault. Common people in the UK had no control over what government did, and even if they had people 150 years later are not responsible.
If the Irish were that hungry why didn't they just eat the chips on their shoulders? Checkmate papists
The only reason the Irish starved is because they had forgotten how to cultivate any number of other fruits and grains.
>>479852
>warship stromboli
>>489462
>Common people in the UK had no control over what government did
That's not entirely true. Everyone pays into the zeitgeist of the time. If enough people cared about the issue then policy would have changed. Politicians derive power from the people and to think otherwise leads to such travesties.
Something something Catholics.
Something something Protestants.
Something something Anglicans.
>>489614
Yeah, I've heard this. But source?
>>489614
Prove it. Most of this thread disagrees with you. English policies caused the mass starvation.
>>489618
>Everyone pays into the zeitgeist of the time.
But Ireland and England were two very different countries and the zeitgeist of Ireland was not that of England. It's unreasonable to expect an English farmer to protest the famine in Ireland. The problem was the disastrous union which put Irish lives in the hands of English elites.
>Politicians derive power from the people and to think otherwise leads to such travesties.
Irish politicians derived power from non-Irish people.
>>489614
>The only reason the Irish starved is because they had forgotten how to cultivate any number of other fruits and grains.
Shitloads of grain, vegetables and livestock were produced in Ireland but they were cash crops and not food crops, and they were exported often under armed guard. This is a stupid statement.
>>479797
do you consider holodomor genocide?
>>489424
>You have a poor perception of Irish people and what they think.
plz. Irish history as it's taught in the republic (and to Catholics in N. ireland) is little more than Mel Gibson-tier propaganda.
>People were shocked. It was an outrage
Precisely. Many people in England were shocked by the scale of the devastation wrought on Ireland. I'm not trying to argue that the government's response didn't leave a lot to be desired, I'm simply trying to counter people like >>489060 who try to argue that it was a deliberate genocide, or that the British government simply didn't care what happened in Ireland. I've already explained
>>487727
>>487656
why the british government was in no state at that point to organise a large relief effort, or indeed do much of anything.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Really, this a discussion of exactly the same nature as '9/11 must have been an inside job because no one could be that incompetent and everyone knows Bush wanted war in the middle east anyway'. Superficially a convincing argument, but when you actually look at the evidence it just doesn't hold up. It wasn't part of some grand plan, they just had no idea what they were doing.
>Food exports increased during the famine.
food imports also increased. Mostly it was expensive stuff that was being exported - meats like beef and lamb. The money this brought to the Irish economy was then used to buy cheaper foods like wheat and maize - over four times more wheat was imported at the height of the famine as was exported. The potato blight had simply wiped out such a large portion of Ireland's agricultural product that there was too big a gap to fill. You simply can't remove that large a percentage of food output and expect people not to go hungry; the only reason the rest of Europe wasn't worse affected was because there wasn't such a reliance on the potato.
>>489794
>>489424
>Food prices were kept artificially high by the Corn laws which parliament refused to repeal.
seriously, has anyone read anything I've written in this thread? The Prime Minister, Peel, was fully committed to removing the corn laws, and he managed to do so in the first year of the famine.
>>489794
>plz. Irish history as it's taught in the republic (and to Catholics in N. ireland) is little more than Mel Gibson-tier propaganda.
I went through the school system in Ireland and you're wrong.
>Many people in England were shocked by the scale of the devastation wrought on Ireland
Then what was your point about the standards of the time?
> I'm not trying to argue that the government's response didn't leave a lot to be desired, I'm simply trying to counter people who try to argue that it was a deliberate genocide
You did try to argue that though, and why are you trying to combat anti-British revisionism with pro-British revisionism? Both are shit.
>why the british government was in no state at that point to organise a large relief effort, or indeed do much of anything.
The fact that there was even a debate in parliament is the issue though, as well as the fact that issues like you mentioned took precedence over the death of a million UK subjects. The problem isn't the particular government, Ireland could have done worse than peel. The problem was the political situation where Ireland was ruled from abroad.
>Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
I'm not blaming either,, though both played a part. The problem was that the UK was never fit to rule Ireland. The union was a mistake.
>Mostly it was expensive stuff that was being exported - meats like beef and lamb.
Livestock were fed using Irish produce and grazed on better land than peasants were allotted. Peasants were often evicted to make room for livestock. Ireland was very fertile during the famine
>You simply can't remove that large a percentage of food output and expect people not to go hungry;
Plenty of places went hungry but there was only one great famine.
>the only reason the rest of Europe wasn't worse affected was because there wasn't such a reliance on the potato.
That was more or less my point. They relied on potatoes for a reason.
>>489799
>The Prime Minister, Peel, was fully committed to removing the corn laws, and he managed to do so in the first year of the famine.
And it nearly brought down the government and forced him to resign. He faced fierce opposition from his own party in instituting a change that was essential to lowering food prices in Ireland during a famine.
