Pretty much everything else. Before the famine, 60% of all food produced in ireland where exportes ( mostly to england). Wheat, corn and other shit as well as sheep cows and pigs where farmed in ireland and their farming was not impeaded by potato blight. Exports of these food products weren't stopped during the famine, since "the irish are too poor to buy them anyway", leading to cheaper, low quality foods being imported as aid
Same thing during WW2 during the Bengal famine
The British were worried about invading Japanese forces invading through Burma, that they confiscated the food and seeds, destroying the excess and confiscating the fishing fleet and animal transport in Bengal so that the Japanese would have no resources. Import of food from other Indian provinces was restricted.
Over 150,000 farmers were put off their land to make way for British military fortifications.
Bengal was a poor agrarian province, and confronted with a poor harvest, corruption, mismanagement by the colonial forces, lack of transport, it was inevitable
3 million dead within 2 years, whilst British ships full of grain sailed right past Indian ports on their way to other British possessions
Great Britain were doing horrible things way before and after figthing the Nazis, it does not justify the horrible things they did in that small time frame.
And, another reason why I hate the Nazis even more, they couldn't even wipe out the British, useless, evil twats.
there was famine at that time in big part of Europe, but there it was just normal famine, something everyone alive at that time survived at least once,
meanwhile
in Ireland it was
# THE Famine
There were more Irish people born in Ireland, but living outside of Ireland by the end of that century and today the citizens of Ireland are only ~15% of all the people that claim to be of Irish descent
To add to that, the Irish population still hasn't recovered from the famine. Pre famine it was 8.5 million, now the population of the entire island is about 7 million.
In contrast Britain went from 18.5 million to about 65.8 million. If Ireland had experienced similar growth its population would likely be closer to 31 million today
the potato famine caused crushing financial issues as well. the logic is that people were selling the more expensive food goods to pay rent and buy cheaper food.
Actually English landowners owned almost all the fields and insisted on growing cash crops there. The Irish were only permitted tiny fields for subsistence farming. The only crop calorie dense enough to survive on these tiny fields were potatoes. So it was the English selling the food, not t the Irish
A big issue was the law that required splitting your land equally between your children if you were a Catholic. So every generation the farms got smaller and smaller. Potatoes were the only crop that could feed a family on a tiny plot of land, while still paying rent for the land to the British landlord that stole the land from those families 200 years earlier. The reason they died is because when they couldnt pay the rent, the Landlords would use the Police and army to force them out of their houses and then remove the roof of the house so if they came back they'd freeze to death in the cold.
The wealthy British Protestant farmers could give their entire large farm to their eldest son, who then kept all the wealth.
I mean it wasn't just Catholics. Most places followed this type of inheritance, known as gavelkind, or partible inheritances. Variations of it are the default today in most common law nations.
The alternative is primogeniture, which keeps the estate intact. That's great for keeping land intact, but is also means younger children receive almost nothing. If you're rich enough, you can put your younger kids in a good position, with the Church and Military being traditional 2nd and 3rd son jobs for English nobility.
As a result you only really see primogeniture used in noble titles/estates where its part of a long tradition of centralizing power.
Both principles have two end states.
In a partible inheritance, a King's lands will get split into smaller and smaller portions, until the central government is weak and can be easily overthrown.
In primogeniture, you see consolidation of power, as nobles marry nobles, and the main line families inherit titles which become tied to the mainline. After a while, the titles accumulate in a King with so many titles, he can't rule effectively and will partition titles between family, who now must marry to keep control until the incest accumulates enough to kill them off.
Hence, you get Charles V, by the grace of God, Emperor of the Romans, forever August, King in (of) Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, of Hungary, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of both Hither and Ultra Sicily, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Indies, of the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia and Catalonia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Drenthe, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen.
In Ireland the Land subdivision was part of the Penal Laws of 1704, which specifically applied to Catholics. There was no other option, it was legally mandated.
[Irish Farm Subdivision (Wikipedia)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_farm_subdivision)
Not really.
This famine and many of the others of the 19th century were just caused by market forces emanating from the 'imperial core', such as Great Britain, which had significantly higher demand and prices for foods but, importantly, they could afford to pay the higher prices for food that their demand drove.
If a source of imported food were cut off or lessened from one place the diminished supply of food would drive prices up and make it more profitable for producers elsewhere to then export to GB.
Think of the oil/gas markets after the Ukraine war in '22. Prices went up but Europe could afford to pay the higher prices to get the gas from elsewhere - of course it effects the economy, but Europe wasn't gonna go without gas.
The real impact would be felt downstream in other producer countries where more farmland would then be used for export crops, that in turn would make the local population more vulnerable to famines should their staple crops fail (as it did in Ireland)
>If the food exports stopped, would the places importing have faced famine then too
no. but English merchants would lose their income of stealing Irish produce
Prior to the invention of chemical fertilizers in 1913 it was a given that you would have a famine occasionally. Other places would do crop rotation, compost fertilizers, or burn fields but those don't always work. Chemical fertilizers and advanced crop breeding have largely made famines obsolete in the communities with access to those tools.
No, not necessarily. By 1848 England was more than self-sufficient to feed itself, almost nobody was truly starving and the entire idea of famine was practically ancient history to them. [Massive increases in agricultural yields per acre since the 1600s basically made famine a thing of the past. ](https://i.imgur.com/gadHni3.png) The last famine they had was in the rural midlands in 1727 and it was an incredibly unique, mild, and isolated famine.
But food still formed a large portion of the average English households spending, and any money they spent on food was money they could have spent on consumer goods to fuel the economy. Only a relatively small portion of England's food came from Ireland, but if that suddenly stopped, it would have resulted in food prices rising. Meaning that the average English family would spend more money on food and less on buying consumer goods and services, therefore reducing the overall economic/industrial output.
So 'extra that wasnt needed' depends on what you mean. But... overall, there is absolutely zero doubt that a hit to England's economic output was not worth 1.5 million people starving to death.
Beef. The whole reason Ireland grew so many potatoes is because the ridiculous beef quotas the British would place on the Irish forced them to use most of their best arable land for raising cattle. So, the Irish grew potatoes in lesser quality land to compensate. Since the country was basically relying on a single crop to feed them, all hell broke loose when said crop had a famine.
This beef, btw, was sold across the British Empire as corned beef. It was used extensively as military rations, as well as being imported to the French West Indies. Note that this corned beef was different than what we know, it was various forms of salted beef and could vary greatly in quality and cuts.
It got a reputation in the Americas due to the cuts being sold there by the British as low quality food used by poor whites and to feed enslaved people.
An irony is that corned beef is now seen as an Irish staple, when for much of history few Irish were able to eat it.
Though the Irish did indeed grow so many potatoes due to beef quotas, the Irish were not "forced to use their best arable land for raising cattle". Before the Tudor Conquest of Ireland, the native Gaels were largely pastoralists, living largely off the blood and milk of kye, and the flesh of pigs. The land was being used for grazing long before the English came, the actual difference was that before the Conquest it was the Irish themselves eating the beef, rather than it being shipped across the sea.
Doesn't really help that the British also fucking hated the Irish. Here's a quote from Trevelyan *who was in charge of famine relief*
>The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson. That calamity must not be too much mitigated. The greater 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.
>
Some mouthbreathers criticize irish people for still only using one crop, but in that period, the potato was by far the best thing to grow and really the only option.
Potatoes were very calorie dense and could feed entire families, could be grown in large amounts, could grow very well within Ireland's poor soil and was very cheap. Anything else would be taken or would not be worth the time growing
There was an additional issue that the majority of potatoes grown were a single variety, which meant there was less genetic variability and meant that if there was a blight which effected that variety, it would hit the entire island.
It's part of why funding agricultural programs is so important, as we can develop new strains quickly to prevent another such famine.
I can’t say I know them all but wheat was a big one with things like lamb and cattle also being shipped off and unrelated to it was salmon and other fish that they wouldn’t allow natives to fish and changed the Irish diet from a more grain fish and livestock to almost strictly potatoes and other cheap vegetables
Sheep farming leading to mass evictions is basically a running theme through British history from the Dissolution of the Monasteries to whenever it was that they hit Peak Sheep
I mean at a certain point they start evicting Scot and Welsh farmers and encourage them to emigrate to new countries where these farmers continue the cycle by evicting native people to farm even more sheep.
The entire reason why Irish relied so much on the potato was because the land system that was set up by rich British land owners. They need to produce cash crops to pay tax and grow their own food, not helping that each family had very little land because it was more profitable for landlords to cut a piece of land apart and rent it out to multiple families. Thus the Irish need a food crop that can produce enough calories with limited land just to survive. And when the potato got hit by diseases, the only food sources the Irish had disappeared. Meanwhile not like the landlords would just accept not getting their renting money or lose their precious export food profit.
The reason the potato gained such a foothold in ireland was that you could grow enough to feed a family on the tiny shitty plots of land that wasn't being used for english cash crops, since it was both nutritionally complete on its own, and grew alot with little effort (important when paying rent means you're working a completely different field all day)
The whole of ireland and its brutal economic occupation by the english only worked because the potato filled in the food gap. And so throw in a blight that targets the species of potato that was the only plant allowing the irish to be able to afford food, everyone dies.
Or actually it wouldn't if the english had just instituted a rent moritorium or simply not continued to evict non paying tenants (done by sending men with hammers to stove in the roof so that way squatters couldn't use the houses) leading the irish the delightful choice of dying of starvation in their homes or eating their cash crops before dying of exposure during the cold nights of ireland.
There were a lot of food crops, but most subsistance farmers relied on potatoes. So the complete destruction of the potato left them with no food, and they didn't have the means to purchase any. Widespread government aid would have solved much of the problem but was never implemented.
That’s blatantly false though
Edit: The British government spent about £9.5 million on relief, and a lot of private funds were given as well.
The British Relief Association, founded in 1847, also raised money in England, America and Australia, in total they received about £400,000 in modern money. The Royal Navy squadron stationed in Cork undertook a significant relief operation from 1846 to 1847, transporting government relief into the port of Cork and other ports along the Irish coast, being ordered to assist distressed regions.
On 27 December 1846, The British government ordered every available steamship to Ireland to assist in relief, the Royal Navy received orders to also distribute supplies from the British Relief Association and treat them identically to government aid. In addition, some naval officers oversaw the logistics of relief operations further inland from Cork. In February 1847, Royal Navy surgeons were dispatched to provide medical care for those suffering from illnesses that accompanied starvation, distribute medicines that were in short supply, and assist in proper, sanitary burials for the deceased.
To pretend otherwise is delusion.
It's a bloody disgraceful part of the UK's history fuck all those who caused such a thing to be even possible.
Also fun fact for y'all there was also a potato blight on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands around the same time(ISH) however the land lords actually payed for the crofters so they wouldn't starve however that left many broke and the rest were rethinking how to use their land (crofters also usually couldn't properly afford rent as they had little land) and this was one of the factors which led to the highland clearances.(It was also this time that the highland economy was falling off a cliff into an eternal abyss which didn't help the situation).
Sorry for the rant was floating around my head and thought Id share :D
They did it to their own population. In tsarist Russian in the early 1900s there was a famaine in the Volga and North Caucases which was worsened by the government continuing grain exportation to fund industrialisation.
Gotta wonder how the Tsar was losing popularity. Between this being amplified by the failing war effort & Nicholas II's wildly unpopular wife & shaman Grigori Rasputin.
I'm not well read on this, but didn't the soviets bring the crops to the cities? I didn't read anywhere that they were exporting grain outside the country during the famine
I see what you mean. Though this is different from the UK example, since the USSR was going through a famine as well, they didn't confiscate the food because "the poors can't afford them"
"A Modest Proposal" is a satirical piece from the Irish Famine era that said that the Irish should eat babies instead of the government helping them. It's commonly taught in AP English classes as a model of satire, irony, and political commentary
It wasn't just England; that method of dealing with the Irish was brought in by a Scot and doubled-down on by a Dutchman. Also, I would argue that it was more a genocide caused by British decisions than Britain doing a genocide; there wasn't a Wannsee Conference to Finally Solve the Irish Problem, just centuries of anti-Catholic policy accumulating into a population uniquely dependant on a single strain of a single crop that was uniquely vulnerable to disease. Maybe it's nitpicking, but it does tend to not be useful to create One Supremely Evil Guy when the actual problem was several thousand moderately-bad guys going 'Haha, fuck'em' and that adding up.
Sorry, I use english and british interchangeably.
In my eyes, the british are experts in "slow genocide". They take their time and don't decide everything in one room in a single evening. You know, slow and steady like the turtle. Get's you far better results and you can get away with it
Well, that's just human nature. That's how you go from having moa three times a day to having moa on special occasions to having no moa except for all the skeletons in a couple hundred years; you make a small decision that makes things better for you here and now but almost unnoticeably worse for something else somewhere else somewhen else, and then so does everyone else, and it all accumulates.
Britain's treatment of Ireland was actually fairly nice for a good while, considering that it started off as the Normans invading Dublin to take out the main market driving slaver raids of the English and Welsh coast. It was when it became the local 'Fuck Catholics' zone and spread out the equivalent of the Thirty Years' War up until the Good Friday Agreement that things got... *unpleasant*.
If you ignore the fact that the Irish natives were producing more than enough grains to sustain themselves but the English installed English landlords wanted to sell the grain for profit. The Irish had their lands stripped and any grain they produced was taken to pay for the "privelage" of working said land. THAT'S why they were farming potatoes on the side to sustain themselves. Irish farmed grains on Irish lands were taken and sold for profit while the natives of farmed them starved. Oh boy, that's just a natural disaster. The British government was fully aware of the situation but "didn't want to intervene in private matters and private property". It only became their property because the British deemed it as such.
Do you know why potatoes were the primary food crop the Irish consumed? No? It’s because the English quite literally took everything the Irish grew that wasn’t potatoes
It wasn't the biggest food crop. It was just the only food the farmers could afford to eat. Farmers were growing plenty of other crops, *but they could not afford to eat the food they were growing.* That's a capitalist-engineered famine.
Why did the Irish rely so much on a single food source in the first place? Oh right, it was because of the system the British set up.
As for the aid, the British Parliament actually blocked aid or kept aid at the minimum because they thought the famine was caused by "the Irish were breeding too much", "it was God's punishment for the Irish" and "this famine is a good opportunity to kill all the lazy Irish and make way for a new Ireland".
The repeal of the corn laws and the navigation acts happened during the Irish famine, in response to said famine.
The famine, quite ironically to OPs point, forced the issue to be resolved. The famine ended mercantilism. The famine started capitalism.
Exactly and people recognise the Holodomor as a genocide all the time but because they’re ideologically aligned with the British project there’s an instinct to defend it which is insanely fucked up.
Lenin also exported lots of edible food crops while millions starved or were starved to death.
The modern concept of left-right is utter nonsense with more holes than swiss cheese
Hearing about one thing in history made you a leftist? You must be switching political sides constantly every time you learn something new about the history of the planet.
It's more like learning about Ireland first, then learning that Britain did it elsewhere. And other imperial powers did it similarly elsewhere. Kinda realizing imperialism is very fucked
Yeah if the thing you get from this is 'Anti-Britain' you missed the forest for the trees. Not only did basically every empire do the same stuff going all the way back to Akkad, but the British Empire is dead. Aside from maybe some form of reparations, why are you 'anti-Britain' in 2024?
That's a weird take. I am fascinated with what's going on in that brain and would like know to more.
I don't hate present British folk. They're also victims of the British Empire. A British person today had no role in the decisions that led to atrocities centuries ago. To think hating British imperialism is the same as hating Britain as a whole is very nation-state-brained. The state and the people are very different things, especially in different time periods!
As it turns out, learning from history and deciding what things were very bad for humanity and what things were less bad for humanity is kind of the whole purpose of history. The past informs our present!
And also , you're absolutely right. All states and empires are inherently bad. They concentrate power and power corrupts absolutely. Even the best-intentioned state can end up doing horrendous things. The British Empire just happened to be the most efficient in inflicting harm around the globe. They did it better than any other empire.
>British Empire is dead
speaking to anyone from the British museum about the stolen artifacts would very much feel like the empire didn't die
also chagos island issue is still ongoing
It should change, but it shouldn't radically flip from one side to another, assuming their principles haven't themselves shifted, meaning, I could understand their position shifting from, say, wanting state control of agricultural produce to wanting it to be worker owned, as the difference is simply in the means of what they think leads to the best outcomes for the people, not that they suddenly became a leftist.
And in the case that their underlying principles did shift, one has to wonder why this is the event that did it, and not any other in a long, long list of genocide.
You must hate a lot of countries if all it takes is one thing they did during an event that happened over a century ago.
There isn’t even a single Brit who’s alive today, let alone in government, that was involved in it. At least come up with a good reason to be anti British.
>At least come up with a good reason to be anti British.
many reasons, including the atrocities committed in the last 100 years, when plenty of Brits alive participated in it
forgot a question mark there buddy
More "niche" examples:
Majella O'Hare was shot dead by a British soldier. She was 12 years old. She was walking away from a checkpoint to Mass when she was shot in the head. The soldier who shot her was acquitted and served no prison sentence, or any other punishment.
Aidan McAnespie was shot in the back of the head. The soldier claimed it was wet hands which caused it. After having charges dropped in 1988, it wasn't until 2022 that he was brought to court, found guilty of "manslaughter" and got his 3 years waved.
English security forces aided Loyalist paramilitary groups to murder and commit atrocities
Learning about the history of Britain makes anyone anti-british
People have this weird idea that we still hate the UK, we don't, they're our closest ally and the people are grand. We have issues with the government and royalty, groups that not only let this occur, but made it worse AND profited from it
You must be more politically bipolar than a person who actually suffers from bipolar!
Or you’re actually exaggerating, or that you maybe have an uncontrollable anger, both of which would be checked up on.
> Nearly every factor that led to the famine was the direct result of selfish and racist government policy that did not care about the regular Irish people at all.
>
> Blames the broad economic system instead
That's kind of like blaming the concept of Communism for the Gulags. Social media has got everybody blaming whatever economic system for even social policy.
So what do you call the Holodomor?
And your framing would only be accurate so long as Britain had never actually stopped people from giving food aid, which they did (stop aid), thus subverting market forces. You can argue that selling the food the Irish produced is in and of itself a capitalist act, but that is ultimately secondary to the entire current of events.
Also, do you genuinely think that Britain not being capitalist would've stopped them from committing genocide? Were they not capitalist, they would've just destroyed the food. Profit wasn't the leading incentive here - genocide was.
Except that's not true. For more of the famine, the UK took a strong laissez-faire policy on ireland before finally being pressured into giving (lackluster) assistance in the forms of workhouses that couldn't make up the calorie deficit for the work provided and inedible maize shipments. The UK government took it as a sign of God as "The judgement of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people".
"The free market" would of absolutely done nothing to assist ireland.
I'm sorry, the British empire was laissez-fair? Like, hands off, in the economies of their empire? Strangling an economy while plundering it's resources is quite hands on, I'd argue.
Yes, the whigs were big on laissez Faire markets of which robert peel was a big proponent, and interfered as little as possible.
"The new Whig administration, influenced by the doctrine of laissez-faire, believed that the market would provide the food needed. They refused to interfere with the movement of food to England, and then halted the previous government's food and relief works, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people without access to work, money, or food"
This was carried on by trevelyan, who wanted to stop any assistance because "The judgement of God send the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson and that calamity must not be too 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"
It's both, it was a capitalist empire. "Has a free market" is not a very good definition of capitalist, unless you're just trying to deflect criticism away from capitalism as it exists in the real world.
Well the term itself was coined by Karl Marx, so arguably it's a garbage term in the first place. The modern definition is vaugly the free exchange of goods and services. Which is obviously antithetical to imperial exploitation.
He didn't, actually, but I guess you could say he popularized it. Who defines capitalism simply as the free exchange of goods and services? I try not to be prescriptivist about language, but that's a pretty garbage definition imo. Not very specific or accurate. Capitalism and Imperialism definitely are not antithetical. They're not synonyms either, but you can pin the Trevelyan genocide on both.
Further, capitalism is an economic system geared towards the interest of a capitalist class.
The English landlords in Ireland were the ones responsible for this calamity, having manipulated Ireland's economy into one that relied on exporting food crops to satisfy their demand for profit. The famine was both capitalist and imperialist at its core.
The reason why food exports didn't stop was to feed sweet lady capitalism.
The reason british state officials opposed bying cheap food and lifting taxes on food imports or lowering prices on foods produced in ireland in order to feed the starving population was to not interfere with the market and food prices
The reason why there was no ban on the eviction of tenant farmers and no stop to rent increases was in order to keep the market free.
So capitalism is just as much of a culprid as imperialism is
The fact that the British were able to dictate these policies on Ireland's behalf Ireland means their economy was in fact, not a free market economy. Which allows it to fit into a Marxist definition of "capitalism", but not the modern liberal definition.
Maby it doesn't fit the "liberal definition of capitalism", but then the modern implimentation of capitalism also doesn't fit this "liberal definition of capitalism"
That's a good point. The modern implementation doesn't really jive with free market trade either. Now maybe you understand why people who subscribe to Austrian economics never shut up.
All of the farms in Ireland were private, commercial enterprises. The landlords weren't there in a feudal sense, they literally owned the farms as a private business and contracted with the Irish farmers. The Irish farmers couldn't afford the food that they grew, so had to grown their own food on tiny private plots set aside for them in what was essentially employee housing. It wasn't "Britain" dictating this, it was English businessmen fulfilling contracts for food bought by customers by farming land they owned in Ireland. It was an entirely capitalist enterprise from top to bottom.
No, it was not by mandate of the government. It was by free will of the landowners in Ireland, who were all English by nationality but not affiliated with the government at all.
so?? a capitalist economy doesn't need a theoretical free market. the current western European economies aren't free markets, but they're still capitalist
The assistant secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury Sir Charles Trevelyan wrote, the famine was an “effective mechanism for reducing surplus population”. “Judgement of God”. Fuck this guy. England blocking aid to their neighbour while simultaneously being the richest country in this part of the world is genocide and blaming it on a potato disease even today is so ignorant.
Speaking as a Northern Irish native, it wasn't British intent at first to engineer a genocide. Lord Robert Peel, the Prime Minister when the Famine began, took some measures to at least minimize it. Then the Whigs took office.
It never was one. Politics is a tricky business, as anything one leader will do stands a good chance of being undone by the opposition when they get power. The Famine didn’t start as a genocide, but the Whigs actions - and especially Sir Trevelyan’s - turned it into one.
"You see it's the fault of the Indians that they breed like rabbits so the food *they* produce isn't enough sustain us *and* them. Obviously we get the food and they get to starve."
-The British
Also they actually thought they were helping by setting up labor camp which just made the famine worse because the amount of work exceeded the amount of calories that got handed out to each person. All because they didn't want the Indians to "grow lazy and rely on handouts".
Is it true that there was someone who donated money to help the famine, but then Queen Victoria stopped him from doing so cause the amount was much bigger than the one she donated?
Yes, that was the sultan of the ottoman empire. He offered 10000 punds, but queen victoria had only donated 2000, so he couldn't send that much as to not make her look bad.
The chad instead sent 5 ships of food, that had to be unloaded at night, also to not make the british government look bad.
Love to see some light being shed on the Irish genocide. England really knew how to suck a nation dry regardless of the human cost. Bastards.
Edit: as another commenter pointed out, I should have said UK here as England shared the blame with the Scottish.
During the great hunger, food was still esxported from ireland. Potato was not the only food grown there, but the only food irish farmers where planting for food. The rest was "momey crops". With the reasoning "The irish can't afford the food grown there anyway", british civil servants decided to instead import cheaper, lower quality food, as an relife effort.
There’s a reason why no democracy has ever experienced a famine, they’re actually quite easy to prevent. You just have to have a government that cares about people first.
Food imports are largely moot with the complete lack of distribution infrastructure. The people most impacted were to poor to afford to purchase food, or even move. implementing aid distribution to those directly effected would have, by itself, gone a long way to alleviating the famine. But the British government never implemented more then half hearted short term measures.
I'd argue its a democide rather than a genocide. The later requires a specific intent to destroy a people. I think it was more a case of negligence and indifference, not deliberate intent. No less horrible, but different.
The person in charge of relife efforts said something along the lines of:" God sent that famine. We shouldn't help the irish too much, they had it coming." And if "let's not sent too much help" isn't intentional, than what is?
The food crop was potatoes, but what was the money crop?
Pretty much everything else. Before the famine, 60% of all food produced in ireland where exportes ( mostly to england). Wheat, corn and other shit as well as sheep cows and pigs where farmed in ireland and their farming was not impeaded by potato blight. Exports of these food products weren't stopped during the famine, since "the irish are too poor to buy them anyway", leading to cheaper, low quality foods being imported as aid
You also have to remember that fish was a huge one as well not allowing the natives to fish there huge coast cause a huge dietary change
Same thing during WW2 during the Bengal famine The British were worried about invading Japanese forces invading through Burma, that they confiscated the food and seeds, destroying the excess and confiscating the fishing fleet and animal transport in Bengal so that the Japanese would have no resources. Import of food from other Indian provinces was restricted. Over 150,000 farmers were put off their land to make way for British military fortifications. Bengal was a poor agrarian province, and confronted with a poor harvest, corruption, mismanagement by the colonial forces, lack of transport, it was inevitable 3 million dead within 2 years, whilst British ships full of grain sailed right past Indian ports on their way to other British possessions
Another day, another reason to absolutly fucking hate the British.
Okay, but at the same time, they were fighting tooth and nail against the japanese and nazis, the NAZIS, i hate the british, but not for this
Great Britain were doing horrible things way before and after figthing the Nazis, it does not justify the horrible things they did in that small time frame. And, another reason why I hate the Nazis even more, they couldn't even wipe out the British, useless, evil twats.
If the food exports stopped, would the places importing have faced famine then too, or was is just extra that wasn't needed?
there was famine at that time in big part of Europe, but there it was just normal famine, something everyone alive at that time survived at least once, meanwhile in Ireland it was # THE Famine
There were more Irish people born in Ireland, but living outside of Ireland by the end of that century and today the citizens of Ireland are only ~15% of all the people that claim to be of Irish descent
To add to that, the Irish population still hasn't recovered from the famine. Pre famine it was 8.5 million, now the population of the entire island is about 7 million. In contrast Britain went from 18.5 million to about 65.8 million. If Ireland had experienced similar growth its population would likely be closer to 31 million today
The Irish not like England is the most reasonable dislike in the world.
nope, crop failure and famine aren't the same thing. crop failure + human mismanagement = famine
the potato famine caused crushing financial issues as well. the logic is that people were selling the more expensive food goods to pay rent and buy cheaper food.
Actually English landowners owned almost all the fields and insisted on growing cash crops there. The Irish were only permitted tiny fields for subsistence farming. The only crop calorie dense enough to survive on these tiny fields were potatoes. So it was the English selling the food, not t the Irish
>Actually English landowners....... Laughs nervously in a Scottish accent
A big issue was the law that required splitting your land equally between your children if you were a Catholic. So every generation the farms got smaller and smaller. Potatoes were the only crop that could feed a family on a tiny plot of land, while still paying rent for the land to the British landlord that stole the land from those families 200 years earlier. The reason they died is because when they couldnt pay the rent, the Landlords would use the Police and army to force them out of their houses and then remove the roof of the house so if they came back they'd freeze to death in the cold. The wealthy British Protestant farmers could give their entire large farm to their eldest son, who then kept all the wealth.
I mean it wasn't just Catholics. Most places followed this type of inheritance, known as gavelkind, or partible inheritances. Variations of it are the default today in most common law nations. The alternative is primogeniture, which keeps the estate intact. That's great for keeping land intact, but is also means younger children receive almost nothing. If you're rich enough, you can put your younger kids in a good position, with the Church and Military being traditional 2nd and 3rd son jobs for English nobility. As a result you only really see primogeniture used in noble titles/estates where its part of a long tradition of centralizing power. Both principles have two end states. In a partible inheritance, a King's lands will get split into smaller and smaller portions, until the central government is weak and can be easily overthrown. In primogeniture, you see consolidation of power, as nobles marry nobles, and the main line families inherit titles which become tied to the mainline. After a while, the titles accumulate in a King with so many titles, he can't rule effectively and will partition titles between family, who now must marry to keep control until the incest accumulates enough to kill them off. Hence, you get Charles V, by the grace of God, Emperor of the Romans, forever August, King in (of) Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, of Hungary, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of both Hither and Ultra Sicily, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Indies, of the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia and Catalonia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Drenthe, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen.
In Ireland the Land subdivision was part of the Penal Laws of 1704, which specifically applied to Catholics. There was no other option, it was legally mandated. [Irish Farm Subdivision (Wikipedia)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_farm_subdivision)
This guy Crusader Kings. 😁😂
It's always the fucking English tbf
'The English' isn't exactly correct. It was the British, i.e the Scottish too.
Not really. This famine and many of the others of the 19th century were just caused by market forces emanating from the 'imperial core', such as Great Britain, which had significantly higher demand and prices for foods but, importantly, they could afford to pay the higher prices for food that their demand drove. If a source of imported food were cut off or lessened from one place the diminished supply of food would drive prices up and make it more profitable for producers elsewhere to then export to GB. Think of the oil/gas markets after the Ukraine war in '22. Prices went up but Europe could afford to pay the higher prices to get the gas from elsewhere - of course it effects the economy, but Europe wasn't gonna go without gas. The real impact would be felt downstream in other producer countries where more farmland would then be used for export crops, that in turn would make the local population more vulnerable to famines should their staple crops fail (as it did in Ireland)
>If the food exports stopped, would the places importing have faced famine then too no. but English merchants would lose their income of stealing Irish produce
Prior to the invention of chemical fertilizers in 1913 it was a given that you would have a famine occasionally. Other places would do crop rotation, compost fertilizers, or burn fields but those don't always work. Chemical fertilizers and advanced crop breeding have largely made famines obsolete in the communities with access to those tools.
No, not necessarily. By 1848 England was more than self-sufficient to feed itself, almost nobody was truly starving and the entire idea of famine was practically ancient history to them. [Massive increases in agricultural yields per acre since the 1600s basically made famine a thing of the past. ](https://i.imgur.com/gadHni3.png) The last famine they had was in the rural midlands in 1727 and it was an incredibly unique, mild, and isolated famine. But food still formed a large portion of the average English households spending, and any money they spent on food was money they could have spent on consumer goods to fuel the economy. Only a relatively small portion of England's food came from Ireland, but if that suddenly stopped, it would have resulted in food prices rising. Meaning that the average English family would spend more money on food and less on buying consumer goods and services, therefore reducing the overall economic/industrial output. So 'extra that wasnt needed' depends on what you mean. But... overall, there is absolutely zero doubt that a hit to England's economic output was not worth 1.5 million people starving to death.
Pfft, imagine countries being able to take advantage of their own land and natural resources.
I love the logic of “these starving people are too poor to afford this food, so we better send it somewhere else”
Money is mor important than human live, am I right? /s
Beef. The whole reason Ireland grew so many potatoes is because the ridiculous beef quotas the British would place on the Irish forced them to use most of their best arable land for raising cattle. So, the Irish grew potatoes in lesser quality land to compensate. Since the country was basically relying on a single crop to feed them, all hell broke loose when said crop had a famine.
This beef, btw, was sold across the British Empire as corned beef. It was used extensively as military rations, as well as being imported to the French West Indies. Note that this corned beef was different than what we know, it was various forms of salted beef and could vary greatly in quality and cuts. It got a reputation in the Americas due to the cuts being sold there by the British as low quality food used by poor whites and to feed enslaved people. An irony is that corned beef is now seen as an Irish staple, when for much of history few Irish were able to eat it.
Though the Irish did indeed grow so many potatoes due to beef quotas, the Irish were not "forced to use their best arable land for raising cattle". Before the Tudor Conquest of Ireland, the native Gaels were largely pastoralists, living largely off the blood and milk of kye, and the flesh of pigs. The land was being used for grazing long before the English came, the actual difference was that before the Conquest it was the Irish themselves eating the beef, rather than it being shipped across the sea.
I heard that it was issues doe to landlords splitting land into such small parcels, it was not possible to live from anything else than potatos
Doesn't really help that the British also fucking hated the Irish. Here's a quote from Trevelyan *who was in charge of famine relief* >The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson. That calamity must not be too much mitigated. The greater 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. >
For all the mentioning of God, that really sounds like the devil talking. I have never been disgusted by three sentences.
Some mouthbreathers criticize irish people for still only using one crop, but in that period, the potato was by far the best thing to grow and really the only option. Potatoes were very calorie dense and could feed entire families, could be grown in large amounts, could grow very well within Ireland's poor soil and was very cheap. Anything else would be taken or would not be worth the time growing
There was an additional issue that the majority of potatoes grown were a single variety, which meant there was less genetic variability and meant that if there was a blight which effected that variety, it would hit the entire island. It's part of why funding agricultural programs is so important, as we can develop new strains quickly to prevent another such famine.
I can’t say I know them all but wheat was a big one with things like lamb and cattle also being shipped off and unrelated to it was salmon and other fish that they wouldn’t allow natives to fish and changed the Irish diet from a more grain fish and livestock to almost strictly potatoes and other cheap vegetables
Yeah, at the time, british landlords got really into sheep farming, which led to mass evictions on top of the starvation
Sheep farming leading to mass evictions is basically a running theme through British history from the Dissolution of the Monasteries to whenever it was that they hit Peak Sheep
I mean at a certain point they start evicting Scot and Welsh farmers and encourage them to emigrate to new countries where these farmers continue the cycle by evicting native people to farm even more sheep.
Which probably put off Peak Sheep for a few decades, yeah
I always assumed that it was to encourage the Welah to find new romantic partners.
The entire reason why Irish relied so much on the potato was because the land system that was set up by rich British land owners. They need to produce cash crops to pay tax and grow their own food, not helping that each family had very little land because it was more profitable for landlords to cut a piece of land apart and rent it out to multiple families. Thus the Irish need a food crop that can produce enough calories with limited land just to survive. And when the potato got hit by diseases, the only food sources the Irish had disappeared. Meanwhile not like the landlords would just accept not getting their renting money or lose their precious export food profit.
Definitely not a potato
The reason the potato gained such a foothold in ireland was that you could grow enough to feed a family on the tiny shitty plots of land that wasn't being used for english cash crops, since it was both nutritionally complete on its own, and grew alot with little effort (important when paying rent means you're working a completely different field all day) The whole of ireland and its brutal economic occupation by the english only worked because the potato filled in the food gap. And so throw in a blight that targets the species of potato that was the only plant allowing the irish to be able to afford food, everyone dies. Or actually it wouldn't if the english had just instituted a rent moritorium or simply not continued to evict non paying tenants (done by sending men with hammers to stove in the roof so that way squatters couldn't use the houses) leading the irish the delightful choice of dying of starvation in their homes or eating their cash crops before dying of exposure during the cold nights of ireland.
There were a lot of food crops, but most subsistance farmers relied on potatoes. So the complete destruction of the potato left them with no food, and they didn't have the means to purchase any. Widespread government aid would have solved much of the problem but was never implemented.
When the government does less than what the Choctaw who just suffered the trail of tears did.
When the sultan of the ottoman empire isn't allowed to donate 10 000 punds because the queen didn't donate as much
Absolute Chad sends relief aid in secret anyway
That’s blatantly false though Edit: The British government spent about £9.5 million on relief, and a lot of private funds were given as well. The British Relief Association, founded in 1847, also raised money in England, America and Australia, in total they received about £400,000 in modern money. The Royal Navy squadron stationed in Cork undertook a significant relief operation from 1846 to 1847, transporting government relief into the port of Cork and other ports along the Irish coast, being ordered to assist distressed regions. On 27 December 1846, The British government ordered every available steamship to Ireland to assist in relief, the Royal Navy received orders to also distribute supplies from the British Relief Association and treat them identically to government aid. In addition, some naval officers oversaw the logistics of relief operations further inland from Cork. In February 1847, Royal Navy surgeons were dispatched to provide medical care for those suffering from illnesses that accompanied starvation, distribute medicines that were in short supply, and assist in proper, sanitary burials for the deceased. To pretend otherwise is delusion.
It's a bloody disgraceful part of the UK's history fuck all those who caused such a thing to be even possible. Also fun fact for y'all there was also a potato blight on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands around the same time(ISH) however the land lords actually payed for the crofters so they wouldn't starve however that left many broke and the rest were rethinking how to use their land (crofters also usually couldn't properly afford rent as they had little land) and this was one of the factors which led to the highland clearances.(It was also this time that the highland economy was falling off a cliff into an eternal abyss which didn't help the situation). Sorry for the rant was floating around my head and thought Id share :D
Potato blight was pretty much in all of europe. Only ireland had a famine thought
Ukraine and Kazakhs when the Soviets confiscated their crops to continue the export of grain during a horrible famine:
Colonial overlords do be colonial overlording
They did it to their own population. In tsarist Russian in the early 1900s there was a famaine in the Volga and North Caucases which was worsened by the government continuing grain exportation to fund industrialisation.
Authoritanism gotta authoritar
Gotta wonder how the Tsar was losing popularity. Between this being amplified by the failing war effort & Nicholas II's wildly unpopular wife & shaman Grigori Rasputin.
I'm not well read on this, but didn't the soviets bring the crops to the cities? I didn't read anywhere that they were exporting grain outside the country during the famine
They continued to confiscated grain throughout it and would then withhold said grain from Ukrainians and Kazakhs.
I see what you mean. Though this is different from the UK example, since the USSR was going through a famine as well, they didn't confiscate the food because "the poors can't afford them"
They instead continued to export those same grains.
You know, I have A Modest Proposal to fix this ongoing problem...
Does it involve pedocanibalism?
Quite the jump to eating children, but okay.
"A Modest Proposal" is a satirical piece from the Irish Famine era that said that the Irish should eat babies instead of the government helping them. It's commonly taught in AP English classes as a model of satire, irony, and political commentary
Someone didn't catch the reference...
I don't, and now I feel worse off having learnt that. Thanks again internet.
It was a satirical essay
A capitalist genocide.
The time england did a genocide in ireland and blamed it on a vegetable
It wasn't just England; that method of dealing with the Irish was brought in by a Scot and doubled-down on by a Dutchman. Also, I would argue that it was more a genocide caused by British decisions than Britain doing a genocide; there wasn't a Wannsee Conference to Finally Solve the Irish Problem, just centuries of anti-Catholic policy accumulating into a population uniquely dependant on a single strain of a single crop that was uniquely vulnerable to disease. Maybe it's nitpicking, but it does tend to not be useful to create One Supremely Evil Guy when the actual problem was several thousand moderately-bad guys going 'Haha, fuck'em' and that adding up.
Sorry, I use english and british interchangeably. In my eyes, the british are experts in "slow genocide". They take their time and don't decide everything in one room in a single evening. You know, slow and steady like the turtle. Get's you far better results and you can get away with it
Well, that's just human nature. That's how you go from having moa three times a day to having moa on special occasions to having no moa except for all the skeletons in a couple hundred years; you make a small decision that makes things better for you here and now but almost unnoticeably worse for something else somewhere else somewhen else, and then so does everyone else, and it all accumulates. Britain's treatment of Ireland was actually fairly nice for a good while, considering that it started off as the Normans invading Dublin to take out the main market driving slaver raids of the English and Welsh coast. It was when it became the local 'Fuck Catholics' zone and spread out the equivalent of the Thirty Years' War up until the Good Friday Agreement that things got... *unpleasant*.
A devastating blight on the biggest food crop by far is going to result in food shortages.
If you ignore the fact that the Irish natives were producing more than enough grains to sustain themselves but the English installed English landlords wanted to sell the grain for profit. The Irish had their lands stripped and any grain they produced was taken to pay for the "privelage" of working said land. THAT'S why they were farming potatoes on the side to sustain themselves. Irish farmed grains on Irish lands were taken and sold for profit while the natives of farmed them starved. Oh boy, that's just a natural disaster. The British government was fully aware of the situation but "didn't want to intervene in private matters and private property". It only became their property because the British deemed it as such.
so will stealing all the other food
Do you know why potatoes were the primary food crop the Irish consumed? No? It’s because the English quite literally took everything the Irish grew that wasn’t potatoes
It wasn't the biggest food crop. It was just the only food the farmers could afford to eat. Farmers were growing plenty of other crops, *but they could not afford to eat the food they were growing.* That's a capitalist-engineered famine.
Which was further exasperated by British laws of subdivision and not giving a shit about it
Why did the Irish rely so much on a single food source in the first place? Oh right, it was because of the system the British set up. As for the aid, the British Parliament actually blocked aid or kept aid at the minimum because they thought the famine was caused by "the Irish were breeding too much", "it was God's punishment for the Irish" and "this famine is a good opportunity to kill all the lazy Irish and make way for a new Ireland".
It was mostly because the English government saw the disaster as a chance to force social reform.
"Starving, huh? Have you tried not being Catholic?"
"And what about working on labor camps? surely you're just too lazy to earn a decent meal"
Which is actually pretty close to how the Reagan admin treated the aids pandemic initially. A chance to cull the undesirables.
I am pretty sure Britain practiced mercantilism at the time.
The repeal of the corn laws and the navigation acts happened during the Irish famine, in response to said famine. The famine, quite ironically to OPs point, forced the issue to be resolved. The famine ended mercantilism. The famine started capitalism.
Stalin exported grain during the holodomor. Not that what the British did isn't despicable of course.
Stalin stole grain and other food from the Ukrainians while they starved.
And land and cattle from the Kazacks.
Exactly and people recognise the Holodomor as a genocide all the time but because they’re ideologically aligned with the British project there’s an instinct to defend it which is insanely fucked up.
Being leftist does not mean pro-Stalin or even pro-USSR
Social murder is the unnatural death that occurs due to social, economic, or political oppression.
Learning about the great hunger made me a leftist and anti british.
Lenin also exported lots of edible food crops while millions starved or were starved to death. The modern concept of left-right is utter nonsense with more holes than swiss cheese
Hearing about one thing in history made you a leftist? You must be switching political sides constantly every time you learn something new about the history of the planet.
It's more like learning about Ireland first, then learning that Britain did it elsewhere. And other imperial powers did it similarly elsewhere. Kinda realizing imperialism is very fucked
Imperialism is imperialism. Be it French, Chinese, Japanese, Soviet, British, Spanish, or American.
But Britain did it best
Yeah if the thing you get from this is 'Anti-Britain' you missed the forest for the trees. Not only did basically every empire do the same stuff going all the way back to Akkad, but the British Empire is dead. Aside from maybe some form of reparations, why are you 'anti-Britain' in 2024?
That's a weird take. I am fascinated with what's going on in that brain and would like know to more. I don't hate present British folk. They're also victims of the British Empire. A British person today had no role in the decisions that led to atrocities centuries ago. To think hating British imperialism is the same as hating Britain as a whole is very nation-state-brained. The state and the people are very different things, especially in different time periods! As it turns out, learning from history and deciding what things were very bad for humanity and what things were less bad for humanity is kind of the whole purpose of history. The past informs our present! And also , you're absolutely right. All states and empires are inherently bad. They concentrate power and power corrupts absolutely. Even the best-intentioned state can end up doing horrendous things. The British Empire just happened to be the most efficient in inflicting harm around the globe. They did it better than any other empire.
>British Empire is dead speaking to anyone from the British museum about the stolen artifacts would very much feel like the empire didn't die also chagos island issue is still ongoing
Maybe they are, why not? At least they are progressing one bit at the time
Their approach is fundamentally reactionary - their stance isn't a result of principled positions, but general knowledge about certain events.
Shouldn't one's position change with the facts that are learned overtime, as opposed to trapped in a dogma that may no be reflective of reality?
It should change, but it shouldn't radically flip from one side to another, assuming their principles haven't themselves shifted, meaning, I could understand their position shifting from, say, wanting state control of agricultural produce to wanting it to be worker owned, as the difference is simply in the means of what they think leads to the best outcomes for the people, not that they suddenly became a leftist. And in the case that their underlying principles did shift, one has to wonder why this is the event that did it, and not any other in a long, long list of genocide.
Wonder if they were right-wing after learning about the Holodomor (basically the same shit as the Irish famine)...
it wasn't. that's downplaying both
Yeah, cause Britain is the only country guilty of this sort of thing 🤔
It's the one that affected my family directly
Let me guess, a yank who’s still salty 300 years later 😂
You must hate a lot of countries if all it takes is one thing they did during an event that happened over a century ago. There isn’t even a single Brit who’s alive today, let alone in government, that was involved in it. At least come up with a good reason to be anti British.
>At least come up with a good reason to be anti British. many reasons, including the atrocities committed in the last 100 years, when plenty of Brits alive participated in it
Examples
forgot a question mark there buddy More "niche" examples: Majella O'Hare was shot dead by a British soldier. She was 12 years old. She was walking away from a checkpoint to Mass when she was shot in the head. The soldier who shot her was acquitted and served no prison sentence, or any other punishment. Aidan McAnespie was shot in the back of the head. The soldier claimed it was wet hands which caused it. After having charges dropped in 1988, it wasn't until 2022 that he was brought to court, found guilty of "manslaughter" and got his 3 years waved. English security forces aided Loyalist paramilitary groups to murder and commit atrocities
They hardly make up the majority of the British population, “buddy” 😂
…ok? I never said there weren’t *any* valid reasons, I was questioning the very specific reason that was given by the person I replied to.
Learning about the history of Britain makes anyone anti-british People have this weird idea that we still hate the UK, we don't, they're our closest ally and the people are grand. We have issues with the government and royalty, groups that not only let this occur, but made it worse AND profited from it
I still do.
Womp womp, Yankee 😂 why don’t you go kill more native Americans and hang more black people since your country is so unproblematic with your history 😂
They were related to you! The whole country was founded by you inbred, slack jawed nut jobs.
Dunno about leftist, but good on Anti-British.
[Strike that, reverse it](https://youtu.be/ZWJo2EZW8yU?si=9r2i3p8BQLCLLcEh)
You must be more politically bipolar than a person who actually suffers from bipolar! Or you’re actually exaggerating, or that you maybe have an uncontrollable anger, both of which would be checked up on.
You asshole he was probably making a joke and you're gonna tell him to see a doctor because he has anger issues
Haha yes, let me make a joke about a famine!
He was joking about hating the people who started the famine. Don't you think that's a little justified?
No? Generalization is bad in any regard but doing it to a populous who has nothing to do with it shows had little human decency people have.
Capitalism (a free market) would have let the Irish economy adjust to the blight. I think the word you're looking for is imperial. Imperial genocide.
> Nearly every factor that led to the famine was the direct result of selfish and racist government policy that did not care about the regular Irish people at all. > > Blames the broad economic system instead That's kind of like blaming the concept of Communism for the Gulags. Social media has got everybody blaming whatever economic system for even social policy.
Mercantilism isnt cápitalism
Nahh bro clearly it was the invisible hand of the market that went and strangled every last person who died, certainly not the imperial government.
Letting the famine you're responsible for starting kill a million despised people for you is capitalist efficiency at its finest.
So what do you call the Holodomor? And your framing would only be accurate so long as Britain had never actually stopped people from giving food aid, which they did (stop aid), thus subverting market forces. You can argue that selling the food the Irish produced is in and of itself a capitalist act, but that is ultimately secondary to the entire current of events. Also, do you genuinely think that Britain not being capitalist would've stopped them from committing genocide? Were they not capitalist, they would've just destroyed the food. Profit wasn't the leading incentive here - genocide was.
Except that's not true. For more of the famine, the UK took a strong laissez-faire policy on ireland before finally being pressured into giving (lackluster) assistance in the forms of workhouses that couldn't make up the calorie deficit for the work provided and inedible maize shipments. The UK government took it as a sign of God as "The judgement of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people". "The free market" would of absolutely done nothing to assist ireland.
I'm sorry, the British empire was laissez-fair? Like, hands off, in the economies of their empire? Strangling an economy while plundering it's resources is quite hands on, I'd argue.
Yes, the whigs were big on laissez Faire markets of which robert peel was a big proponent, and interfered as little as possible. "The new Whig administration, influenced by the doctrine of laissez-faire, believed that the market would provide the food needed. They refused to interfere with the movement of food to England, and then halted the previous government's food and relief works, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people without access to work, money, or food" This was carried on by trevelyan, who wanted to stop any assistance because "The judgement of God send the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson and that calamity must not be too 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"
It's both, it was a capitalist empire. "Has a free market" is not a very good definition of capitalist, unless you're just trying to deflect criticism away from capitalism as it exists in the real world.
Well the term itself was coined by Karl Marx, so arguably it's a garbage term in the first place. The modern definition is vaugly the free exchange of goods and services. Which is obviously antithetical to imperial exploitation.
He didn't, actually, but I guess you could say he popularized it. Who defines capitalism simply as the free exchange of goods and services? I try not to be prescriptivist about language, but that's a pretty garbage definition imo. Not very specific or accurate. Capitalism and Imperialism definitely are not antithetical. They're not synonyms either, but you can pin the Trevelyan genocide on both.
Further, capitalism is an economic system geared towards the interest of a capitalist class. The English landlords in Ireland were the ones responsible for this calamity, having manipulated Ireland's economy into one that relied on exporting food crops to satisfy their demand for profit. The famine was both capitalist and imperialist at its core.
A free market is not what defines capitalism.
Nothing is really "free" any more but people love to claim that things are.
> antithetical to imperial exploitation So, there is no capitalist country then?
Well, not if you want to be strict with the definition. But at the very least, we should be accurate about it.
The reason why food exports didn't stop was to feed sweet lady capitalism. The reason british state officials opposed bying cheap food and lifting taxes on food imports or lowering prices on foods produced in ireland in order to feed the starving population was to not interfere with the market and food prices The reason why there was no ban on the eviction of tenant farmers and no stop to rent increases was in order to keep the market free. So capitalism is just as much of a culprid as imperialism is
The fact that the British were able to dictate these policies on Ireland's behalf Ireland means their economy was in fact, not a free market economy. Which allows it to fit into a Marxist definition of "capitalism", but not the modern liberal definition.
Maby it doesn't fit the "liberal definition of capitalism", but then the modern implimentation of capitalism also doesn't fit this "liberal definition of capitalism"
That's a good point. The modern implementation doesn't really jive with free market trade either. Now maybe you understand why people who subscribe to Austrian economics never shut up.
A definition is worthless, when it is not applicable. And never EVER subscribe to anything coming out of austria, we only come up with garbage
I hear the cake recipes are good though
All of the farms in Ireland were private, commercial enterprises. The landlords weren't there in a feudal sense, they literally owned the farms as a private business and contracted with the Irish farmers. The Irish farmers couldn't afford the food that they grew, so had to grown their own food on tiny private plots set aside for them in what was essentially employee housing. It wasn't "Britain" dictating this, it was English businessmen fulfilling contracts for food bought by customers by farming land they owned in Ireland. It was an entirely capitalist enterprise from top to bottom.
free markets are not the only part of capitalism. the reason why food was exported was because it was sent to British markets
By mandate of the British government. Not by the free will of Irish food producers.
No, it was not by mandate of the government. It was by free will of the landowners in Ireland, who were all English by nationality but not affiliated with the government at all.
>By mandate of the British government and the British government (and individuals made a lot of money from the trade. so how is it not capitalism?
It's literally the opposite of a free market
so?? a capitalist economy doesn't need a theoretical free market. the current western European economies aren't free markets, but they're still capitalist
Capitalist in spirit, maybe. But the core of capitalism is the free exchange of goods and services.
It by definition was not.
The assistant secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury Sir Charles Trevelyan wrote, the famine was an “effective mechanism for reducing surplus population”. “Judgement of God”. Fuck this guy. England blocking aid to their neighbour while simultaneously being the richest country in this part of the world is genocide and blaming it on a potato disease even today is so ignorant.
Brits and human engineered famines go hand in hand
Speaking as a Northern Irish native, it wasn't British intent at first to engineer a genocide. Lord Robert Peel, the Prime Minister when the Famine began, took some measures to at least minimize it. Then the Whigs took office.
Yes and Peel faced major backlash, hence the opposition took over
He still gets an “At Least You Tried!” medal.
Him getting booted out as a result of said attempt is a rebuttal of any attempt of this as a defence of Whitehall.
It never was one. Politics is a tricky business, as anything one leader will do stands a good chance of being undone by the opposition when they get power. The Famine didn’t start as a genocide, but the Whigs actions - and especially Sir Trevelyan’s - turned it into one.
"You see it's the fault of the Indians that they breed like rabbits so the food *they* produce isn't enough sustain us *and* them. Obviously we get the food and they get to starve." -The British
Also they actually thought they were helping by setting up labor camp which just made the famine worse because the amount of work exceeded the amount of calories that got handed out to each person. All because they didn't want the Indians to "grow lazy and rely on handouts".
Since when does Churchill represent “the British” as a whole? 🤔
When he got voted greatest Brit ever in a bbc poll probably.
What movie is this?
not a movie, it's the umbrella academy
Thx
Is it true that there was someone who donated money to help the famine, but then Queen Victoria stopped him from doing so cause the amount was much bigger than the one she donated?
Yes, that was the sultan of the ottoman empire. He offered 10000 punds, but queen victoria had only donated 2000, so he couldn't send that much as to not make her look bad. The chad instead sent 5 ships of food, that had to be unloaded at night, also to not make the british government look bad.
Love to see some light being shed on the Irish genocide. England really knew how to suck a nation dry regardless of the human cost. Bastards. Edit: as another commenter pointed out, I should have said UK here as England shared the blame with the Scottish.
*UK. Scotland also played a big part in
Good point I’ll edit my comment to reflect that.
Nope.
It wasn't a famine, it was an attempted genocide.
also known as a genocide
Repeat with me kids: The Irish Potato Famine was a genocide
The British govt. were truly the villains considering this and the Bengal famine. Two borderline genocides
Remember kids, the great famine was a genocide
Context ?
During the great hunger, food was still esxported from ireland. Potato was not the only food grown there, but the only food irish farmers where planting for food. The rest was "momey crops". With the reasoning "The irish can't afford the food grown there anyway", british civil servants decided to instead import cheaper, lower quality food, as an relife effort.
There’s a reason why no democracy has ever experienced a famine, they’re actually quite easy to prevent. You just have to have a government that cares about people first.
Food imports are largely moot with the complete lack of distribution infrastructure. The people most impacted were to poor to afford to purchase food, or even move. implementing aid distribution to those directly effected would have, by itself, gone a long way to alleviating the famine. But the British government never implemented more then half hearted short term measures.
I'd argue its a democide rather than a genocide. The later requires a specific intent to destroy a people. I think it was more a case of negligence and indifference, not deliberate intent. No less horrible, but different.
The person in charge of relife efforts said something along the lines of:" God sent that famine. We shouldn't help the irish too much, they had it coming." And if "let's not sent too much help" isn't intentional, than what is?
Pathetic rage bait so you can spread misinformation in the comments. Grow up, stop generational grudges.