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We’ve stopped calling it the famine here and now it’s “the great hunger”.
Ireland was producing more than enough to feed itself but the British landlords were forcing the export of non-potatoes and leaving us to die.
The queen at the time politically shamed the Turks into reducing their aid to us because it was higher than hers.
What’s up, Turkey? We haven’t forgotten your generosity.
Massive, massive shout out to our Choctaw brothers and sisters in America who gave what they didn’t have after the trail of tears.
For those not familiar, we have never, ever forgotten that one.
Sculpture in Cork called “kindred spirits”:
A large contributor to Irish suffering were the British corn laws, a tariff that kept the price of barley, wheat, and oats artificially high. So when potato crops failed, the poor Irish couldn’t afford substitutes. Ironically, American maze was exempt from the corn laws, so much of that was imported to Ireland.
Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.
The Irish potato famine wasn’t exclusive to Ireland. It actually first appeared in the US and spread to Europe.
The issue was, unlike other nations, the Irish ONLY had potatoes as all other crops were cash crops for tax.
The British government could have 100% minimized the damage. But they didn’t.
Good Job PM Peel. You fucked up.
The Brits actively shipped beef out of Ireland while people starved. The Brits also forced the Irish to labor in pointless workhouses to “earn” their food. For instance the Brits would force the Irish to build roads that led to nowhere. Apparently those pathways to nothing are still littered around Ireland.
My understanding is the Tories actually tried to provide relief by importing food which was discontinued by the liberals. So more PM Russell who fucked up.
Iirc they imported Corn from the US since it was cheap. But corn is a odd crop, it’s difficult to digest especially for the Irish who weren’t accustomed to the crop. So it provided minimal nutrition for the Irish.
This was framed as “Look, we give them food and they’re still starving! We’re wasting money, giving it to the Yanks, all for nothing! This is clearly god punishing the Irish for their sin!”
I don’t remember the exact responses by different groups in Parliament, infect Peel was probably wasn’t ass harmful as the others.
Although, I think it’s funny to know that the British PM at the time was named Peel.
I’m assuming “ass harmful” is a typo but prefer to believe it’s an historian term applied to British ideological aims
It was a typo but honesty, I think it fits perfectly so amma keep it.
This constitutes a period of British policy which we now know as “Ass Harm”, harm perpetuated by asses
- some fake historian
??? Fake news made up by the liberal media. They probably ruined their own crop. Glug glug if you know what I mean.
Random observation, I had no idea how many languages are spoken in the British isles…
LanguagesEnglish, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, French, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Sercquiais, Shelta, Ulster-Scots, Angloromani, British Sign Language, Irish Sign Language
I’m just coming off a severe staph infection that could have cost me my right leg below the knee, so can relate to devastating bacteria. Was hospitalized for a couple days to rehydrate and get iv antibiotics that appear to have knocked it out now. If you develop a skin infection that seems to be spreading fast, don’t jack around and have it checked
Once you learn microbiology you basically go through the process of cleaning the wound ASAP. There are opportunistic pathogens that are just waiting to be pathogens because they moved and that scares me.
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
And really it’s not even “the british” that are to blame. It was the rich land owners that continued to export the food grown in Ireland in order to make profit and the conservative (well, whig, but they are the spiritual predecessor to the modern conservatives and where politically conservative at the time) government that stopped and aid and refused to ban exporting food out of Ireland as they believed the famine was divine providence.
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
This is absolutely false. They didn’t cause the potato blight but they absolutely caused the famine by forcing the export of the remaining food stock which was more than enough to feed the population.
We still have not reached pre-famine population levels after 180 years.
They didn’t cause the potato blight but they absolutely caused the famine by forcing the export of the remaining food stock which was more than enough to feed the population.
That’s litterally exactly what I said.
It’s not though.
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
It’s a common misconception but there are a few issues with “didn’t cause the famine” for me:
- Potato blight != famine. There was a potato blight across all of Europe at the time. Ireland still produced more than enough food to feed itself even in 1847, the worst year of the blight. It wasn’t a case of making it worse, they literally wouldn’t have gone hungry at all.
- The only reason Irish peasants were so dependent on a single food crop to feed themselves was because it was what produced the most calories for a given area of land. The British stole the land from the Irish then forced payment at such a high rate from the people they stole it from that it left no choice but to use that single crop to feed themselves. They had to use their remaining non-potato land for higher value cash crops to pay rent on the land that was stolen from them.
- An enormous number of people died from exposure after being fucked off their land and having their homes burned to the ground because they couldn’t afford to pay rent to those landlords.
So the British did cause the actual famine in it’s entirety and the deliberate lack of relief was seen as an act of God / retribution to reduce the population here (which they 100% left to starve, with some kind landlord exceptions).
It’s why the Irish don’t call it “The Famine” any more. It’s “the great hunger” here because there wouldn’t have been a famine at all if we’d just been left the fuck alone to grow a variety of crops instead of being raped and pillaged for hundreds of years.
That’s a very good point and a distinction well worth making, thank you.
No worries :) I appreciate the back and forth.
Equals to calling a study on the corona virus SarsCov-19 dumb because it should be a study on the Chinese instead.
Seems different then.
The British were responsible for those deaths while the Chinese were not.
How does that make any sense?
If the paper was on the micro organism. Then its a paper on the micro organism. It’s completely irrelevant to the situation surrounding it.
Weaponized brain rot take.
The Irish people were growing tons of crops besides potatoes, but the British landlords took everything besides the potatoes as cash crops/taxes, leaving them only the potatoes to actually eat. There was more than enough food to prevent those deaths, but the Irish people weren’t allowed to eat it.
Doesn’t change the fact that the paper was about the fucking organism and not about the political schemes going on at the time.
How did this forum gather so many dense brains in one place?
The issue is that the title of the story implies that it was entirely due to the organism that the Irish people suffered so many deaths. Context matters and they framed this in the worst way possible.
Do you not understand that it’s a joke?
Obviously we all know the paper is talking about the microorganism, but since the real cause of the famine wasn’t the microorganism but the British, it’s funny to act like the paper is insulting the British rather than talking about the microorganism.
That’s the only way I can interpret your comment in any coherent way, that the joke just went completely over your head.
I do understand it.
It’s just bad. But you guys eat up any bad joke if the purpose is to blame the US, GB or Israel for anything. It’s predictable and lame.
So lame.
The wordplay is clever. Somebody’s big mad that people are blaming the British for something they did
Might want to examine why people making fun of one of the most blatantly evil empires of all time offends you.
