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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.
Not to mention that the Irish people had to sell all of their produce for very little money to their English landlords, who would then graciously offer to sell it back for a lot more than any Irish farmer could afford.
And just in case you ask "why not cut out the middleman and survive penniless on your own produce?", remember how I said that the English were also their landlords?
Turns out that landlords were even MORE happy to throw poor people out for being unable to pay than they are nowadays and being homeless in mid 1800s Ireland wasn't very survivable.
It is vitally important to understand that throughout the "potato famine" Ireland was a major exporter of food to the rest of the UK.
Irish farmers were growing all kinds of crops. Grains, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, etc, etc. All of these were sold to pay for the oppressive rents that they were forced to pay to English landlords who had stolen all of their land.
The potatoes the Irish grew were for subsistence, because all of the rest of their crops went to market. Even when the potato crops failed, there was more than enough food for everyone in Ireland, if the English would simply suspend rent collection for a short while, until the crop failures had passed.
Many motions to do so were put before parliament. All of them were rejected.
The Irish famine was not caused by a disease. It was caused by the intentional cruelty of the English.
Hats off to the historical accuracy of this comment chain. Not sure how many of you are Irish but honestly it's heartening. ❤️
Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.
That implies that Britain didn't intend those consequences. But Britain has mastered using starvation as a weapon of genocide, in particular by masking it as an "unfortunate" result of taxes and tariffs.
Britain genocided more than ten million people in todays India about a century earlier and then again about three million in todays Bangladesh during World War II.
Britain murdered the Irish very much deliberately.
Wait the Brits? Not the English? Ireland is part of the British Isles, doesn't that make them Brits too?
On a linguistic level yes. The ancient Greeks named the islands after the Prythonic tribes, who were active in Britannia and Hibernia (Ireland).
On a don’t-annoy-the-alarm-clock-aficionados level, nope. This guy isn’t with me. Never met them.
Don't start your car tomorrow
(I jest of course).
We’ll, they were Brits at the time, but I guess their time in the union was not entirely to their satisfaction.
I wouldn't ask an Irishman that, lol.
Ireland is not part of the British Isles
Ireland is absolutely part of the British Isles, just not part of Great Britain. I would say that it's generally only considered correct to call someone from Great Britain British, rather than the Isles as a whole though. However, in common parlance I would say that people from Scotland and Wales use Scottish and Welsh more than British, with people from England using English and British interchangeably, and people from Northern Ireland (that are unionist anyway) using the term British over Irish. That's all to say, you'd probably get a smack upside the head for calling someone Irish British, and rightfully so.
I see your argument, but the Irish will absolutely throw hands if you call them Brits. They thing the term should only apply to people on the isle of Britain, not the British isles as a whole.
Aren't the Brits more viral historically? Go, inject themselves into another organism and force it to produce more brits.
They're more like a malignant bone cancer.
So, the EU got rid of cancer? That sounds about right.
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 lower 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":
The vast majority of Brits still hate British landlords.
And when the choctaw faced trouble during the pandemic, Ireland returned the favor
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/world/coronavirus-ireland-native-american-tribes.html
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.
Sir, you can’t blame class war rather than entire ethnic and cultural groups in here. How else will people know to fight against each other instead of the oligarchs?
Or we should just stick to facts?
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.
yup because the blight was affected the low genetic diversity of the potato cultivar were using, this allowed the oomycetes to infect the potatos, aka water molds, which are not related to fungus.
Uhm akshually don't you know that it was a subset of British society and not Britain as a whole. Jeeze, way to not be historically accurate.
Tap for un-circlejerk
Hope the /s is implied but just incase. If you're British and upset by this take, maybe your ancestors should have rolled out some guillotines when the French did. It's not too late to get rid of Charles, Starmer, Farage, Johnson and the rest of these chucklefucks.
And I'm sure you personally have made moves to execute your worst politicians right? And have no ancestors that have done anything wrong in the past?
Oh no, I absolutely have ancestors in my past that have done horrendous things. And I'm Australian, so they were also British subjects ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As for the executions, well I'd love to get my hands on Charles! #NotMyKing
You don't need to look that far back in all honesty. The Australian treatment of aboriginals has been abhorrent; and continues to this day.
Time to get your guillotine out.
Australians were considered British subjects right up until the 'Australia Act' of 1986. I still very much blame Britain for much of the way Indigenous Australians have been treated. In the same way that I put a lot of blame on Britain for the current war in Gaza. Or the escalating conflict between Pakistan and India.
Well yeah, it's an easy cop out to blame a country the other side of the world for your fellow countryman's treatment of aboriginals.
Introspection is hard; but deflecting the blame will do nothing to resolve the issue.
Edit: Australia gained Responsible government (IE: making their own rules independent of the UK; though subject to higher laws like taxes etc) between 1855-1890... with full autonomy granted in the 1930s.
So you lot have had around 100 years; and the treatment hasn't budged... Let me guess; still not the Aussies fault eh?
I never said it wasn't Australians fault as well. This is a really reductive take that shifts the blame for colonisation. Fluffing hilarious that you're a feddit.uk user. Cope much for your country destroying the world?
Edit: Also, no, the Westminster Act was not full autonomy, it was the dual Australia Acts in both countries parliaments in 1986 that granted that.
"as well".
You're still deflecting. The current treatment of aboriginals is wholly down to your country. I ask again, why haven't you got your guillotine out yet?
There's no statute of limitations on genocide.
Exactly. And your inaction during the ongoing issues in your country aligns you with our common ancestors who did nothing way back when; so when's the guillotine coming out?
What the fluff makes you think that I fail to act? You know literally nothing about me. I can both take responsibility, blame YOU and your country, and act to change things for the better. I am pretty consistently out protesting, and out there donating my time and money to causes looking to change the status quo, even though I am disabled and on a pension.
THIS attitude is why people blame your shitty country for these things. Grow up.
Ohhhh you're so close to getting it.
Now, with all of that emotion about how I know nothing about your activism, try applying that same logic to the British people you're so vehemently against.
This entire conversation has been an attempt to point out your hypocrisy.
Ah so I'm responsible for my government, but you're not responsible for yours. Got it.
Jag off mate. I've said I'm responsible for my country several times. Do you have any responsibility for yours?
Ah yeah. I'm Irish and I don't blame modern folks over there for it. I know it was the ruling class but damn were they cold AF. To be fair though there were lots of acts of brutality from British soldiers over the centuries who I have to guess were working class. Well beyond just "following orders".
We do remember the acts of kindness at the time, especially the Choctaw as I mentioned in another comment. Just goes to show it's nice to be nice. You will be eventually be forgiven the sins of your ancestors they you do bad things, but you will forever be remembered as kind if your ancestors do nice things.
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:
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.
The laugh this gave me was appreciated
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
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 answer is that it's complicated, and the British made decisions that needlessly complicated things further.
Just so we're clear, the Irish did too — there were many different bad actors that took advantage of what happened in Ireland. It just so happens that the worst of them were British.
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, thr Irish ONLY had potatoes as all other crops were cash crops for tax.
Thr British government could have 100% minimized the damage. But they didn't.
Good Job PM Peel. You fucked up.
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.
???? Fake news made up by the liberal media. They probably ruined their own crop. Glug glug if you know what I mean.
