[HN Gopher] What made the Irish famine so deadly
___________________________________________________________________
What made the Irish famine so deadly
Author : pepys
Score : 300 points
Date : 2025-03-10 21:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| pvg wrote:
| https://archive.is/AfeHU
| hinkley wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
| Especially not on divisive topics, as
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html requests:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
| hinkley wrote:
| I didn't provide citations, that doesn't mean it's
| unsubstantiated.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43326908
|
| This is the story historians and people of Irish extraction
| (almost 12% of the US population, including myself) pay more
| attention to. Lots of people fled during the Famine and found
| their way to the US.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _Unsubstantive_ != _unsubstantiated_.
|
| <https://www.wordnik.com/words/unsubstantive>
|
| <https://www.wordnik.com/words/unsubstantiated>
| dang wrote:
| dredmorbius pointed it out already, but I think there was a
| misunderstanding here. I don't know what did or didn't
| cause the famine (that's why I said "maybe so" above). I
| just know that your GP comment took the form of an internet
| snark post, rather than a thoughtful informative comment.
| We want the latter, not the former, on HN.
|
| That's the difference, btw, between your GP comment and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43326908, which I
| agree was a good post. Your post and that one are taking
| more or less the same position but one is snarky and lacks
| information, while the other is snark-free and provides
| plenty of information.
| rayiner wrote:
| A crazy fact is that a higher percentage of Irish died in the
| Great Famine (well over 10% of the population) than in the Bengal
| famine in India in 1943 (about 3.5%).
|
| This is a fascinating point:
|
| > In 1837, two years after Alexis de Tocqueville published the
| first volume of "Democracy in America," his lifelong
| collaborator, Gustave de Beaumont, went to Ireland, a country the
| two men had previously visited together. The book de Beaumont
| produced in 1839, "L'Irlande: Sociale, Politique et Religieuse,"
| was a grim companion piece to his friend's largely optimistic
| vision of the future that was taking shape on the far side of the
| Atlantic. De Beaumont, a grandson by marriage of the Marquis de
| Lafayette, understood that, while the United States his ancestor
| had helped to create was a vigorous outgrowth of the British
| political traditions he and de Tocqueville so admired, Ireland
| was their poisoned fruit. America, he wrote, was "the land where
| destitution is the exception," Ireland "the country where misery
| is the common rule."
| abeppu wrote:
| Maybe a closer comparison would be famine of 1876-8, where some
| estimate go as high as 8.6M fatalities on a population of ~58M.
|
| > In its first full year, 1846, Robert Peel's Conservative
| government imported huge quantities of corn, known in Europe as
| maize, from America to feed the starving. The government
| insisted that the corn be sold rather than given away (free
| food would merely reinforce Irish indolence)
|
| Compare this to the 1876 response in which "relief work" camps
| had workers doing strenuous labor in order to receive a meager
| ration of far fewer calories than would have been expended in
| the work.
|
| > ... this 'Temple wage' consisted of 450 grams (1 lb) of grain
| plus one anna for a man, and a slightly reduced amount for a
| woman or working child,[12] for a "long day of hard labour
| without shade or rest."[13] The rationale behind the reduced
| wage, which was in keeping with a prevailing belief of the
| time, was that any excessive payment might create 'dependency'
| ...
| Loughla wrote:
| >which was in keeping with a prevailing belief of the time,
| was that any excessive payment might create 'dependency' ...
|
| Now where have I heard that recently
| Henchman21 wrote:
| From people who want to take us back to feudalism.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| and that keep succeeding in those attempts
| zdragnar wrote:
| The generic term is: perverse incentive.
| munificent wrote:
| Indeed, and ironically, from people who have largely
| inherited their wealth instead of working for it.
| salomonk_mur wrote:
| Dependence on assistantialism is a real phenomenon. Here in
| Colombia (and probably all over the developing world?) it
| has been well proven that permanent help does create
| complacency and dependency. Help must be conditioned to
| effort and have a limit, so recipients have an incentive to
| improve their conditions under some timeline.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Where was this proven in Colombia?
| abeppu wrote:
| 1. "permanent" help is not what's required during an
| famine due to crop failures, and not what anyone was
| demanding
|
| 2. focusing on the "assistance" without mentioning the
| circumstances which create the crisis is missing a big
| part of the picture. In the case of British policy in
| India, some important components leading up to that
| famine were: a. favoring a bunch of non-
| food cash crops, including opium production for export to
| China, tea for export to Britain, and materials for
| industry like jute and cotton. All of this diverted land
| away from food production which only set up for the
| famine to be a larger and more deadly crisis.
| b. of the food that was produced, as in the Irish
| context, the British exported a lot of it. And didn't
| stop exporting it when there was a local famine.
| c. in some areas imposing extremely high taxes, and in
| others switching farmers to owe taxes to be a percentage
| of land rents rather than as a percentage of their
| production -- i.e. if your crops failed you became
| insolvent and were pushed off the land, _preventing you
| from working_.
|
| The narrative that colonizers shouldn't "assist" the
| victims of a famine when the colonizers were the ones
| driving down food production and exporting grain is so
| mind-bogglingly backwards. This is only a step away from
| an arsonist setting fire to your house and preventing the
| fire department from responding because that would only
| teach you to become dependent on the state bailing you
| out of every crisis.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Blaming the British for the famines in India is like
| blaming Democrats for the forest fires in California; it
| only has an air of respectability about it because
| Brahmins have been doing it for 200 years.
| ivell wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-
| church...
|
| "Mukerjee and others also point to Britain's "denial
| policy" in the region, in which huge supplies of rice and
| thousands of boats were confiscated from coastal areas of
| Bengal in order to deny resources to the Japanese army in
| case of a future invasion."
|
| On the topic of brahmins, they were the elite, but mostly
| not the rulers. All castes discriminated against castes
| lower to them, even within scheduled castes. Blaming just
| brahmins for all ills of the society is an uninformed
| position.
| leosanchez wrote:
| > Brahmins have been doing it for 200 years
|
| Doing what? Starving people to death? Do you have any
| sources or made it up?
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Doing what?
|
| Blaming the British for their misfortunes. You'll find
| the articles yourself if you read about this subject.
| They're also fond of claiming that they were
| deindustrialized by the British, that British industrial
| development was predicated upon a theft of wealth from
| India (the figures here range from the bizarre to the
| impossible), and that the British created the caste
| system.
| leosanchez wrote:
| So british has nothing to do with the famine ?
|
| The rest is irrelevant for this thread.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > So british has nothing to do with the famine ?
|
| You could feasibly make the argument that they
| exacerbated the Bengal famine. I don't think the
| scholarship supporting this argument is very good, but
| you could make the argument. As for the famines that
| occurred throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, no.
| There is no compelling reason to think that those famines
| occurred as a result of British mismanagement; they were
| the result of natural disasters.
|
| Amartya Sen makes the argument that famines stopped
| occurring after India was granted independence, which
| alongside Churchill's general disdain for Indians is one
| of the more compelling reasons to think the British had
| anything to do with the 1943 famine, but this also
| coincides with the introduction of modern farming
| technologies (mechanization, chemical fertilizers, etc.),
| which complicates things.
| graemep wrote:
| There was also a high level of extreme poverty in India
| for many decades after independence. Maybe not large
| scale famines, but people being constantly very badly
| malnourished.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It also coincides with the end of WWII and thus the end
| of the Japanese naval threat, which was a factor in the
| last Bengal famine.
|
| These correlations are hard to parse apart. There wasn't
| any famine in the USSR in the early 1950s either, but
| that does not mean that Stalin, compared to the 1930s,
| suddenly became a humanist leader interested in
| prosperity of all subjugated people.
| bmandale wrote:
| The argument wouldn't be that the famines occurred due to
| british mismanagement, but rather due to british
| management. A country produces a certain amount of food
| during times of plenty. If they are careful, they will
| stow away some of that excess food for times of hardship.
| If they are being "managed" by a foreign power for its
| own benefit, this excess will instead be shuttled away to
| generate income. During times of hardship, there will be
| no excess to feed on and people will starve. The foreign
| power, in turn, will be nowhere to be found. This is no
| accident or failure, but rather the colony being run as
| intended: for profit, not for the benefit of the people
| living there.
| rbetts wrote:
| On the topic of the colonization of India, "Inglorious
| Empire: What the British Did to India" is an illustrative
| book - especially if you want more context to draw
| conclusions about the scale of wealth taken from India.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The British _did_ plunder INCREDIBLE resource wealth from
| India, and various African countries, and the Americas
| prior to the revolutionary war, and the Carribean, and
| some South American countries too. And they weren 't
| alone: Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, and more, all
| colonizer nations, all held colonies, all of which
| generated revenue which was returned to/made in the home
| country. Like come on.
|
| And this continues even today. Colonialism is alive and
| well, and rapaciously exploits the global south every
| day. Every company that exports jobs overseas because
| they can pay shit wages is part of it, every government
| that saddles newly-freed nations with unpayable debt is
| part of it, every environmental regulation that shoves
| polluting industry or waste disposal there, where their
| own voters don't have to look at it, is part of it. And
| yeah, paying office buildings full of workers barely
| making starvation wages to remove kiddie porn from
| Facebook is also part of it. We just traded guns for
| money, and sure, being exploited to near-death is better
| if you're getting paid than if you simply earn the right
| to not be shot, but that's a fucking low bar there.
| bmandale wrote:
| > Every company that exports jobs overseas because they
| can pay shit wages is part of it
|
| No they aren't. The case for colonialism is that it
| improves the country so colonized and benefits the people
| therein by providing them with wealth and the trappings
| of civilization. For the most part, actual colonies
| failed in this ideal by doing more to exploit the people
| being colonized than to help them. But a company
| providing jobs to those overseas, even at a shit wage, is
| definitely providing benefit to those people by giving
| them a better opportunity than they would otherwise have.
|
| The lesson of the "white man's burden" should be that
| you, the white man, do not know better than a people
| themselves what is good for them. Take that lesson.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > But a company providing jobs to those overseas, even at
| a shit wage, is definitely providing benefit to those
| people by giving them a better opportunity than they
| would otherwise have.
|
| This is not the truism as implied and saying that is not
| "white man's burden." Us filling beaches in developing
| countries with ships slated to be scrapped by people who
| work with plasma cutters while barefoot is not charity of
| any sort. Us polluting lands we do not own with waste we
| cannot dispose of under the environmental laws we
| ourselves have created in our own country is not
| "providing" anything, it's exporting misery. We demand
| our own people "earn" a living and by the same logic,
| demand thus of nations who do not necessarily agree, but
| we hold them hostage to it nonetheless.
|
| If you want to uplift developing nations, tear up the
| agreements that give Western corporations the rights to
| plunder them, shred the documents of the "debt" they
| supposedly owe other nations for their own, deserved and
| far too delayed freedom, and treat their leaders with the
| respect they deserve and let them determine the destinies
| of their own countries, FOR ONCE, including and dare I
| say especially if said destinies are not the preferred
| ones by global colonial capitalism.
|
| Everyone deserves freedom. No one deserves the freedom to
| be exploited, and it's long passed time we all started
| noting the difference. Freedom to be under the boot of
| capital is not freedom.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Us filling beaches in developing countries with ships
| slated to be scrapped by people who work with plasma
| cutters while barefoot is not charity of any sort.
|
| Why are "we" responsible for occupational health and
| safety in India? These shipbreaking yards aren't owned by
| British interests. Their conditions are reflective of a
| broader attitude of neglect across the entire
| subcontinent. "So cut off the supply of ships," you say;
| the attitude exists even in industries where "we"
| couldn't possibly change the working conditions (e.g.
| textile manufacturing) without engaging in what I'm sure
| you would call neo-imperialism.
| nickd2001 wrote:
| Textile manufacturing is an interesting example because
| some large companies do sign up to anti sweatshop rules.
| Back in the day Gap got pressured into doing that I
| believe. Here in UK, last I heard (may not be up to date)
| Marks and Spencer does that, and apparently so do Primark
| (cheap clothes store who many might assume use
| sweatshops), while large supermarket Tesco I've heard
| associated with using sweatshops and being unresponsive
| when people complained. I'd argue we the western consumer
| are responsible to a certain extent. We can do research
| and find out who's best to shop with and direct our
| spending accordingly, thus impacting the lives of people
| in those countries.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Why are "we" responsible for occupational health and
| safety in India?
|
| Because we reap the rewards of it?
|
| > "So cut off the supply of ships," you say
|
| Yes, I do.
|
| > the attitude exists even in industries where "we"
| couldn't possibly change the working conditions (e.g.
| textile manufacturing) without engaging in what I'm sure
| you would call neo-imperialism.
|
| Imperialism is not as simple as "when you make people
| elsewhere do a thing." And more to the point, no activist
| on earth would state that it's Imperialist to say "your
| workers need PPE." There is no cultural stance on keeping
| your goddamn fingers. Poor as shit workforces scrapping
| ships are not forgoing protective gear because they
| simply enjoy the thrill of making sure their toes don't
| get hit by falling slag. They're people for Christ-sakes,
| just like you, trying to earn a living, and they can't
| afford to quit that job, nor can they afford a pair of
| boots to do it more safely, and no established
| organization is in their country making sure they do.
| Just like we did before we had things like OSHA and child
| labor laws made cheap business bastards do the right
| thing here, they deserve the same.
|
| And while we can't make them form an OSHA, what we can do
| is tell our own corporations they are not permitted to
| dump ships on foreign soil where people working
| incredibly unsafely for slave wages will take them apart.
| That, we very much can and should do.
| lurk2 wrote:
| There was obviously value extraction taking place in
| these areas. The question is if this extraction had
| meaningful impacts on the trajectory of the imperialists
| or that of their subjects. Decolonialists would have you
| believe that Britain would not have industrialized had it
| not been for materials they "stole" from India, Africa,
| and the Americas.
|
| Let's suppose this extraction had an appreciable impact
| on the development of Britain: Could you explain why the
| British are not as wealthy as the Germans or the Swedes,
| being that the British possessed colonies, and the
| Germans and Swedes did not? This pattern holds for almost
| all North European countries, so take care that your
| explanation does not fixate on the two I have chosen.
| lurk2 wrote:
| This also ostensibly occurred in New York in the 1970s,
| but the key thing to understand is that there is a
| significant historiographical tradition which views the
| Irish famine as a negligent (or intentional) genocide on
| the part of the British.
| kergonath wrote:
| > it has been well proven that permanent help does create
| complacency and dependency
|
| Surely there are proofs, then? And I mean, other than
| white papers from right-leaning think tanks or "it is
| known" pseudo-common sense.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| You have to be willing to entertain evidence from biased
| sources when you're considering politically charged
| questions. By all means, consult evidence from various
| ideologies, but don't hold out for unbiased scholarship
| that will never exist.
| kergonath wrote:
| "Does welfare make people less productive" is not a
| political question. We can measure welfare and we can
| measure many aspects of productivity and activity. We can
| make a quantitative answer to that question. Opinion and
| ideology is not evidence.
|
| Saying that we need to consider opinions on the same
| level as actual observations because "political" is
| fundamentally wrong.
|
| What is political, and must be, is how we act on those
| findings, the answer to the question "considering those
| facts, what do we do?" There are many possibilities that
| are worth discussion, from doing away with welfare
| entirely to UBI. But this must be based on facts, not
| ideology. Think tank opinion pieces belong here, in the
| political discussion.
| rayiner wrote:
| > And I mean, other than white papers from right-leaning
| think tanks
|
| If political bias means we shouldn't look at scholarship,
| we should also ignore papers from uniformly left-leaning
| university academics, correct?
| Forbo wrote:
| For either, if the papers don't stand up to peer review
| and meta-analysis then yes, we should ignore them. Don't
| often see papers from think tanks engaging in actual
| science though....
| kergonath wrote:
| We should ignore fact-free white paper from left-leaning
| think tanks, as well. We should accept scientific studies
| with a clear protocol, regardless of the institution.
| That is the bare minimum and then, those studies can be
| refuted or not depending on several factors.
|
| If your point is that no academic study can be trusted
| because academics are raging socialists, then I don't
| know what to tell you. We clearly do not live in the same
| reality.
| graemep wrote:
| Is that because of the structure of the assistance?
|
| In the UK benefits are reduced as earnings rise, you then
| start paying taxes at an income (as an employee) of just
| over PS1,000 a month (the employee NI threshold is
| PS241/week). You lose 55% from the benefits reduction,
| then lose with taxes, then you lose various concessions
| such as lower rates of/exemption from the tax paid to
| your local government and help with utility bills, you
| may have to pay travel costs - so for some people working
| leaves them barely, if at all, any better off.
|
| Would you work under those circumstances?
|
| > Help must be conditioned to effort and have a limit, so
| recipients have an incentive to improve their conditions
| under some timeline.
|
| So what do you do when people fail to meet that deadline?
| Let them starve?
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| What medieval gibberish is this? I have installed a ton
| of robots in my time- and they put a ton of people
| permanently and forever out of work. It just evaporates -
| and does not return.
|
| So what is your solution ? To smash the robot, so busy-
| work can be restored?
| Panzer04 wrote:
| The main problem seems to be setting the backup payment
| below the rate necessary to sustain life.
|
| I have to disagree that you won't become dependent on
| assistance given too freely. Obviously these crises leaned
| way, way too far in the other direction to avoid it,
| however.
| Plasmoid2000ad wrote:
| It's a deep and complicated part of history, but I think
| calling out a single main problem really risks skipping
| over the depth and scale of the problems.
|
| Scattered points - but during the famine to earn 'wage'
| of insufficient grain ration, you had to work. This
| happened in work houses and camps, not necessarily in
| their homes or home areas. Workhouses existed in most
| towns where labourers lived, leaving their homes and
| families or after being evicted. Families were split up,
| Men, Women and Children did not live together. The
| workhouses and camps had terrible conditions, and the
| work was hard enough to have injuries and deaths even
| ignoring the illnesses that spread and grew worse from
| conditions. The work was often pointless - famine roads
| for example, roads to nowhere, so the work effort did
| nothing to improve the situation.
|
| Those that had been evicted for failing to pay their
| rent, as they couldn't afford food or had not potato
| crops to sell, were considered convicts. As they were
| paid for their labour in food and sometimes lodging, they
| could not work their way out of situation or pay for
| healthcare when they got sick or injured. Many immigrated
| as things worsened year-on-year, on famine ships, but
| were refused and rejected from docking in multiple
| countries due to fear of the infectious illnesses they
| carried and burden they would inflict - and those stuck
| on ships became more unwell.
|
| There was enough food, in fact a surplus in Ireland - but
| the "excess" was exported and cheaper questionable
| alternatives were imported for the soup kitchens and
| workhouses. Potatoes were such a single point of failure
| not by coincidence - many lived as tenants on landlords
| land, on tiny holdings but were expected to produce their
| own food. Potatoes were the only crop able to do this, or
| rather the holdings had sized down because Potatoes
| allowed it.
|
| To me, that all screams of a systems failure and would
| not have been fixed with simply larger rations. Even
| ignoring the morality part to how the system was formed,
| how Ireland was ruled and Landlord system worked - the
| Potato Famine exposed the problems and limitations of the
| system with urgent crisis. The system did not adapt, did
| not act proactively or even react, and did not seem to
| learn in time to respond to a growing crisis.
|
| One of the learnings surely was how terrible the concept
| is of worrying about people becoming too dependent on
| assistance in a crisis - debating the morale hazard and
| long-term dependency concerns runs the risk for short
| term death, disease and collapse.
|
| It isn't said in Ireland that the famine was caused by
| the Potato, or by the meagre rations - It's said it was
| caused by the British, really the system in place rather
| than the British race but that doesn't simplify as well.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Your web site is down. You're losing $BIGNUM every hour.
| Someone says, we can work around it if we do this hack in
| this bit of code. But someone else says, we shouldn't do
| that, it will add technical debt and make more work for
| us later on down the line. We need to take our time and
| do it right.
|
| That is, of course, ridiculous. You get the site back up
| and stop losing $BIGNUM. Once you've stopped the
| bleeding, _then_ you can go back and do things the right
| way.
| hobs wrote:
| That kind of justification is absolutely what gets people
| to experiment with working people to death who are dying
| of starvation.
|
| "We're giving the assistance too freely! Ah, maybe a
| little more work would be good for them, not me of
| course, but them, they are the ones not working hard
| enough, who are dependent, me? no I work hard for my
| money, that's why I get to decide who lives or dies
| because they are not working hard enough!"
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| What a steaming crock of shit.
|
| The far bigger problem is creating entitled masters, not
| entitled slaves.
| Clent wrote:
| The problem is it compares humans to wild animals. If you
| feed wild animals they'll see you as a food source and
| often expect you'll continue to feed them forever.
|
| The question then is do you agree (certain) people are
| wild animals.
|
| If so are you too not a wild animal and if not, what
| makes you special?
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| Because it's true. Aid makes governments less accountable
| to their people and more accountable to donors.
|
| It has made many countries refuse to create robust
| healthcare/education/military (etc.) systems with local
| resources and instead depend on foreign resources that can
| be zapped away anytime and are often used to control local
| leaders to do the donor's bidding.
|
| Many locals in aid-dependent countries (including mine) say
| the same thing, yet it seems do-good Westerners want to
| force people to collect their aid.
|
| All the aid to Haiti, Afghanistan, and many other
| countries...their only achievement is now needing even more
| aid.
|
| Yes, a famine is a special case where aid is necessary in
| the short term, but it'll be a disaster and destroy local
| agriculture output if continued in the long term..
| rob74 wrote:
| If you're mentioning Haiti, it's only fair to add that
| they were saddled with a crippling debt to France (later
| to the US - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_indep
| endence_debt) from the very beginning of their existence,
| and many of their current problems can be traced back to
| that. It's important to see both sides, especially now
| that it's clear how corrosive this narrative is if you're
| looking at Musk's attitude toward USAID...
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| We're likely in agreement. What Haiti needs is
| _investment_ in domestic industries to be competitive in
| a capitalist world.
|
| These investments can be provided by foreigners, but it's
| ultimately the locals that need to rise up to the
| occasion and use it well. Unfortunately, Haiti is rooted
| in endemic corruption, stemming in part from aid
| dependency.
|
| There's no point of giving aid to Haiti while maintaining
| the status quo of the country being a little more than a
| raw material supplier to richer countries.
|
| My exact complaint is that many countries give aid to
| feel good...and also for the recipient to do the donor's
| bidding instead of what's right for their countrymen.
|
| Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. If Haitian leaders
| remain more accountable to foreign donors than their
| local population, there's no incentive to improve.
| soco wrote:
| I cannot imagine a way out of this, the way you put it.
| Not giving any aid today means condemning masses to
| death. Giving some aid today means feeding the masses and
| maintaining the corruption. The foreign donors cannot
| condition the aid, or they theoretically could but have
| zero leverage for actually following up, because see
| above - they could only stop it, which nobody wants. I'm
| aware that it's common to blame the foreign forces for
| any bad situation, but again, I see zero ways to change
| the status quo just by modulating the foreign aid. Or you
| mean the Haitian leaders are paid exactly to keep the
| population half-starving?
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| > Not giving any aid today means condemning masses to
| death.
|
| It's not the responsibility of foreigners to feed other
| countries' populations. Those countries have governments
| made up of adults (often voted in by the masses) who can
| take decisions for themselves...it's their fault if their
| citizens are left to starve, not foreigners.
|
| > Or you mean the Haitian leaders are paid exactly to
| keep the population half-starving?
|
| It's not intentional, but that's what inadvertently
| happens. There's little incentive to find unique domestic
| solutions to long-running issues when foreign saviors are
| willing to cover for the Haitian government repeatedly.
|
| At some point, we should admit that it's arrogant for
| foreigners thinking they're responsible for another
| country's problems and should be the ones solving them,
| not the locals.
|
| The above reasoning is what caused the U.S. to spend
| trillions of dollars on wars and so-called nation-
| building in Afghanistan and Iraq, all to no avail.
|
| It helped neither the locals nor the U.S., where these
| wars have contributed to political turbulence with dire
| consequences.
| nickd2001 wrote:
| "it's arrogant for foreigners thinking they're
| responsible for another country's problems and should be
| the ones solving them, not the locals." - I agree with
| that but, to me that isn't an argument against providing
| targeted, life-saving aid to those in a terrible
| situation, whilst try to be mindful that the locals
| should be listened to and often in charge of it, and that
| aid can have negative effects if done badly. To give an
| example, I'm sure no-one in a disaster zone worries about
| arrogance when they see a doctor arrive from Medecins
| Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). But hopefully
| MSF once they've dealt with the initial problem, are
| trying to help locals train up in medical techniques that
| they themselves want and work in the local environment.
| From what I've seen, I believe they do just that..
| probably not always perfectly.
| nickd2001 wrote:
| This is one of the aims behind Fair Trade. Its giving a
| fair price to local producers for products, which means
| you can help people without running into issues of
| perverse incentives, dependency, lack of self-
| determination. That's the theory at least... For items
| not easily produced in the west e:g tea, coffee,
| chocolate, bananas, we try wherever possible to buy Fair
| Trade.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > it seems do-good Westerners want to force people to
| collect their aid
|
| "do-good"? No, you are confusing legitimate aid with "the
| first one's free". The fake aid is often designed to
| create dependency and send large part of the money back
| to the donors.
| abeppu wrote:
| I think maybe there's an important different ethical and
| practical situation with genuinely foreign aid (rich
| countries sending resources to poor countries which have
| their own government, systems, regulations etc) vs a
| colonizing power that's effectively already in control of
| the area in which they helped form the crisis. The
| British were exporting food from Ireland and India in
| both of those crises. British land speculators bought
| Irish land and raised the rents and evicted farmers --
| i.e. people already engaged in producing food were forced
| to stop.
|
| So foreign aid may make governments less accountable to
| their people. But colonial governments don't start off
| being accountable to their people. The "aid" that the
| British ruling class said would create dependence can
| only be understood in the context of the intense
| extractive practices that were already in place.
|
| > Yes, a famine is a special case where aid is necessary
| in the short term, but it'll be a disaster and destroy
| local agriculture output if continued in the long term.
|
| ... but because Ireland was still exporting food to
| Britain, "aid" in the form of keeping Irish food to feed
| Irish people would clearly still have supported local
| agriculture. Not evicting farmers would have supported
| local agriculture. This is structurally different from
| shipping American grain to Afghanistan.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| True, I was referring to the modern context of aid, not
| colonial times with extractive economies.
|
| I don't think it's fair to apply the modern concept of
| aid to previous eras of colonialism, wars, and frequent
| famines. It was a different ballgame I feel I wouldn't be
| qualified to comment on except I experienced it first-
| hand.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Maybe Singapore?
|
| They deliberately never accepted help from outside for that
| exact reason. It worked for them.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| > _On the international stage, if you have to put your
| hand out for assistance, it means you have no say_. It is
| a big advantage for Singapore not to have to beg for aid.
| We have no need for assistance or loans that will subject
| us to external pressure. We are not dependent on any
| single external partner. And perhaps even more
| importantly, and you have just heard Minister Ng's speech
| earlier, we do not depend on any external country to
| defend Singapore. We have the capability and the will to
| defend ourselves.
|
| The above is from a recent speech by Singapore's foreign
| minister; https://www.mfa.gov.sg/Newsroom/Press-
| Statements-Transcripts.... I think it's a reason why a
| handful of Westerners detest Singapore: that it developed
| without being dependent on them. "How dare they?!"
|
| A fitting example is that Europe is currently learning a
| lesson about the implications of depending on an external
| partner (the U.S.) for defense. It means being bullied at
| will by that country and having no say.
| soco wrote:
| The difference is that both Singapore and the EU did, or
| start doing, things by themselves. Just blaming the US
| for their misdeeds might feel good but does exactly
| nothing to help the bullied further.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| Agreed. Other countries should follow the same path
| instead of depending on foreign aid to solve their
| issues.
| concordDance wrote:
| It's one of those things that is generally true but should
| not be the only consideration.
|
| A bit of dependence that would need reducing later is a
| very small price to pay to avoid a million starved.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| There were other methods that could have prevented
| starvation: the British could have closed Irish ports for
| export, so that the food raised in Ireland stayed there
| to feed the Irish. Instead, the British continued
| exporting food from Ireland. They could also have
| forbidden the distillation of grain (a potential food
| source) into whiskey, but they didn't, although some
| distilleries shut down as depopulation led to lower
| demand.
| concordDance wrote:
| Having now checked the wikipedia page, that doesn't seem
| like it would have made a particularly big difference.
| The imports dwarfed the exports, particularly during 1847
| when they were 8x larger.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| This reminds me of Vladimir Lenin's claim that an important
| socialist principle is "He who does not work shall not eat"
| [0].
|
| Just let the people eat dudes.
|
| Also Russell's party during the famine was the Whigs. O'Toole
| gets that wrong, referring to them as "The Liberals."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neith
| er_...
| tux wrote:
| Yeah this reminds me of
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
| lurk2 wrote:
| The sentiment goes back as far as the Bible:
|
| 6 Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord
| Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every
| brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the
| tradition which he received of us.
|
| 7 For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we
| behaved not ourselves disorderly among you;
|
| 8 Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but
| wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we
| might not be chargeable to any of you:
|
| 9 Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an
| ensample unto you to follow us.
|
| 10 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you,
| that if any would not work, neither should he eat.
|
| 11 For we hear that there are some which walk among you
| disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.
|
| 12 Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord
| Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their
| own bread.
|
| 13 But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing.
|
| 14 And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note
| that man, and have no company with him, that he may be
| ashamed.
|
| 15 Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a
| brother.
|
| - 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| That's very different from saying you shouldn't help
| people in a famine. Jesus also said, "blessed are the
| poor" full stop in Matthew. Also the KJV version is a
| pretty inaccurate translation and I don't know why people
| quote it in 2025 when there are translations that are
| both more accurate and more comprehensible.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > That's very different from saying you shouldn't help
| people in a famine.
|
| I never claimed that it said that.
|
| > Also the KJV version is a pretty inaccurate translation
|
| It's the version I am familiar with and thus the version
| that I used.
| Reasoning wrote:
| I think the point is there is a big difference between
| "He who does not work shall not eat" and "...anyone who
| was unwilling to work should not eat". Specifically the
| clause "unwilling to work".
| jampekka wrote:
| As a socialist principle "who does not work" referred
| primarily to the bourgeoisie, i.e. who get money from
| capital gains, rents or inheritance as opposed to labor,
| although it did also mean that in early stages of socialism
| the communist principle "from each according to their
| ability, to each according to their ability" is not
| feasible.
| jajko wrote:
| Nah not really, I grew up in communism/socialism and it
| was literally forbidden by laws to not have a work, that
| was ticket straight to jail.
|
| Of course any form of intelligence, university educated
| or former bourgeoisie suffered way more, got menial or at
| least underpaid jobs that paid barely for survival.
|
| Both my parents had good university degrees in
| engineering (back when less than 5% of their peers
| managed to get to uni, economics and mechanical
| engineering/welding), and were paid maybe half of what
| some trench diggers or field workers got and barely
| scrapped to make ends meet.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Was Malthusianism in vogue in the British government back
| then?
| donall wrote:
| Very much so. Tim Pat Coogan covers this in his book "The
| Famine Plot" (which is one of the major proponents that the
| great hunger was a genocide and has received a lot of
| criticism, but which covers the basic facts in good
| detail).
|
| [edit: somebody elsewhere in this comment section has
| (apparently seriously) proposed Malthusianism as the root
| cause. In the Year of Our Lord 2025. With all of human
| knowledge available at their fingertips. You can't keep a
| bad idea down]
| scandox wrote:
| Despite being a much liked figure in Ireland Tim Pat
| Coogan is not taken seriously as a historian by anyone
| here at all.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Except by your Secretary of State, who Schumer petitioned
| to get Coogan his visa for academic touring when it was
| strangely denied by the Dublin Embassy.
|
| He is also a hero solely based on the defamation case he
| lost raised by Ruth Dudley Edwards, where he (correctly)
| posited that Ruth had 'grovelled to and hypocritically
| ingratiated herself with the English establishment to
| further her writing career'.
| donall wrote:
| I'm aware that he has his detractors. I'm not a Coogan
| apologist! I'm just saying that the book covers the
| Malthusian angle well enough and it cites sources. The
| genocide angle is controversial to some but 90% of the
| book is straightforward fact.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I figured. Thanks.
| KingMob wrote:
| > Maybe a closer comparison would be famine of 1876-8, where
| some estimate go as high as 8.6M fatalities on a population
| of ~58M.
|
| Uh, this is the Bengal famine the parent comment refers to,
| right? Ireland has never had 58M people in it.
| abeppu wrote:
| Uh, no, the parent comment explicitly said the Bengal
| famine of 1943, which had up to 3.8M deaths
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
|
| The famine of 1876-8 in addition to being worse from the
| percent-causalities view, and a lifetime earlier (65
| years), was also not centered in Bengal but in other
| regions of India generally further south and west.
| Different in time, place and severity, and different in the
| policy response in part b/c the 1943 famine was during WW2.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%93
| 1...
| newsclues wrote:
| Sounds like an attempt at genocide. Something that has led to
| billions in reparations for some groups but not the Irish.
| nextts wrote:
| Addicted to basic survival huh. Can't have that.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Famine? Only one crop failed. Ireland was a net exporter of
| food to the UK..
|
| There's another word for this, not a famine...
| lovich wrote:
| I see why others flagged you although I wouldn't.
|
| For anyone else who doesn't know, Ireland was exporting grain
| and meat during the famine at the orders of the British. They
| explicitly let the Irish die if someone else could order the
| food because Free Trade was perfect and if it wiped out a
| bunch of undesirables to boot, even better[1]
|
| As you had groups with a wildly different wealth as the
| Ottaman Sultan and the Choctaws on the Trail of Tears
| scrounging for anything to spare to feed the starving Irish,
| their British overlords were shipping away food to anyone who
| could pay them a penny more.
|
| If it wasn't an engineered genocide then it's close as you
| can get to one imo
|
| [1] https://ireland-calling.com/irish-famine-ireland-
| exported-fo...
| emmelaich wrote:
| Private charity from England and others did send a lot of
| money to Ireland during the famine(s).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Relief_Association
| lovich wrote:
| There may have been individuals within the British
| citizenry who independently did the best moral actions
| they could in the circumstances, but there's documented
| evidence that the political body at large and their
| leadership at best did not care an iota for an any and
| all deaths in the Irish due to the consequences of their
| leadership, or at worst actively hoped and planned for
| the deaths to remove an inconvenient people.
| dmix wrote:
| There was no real market competition within Ireland. All
| the farms were owned by an elite mostly British class
| living in England which was a direct hold over from
| Feudalism. Regular Irish could only pay rent to this group
| to farm themselves. Import/exports were controlled by the
| British shipping and enforced by the military when locals
| resisted, all in direct coordination with the small amount
| of landowners. Particularly difficult situation on an
| island. It was extractive colonialism without a strong
| equal rule of law or self representation. Calling it
| laissez faire was just a cover to benefit the British.
| skissane wrote:
| > All the farms were owned by an elite mostly British
| class living in England which was a direct hold over from
| Feudalism.
|
| I think that's a misconception-yes, there were a
| significant number of absentee landowners from England,
| but they were never the majority - the majority of
| wealthy Irish landowners lived in Ireland. Only around a
| third of large Irish landowners lived outside of Ireland.
|
| One issue was that the land-owning upper classes were
| near exclusively Protestant, while the vast majority of
| the poor were Catholics-which is not to say no
| Protestants died in the famine, many did-but, while at
| the time Ireland was 80% Catholic 20% Protestant, famine
| deaths were 90% Catholic only 10% Protestant-so a
| Catholic was 2.25 times more likely to perish in the
| famine than a Protestant. Even though by the time of the
| famine, most of the formal legal discrimination against
| Catholics had been repealed, the consequences of it were
| still very evident.
|
| Although there were many poor Protestants, the average
| poor Protestant was still better off (and hence more
| likely to survive) than the average poor Catholic, having
| benefited from generations of anti-Catholic/pro-
| Protestant discrimination.
|
| Protestants also benefited from the greater wealth of
| Protestant charities - even though many Protestant
| charities were willing to help Catholics too, most
| Catholics were fearful to accept their help, viewing it
| as an inducement to conversion
| rorytbyrne wrote:
| The "Protestant Ascendency" are not Irish, even if they
| technically lived and were born on the island.
| dghf wrote:
| Wolfe Tone was a member of the Protestant Ascendancy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfe_Tone
| skissane wrote:
| Some Irish Protestants were descendants of recent
| immigrants from Britain, others were descendants of Irish
| converts from Catholicism.
|
| Consider for example, Edmund Burke (the famous
| conservative philosopher) - he was born in Ireland to a
| Roman Catholic mother and a Church of Ireland father; his
| parents raised him Anglican and his sister Catholic -
| this was not an uncommon compromise for middle class
| Irish families of the time, discriminatory laws limiting
| career and education opportunities for Catholics largely
| didn't apply to women who were excluded from careers and
| higher education irrespective of their faith. It is
| unclear whether or not his father, a lawyer (at a time
| when Catholics weren't allowed to practice law) had
| converted from Catholicism, or if one of his ancestors
| had - but given Burke's paternal line came from an old
| Hiberno-Norman family, descendants of the 12th century
| English invaders who over the following centuries
| assimilated to a Gaelic identity, it is obvious that one
| of his patrilineal ancestors must have switched from
| Catholicism to Protestantism at some point.
| stuartd wrote:
| Archive link - https://web.archive.org/web/20250114101154/h
| ttps://ireland-c...
| vondur wrote:
| You are correct, food was exported outside of Ireland during
| this time period. This time was called the Hungry 40's and
| crop failures were happening all over Europe. It lead to the
| Revolutions of 1848. Food was only available at prices that
| the poor could no longer afford.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > Food was only available at prices that the poor could no
| longer afford.
|
| > It lead to the Revolutions of 1848.
|
| Too bad politicians today don't read the history books they
| want to burn, they might save their own skins.
| reverend_gonzo wrote:
| Pretty sure donors line their pockets a lot more than the
| voting poor.
| vondur wrote:
| Unfortunately the Revolutions of 1848 were violently
| suppressed. The forces of order were able to exploit the
| differences between the political reformers and the
| social reformers.
| m4rtink wrote:
| It still resulted in significant reforms in the end, even
| in Austria-Hungary, removing a lot of religion based
| persecution there for example.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Sounds like you are trying to explain away over a million
| deaths as if it was happening everywhere in Europe and not
| primarily the British fault.
|
| Fact: in 1847, nearly 4,000 vessels carried food from
| Ireland to British ports while hundreds of thousands of
| Irish people died of starvation and related diseases. There
| was PLENTY of food in Ireland.
|
| FACT: The government refused to intervene in the market to
| prevent food exports, even as the Irish population faced
| severe food shortages. Why?
|
| While crop failures were happening across Europe, the
| impact in Ireland was particularly devastating because of
| the population's heavy reliance on potatoes. The suggestion
| that food was only unaffordable for the poor overlooks the
| fact that the potato blight left many people without any
| access to their primary food source. WHY was it the only
| source of food in an abundant growing environment??
|
| Fact: Wages paid on "work programs" for those (un)lucky
| enough to get on them were too low to purchase food at
| inflated "famine" prices, leading to widespread starvation.
|
| The export of food from Ireland during this period was a
| significant factor in the suffering of the Irish people,
| and it is important to acknowledge the role of British
| economic policies and the prioritization of profits over
| humanitarian needs which seems to be a struggle for you.
| verzali wrote:
| The way this comment is written reads suspiciously like
| ChatGPT. And the name of the user has bot in it...
|
| You seem to contradict yourself as well, you say plenty
| of food, and then it was because of the reliance on
| potatoes, and then it was the only food source?
|
| Maybe I just dislike comments that insist on saying FACT
| multiple times.
| I-M-S wrote:
| So like housing today. Future will not judge monetization
| of basic needs kindly.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| I lived in a country where housing was provided for free
| (the Soviet Union), but monetization is so far superior--
| you wouldn't believe the difference.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Nice myth. Food wasn't quite provided for free. You did
| not get quite even basic rations enough to survive even
| if you were able to get them, further, due to mass exodus
| from farming to city, buildings were built there, and you
| had to wait a really long time, sometimes forever, to get
| a living space by lot. Similar with a car - it all
| operated under severe scarcity. All countries involved,
| even East Germany, had these problems.
|
| Workers got either in priority to farmers and further
| others. Except politicians and connected people got
| theirs first beyond workers. And some were able to buy it
| ahead of the queue.
|
| The magical development in the West was driven by really
| heavy handed subsidies industrial development on already
| richer area, which USSR just could not afford, and
| especially not after funding the high military spending.
| That notwithstanding some completely broken experiments
| done in large scale like attempts to farm the steppes in
| the middle of nowhere, a lot of which was funded by
| export from the few basket countries which would have
| otherwise had enough food. And after a relatively short
| while, the industrialization effort stalled, a variety of
| farming related problems appeared due to both
| mismanagement, bad weather and plagues, countries
| involved got indebted on bad terms...
|
| So yeah, it was "free".
| skeletal88 wrote:
| Why the downvotes? This is correct
| Kon5ole wrote:
| I didn't vote but I guess the downvotes are because it
| calls the parent claim a "myth" and then goes on to agree
| with it.
|
| The scarcity that made food and housing not free in
| practice is why monetization (capitalism) ended up being
| better, which I assume was MikePlacid's point.
|
| Capitalism has problems for sure, but it eliminates
| scarcity more efficiently than any other system we have
| tried so far.
|
| Capitalism may share the abundance unevenly, but it still
| creates it in the first place, which is key.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Umm... how do you think modern farming works exactly?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| With a wild amounts of gov't subsidies. (Note: All highly
| advanced nations do it in slightly different ways.)
| epistasis wrote:
| The problem is not monetization of basic needs, the
| problem is putting the controlling interest in the hands
| of a few who do not care about the lives of the many.
|
| This famine happened from the concentration of power, not
| because food costs money. Democratic land reform solves
| it, keeping the monetary impetus in play.
|
| The Holodomor was a very similar genocide where farms
| were collectivized. That didn't stop millions of people
| from dying from hunger as their own food was taken at
| gunpoint and exported to other countries.
|
| We must judge harshly, but on the proper aspect.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >That didn't stop millions of people from dying from
| hunger as their own food was taken at gunpoint and
| exported to other countries.
|
| The problem was not exactly that, there wasn't food
| export when there was famine. Communists are not that
| stupid. All they wanted was to overcome the corporate
| greed of the peasantry, who often sold food to workers at
| 2, 3, or 5 times the price, so they fought price gouging
| on food, determining fair prices, that would allow all
| the country to be well-fed.
|
| But for some unknown reason in response to that beautiful
| and righteous policy the peasantry reduced food
| production, which caused the famine.
| epistasis wrote:
| I'm not sure if you are mocking the absurdity of the
| false communist narrative or just repeating it
| uncritically.
|
| So to be clear: Communists exported food, stolen from the
| people who grew it, which is very well known, here's one
| citation from Wikipedia:
|
| > In regard to exports, Michael Ellman states that the
| 1932-1933 grain exports amounted to 1.8 million tonnes,
| which would have been enough to feed 5 million people for
| one year.[16]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80
| %93...
|
| Further it wasn't "stupidity" of Communists but rather a
| deliberate genocide of those considered inferior. They
| sent groups of soldiers around the countryside to steal
| more grain as children starved in the streets. It is one
| of the more horrific acts of brutality in the 20th
| century, all in service of authoritarianism.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >In regard to exports, Michael Ellman states that the
| 1932-1933 grain exports amounted to 1.8 million tonnes
|
| That is blatant manipulation. Most of those grain de
| facto didn't left the country and were used to fight
| famine. From 1930 there was massive grain import.
| Moreover, import was considered by Stalin from 1928, but
| at that time all the statistics showed, that food
| situation will be fully fixed by fair share from upper
| parts of peasantry.
|
| >deliberate genocide of those considered inferior
|
| This is literally a conspiracy theory on the level of the
| Jews starting World War II to exterminate the Europeans.
|
| >They sent groups of soldiers around the countryside to
| steal more grain as children starved in the streets.
|
| Yeas, and they did that exactly to give that grain to
| those children.
|
| The fact is, communists with all honesty tried to achieve
| a fair distribution of necessities to the poorest. But as
| always leftist's "fair" implies market incentive
| distortion and as a result hindered production.
|
| The cause of the famine is not the evil communists who
| took grain from hungry peasants, communists simply tried
| to take excess food from the rich and give it to the
| poor. The cause of the famine is the 7-fold drop in food
| production. And when you have that drop - there
| inevitable will be mass famine.
| vkou wrote:
| The word for it is a man-made famine, much like the Holodomor
| was a man-made famine.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Mass Murder
| crowselect wrote:
| Huh, weird - two genocides caused by the brits, only 100 years
| apart.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| The other one being the Australian Aboriginal population?
| leosanchez wrote:
| Bengal famine.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Japan had nothing to do with the Bengal famine at all.
| crowselect wrote:
| "Caused by the brits"
|
| Where are you getting japan from?
| SwtCyber wrote:
| It's wild how the same empire could produce such different
| outcomes
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| A somewhat related side-note (might be interesting): William
| Dalrymple recently talked about - "How in India the Irish
| Transformed from Colonised to Colonisers" -
| https://nitter.net/DalrympleWill/status/1898036558898585768 -
| and not quite/always the benevolent/sympathetic ones.
|
| Besides we still call these events "famines"? Interesting. I
| thought genocide would be the word, isn't it?
| Kudos wrote:
| > "How in India the Irish Transformed from Colonised to
| Colonisers"
|
| The Irish people mentioned appear to actually be part of the
| plantation class of British people who arrived into Ulster. I
| don't think the framing should be taken sincerely.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Famines, blockades & sanctions on basic goods were the WMD of
| the colonial age. All the latecomer nations raced to get out
| from under this boot and become empires - and became the same
| sort of monster or worser.
|
| Every meal is a gift from Harber & Bosch + the world order
| allowing international trade.
|
| A glimps can be had, when looking at countries going bankrupt
| who can not import these basics: Sri-Lanka
| https://www.wfp.org/news/food-crisis-sri-lanka-likely-worsen...
| or Pakistan.
| sushibowl wrote:
| > Every meal is a gift from Harber & Bosch + the world order
| allowing international trade.
|
| Let's not forget Norman Borlaug
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Great man, on whose shoulders many dwarfs have postured,
| about having brought peace by self-posturing and self-
| producing. We talked ourselves into having changed and
| being better than our predecessors, while eating their
| meals. We got drunk with ourselves on their grapes.
| blululu wrote:
| The Irish famine is roughly comparable to other famines of the
| 19th century in terms of its mortality rate (i.e. Mysore in the
| 1870s). A true comparison is difficult since there were not
| accurate census figures in most famine prone regions but the
| rate is comparable (Ireland is on the high side but it was
| still comparable within the margin of error). What is unique
| about the Irish famine is that modern day Ireland's population
| is still about 25% lower now than it was in the eve of the
| famine 180 years ago. I can't think of any other place that
| depopulated like that.
| ac2u wrote:
| Mortality rate doesn't paint a full picture of the effect on
| Ireland. Emigration had a huge effect on the depopulation
| too. (I don't think you deliberately left this out or
| anything just wanted to provide additional context).
|
| There were other crops in Ireland at the time that were
| exported under armed guard. A lot of the policy was driven by
| the fact that some British politicians saw the famine as a
| natural way to 'thin the herd' of the Irish populous.
|
| Of course, Houses of Parliament records show that there were
| British politicians that were morally aghast at this, but
| unfortunately they couldn't have enough of an impact.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The Irish famine is roughly comparable to other famines of
| the 19th century in terms of its mortality rate (i.e. Mysore
| in the 1870s)
|
| Yes, absolutely. But at least for me it was shocking to learn
| that Ireland, right next door to Britain, was suffering from
| similar famines to India.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| My understanding is that while Britain wasn't the direct
| cause of the famine itself (that is, they didn't
| specifically introduce a pathogen that would fuck up their
| major crop), they were largely responsible for explicitly
| refusing to help and making the situation worse.
|
| I'd be more shocked to find out that Britain in the 19th
| century made things _better_ in a region with famine.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > My understanding is that while Britain wasn't the
| direct cause of the famine itself (that is, they didn't
| specifically introduce a pathogen that would fuck up
| their major crop)
|
| There's a historical grey area here. India had
| experienced the conditions of their famine before, as you
| might expect, things happen more than once and so they
| had a social structure agreement between villages where
| ones who's crops were stricken and lost would have their
| food stocks supplemented with those of neighboring
| villages, and every village grew more than they needed to
| facilitate this. This worked excellently for probably
| thousands of years, until the Brits arrived and insisted
| taxes be collected, and they took crop yields in lieu of
| money the Indians didn't have.
|
| Either they were unaware because they assumed the brown
| people had no idea what they were doing, or they were
| aware and didn't give a shit because the people were
| brown, or some combo of the two, who's to say. But they
| did the very same to the Irish. Landlords were entitled
| to the yields of their land, and they took whatever it
| produced, which exasperated the already dire situation.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| I don't know, it's been a while since I've read on the
| subject, but I thought part of what drove the Irish to
| subsisting off of a monoculture was somewhat driven by
| necessity from the english consolidating lots of holdings
| to english lords and collaborators, tax policies shaping
| what little output they had left basically meant with the
| amount of arable farm land available to the Irish, it was
| only the surprisingly effective potato that could keep
| up.
|
| If that recollection is correct, then while the english
| might not have lit the metaphorical fire, they definitely
| gathered the kindling.
| slibhb wrote:
| It's so trendy to blame everything on the British.
| Downside of being the local (or global) power; everything
| is your fault. Probably they should have helped more, but
| so should have everyone.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| It'd be one thing if they just didn't help more, but they
| actively exacerbated it. There was food in Ireland, it
| just wasn't for the Irish. From the article:
|
| > The problem was not that the land was barren.... But
| almost none of this food was available for consumption by
| the people who produced it. It was intended primarily for
| export to the burgeoning industrial cities of England.
| ... In the mid-nineteenth century, Scanlan notes, fewer
| than four thousand people owned nearly eighty per cent of
| Irish land. Most of them were Protestant descendants of
| the English and Scottish settlers who benefitted from the
| wholesale expropriation of land from Catholic owners in
| the seventeenth century. Many lived part or all of the
| year in England. They rented their lands to farmers, a
| large majority of whom were Catholics. Scanlan points out
| that, whereas in England a tenant farmer might pay
| between a sixth and a quarter of the value of his crops
| in rent, in Ireland "rent often equalled the entire value
| of a farm's saleable produce."
| sgt101 wrote:
| So, when you say "they" you mean the Protestant Irish
| ruling class?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > In the mid-nineteenth century, Scanlan notes, fewer
| than four thousand people owned nearly eighty per cent of
| Irish land. Most of them were Protestant descendants of
| the English and Scottish settlers who benefitted from the
| wholesale expropriation of land from Catholic owners in
| the seventeenth century. Many lived part or all of the
| year in England.
|
| A snippet from the snippet you apparently neglected to
| read.
| tga_d wrote:
| I want to set aside for the moment the fact that the
| land-owning class was English (and not Irish) -speaking
| and usually lived in England, because while that's the
| easier point to make, there's a more fundamental issue
| here that I think is important, and would be true
| regardless of whether the ruling class was Irish or
| English: What was the mechanism that allowed the ruling
| class to do this? They clearly didn't have the support of
| the Irish people; absolutely everyone who starved would
| have obviously preferred a system where they could eat
| the food they were growing, so why didn't they just do
| that? Where was the monopoly on violence, which prevented
| these farmers from eating, based out of? The framing of
| "the British didn't cause it, they just didn't do
| anything to help" ignores the glaring fact that "not
| doing anything" would have meant "not enforcing their
| colonial power", when they most certainly _did_ actively
| maintain their control, and it was precisely that control
| that enabled this to both happen and to continue. Were
| they trying to kill the Irish? No, but if you could solve
| a problem like a famine by simply ceasing to enforce a
| certain set of laws, but you continue to do so anyway,
| you are very obviously still responsible. If a school
| bully threatens violence to make sure his lackeys can
| sell your lunch, and he says "The lackeys are in charge,
| you should have brought more if you wanted to keep some,"
| that doesn't mean he's not the one making you go hungry.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Downside of being the local (or global) power;
| everything is your fault.
|
| Yes, that's generally how power works.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > they were largely responsible for explicitly refusing
| to help and making the situation worse.
|
| Moreso than that, they exacerbated it. The British farmer
| barons refused to lower their demand on their crops to
| allow the Irish to consume them in lieu of their lost
| crops. In addition, they were the ones that pushed
| heavily for a monoculture on potatoes and a few oats over
| a diverse agricultural landscape; which allowed the
| famine to get so widespread.
|
| In other words, the Irish Famine wasn't any worse than
| most contemporary famines. However, it was a death toll
| for the Irish because _all_ of the grown food was shipped
| over the North Channel (or you were imprisoned /killed
| for refusing to cede it).
|
| There's a reason the (catholic) Irish hated the British
| so fervently and it was 100% due to liberal involuntary
| servitude punishments, Cromwellian policies, and the
| Black 47.
| Reasoning wrote:
| > In addition, they were the ones that pushed heavily for
| a monoculture on potatoes and a few oats over a diverse
| agricultural landscape; which allowed the famine to get
| so widespread.
|
| That doesn't mesh with what I've read. The English were
| generally derisive of the Irish's reliance on potatoes.
| But the Irish became reliant on potatoes because of the
| shrinking size of the average tenant farmer's allotment.
| Potatoes are labor intensive but produce a higher number
| of calories per area of land than others staple crops,
| especially on marginal land.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I gave the short version. Your outline of consequence and
| effect is correct.
|
| The British demanded specific oats and other crops, which
| required large allotments; this left the Irish farmers
| with a small portion of land to grow their own
| subsistence on, in turn leading to Potatoes as the only
| option (ending in a monoculture). When the potatoes
| started dying, the Irish had no access to the other crops
| (as they were grown for the tenant holders).
| concordDance wrote:
| > they were largely responsible for explicitly refusing
| to help and making the situation worse.
|
| Where does this come from?
|
| The article we are discussing mentions various bits of
| helping, as does the wikipedia page.
|
| It looks like a complex mix of various entities doing
| different things they think would help, some effective,
| some not.
| Balinares wrote:
| The pathogen affected all of Europe but only Ireland
| suffered a famine. So, blaming the pathogen on its own is
| not convincing. British policy did play a central role.
|
| As a matter of law, the Irish were not allowed to own
| land. They could only rent a limited amount from
| landowners -- 0.5 acres at most, if my memory serves. And
| the only culture with a sufficient yield per unit of
| surface that the Irish could both make rent and feed
| themselves was the potato.
|
| The rest of the land served to produce other crops for
| the benefit of British landowners. As a result, the
| island of Ireland was in fact producing enough food to
| feed its population through the Famine. It was just
| exported to Britain instead.
| fmajid wrote:
| So the British Empire was color-blind in its viciousness,
| after all?
| brink wrote:
| Sure, but I wouldn't naively believe that it's just the
| British that are/were like this.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| I don't believe they implied that at all.
| brink wrote:
| Well it's easy to assume, so it's best to clarify.
| fmajid wrote:
| I was being sarcastic about how even-handedly the British
| dispensed their cruelty, to white Irish or Boer just as
| readily as to brown Bengalis.
| roomey wrote:
| No, they had a lot of propaganda that showed the Irish as
| sub human, look at punch magazine for example
|
| The Irish were not "white" back then
| Gothmog69 wrote:
| Stupid and lazy analysis.... they were not English. The
| French and the Germans were also not English. Nothing to
| do with racism it was nationalism.
| rayiner wrote:
| Kind of. There is a quote from Lord Thomas Macaulay in
| 1835, regarding education in colonial India, that I've
| always found interesting:
|
| > I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our
| limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the
| people. We must at present do our best to form a class
| who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom
| we govern; a class of persons Indian in blood and colour,
| but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in
| intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the
| vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those
| dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western
| nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles
| for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the
| population.
|
| In 1835, it's quite progressive to posit that you can,
| through _education_ , create a class of Indians who are
| "English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in
| intellect." Arguably, it was too optimistically
| progressive--history showed that Oxbridge educations
| could go only so far in turning Indians into English.
| zem wrote:
| it's not even remotely progressive; it's the standard
| "white man's burden" horseshit that was prevalent at the
| time, positing that englishness was a higher state of
| civilisation that indians needed to be educated to
| attain.
| rayiner wrote:
| In 1835, England already had inter-city railways and most
| textile mills were using steam engines. If you were an
| Englishmen in 1835, you'd absolutely look out at India
| and see English civilization as being from a higher
| state. And, based on the empirical evidence before your
| eyes, it would be extremely progressive of you to posit
| that the difference between you and those Indians was
| something that could be bridged by education.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Its pretty close to the Holdomor in all attributes?
| jmyeet wrote:
| This should be your daily reminder that _every_ famine is
| political, meaning it is the result of one group of people
| willing to starve another group of people. In this case, the
| British starved the Irish.
|
| This whole thing was exacerbated by relatively few landholders
| and a system of rent-seeking landlords that only worked when
| there was a good potato crop so when that failed, the English
| remained fed, the land tenants could no longer produce enough to
| eat and the Irish starved.
|
| The world now produces an excess of food yet millions die of
| famine every year. We are quite deliberately letting people
| starve while food rots.
| markdown wrote:
| USAID has been gutted, and yes, it was political.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > every famine is political
|
| Well probably not those directly caused by natural disasters at
| least.
| lucideer wrote:
| All famines are caused by natural disasters. What makes them
| political is that people die when their ability to overcome
| natural disasters is restricted or removed.
|
| E.g. for the Irish Famine, the natural disaster was the
| outbreak of the phytophthora infestans disease affecting
| potato crops - the outbreak spread from North America across
| Europe, affecting Belgium, Netherlands, France & the UK. The
| cause of death in Ireland was the English exporting all food
| produced in Ireland that wasn't potatoes. An interestingly
| relevant historical record here is the Australian Convict
| Collection showing the number of Irish convicts sent to
| Australia & Tasmania for stealing food during the famine
| years.
| beezlewax wrote:
| Many of those convicts were children.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > All famines are caused by natural disasters.
|
| I don't think I'd consider war to be a form of natural
| disaster, or even related to one in the majority of cases.
| ameister14 wrote:
| >All famines are caused by natural disasters.
|
| The great leap forward would like a word with you.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| So far, if it's lasted long enough to be considered a famine,
| it's political. Yes, there's temporary and severe
| interruptions due to natural disasters, but if the political
| will is there, resources would be able to arrive anywhere in
| the world in the matter of days.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Modern famines, sure. But I think that's a relatively
| recent development. It also isn't guaranteed. A
| sufficiently large volcanic eruption could severely impact
| agriculture the world over.
| FredPret wrote:
| On the plus side, hunger is decreasing quickly.
|
| For the couple of remaining places with hunger, the causes are
| political as you say. But the rest of the world is in most
| cases not "letting it" happen. We're sending food and aid,
| sometimes at risk to the aid workers delivering the food.
| davidw wrote:
| > We're sending food and aid
|
| We (US) were, now we are cutting back. People will starve
| because of this.
| guiriduro wrote:
| Depends who "we" are in this context of course, but there's a
| middle eastern country whom the USA shower with military aid,
| that is committing a genocide and using starvation as a
| weapon, and the US is absolutely letting, even encouraging
| that to happen.
| yesco wrote:
| I've always seen it as a logistical problem. With the Irish
| famine the British had a sophisticated world spanning
| logistical system that deliberately de-prioritized the Irish,
| even during an active famine that was a consequence of their
| own design. It's hard not to point fingers here when the
| culprit is obvious.
|
| With modern famines it becomes more nuanced though imo. The
| logistical systems are not already in place like with Ireland,
| they are often built and sustained reactively, like a bridge
| during a storm. Some never "turn off" properly and undercut
| local farmers creating a stronger potential for future famines
| in the region. The solution isn't just allowing everyone to
| starve of course, but doing a better job at the follow-up work.
|
| I'm not saying this is some impossible problem, just that it's
| a delicate one despite best intentions. Food grown in abundance
| in one region of the world might be rotting by the time it
| arrives where it's needed. While we have systems through the UN
| and non profits for this I still think we could do a lot
| better.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| They used that logistics system to export most of the food
| that Ireland produced as they were growing more food than
| they needed, not even counting potatoes. But the English
| would pay more, so another great free market experiment.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The world produces excess of food but the distribution costs
| are very high for example. Would you go into debt sending food
| to another country or are you relying on the government to bear
| the burden of that through taxes? There's a secondary factor
| which is that we've learned through efforts in the 80s that
| charity breeds dependence and the food aid drives often had a
| paradoxical effect of preventing those countries from building
| up their own local farm base which is more harmful long term
| for everyone involved. I don't think it's quite clear and dry
| as you paint it and that every famine is the result of one
| group intentionally trying to starve another.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Well, that's the thing, right? If we were thinking about
| humanity as a global populace, the second (bear the burden of
| that through taxes) would be the obvious answer, for
| precisely the same reason Americans in Florida pay taxes into
| a FEMA system to address wildfires in California, even if
| they never visit California. Besides ideological reasons,
| there's also the practical that that same FEMA is going to
| help Florida the next time it's hurricane season.
|
| The concern about suppressing local agriculture is relevant
| (although I do wonder if one can make the same argument
| regarding FEMA and "suppressing local blue-tarp
| manufacturing"). But if food rots while people starve, the
| taxes probably aren't high enough. We've recognized (in the
| US, at least) the role of government in distribution and
| management of distribution policy since at least the Great
| Depression.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| It's pretty clear in this case - instead of sending the food
| _out_ of Ireland then keep it there.
|
| Like excuse me what the fuck is that word salad?
| skyyler wrote:
| >we've learned through efforts in the 80s that charity breeds
| dependence
|
| Is this the sort of thinking that led to the famine walls
| being built?
|
| Why do people think this?
| stefan_ wrote:
| Which is why most non-failed countries try to self-sustain a
| large amount of their food requirements and agriculture is
| subsidized and protected. But it also means _food export_ isn
| 't a big business.
| lucideer wrote:
| Which countries are these?
| watwut wrote:
| Pretty much all western ones.
| lucideer wrote:
| I'm not aware of any Western countries that don't have a
| significant dependency on imported food (and many with a
| large food export)
| jmyeet wrote:
| Let's talk about the way in which the West uses the IMF and
| World Bank to create economic crises and famine.
| Specifically, let's talk about Somalia. The playbook is
| basically this:
|
| 1. A country borrows money for some project. There's often
| corruption involved here (as the leaders siphon off work to
| make themselves rich);
|
| 2. The IMF imposes conditions on those loans. These includes
| financializing the food supply. Typically, what might've been
| a self-sufficient agricultural sector tends to get banned
| from producing food for themselves. Instead they have to
| produce export crops and buy food from, surprise surprise,
| Western nations. This tends to lead to a drop in food prices
| that means farmers can no longer support themselves. They
| then often become destitute and move to cities to find work;
|
| 3. If the loan is for an infrastructure project, it's usually
| Western companies doing it so the US is funding the IMF to
| give money to Western companies, basically;
|
| 4. As inevitably happens, the currency ends up tanking. The
| foreign food that decimated local production is now much more
| expensive in local terms. The government's ability to service
| the debt also gets savaged;
|
| 5. The IMF steps in with "structural programs" (including
| those like the financialization of agriculture) to take money
| out of the government to service IMF debt, which has similar
| devastating effects "austerity" measures do in Western
| countries;
|
| 6. The country is now trapped in debt, so much so that some
| call this "debt colonialism".
|
| This has happened to Haiti and other countries.
|
| The point is that Western interference most often comes with
| destroying agricultural self-sufficiency, creating famine.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| Like the Holodomor, like the Bengal famine, this was a genocide.
| trhway wrote:
| to me that is the gist. Genocide by the system without the people
| in the system intending it to happen (with those people even
| trying to mitigate its damage) It has been happening again and
| again - a system follows orthodoxy/ideology despite its subjects
| mass dying as a result, and we still don't have a machinery in
| place which should serve as emergency brakes on any system once
| that system, for whatever, and frequently even good sounding
| reasons at that, starts to cause such pain and suffering and
| deaths:
|
| >Militant Irish nationalism would follow Jane Wilde in seeing the
| famine as mass murder and thus as what would later be categorized
| as a genocide. Under pressure from Irish Americans, this even
| became an official doctrine in New York, where a state law signed
| in 1996 by then governor George Pataki required schools to
| portray the famine "as a human rights violation akin to genocide,
| slavery and the Holocaust."
|
| >Pataki announced that "history teaches us the Great Irish Hunger
| was not the result of a massive failure of the Irish potato crop
| but rather was the result of a deliberate campaign by the British
| to deny the Irish people the food they needed to survive." But
| this is not what history teaches us. A much more accurate
| conclusion is the one drawn by the Irish historian Peter Gray,
| who wrote that there was "not a policy of deliberate genocide" on
| the part of the British. Instead, Gray argued, the great failure
| of the British government was ideological--"a dogmatic refusal to
| recognise that measures intended to 'encourage industry, [and] to
| do battle with sloth' . . . were based on false premises." The
| British did not cause the potatoes to rot in the ground. They did
| launch, by the standards of the mid-nineteenth century, very
| large-scale efforts to keep people alive, importing grain from
| America, setting up soup kitchens, and establishing programs of
| public works to employ those who were starving. But they were
| blinded by prejudice, ignorance, and a fanatical devotion to two
| orthodoxies that are very much alive in our own time: their
| belief that poverty arises from the moral failings of the poor
| and their faith in the so-called free market. The famine was so
| devastating because, while the mold was rotting the potatoes,
| mainstream British opinion was infected with a cognitive blight.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| They literally fired cannons from warships at people protesting
| the exportation of food when they are starving to death.
| genewitch wrote:
| Can't have them stealing someone else's profits...
| trhway wrote:
| I don't think the officers ordering to fire cannons
| explicitly wanted those people to starve. I'd suspect they
| were enforcing the laws of public order and trade. That is
| the systemic issue - the laws taking precedence over mass
| starving. And we still don't have a good solution to such
| issues - just look at the recent court decision and city
| actions on homeless even here in Silicon Valley, one of the
| most richest place. And 700M people faced hunger in 2023.
| Almost 10%. Why we can't help them? I see the same systemic
| issue as the machinery of the current economic order (really
| powerful, no doubt, and the best we could so far come up with
| as a civilization) still fails here.
| sorokod wrote:
| The arguments stemming from the rule of law always remind
| of this:
|
| _The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust
| fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust hath the
| just's umbrella._
| er4hn wrote:
| This is very clever and an interestingly adversarial (the
| unjust steal from the just) take on the quote that came
| to my mind: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids
| rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the
| streets, and to steal their bread."
| sorokod wrote:
| They complement each other beautifully.
| Chance-Device wrote:
| > I don't think the officers ordering to fire cannons
| explicitly wanted those people to starve.
|
| While I take your broader point about it being a system
| level issue - when you're firing cannon at starving people
| so you can continue to export their food, you're complicit,
| laws be damned.
| Qwertious wrote:
| The guards at Auschwitz were perpetually drunk, because
| they couldn't stand what they were doing. Were they
| complicit in the holocaust? YES!
| trhway wrote:
| That is the point - after countless deaths we produced
| the principle of "carrying out a criminal order is a
| crime", yet we still see the people committing atrocities
| and going unpunished because they were just carrying out
| the orders. And that makes me think that we're still
| missing something important.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well the folks giving the orders obviously have mixed
| feelings about the whole idea that their orders could be
| criminal.
| briankelly wrote:
| Systems don't emerge from the aether they are composed of
| by people. In this case the people were absolute bastards.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I didn't have a Hacker News thread where George Pataki is
| held up as some fenian and British sailors shelling a
| starving mob are misunderstood, well-intentioned chaps on
| my bingo card.
|
| Yet here we are. Should you ever find yourself up against
| the wall during the revolution, take solace that the boys
| don't take it personally at all.
| Teever wrote:
| It's not their fault. They think it's normal to turn
| every conversation into one about the homeless in
| California pooping on the streets.
|
| If anything it's our fault for letting them turn every
| conversation into this one.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| Really? "Just following orders"? Did that work in
| Nuremberg?
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > I don't think the officers ordering to fire cannons
| explicitly wanted those people to starve.
|
| Yeah they wanted them to explode.
| elliotto wrote:
| I think performing apologetics for a system that resulted in
| the genocide of a people is a difficult position to hold. At
| some point you need to hold the people who perpetuate the
| system accountable for the devastation it causes. This is a
| difficult thing to do on a SV based startup forum. I love
| drones!
| trhway wrote:
| It isn't apologetic. It is a statement of "we're still not
| able to fix/avoid it or similar to it" almost 200 years
| later.
|
| > At some point you need to hold the people who perpetuate
| the system accountable for the devastation it causes.
|
| Naturally, that beyond the debate. Unfortunately we still
| fail to effectively unwind the system behavior back to
| responsible people (and there is whole theory on whether in
| general it is possible at all and to what extent)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| > the British government was ideological--"a dogmatic refusal
| to recognize that measures intended to 'encourage industry,
| [and] to do battle with sloth' . . . were based on false
| premises."
|
| I'm sure that high minded distinction would be appreciated by
| the barely self-sufficient tenant farmer, banished to the west
| when his ancestors were ethnically cleansed a few generations
| past, when he was evicted and left to starve.
|
| This wasn't capitalism any more than the depredations in India
| or Africa. It was a colonial state, which existed to extract
| considerable wealth to build and support a vast empire.
| rixed wrote:
| Apparently we don't like this idea that a "system" can cause a
| genocide. Instead, we rather want to believe that only people
| with bad intentions are doing bad things, and that if something
| dramatic happen it must be because some people wanted it that
| way, despite the enormous amount of evidence showing that our
| individual volition adds almost no weigh in the course of
| history.
|
| I suppose that this fallacy comes partly from the fear that
| people guilty of criminal negligence or hateful prejudice would
| escape punishment. Like that person who mentioned Nuremberg in
| his response. Well, no of course, that many circumstances are
| necessary for a genocide to happen beside just the will of the
| criminals, do not free anyone participating in it from the
| responsibilities of their _actions_ (or lack thereof).
|
| But I also suspect this is coming from a deeper, darker
| psychological bias. This belief that there are "villains"
| behind every crime may just be the necessary belief to justify
| our own wrong behavior. We do not intend to cause any harm to
| anyone, yet we let a lot of unjust things happen every day. We
| walk past some people in need for assistance every day, but we
| can't help everyone right?, on our way to work in some IT
| corporation that's also helping build bombs or military IA
| that's going to be used in yet another unfair war but a good
| defense industry is necessary right? So in order for this
| thought to work as justification, we need to believe that, as
| long as we do not _intend_ to cause harm, then we are in the
| green.
|
| The machinery we need to prevent the system we all play a small
| part into from causing such crimes of historical scale is that
| we should acknowledge and learn about the system. That's not
| enough to learn history ; in an advanced democratic society we
| would learn some sociology from middle school.
| m348e912 wrote:
| In 1847, one of the bleakest years of the Irish famine, Khaleefah
| Abdul-Majid I, Sultan of an Ottoman Empire offered PS10,000
| (which was quite a sum at the time) to help alleviate the
| suffering of the Irish people.
|
| Queen Victoria, upon learning of this, requested that he reduce
| his donation to a more modest PS1,000, so as not to embarrass her
| own relatively meagre offering of PS2,000. Reluctantly, the
| Sultan agreed, but bolstered his contribution by secretly sending
| five ships loaded with food.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Britain-refuse-Ottomans-aid-to...
|
| My conclusion is that the famine was as much political as it was
| environmental. (as they often are)
| genewitch wrote:
| I wrote a song called greenocide where my Irish friend
| explained this in a particularly straightforward way.
|
| The English already owned all the land so they figured let the
| Irish die out. In essence.
| mritun wrote:
| That's pretty much what the British did in Bengal.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Is there an academic source available for that?
| lolinder wrote:
| Wikipedia says that the provenance is... sketchy, to say the
| least:
|
| > The claim that he had wanted to give PS10,000 first appears
| in Taylor & Mackay's Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel
| (1851), but the book is not referenced and no source is
| given. A second source, dating to 1894, is more explicit: the
| Irish nationalist William J. O'Neill Daunt claimed to have
| heard from the son of the sultan's personal physician that he
| "had intended to give PS10,000 to the famine-stricken Irish,
| but was deterred by the English ambassador, Lord Cowley, as
| Her Majesty, who had only subscribed PS1000, would have been
| annoyed had a foreign sovereign given a larger sum..."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relat.
| ..
| s_dev wrote:
| https://www.mfa.gov.tr/relations-between-turkiye-and-
| ireland...
|
| The 1,000 Pound claim at least can be sourced from this
| website.
|
| It very much was policy that killed the Irish and not the
| lack of food. Ireland exported enough food to feed the
| country four times over -- during the Famine.
| lolinder wrote:
| This source notably does not make the claim that the amount
| was lowered in response to a request from Queen Victoria,
| which is the actually damning claim.
| thfuran wrote:
| That entire claim is unnecessary for the given
| conclusion, which is substantiated by other evidence.
| lolinder wrote:
| Agreed. So there's no need to perpetuate claims whose
| provenance is "someone 40 years later claimed to have
| heard this from the sultan's physician's son" (see my
| reply to GP). We have plenty else to use.
| kortilla wrote:
| Then there is no reason to include that part. It changes
| the entire tone of the British govt's response.
| smcin wrote:
| Are we 100% in agreement that Queen Victoria's donation
| in 1848 was inadequate to prevent 1 million people from
| starving to death, and that Britain had direct
| responsibility for the gross inequality in land ownership
| that constituted Ireland in the 1840s, whereas the
| Ottoman Sultans, or Calcutta (or the Choctaw Nation) had
| zero responsibility?
|
| I mean we could look at British spending (govt and crown)
| in the period 1845-52. Or note that Queen Victoria was
| one of the wealthiest women in the world, and Parliament
| granted her an annuity of PS385,000 per year.
| kortilla wrote:
| Yes, but the notion that a donation 10x larger was
| declined for optics is so fundamentally different from
| those claims I can't even believe that there is any
| confusion here about how ridiculous including that is.
| smcin wrote:
| Why isn't "How did Queen Victoria spend her yearly
| PS385,000 in 1845, and 1846, and 1847, and 1848"
| infinitely more relevant to deciding whether her
| documented lack of meaningful intervention should be
| considered embarrassing or not? I don't accept your
| framing at all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria#Marriage_and
| _pu...
|
| (Didn't know there were attempts to assassinate her in
| 1840, 1842, 1849 and 1850. Mostly by English people,
| btw.)
| lolinder wrote:
| No one is questioning that all of this is relevant to the
| famine. All we're saying is that this specific story
| quoted by OP is most likely fictitious, so we're better
| off focusing on all of the other evidence and facts (such
| as the facts that you're bringing up).
|
| I honestly have no clue what you're trying to argue here:
| No one is actually arguing with any of your points, nor
| did either of us give any indication that we _would_
| disagree with them in comments before you came. What you
| 're bringing up is essentially a non-sequitur to what
| this subthread is actually about.
| smcin wrote:
| Conversely, I'm saying that disputing the anecdote about
| allegedly pressuring the Sultan to reduce his donation is
| an unnecessary sidebar to reaching the inescapable
| conclusion that the Crown's response was embarrassing and
| dwarfed by other donations (e.g. Calcutta).
|
| (We have multiple threads on this, if you want to respond
| let's pick one to make primary.)
| lolinder wrote:
| And as I've said, we agree, so I see no need to pick a
| thread to reply.
| smcin wrote:
| You seriously don't think that Calcutta donating more
| (PS14,000) in 1846 and two years earlier than Queen
| Victoria (1848) isn't a damning fact? (and the Calcutta
| donation is a verified fact. So no need to dispute the
| anecdote about the Sultan's donation.)
| lolinder wrote:
| As I mentioned in my response to your other comment, the
| controversial part of the anecdote is the claim that
| Victoria actually intercepted sent aid and convinced
| someone through diplomatic pressure to lower their
| intended donation.
|
| OP does not bring up any additional donations besides the
| purported attempted donation from the sultan, so I'm not
| sure why you're bringing that up as some kind of
| controversial thing: You're literally the first person to
| mention it here.
|
| As I've said in my other comments, there's plenty of
| evidence that the British government both did far less
| than they should have to help with the famine and there's
| also evidence that they willfully exacerbated it. I fully
| accept and appreciate that. I have no clue why you're
| waving that evidence at me as some kind of gotcha when
| the only thing I'm disputing is this single specific
| story.
| smcin wrote:
| I specifically brought up the other donations to show
| that the Crown's response was inadequate, and the
| Calcutta donation in 1846 was both earlier and larger,
| this not only before Queen Victoria had not yet donated
| but not yet started (in 1847) encouraging Protestant
| landowners to fundraise in lieu of donating herself...
|
| So under all circumstances her behavior wasn't
| impressive. Ok? I'm suggesting that disputing the
| anecdote about allegedly pressuring the Sultan to reduce
| his donation is an unnecessary sidebar to reaching the
| same conclusion.
| FjordWarden wrote:
| Something even more remarkable, the Indians that where only a
| few years ago forcibly relocated and experienced their own
| starvations during the events of the Trail of Teers, collected
| about 700$ in donations and send it as aid to the starving
| Irish in a grand gesture of empathy amongst oppressed people.
| lolinder wrote:
| I agree with your conclusion, but this story is very badly
| sourced and really should not be used [0]. We only have two
| sources from the 1800s that claim it: one is contemporary but
| provides no attribution and we have no reason to believe they
| had firsthand knowledge. The other is 40 years later and is
| attributed to a conversation with the son of the sultan's
| personal physician. Yeah.
|
| With such bad evidence for _such_ an incendiary claim, I think
| we 're better off sticking with the enormous amount of other
| evidence that policy caused the famine and letting this
| particular story die.
|
| (What is true and backed up by evidence is that the sultan sent
| PS1k. The rest has no reliable source.)
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relat...
| smcin wrote:
| The Ottoman Sultan's donation (or the US$170/PS111 famously
| donated by a group of Native American Choctaw Nation, which
| is verified historical fact [0][1][2], or the PS14,000
| donated by Calcutta in 1846 [0], which is > Queen Victoria's
| subsequent 1848 donation) have nothing to do with arguing
| that British policy caused the famine.
|
| They're (verified) anecdotes showing the British Crown was
| embarrassed that their own charitable donations to a famine
| that killed 1 in 8 Irish people, were not that much and could
| be rivaled or outdonated (Calcutta) by private groups, even
| groups like the Choctaw who had just survived the Trail of
| Tears forced displacement/genocide 16 years before. (This is
| commemorated today by sculptures in Midleton, County Cork,
| Ireland "Kindred Spirits" and a companion sculpture in
| Tuskahoma, OK "Choctaw Ireland Monument"). By implication the
| Crown wasn't at all exercised about changing the setup in
| Ireland where most of the population were tenant farmers on
| the 90% of the land was foreign-owned. The landlords made a
| lot of money on exporting grain (esp. during the Napoleonic
| Wars until the price crashed). The tenants had essentially
| zero political representation in Westminster.
|
| Nearly two centuries later, Ireland's population (all-island,
| Republic + NI) has _still_ not recovered to the pre-Famine
| peak (1841, 8.175m est.) [3]. Predicted to finally happen
| sometime in the 2050s.
|
| Curious if anyone has documented the massive imbalance in
| ownership in land in pre-Famine Ireland and compared it to
| other historical situations (Russia, colonial Americas,
| Africa, India, 1930s Ukraine) and their eventual outcomes.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Charity
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_Nation_of_Oklahoma
| #For...
|
| [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40304645
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_population_of_I
| rela...
| lolinder wrote:
| > They're (verified) anecdotes showing the British Crown
| was embarrassed
|
| Again, to be clear, this anecdote is not verified. It is
| extremely poorly sourced, not much more than an urban
| legend. The _only_ attribution for the story dating to the
| 19th century is a claim that someone heard it from the
| sultan 's physician's son, and that claim is put forward
| more than 40 years after the events.
|
| The existence of donations, verified or otherwise, does not
| independently show that the British government attempted to
| prevent aid from reaching Ireland because they were
| embarrassed about how little they had contributed. That is
| the claim that OP puts forward with their story, that is
| the claim that I'm responding to. I'm not questioning that
| others did send donations or that some of those donations
| exceeded those put forward by the British government.
|
| All of that is true, but it being true does not justify
| perpetuating unsubstantiated stories that happen to support
| the same conclusion. As you have amply demonstrated,
| there's enough good evidence in favor of the conclusion
| that we don't need to rely on bad evidence.
| smcin wrote:
| > > They're (verified) anecdotes showing the British
| Crown was embarrassed
|
| "They" in my sentence clearly refers to "(or the Choctaw
| US$170/PS111"... or Calcutta 1846 PS14,000 donations" -
| not the Ottoman Sultan's generous donation or the
| anecdote about being pressured by the Crown to reduce it.
|
| > The existence of donations, verified or otherwise, does
| not independently show that the British government
| attempted to prevent aid from reaching Ireland because
| they were embarrassed about how little they had
| contributed. That is the claim that OP puts forward with
| their story, that is to claim that I'm responding to.
|
| But it's also claimed the Sultan's ships had to sail
| secretly, and north of Dublin to Drogheda, instead of
| simply unloading in Dublin, which would be faster and
| infinitely more logical (because the famine areas were in
| the west/southwest/south, not the northeast). So no, that
| would be a second piece of corroboration that he had
| needed to make the donation secretly (Why? Unless he had
| a fetish for being the Bruce Wayne of the 1840s. It makes
| no sense unless there was a reason.)
|
| If I ever get a time machine I guess I'm dialing it to
| Sultan Abdulmecid's and Queen Victoria's residences in
| 1847 to plant listening devices to settle this for once
| and all. :)
|
| But either way, even if the Ottomans never existed, the
| British Crown response was embarrassing, everything else
| is a sidebar. This all feels like it needs an AI
| treatment starring Joan Sims as Queen Victoria in one of
| the British "Carry On" comedies, and Syd James as the
| Sultan, and Paul Whitehouse ("Ralph and Ted") as token
| Irish tenant farmer. "Carry On Famine Relief".
| lolinder wrote:
| > "They" in my sentence clearly refers to "(or the
| Choctaw US$170/PS111"... or Calcutta 1846 PS14,000
| donations" - not the Ottoman Sultan's generous donation
| or the anecdote about being pressured by the Crown to
| reduce it.
|
| Oh, I was interpreting your comment as relevant to mine
| rather than completely tangential. My mistake, as you
| were.
| smcin wrote:
| My comment is directly responsive to yours (and you now
| have triplicate threads where you're repeatedly
| challenging why): under all circumstances the Crown's
| response was inadequate, and disputing the anecdote about
| the Crown allegedly pressuring the Sultan to reduce his
| donation is an unnecessary sidebar to reaching that exact
| conclusion.
|
| Further I showed you an independent piece of
| corroboration about whether the Sultan had to donate in
| secret, so it's absolutely not single-sourced to "one
| anecdote forty lears later by the Sultan's son."
|
| Here's _more_ corroboration by Drogheda people (and
| former President McAleese) that the Ottoman famine relief
| ships did in fact land in Drogheda (and inexplicably, not
| Dublin): https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/ireland-
| remembers-how-19th-c... Since there is zero reason to
| waste time sailing urgently-needed food aid ships north
| past Dublin to a smaller port (Drogheda) from which it
| would take longer to distribute, that raises the obvious
| question why they did that. Go look at any map of Ireland
| to verify that, instead of mocking that.
| xinuc wrote:
| As they say, you can not make a blind man see
| xinuc wrote:
| Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland: The Kindness of
| Strangers. By Christine Kinealy
|
| https://books.google.co.id/books?id=GnksAQAAQBAJ&lpg=PR4&hl=.
| ..
|
| > He had originally offered PS10,000 to the British Relief
| Association and some ships laden with provisions, but had
| been advised by British diplomats that British Royal protocol
| meant that nobody should contribute more than the Queen. It
| was suggested that he gave half the sum contributed by
| Victoria.
| lolinder wrote:
| That was published in 2013. Do you have a physical copy
| that would allow you to see footnote 64 and see where this
| author got the story?
|
| (The Google book has a lot of footnote 64s at the bottom,
| but it's impossible to see which corresponds to which
| chapter or to know if the 64 we're looking for is even
| there at all.)
| westonmyers wrote:
| Chapter 5-64: The Albion. A Journal of News, Politics and
| Literature, 21 July 1849.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| When political pride outweighs human lives, you know something
| is deeply broken. Definitely reinforces the idea that famines
| are rarely just about food shortages
| lemoncucumber wrote:
| "Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the
| Third World" is a great book by Mike Davis about similar famines
| in the late 19th century caused by colonial powers putting
| profits and the sanctity of markets above human lives during
| periods when forces in the natural world impacted food production
| (climate swings in this case).
| morkalork wrote:
| Eerie.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| One of the most interesting and informative books I've ever
| read. Depressing as fuck though.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Such an amazing writer and yet I never want to read his work
| because... yeah.
|
| We lost a real giant.
| senderista wrote:
| "There is only one thing about the Irish famine that now seems
| truly anachronistic--millions of refugees were saved because
| other countries took them in. That, at least, would not happen
| now."
| soperj wrote:
| Many countries took in a lot of refugees from both Ukraine and
| Syria. Syria used to take in refugees from all over the middle
| east.
|
| Canada alone approved over a million applications from Ukraine,
| numbers that have actually come are more in the 300,000 range.
| metabagel wrote:
| But, would that happen today? Trump has stated the intention
| to deport Ukrainian refugees.
| poncho_romero wrote:
| Trump is not president in Canada (or Germany -- see Syrian
| refugees). I hope this helps!
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| There is a whole world outside of the USA.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| The present could never be the past. Having said that, never in
| History there has been so much migration.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| There has been large scale migration throughout recorded
| history. Just look at the endless problems the Romans had
| with the migration of groups such as the Goths and the
| Vandals, who were themselves displaced by the Huns.
| rayiner wrote:
| There's no famines going on anywhere in Latin America. Yet we
| had more immigrants to the U.S. last year than during the
| entire ten year period from Ireland during the great famine.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You might wonder why the state of affairs in Latin America
| drives people to hard lives in the US.
|
| A certain large country to the north had a policy of
| destabilizing economic, covert action and direct military
| action in place to save these nations from the horrors of
| socialism.
|
| When you build empire, there's always a pull of your subjects
| to the center.
| hollerith wrote:
| Preventing Latin American countries from forming alliances
| with the USSR does not constitute turning Latin American
| into imperial possessions: they are different levels of
| influence or control.
| igleria wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
|
| Let's not argue semantics here: The fact that latin
| american countries did not turn into Puerto Rico does not
| mean the imperialist action was not executed.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| American imperialism moved past that. Our tools are
| economics and banking. Places like Central America and
| Indonesia were all about economics. Guatemala has
| historically been dominated by fruit companies.
|
| Sometimes it spills over. The domination of Chile
| transitioned from pulling the levers of banking and
| capital access to a full on CIA sponsored coup, followed
| by the Pinochet experience. NAFTA was great for the top-
| line numbers for the US and Canada, but nuked the Mexican
| agricultural economy. (Repeating what we did within the
| US)
|
| Critical thinking is a good thing. When you read about
| people packing up their family and meager belongings to
| walk through hostile Mexico, to then pay a gangster to
| smuggle you across the Sonora, so you can work some
| menial labor job in the US... the question "why?" should
| come to mind.
| wcarss wrote:
| ...do you mean per capita? because all of latin america has
| north of 600 million people, versus (at the time of the
| famine) ireland's ~7 million, so "more" would in strict terms
| be very unsurprising. Like it would basically be a given that
| a whole continent contributes far more immigrants than a
| small country.
|
| Google's automated result on "irish immigration to america
| during the potato famine" suggests ~1.5 million Irish folks
| resettled in America during the famine, though the first
| source I checked[1] claimed ~2M. No automated google result
| came back for "total latin american immigration to america
| 2015-2025", but this article[2] claims that the immigrant
| latin american population was ~2.73M in 2010 and ~3.91M in
| 2020, an increase of 1.2M people over 12 years. That feels
| like it could be low, so a second check over on Wikipedia[3]
| claims that total immigration from "the americas", including
| Canada, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc., totaled ~4.22 M
| from 2012-2022, the most recently included year. Technically
| that is more in absolute numbers, if you also stretch the
| definition of Latin America, I guess?
|
| So, what the heck are you talking about? Can you back those
| claims up?
|
| 1 - https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-
| Research/Folklife-Co...
|
| 2 - https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/south-american-
| immig...
|
| 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethni
| c_d...
| umachin wrote:
| The economist Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize partially
| for his research on famines and the conclusion that most are
| social and political. He was a young child during the Bengal
| famine (famously not due a food shortage) and witnessed it up
| close.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Of course food shortage was _a_ factor;
|
| > _Rice yield per acre had been stagnant since the beginning of
| the twentieth century;[25] coupled with a rising population,
| this created pressures that were a leading factor in the
| famine_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
|
| Add to that transport impact (floods, war), the drop in imports
| from Burma and other factors.
| creddit wrote:
| FWIW, your quote doesn't support a food shortage being a
| cause since it says nothing about the relative change of
| total planted acreage.
| senderista wrote:
| I've always found this song about the Great Famine to be moving:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5onHLICxgc
| frereubu wrote:
| This is another great one by Sinead O'Connor:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZIB6MslCAo OK,
| I want to talk about Ireland Specifically I want to talk
| about the "famine" About the fact that there never really
| was one There was no "famine" See, Irish people
| were only allowed to eat potatoes All of the other food,
| meat, fish, vegetables Were shipped out of the country
| under armed guard To England while the Irish people
| starved
| beezlewax wrote:
| The man in charge of the British response to the great hunger was
| Charles Trevelyan. He famously said of the Irish "[The Famine] is
| a punishment from God for an idle, ungrateful, and rebellious
| country; an indolent and un-self-reliant people. The Irish are
| suffering from an affliction of God's providence."
|
| The British actively exported grains meats and other food leaving
| the local population to starve.
|
| It was a famine only because they made it one.
| favorited wrote:
| He also famously suggested that the Irish should simply grow
| corn, if there was a potato blight. As if, in the middle of a
| famine, farmers can simply pivot to another crop that they've
| never grown before.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think Ireland grows corn _today_. The wiki page for
| Irish agriculture doesn't even mention it, which I interpret
| as "not enough grown to be noteworthy".
| biorach wrote:
| We grow maize, which is what we call corn, here. In
| significant quantities, using modern agricultural methods.
| Even with that the climate is not totally suitable and it
| is mostly used for animal feed.
|
| I very much doubt it would have been possible to grow
| sustainable amounts of maize up until recent decades
| hinkley wrote:
| And unless something changes with corn strains and
| agriculture, possibly not again in another four or five.
| It's a very thirsty boy. Both in water and nitrogen.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| It wasn't a famine - it was a genocide
| fergal_reid wrote:
| As an Irish person when I saw the article title, I was
| immediately sceptical.
|
| I personally believe most articles about the famine shy away from
| the horror of it, and also from a frank discussion.
|
| Going to give some subjective opinion here: people generally
| downplay the role of the British government and ruling class in
| it.
|
| Why? One personal theory - growing up in the 80s in Ireland there
| was a lot of violence in the north. (Most) Irish people who were
| educated or middle class were worried about basically their kids
| joining the IRA, and so kind of downplayed the historical beef
| with the British. That's come through in the culture.
|
| There's also kind of a fight over the historical narrative with
| the British, maybe including the history establishment, who yes
| care a lot about historical accuracy, but, also, very
| subjectively, see the world through a different lens, and often
| come up through British institutions that view the British empire
| positively.
|
| It's often easier to say the famine was the blight, rather than
| political. (They do teach the political angle in schools in
| Ireland; but I think it's fair to say it's contested or
| downplayed in the popular understanding, especially in Britain.)
|
| However that article is written by a famous Irish journalist and
| doesn't shy away from going beyond that.
|
| Perhaps a note of caution - even by Irish standards he'd be left
| leaning, so would be very politically left by American standards;
| he's maybe prone to emphasize the angle that the root cause was
| lassiez-faire economic and political policies. (I'm not saying it
| wasn't.)
|
| I personally would emphasize more the fact that the government
| did not care much about the Irish people specifically. The Irish
| were looked down on as a people; and also viewed as troublesome
| in the empire.
|
| Some government folks did sympathize, of course, and did try to
| help.
|
| But I personally do not think the famine would have happened in
| England, no matter how lassiez-faire the economic policies of the
| government. A major dimension must be a lack of care for the
| Irish people, over whom they were governing; and there are
| instances of people in power being glad to see the Irish being
| brought low:
|
| "Public works projects achieved little, while Sir Charles
| Trevelyan, who was in charge of the relief effort, limited
| government aid on the basis of laissez-faire principles and an
| evangelical belief that "the judgement of God sent the calamity
| to teach the Irish a lesson"." per the UK parliament website!
|
| It's not an easy thing to come to terms with even today. I
| recently recorded a video talking about how fast the build out of
| rail infrastructure was, in the UK, as an analogy for how fast
| the AI infra build out could be; and I got a little quesy
| realizing that during the Irish potato famine the UK was spending
| double digit GDP percent on rail build out. Far sighted, yes, and
| powering the industrial revolution, but wow, doing that while
| mass exporting food from the starving country next door, yikes.
| tehjoker wrote:
| They also did that to Bengal in the famine there much later.
| It's a pattern with the Brits.
| mandevil wrote:
| Crop failures are natural disasters. Famine's are political
| disasters.
|
| The Indian economist Amartya Sen wrote a book in 1999,
| _Development as Freedom_ which argues, relatively convincingly,
| that famine's don't happen in functioning democracies among
| their own citizens. The book makes the observation that famines
| happened regularly in British colonial India, every few
| decades, but basically stopped in democratic, self-governing
| India. (1) And, as far back as the Romans, Egyptians, and
| Chinese many of the stories told about what good governance
| looked like involved beating famines- either because they were
| able to organize shipments of food from unaffected areas or
| because they stored up enough grain in the good times to
| survive the crop failures.
|
| It is the general consensus among people who study this sort of
| thing that, as the United Nations OHCHR wrote in 2023, "Hunger
| and famine did not arise because there was not enough food to
| go around; they were caused by political failures, meaning that
| hunger and famine could only be addressed through political
| action." (2) Yes, a particular crop failure can be a natural
| disaster, but a famine happening requires a political failure
| on top of that (and the research does seem to indicate
| causation: the political failure is not caused by the crop
| failure but was pre-existing, and caused the crop failure to
| turn into a famine).
|
| So, basically, yeah, the general consensus of people who study
| famines today and in the past is that the British government
| made choices that turned a crop failure into a famine. The same
| with the Great Famine of India, the Bengal Famine, the Soviets
| and the Holdomor, etc.
|
| 1: Generally, my understanding is that people who look at this
| think that Sen was basically correct. There might be a couple
| of occasions where a democracy failed to govern and suffered a
| famine, but, the way that democracies distribute power makes it
| far more unusual for them to fail so catastrophically that they
| can't deliver food to an area experiencing crop failure. This
| is one of the reasons that democracies are better than
| authoritarian governments!
|
| 2: https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/03/conflict-and-
| violence-...
| esperent wrote:
| Also Irish person here. My primary school was 100m from one of
| the old workhouses, and I was taught from maybe age 7 what
| happened there. All the old stone walls in the nearby fields
| were built by forced famine labor. There's abandoned roads to
| nowhere (famine roads) all around, likewise built by forced
| labor.
|
| I think it was taught quite well, and people around me while I
| was growing up didn't downplay it. It's still a significant
| event in the Irish psyche, especially in the parts of the
| country most deeply effected at the time.
|
| The things it's, though, it's a fairly distant historical event
| at this stage, and I don't think it's healthy or helpful to the
| Irish collective psyche to hold on to it as strongly as we
| still do - not just the famine but all aspects our being "the
| oppressed". We're no longer oppressed, we're a privileged and
| filthy rich country (even if it doesn't feel like that right
| now, but we have no one to blame for the housing crisis except
| our own politicians and capitalists).
|
| While we should be mindful of the English tendency to play down
| and rewrite history, I know many Irish people who are straight
| up racist towards the English - defended with the tired caveat
| the "oppressed people can't be racist towards the oppressors".
| Yes, they can. _Maybe_ it 's a less harmful form of racism, but
| it holds back the psychological development of the person with
| racist views nonetheless.
|
| In secondary school "Up the Ra" was a common slogan shouted by
| my classmates. There's still pubs in Dublin and other places
| around the country where you wouldn't want to go with an
| English accent.
|
| I'm not saying any of this to defend the English - they did
| terrible things in history, and those must not be forgotten or
| rewritten. There's also a fair few English people who are
| racist towards Irish too, not to mention a lot of "harking back
| to the glory days of Empire", mostly from older English men
| whose ancestors were probably peasants back then.
|
| But for us Irish, holding onto this old identity of "the
| oppressed" is a part of our collective psyche which I struggled
| with a lot growing up, and it holds back out country. It's time
| we moved on.
|
| Yes, I know that's hard when a quarter of the geographical
| landmass of Ireland still belongs to the old oppressors. But
| that's another thing we need to let go off. The people living
| in the North voted, several times, to remain in the UK. It's
| their choice, not ours. If they look like they're leaning to
| vote differently in the future we can restart the conversation.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's important to teach about bad times during the good
| times, because the horrors of what humans are capable of seem
| unfathomable with time and distance.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Sure, it's unhelpful to dwell too much on the past, but I
| don't think the Ireland of today is as consumed by victimhood
| or anti-Britishness as you are making out. I don't doubt
| there are pockets of society where anti-British sentiment is
| still strong but there is no society in the world without
| similar pockets of backwards, racist thinking. By and large,
| Irish people do not dislike or begrudge British people. While
| Brexit stoked some of the old tensions (again, we were far
| from the only country getting frustrated with Britain during
| those negotiations) we have, both before and since, largely
| regarded the British as our friends and allies.
|
| The famine was a _huge_ event in our history. Our population
| still hasn 't recovered from it and the mass emigration it
| triggered still has an impact on our relations with other
| countries, particularly the US. We shouldn't be (and aren't)
| consumed by it but it would be madness to forget it. The same
| goes for our broader struggle for independence, which is
| literally the origin story of our country.
|
| > Yes, I know that's hard when a quarter of the geographical
| landmass of Ireland still belongs to the old oppressors. But
| that's another thing we need to let go off. The people living
| in the North voted, several times, to remain in the UK. It's
| their choice, not ours. If they look like they're leaning to
| vote differently in the future we can restart the
| conversation.
|
| The Irish position on the North is clear and has been since
| 1998. We don't lay claim to it so there is nothing to "let
| go". No one questions the right of the North to choose its
| own way, but equally we have a relationship and a history
| with that part of the island that we cannot just ignore.
| biorach wrote:
| > I know many Irish people who are straight up racist towards
| the English
|
| I'm Irish. I've spent a lot of time in the countryside and
| the cities. This is not true. It's very rare to find an Irish
| person who is racist towards the British
|
| > secondary school "Up the Ra" was a common slogan shouted by
| my classmates.
|
| These days its justa catchy rebel chant. It does not
| necessarily mean the people chanting it support the IRA
|
| > There's still pubs in Dublin and other places around the
| country where you wouldn't want to go with an English accent.
|
| No there's not.
|
| I can think of maybe 2 pubs in Dublin you might get an
| unfrindly welcome. On a bad day.
|
| > But for us Irish, holding onto this old identity of "the
| oppressed" is a part of our collective psyche
|
| You're really really over stating how prevalent this is
|
| > a quarter of the geographical landmass of Ireland still
| belongs to the old oppressors. But that's another thing we
| need to let go off.
|
| We did. Remember the referendum? The one where we
| collectively voted to remove the territorial claim from our
| constitution?
|
| Your whole comment is vastly exaggerated.
|
| There's Americans reading. Don't be giving them the wrong
| ideas, they've enough to be dealing with.
| Fomite wrote:
| "There's Americans reading. Don't be giving them the wrong
| ideas, they've enough to be dealing with."
|
| Thanks for making me laugh for a bit before I went back to
| staring at my screen in disbelief.
| esperent wrote:
| > It's very rare to find an Irish person who is racist
| towards the British
|
| Oh come off it. No it's not. Unless you're in deep denial
| about what constitutes racism.
|
| > Your whole comment is vastly exaggerated.
|
| Maybe we have different lived experiences? We can both be
| Irish and have very different lives and experiences, small
| country though it is.
|
| For me, nothing I said is exaggerated. Irish people do hate
| to state things directly though, and I'm used to be told to
| be quiet whenever I speak out about our issues.
|
| > There's Americans reading. Don't be giving them the wrong
| ideas, they've enough to be dealing with.
|
| Ok can't argue with that one.
| donohoe wrote:
| Another Irish person here... Going to have to agree with
| biorach on this one, but not by a lot.
|
| >> It's very rare to find an Irish person who is racist
| towards the British >Oh come off it. No it's not. Unless
| you're in deep denial about what constitutes racism.
|
| The Irish that are racist against the British are, in my
| experience, the American who have things to say about
| other groups, ethnicities, religions.
|
| Not uncommon, not prolific, but not the crowd you'd go
| hang out with either.
| donall wrote:
| "Up the RA" is a great slogan. The IRA made an important and
| undeniable contribution to Irish statehood. I don't think
| we'd be "a privileged and filthy rich country" were it not
| for their activities in the 20th century. There is an
| unfortunate tendency among some people to be unwilling to
| recognise that for fear of offending our neighbours to the
| east. As you say, it's in the distant past and not worth
| getting too offended about.
| TheCondor wrote:
| I'm American of Irish descent and have spent a lot of time in
| Ireland. The walls mentioned were sort of an academic trick.
| They had to do "work" to get "paid" and so they were made to
| just build walls so that they could then be paid in food and
| not starve.
|
| If you hike around and see them, it's stunning. They were
| handmade. The rocks weren't insitu, they were carried in.
| It's not the pyramids, but in a relatively contemporary time
| they were made rather than just providing assistance.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I went to school in the UK. Unsurprisingly, I don't think the
| Irish or Bengal famines were mentioned. In fact the whole British
| imperial project was largely glossed over. But lots of coverge of
| the Romans, Vikings, Normans, the black death and the two World
| Wars.
|
| The Belgians, the Dutch, the Germans, the Portuguese, the
| Italians and the Spanish also did horrible things during their
| colonial periods. Are these taught a schools in these countries?
| Genuine question - I'm curious.
| mtmail wrote:
| In Germany the colonial period is taught, for example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference and global
| maps. The German colonies are hardly mentioned, Germany lost
| them all 100 years ago, and I don't think many Germans could
| name the countries/regions even. The
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_Wars ("systematic
| extermination of native peoples") isn't taught.
| hackandthink wrote:
| The largest german colonial project was based on starving
| millions of people in Eastern Europe mostly Russians.
|
| I did not hear about in school.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
| dmichulke wrote:
| I wasn't aware of this exact plan either, but to the
| defense of my history teacher / curriculum:
|
| It was made very clear that millions of civilians died
| (even when not counting the concentration camps) due to the
| war of extermination (Vernichtungskrieg)
| hackandthink wrote:
| I guess it depends on the decade and the Bundesland.
|
| In the 80s, the Wehrmacht was still presented as a
| morally decent army. That changed in the 90s, partly due
| to the Wehrmacht exhibition.
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung
| ggm wrote:
| I went to school in Scotland 65-78 and it was mentioned,
| studied extensively, as was British colonialism and the post
| war independence movement. Perhaps Scots education ran to a
| different agenda to the English one.
|
| (the Scots diaspora as a result of Land clearances, and the
| Irish independence struggle and its links (and opposition) to
| Scots Protestantism and Irish migration to the mainland might
| have driven this. We have both Irish independence fights at
| football matches and orange order parades)
| creddit wrote:
| My experience in America is largely one of the following:
|
| American person on social media (and, yes, I would claim HN
| is social media) claims "They never taught us this in
| school!!!" with many agreeing emphatically.
|
| ... and 90+% of the time I remember specifically being taught
| it. Most people don't remember much of their educations.
| lolinder wrote:
| In the US there are large regional differences in what is
| taught, especially when it comes to history topics. So some
| of the difference might be that your state had a more
| comprehensive approach to history than the commenters'
| states.
|
| But yes, most people have a really bad memory of what's
| taught in school (and that probably isn't entirely their
| fault, the system clearly doesn't lead to sticky
| knowledge).
| ggm wrote:
| The scots educational curriculum is sufficiently
| different to the English that I had significant
| difficulty at (an English) University, because of
| assumptions about what was learned.
|
| Also, time changes things. I did school during a period
| where school history was in ferment and the teacher said
| at some points we were learning a new curriculum which
| rejected "great men of history" theory and focussed on
| mass movements. I suspect after Thatcher this was
| revised, it was almost overtly marxist. The textbooks on
| post colonialism were pretty clear.
|
| I hasten to add I had no problem with this, and I read
| "the 18th Brumaire of Louis Buonaparte" as revision for
| the history exam in the library, with much pleasure. This
| was because we'd done a lot on the revolutions across
| Europe in 1848. Strangely we did very little on Chartism.
| When I went to uni I found out this was a really active
| field of study, especially in the midlands because so
| many Chartist pamphlets are held by places like Leeds
| university, the working class towns. Maybe thats why
| Scots History ignored it: it was a south of the border
| story! If they'd done the emergence of the British Labour
| party I bet we'd have had a lot given the origins of
| Labour in Scotland, and the Red Clyde story. That was
| probably done in year 12 and I left school early to go
| work in a Marine Biology lab.
|
| I probably remember this because I enjoyed it. A lot of
| history doesn't excite everyone, perhaps I was lucky. I
| am buggered if I can remember the Maths, which isn't very
| helpful given I work in CS. Like Arnold Rimmer in "Red
| Dwarf" I am acceptably meh at colouring in the crinkly
| bits in Geography but not much else.
| hinkley wrote:
| My ex who loved history had to learn about it all on her
| own because she just got civil war history over and over
| and over. She wasn't even in the proper South. Though I'd
| get punched for saying that anywhere anyone could here.
| AngryData wrote:
| It isn't just state differences either, because schools
| are mostly funded by property taxes, areas that serve a
| more expensive area of properties receives way more
| funding. While an area that serves all cheap property
| gets dog shit in funding. The area I grew up in was
| mostly farms but had one lake that was way overly priced
| compared to everywhere else, a new development of cookie
| cutter houses but they were 4-5 times the price of other
| property around. And the school there was excellent, and
| had I not ever moved I would of assumed that was the
| standard public education quality level. But I moved
| schools in highschool to another mostly rural school 2
| hours away, but they didn't have the new development
| well-off lake community, and despite being in the same
| state, the poorer school was literally 3-4 years behind
| in education and had a third of the material supplies and
| teachers were paid significantly less and thus were
| mostly of far lower quality. So that my senior year in
| the poorer school was essentially having what I learned
| in 8th and 9ths grade repeated to me my senior year, but
| of course for the locals that was the first time many of
| them heard those things.
| creddit wrote:
| > areas that serve a more expensive area of properties
| receives way more funding.
|
| This actually isn't true in general. Baltimore (poor
| city) city schools, eg, spend twice as much as Carmel
| Indiana (wealthy city) does per pupil.
|
| The link between education outcomes and spend is
| extremely weak.
|
| They didn't teach this in high school!!!
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Agreed - I was shocked to discover NY State curriculum
| has nothing about Native Peoples. I mean, the five
| nations were influential on early colonial life.
| lurk2 wrote:
| This has also been my experience.
| teamonkey wrote:
| I don't think this is the case here. The English and
| Scottish curricula (and, I imagine, those of Wales and NI)
| are different. Most aspects of British colonialism are
| (were?) simply not taught in England unless you
| specifically chose that subject late in high school.
|
| Looking back, it's also kind of amazing to think that the
| Northern Ireland Conflict was largely glossed over in
| English schools while it was going on, but the news
| coverage was pretty one-sided also.
| mibes wrote:
| British Empire has on the UK National Curriculum since 1988
| and was taught in history classes before the introduction
| of the National Curriculum. This is conveniently forgotten
| by people looking to make a point. My impression is that a
| certain type of Brit likes to play this "I'm one of the
| good ones" role where they admonish their compatriots'
| ignorance as a strange virtue signal. It involves
| collecting damning factoids about the worst aspects of of
| empire (bengal, irish conflicts, slavery etc) with little
| interest in the subject as a whole.
| gadders wrote:
| The Scots pretty much ran the British empire.
| t-3 wrote:
| In the US, we covered a lot of old world colonial abuses in AP
| Euro and World History, but they are only briefly mentioned in
| regular courses. Irish and Armenian genocides were given
| special focus, probably mostly due to the demographics of the
| area I grew up in.
|
| US and Eurocolonial treatment of the Native Americans was
| covered extensively in regular courses though, often alongside
| and explicitly compared to the Holocaust which is also covered
| extensively.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm curious, how old are you if I may ask? I'm 61, and of
| these things, only the Holocaust and the failure of the
| Soviet Union were covered.
| t-3 wrote:
| 34.
| analog31 wrote:
| Thanks. I should also note that my kids learned about
| those things in school.
| jjayj wrote:
| Just to add some (unprovoked) additional info here: I'm a
| 26 year old Canadian. We covered early Canadian history,
| abuse of the aboriginal peoples of Canada, war with
| America, and WW1/WW2/the Holocaust.
|
| I don't think we were really taught at all about
| European/Asian history or the Soviet Union. I think I could
| have taken some classes related to those in highschool
| (secondary school), but for anyone working towards a non-
| history bachelor's degree those courses were generally not
| something that you could fit in your timetable.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I am 30. In all my schooltime history classes, we never
| covered any famine in India or the Global South. Only the
| Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Irish Potato Famine, the
| Chinese famine, and maybe I'm forgetting a few. These are
| the main times famine showed up in our books. No discussion
| about Armenia, or any related such things. Population
| transfer policies of the USSR and China were discussed (and
| these are close to genocide). Native American extermination
| was obviously covered heavily. As was the role of slavery
| in American history up to the present day.
|
| I believe there was also one in Africa committed by Belgium
| in the Congo? I remember seeing some photos of something
| cruel from there to this effect.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The Congo belonged personally to King Leopold of Belgian
| (not the Belgian state). His minions committed all sorts
| of atrocities, mainly in the pursuit of rubber. You can
| read about it online, but it is stomach churning stuff.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| That's pretty recent. If you look at older US history school
| books, the physical and social genocide of the Native
| Americans is largely glossed over. It wasn't until after A
| People's History of the United States came out in the 80s
| that the school books slowly became more honest.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Irish and Armenian genocides were given special focus,
| probably mostly due to the demographics of the area I grew up
| in.
|
| There's just so much history to cover, and to be charitable
| to those who exclude events deemed important it can be that
| other events are deemed more important (especially by the
| local population) and there's only so much class time.
|
| History instruction seems to be of two minds, either grand
| narratives (great men in the past, metrics-driven narratives
| like agricultural productivity now), or the case study
| approach where you sample some episodes from a variety of
| times and places and study each in depth. In both cases the
| approach must involve leaving some stories on the editing
| floor.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| In France this really depends, _today_ , on the teacher.
|
| When I was a kid in the 80s colonization was very lightly
| mentioned, mostly in the vontext of punitive comonies quch as
| Guyana.
|
| Otherwise these territories were shown to children in mainland
| France as normal departments.
|
| Today it is different. Colonies are part of the cirriculum but
| teachers have more leeway in appproching the topic. One of my
| children had the "we are genocide makers" version, when the
| other one was "colonization was a blessing for them" (I am
| overdrawing the picture)
| tmtvl wrote:
| Belgian here. Now, it's been decades, but we did get a mention
| of our colonial past, with a cartoon of Leopold II as a snake
| constricting some African person. I don't think we got told
| what kind of atrocities we committed (and Belgian colonialism
| was really, _really_ bad), but we do get told it was bad.
| nine_k wrote:
| Not even _mentioned?_ E.g. the great man-made famine of 1935 in
| the USSR is mentioned in the school history course in Russia.
| Post-Soviet, admittedly, but still closer in time by a century.
| To say nothing of the US school programs mentioning quite a bit
| of bad things that have been done by the Americans during the
| last couple of centuries.
| hinkley wrote:
| What Americans don't learn about is that the famine we nearly
| triggered here during WWII was caused by seizing farms owned
| by Japanese Americans and then running them into the fucking
| ground. I've heard claims that the food rationing would have
| been totally unnecessary if not for that.
|
| Most of them didn't get those farms back after the war
| either.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| George Takei (yes, the guy off Star Trek) has talked in
| detail about his family's terrible experiences of
| internment during WWII.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I'd learned about the internment camps from a human rights
| perspective, and the loss of family businesses, but I'm
| ashamed to admit I'd never learned about the economic
| impact until now.
|
| I had to check the veracity of this, and it seems to be
| true. By 1945, Japanese American farms were responsible for
| 30%+ of the agricultural output of California.
| hinkley wrote:
| I only heard about this a few years ago. About the fourth
| time I listened to someone talk about the camps. Which we
| did talk about during school but very briefly.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Text (link) display is too truncated, so, "Lies My Teacher
| Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
| is a 1995 book..."
| Vinnl wrote:
| In the Netherlands the colonial period is mentioned, but
| referred to as 'the Golden Century', and atrocities committed
| aren't really mentioned. There has been public debate about
| this in recent years, so this may have changed, and the debate
| in general, in addition to eg museums and documentaries paying
| attention to it, will probably have contributed to slightly
| more widespread knowledge about it. It's how I learned a bit
| about it.
| dddw wrote:
| I also wasnt teached about this in school when I was a kid 3
| decades afo. My history knowledge came selftaught from nul-
| tot-nu comics, where colonialism, slavery and holocaust
| definitly where touched upon. These so called `zwarte
| bladzijden` (black pages, doesnt translate nicely) are more
| common in education nowadays after lively debates the last
| decade(s).
|
| Must be said the knowledge/interest of historical knowledge
| among my fellow Dutchies isn`t all that great.
|
| https://www.historischnieuwsblad.nl/slavernij-en-
| kolonialism...
|
| > figures from article above: percentages of total history
| subject matter: colonialism 9% Slavery 4 % Holocaust 2 %
| drysine wrote:
| >`zwarte bladzijden`
|
| We have the same expression in Russian.
| dddw wrote:
| I heard sometime the best language to read Russian
| literature in (besides Russian) is Dutch, you know
| anything about this?
| drysine wrote:
| No, I haven't heard about that, but that's interesting.
|
| Russia learned a lot from Dutch during Peter the Great's
| time, but I can't make a connection to literature from
| that.
|
| Perhaps, just similar national characters?
| dddw wrote:
| Directness is definitly part of both national characters
| indeed.
|
| I asked the toasters, they said this about it:
|
| Yes, Russian literature tends to translate well into
| Dutch, and there are a few reasons for that:
|
| 1. Linguistic Similarities in Syntax and Tone - While
| Dutch and Russian are from different language families,
| both can handle long, complex sentences without losing
| clarity. Dutch, like Russian, allows for a mix of formal
| and informal tones within a single text, which helps
| maintain the nuance of Russian literature.
|
| 2. Cultural Compatibility - Dutch readers appreciate
| introspective, philosophical, and existential themes,
| which are common in Russian literature. Authors like
| Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov resonate well with Dutch
| audiences because of their deep psychological exploration
| and social critique.
|
| 3. Strong Translation Tradition - The Netherlands has a
| long history of translating world literature with high
| quality. Dutch translators often work directly from
| Russian rather than relying on intermediary languages
| like English or French, preserving the original style and
| meaning.
|
| 4. Directness and Emotional Depth - Russian literature is
| known for its raw emotional depth and directness,
| qualities that align well with Dutch communication norms.
| This makes Russian novels feel more natural in Dutch than
| in some other languages that might soften or rephrase
| certain expressions.
|
| Many Dutch readers have a strong appreciation for Russian
| classics, and some Dutch authors have even been
| influenced by them.
| dddw wrote:
| And Peter the great is just an amazing interesting
| chracter, must be said. I still intend to collect a
| beardtax coin one day.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Just to let you know, the past tense of teach is taught; so
| you would say "I wasn't taught this at school". Other than
| that, your English is great (better than some of my fellow
| English people lol). Well done.
| dddw wrote:
| You are right, and thanks. Typing on mobile with
| alternative keyboard without spelling correction is a
| challenge. I was fortunate enough to be on a part
| Dutch/English primary school. That helped a lot with
| getting a lot of assumptions corrected. For instance as a
| kid I assumed the English word for "monkey" is "ape",
| because the Dutch word is "aap".
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I recently read "Nathaniel's Nutmeg" and it talks in some
| detail about the atrocities carried out by the Dutch in the
| spice islands. It isn't something I had been aware of before.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Unsurprisingly, I don't think the Irish or Bengal famines
| were mentioned. In fact the whole British imperial project was
| largely glossed over. But lots of coverge of the Romans,
| Vikings, Normans, the black death and the two World Wars.
|
| I read a ton of Usborne and Dorling Kindersley books and these
| were exactly the sorts or subjects they fixated on. I suppose
| it's probably part of some long-established national
| curriculum.
|
| Where I live, people often (conspiratorially) complain that
| more serious subjects were not covered in school, but the only
| things I can't ever really remember covering involved South-
| and-4th-of-July-American history. We didn't really cover Africa
| outside of the 20th century, either.
|
| To be honest I think American schools are the only ones who
| really give colonial history the attention it deserves because
| it's the basis of their entire country and then goes on to fill
| out the comparatively boring eighty or so years between the end
| of the Civil War and the start of World War II. I find most
| people I talk to from the UK who are aware of some aspect of
| colonial history are either apologists for the British Empire
| or have this imported view common in North American (and
| especially Canadian) universities that the British were this
| uniquely nefarious force of evil. I suppose the historically
| curious ones just spend their time studying the Norman
| conquests.
| donall wrote:
| I don't think the British empire was "uniquely nefarious",
| but I think most of the indigenous people of the places that
| they colonised experienced it as being _fairly_ nefarious!
| I'm not aware of many former colonies celebrating
| Colonisation Day or bemoaning the withdrawal of the British
| Army from their territories.
|
| Even one of the most anglo-friendly and prosperous former
| colonies, the USA, didn't have very nice things to say about
| the Empire when they were a part of it.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > I think most of the indigenous people of the places that
| they colonised experienced it as being _fairly_ nefarious!
|
| The Maori were eating each other before the British arrived
| - that's not hyperbole, they practised cannibalism. Upper
| caste Indians were throwing still-living women into fires
| so they could join their husbands in the afterlife. If the
| British arrived in these places as marauding pirates (and
| they did), they still come out ahead on these metrics
| alone.
|
| > Even one of the most anglo-friendly and prosperous former
| colonies, the USA, didn't have very nice things to say
| about the Empire when they were a part of it.
|
| Ironically that is where some of the worst atrocities
| occurred.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The British Empire ended the hideous practice of Sati (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice) ). It also
| unified India and built the railroads. The Indians paid a
| very heavy price for this though. The East India compoany
| was rapacious. Before the British colonised India, it was
| one of the richest countries in the world. When it left,
| it was one of the poorest.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Before the British colonised India, it was one of the
| richest countries in the world. When it left, it was one
| of the poorest.
|
| I've never seen any convincing evidence that it was one
| of the richest countries in the world. What are you
| basing that off of?
| vinay427 wrote:
| It's based on some of the same sources describing
| historical economies of other countries/regions. There
| are a variety of sources accessible online that go into
| more detail, including the ones cited in the excerpt I've
| included below.
|
| > India experienced deindustrialisation and cessation of
| various craft industries under British rule,[12] which
| along with fast economic and population growth in the
| Western world, resulted in India's share of the world
| economy declining from 24.4% in 1700 to 4.2% in 1950,[13]
| and its share of global industrial output declining from
| 25% in 1750 to 2% in 1900.[12]
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India
| bitsage wrote:
| Of course a nation with a high population will have a
| high GDP in a mostly agrarian society. Per capita,
| there's no indication India was ever the richest. They
| did fall behind massively due to an inability to compete
| during industrialization though. The attached source even
| mentions deindustrialization started in the waning years
| of the Mughals. Due to industrialization, the West's GDP
| per capita simply outpaced India and China significantly,
| to the extent western nations even had higher nominal
| GDPs.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| IIRC it was discussed in the 'Empire' podcast by British
| historian William Dalrymple. But I might be
| misremembering that.
| gadders wrote:
| It was also mostly already conquered by the Mughals.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| "In 1820, India's GDP was 16% of the global GDP. By 1870,
| it had fallen to 12%, and by 1947 to 4%." https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India_under_the_Bri...
| donall wrote:
| It isn't difficult to find examples of people misbehaving
| in the history of any country. That doesn't mean they are
| irredeemable and they need a British Army battalion to
| come and save them from themselves.
|
| I would guess that the British Army et al. killed at
| least as many people in India as were burned alive as
| part of funerary rites. How does one effectively compare
| those two actions? It's easy to take the coloniser
| perspective of "they were savages and we stopped them
| from doing X". But the colonised are telling their own
| stories "these savages came from across the sea and they
| committed the most horrible atrocities".
|
| I'm not trying to defend burning people or eating people.
| But killing people to take their stuff and calling it
| civilisation is not better. It's certainly not civilised.
| mibes wrote:
| > I would guess that the British Army et al. killed at
| least as many people in India as were burned alive as
| part of funerary rites.
|
| Interesting. What is this based on? When it comes to
| killings done by the British forces in India one of the
| most renowned, bloody and regrettable incidents in
| colonial history in India was the Massacre of Amritsar
| where British forces lost control and fired on a crowd of
| protesters. This resulted in around 400 deaths (many more
| injured). The reason this was such an infamous event is
| because of how uncharacteristic it was of British rule in
| India.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Lost control
|
| Dyer gave explicit orders to fire into the crowd.
| mibes wrote:
| That sounds like loosing control of a protest to me
| lurk2 wrote:
| They did not lose control of a protest. The Indians were
| not permitted to assemble. When it was discovered that an
| assembly was meeting, the British entered the square
| where the assembly occurred and massacred those present.
| gadders wrote:
| Native Americans in the US also practised cannibalism.
| Evidence has been found in coprolites.
| defrost wrote:
| Who didn't eat other people?
|
| Coming out of prion studies, laughing sickness, the Fore
| people in PNG, mad cow disease was a greater
| understanding of the defences _everywhere_ in humans
| against prion related brain diseases .. these defences
| wouldn 't exist if eating other humans wasn't relatively
| commonplace in human evolution.
|
| In _recorded_ European history we have "Corpse medicine"
| and eating bituminised mummies as a fad.
|
| * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-
| history-...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_cannibalism
| lurk2 wrote:
| I was surprised that I had never heard of this, but as I
| investigated further I found the citations were sparse.
| All of the posts I could find about the topic on Reddit,
| for example, pointed back to Richard Sugg. Here's an
| excerpt from the About section of his website:
|
| > This book led me onto even stranger topics still:
| ghosts and poltergeists. As a lifelong rationalist and
| agnostic, I had no interest in these until I came across
| vampires behaving like poltergeists. What could this
| mean? After a lot of reading, of cases seemingly so
| impossible they made your head hurt; and after talking
| about poltergeists to many people, and having a
| surprising number of them say, Yes - that's happened to
| me, I came to suspect that poltergeists were actually
| real. Not only that, but I also realised that the
| poltergeist is a master of disguise. Across centuries and
| continents, when people talk about vampires, witches,
| demons, ghosts, and even fairies, they are often clearly
| describing poltergeist outbreaks.
|
| You'll excuse me if I find it hard to take these claims
| seriously.
| ascorbic wrote:
| Empire is taught now, though the specific parts of it will
| depend on the school/teacher. Here's an example of the sort of
| teaching material that might be used:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zy4sg2p
| smolder wrote:
| This is a reminder why _trying to be hip_ to sell a message
| is actually very often counterproductive. (See D.A.R.E.)
|
| That Quentin Question video made me cringe from the beginning
| to the eventual end when I closed it for being insufferable.
|
| Patronizing kids does not hold sway in the long term. They
| don't stay young. I think it's better to treat them more
| mature than they are, to speak to the people they become.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I should have added the context that my secondary schooling
| was in the 70s and 80s.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The tonal shifts in that video gave me whiplash. Please tell
| me they didn't give that treatment to the Holocaust as well.
| ascorbic wrote:
| That's KS2 material, so 7-11 year olds. They don't cover
| the Holocaust until they're older. Here's an example of KS3
| material about the Holocaust.
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zt48dp3
| varunnrao wrote:
| > In fact the whole British imperial project was largely
| glossed over. But lots of coverge of the Romans, Vikings,
| Normans, the black death and the two World Wars.
|
| I feel that this is a major source of why Britain (and Europe
| to a larger extent) is unable to come to terms with reality on
| a majority of issues today - immigration, foreign policy,
| economic policy etc. They simply have not come to terms with
| the loss of their empires and the wealth they brought. So they
| choose to not teach it. This leads British institutions today
| to have a serious colonial hangover whether they know it or
| not. The operating paradigm is still an outdated one in many
| cases.
|
| They teach students what they _think_ made Britain great -- the
| Romans, the Norman invasion, the World Wars, Churchill etc. --
| while actually glossing over what made them great: Empire. It
| really brings to mind a line from the Thor: Ragnarok movie -
| "Proud to have it; ashamed of how they got it". The British
| people today might not have an idea of their Empire but the
| effects still linger on in their former colonies.
| edwcross wrote:
| Well, if this is not mentioned at all during history classes,
| at least it prevents them from being taught that "British
| brought prosperity and development to all of its colonies,
| making the world better for everyone" and "they should be
| thankful that we went there and did all those things, how
| nice of us, and how rude of them not to thank us again and
| again!".
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >"they should be thankful that we went there and did all
| those things, how nice of us"
|
| I think that is a tacit assumption that a lot of British
| people make.
| concordDance wrote:
| I think it comes from the general belief that poverty is
| bad and a simplistic view of cause and effect. "Before
| the Empire they were really poor, with high mortality,
| after the empire they were much wealthier with lower
| mortality".
|
| It's just going to be the default view if one does not
| have further information.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > I feel that this is a major source of why Britain (and
| Europe to a larger extent) is unable to come to terms with
| reality on a majority of issues today - immigration, foreign
| policy, economic policy etc. They simply have not come to
| terms with the loss of their empires and the wealth they
| brought.
|
| I would be so bold at to assert that no millennial really
| taught that a) Britannia had an empire and b) Britain ruled
| the waves.
|
| Two world wars, and slavery is pretty much all we were
| taught, unless you specialised.
|
| "modern" immigration was/is much more driven by our former
| membership of the EU than empire.
|
| Empire is why our friends had Caribbean grandparents. WWII
| for polish grandparents, and Idi Amin why they also might
| have had indian parents born in Uganda.
|
| But they were all pretty British to us. They sounded like us,
| dressed the same.
|
| "modern" immigration when I was growing up was mostly
| Portuguese and Polish, later more baltics when that opened up
| to schengen.
|
| But those later countries were _also_ a product of another
| empire: USSR.
| gadders wrote:
| >>the effects still linger on in their former colonies.
|
| The rule of law, parliamentary democracy, the English
| language, ending Sati etc.
|
| The empire wasn't all good, but was more benevolent than a
| lot of colonial empires. See the work of Nigel Biggar for
| reference.
| lionkor wrote:
| and of course generational poverty
| gadders wrote:
| You mean that didn't exist in India before the British?
| Or it is a British thing that we imported to India?
| aadhavans wrote:
| Not the parent, but:
|
| Neither. While colonialism didn't _create_ generational
| poverty, the systemic genocides of the British were new.
| Colonial policy of prioritizing exports directly led to
| the deaths of millions. That's a fact.
|
| A similar comparison would be between Roman slavery and
| the chattel slavery of the Americas. They are both
| abhorrent practices (just like the genocides caused by
| Indian rulers in the pre-British period), but it pales in
| comparison to the scale and horror of antebellum slavery.
| newsclues wrote:
| History classes are propaganda
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Depends of the country, it can be done correctly. I also wish
| we taught historiography alongside history itself, it's an
| important part of building critical thinking.
| chasd00 wrote:
| So true. One of my better accomplishments as a parent is the
| BS detection skills of my kids. They're respectful but make
| it clear when one of their teachers shift from facts to
| personal politics and bias. I'm always happy to answer emails
| from teachers with an agenda who get called on it by my kids.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| In France there are mentions of the colonies, slavery, and
| ensuing wars. And you study napoleon of course.
|
| But there is never a critic of it, it's mentioned as matter of
| fact for the first, and only in positive for the second.
|
| I had to grow old to realize "wait, napoleon was basically our
| hitler...".
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Napoleon is certainly a complicated figure and his raw
| ambition caused death and misery for millions. I don't think
| he carried out any genocides though, did he? I see an
| accusation of genocide online (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_Crimes ), but it
| doesn't sound very credible.
| donall wrote:
| Complicated doesn't begin to describe him! I think that, by
| our modern standards, I would be very unhappy to be a
| citizen of Napoleon's empire.
|
| However, considering the available governments in Europe at
| the tail end of the 18th century, I think a time-traveller
| such as myself would be more interested in spending a few
| years in France than any of her neighbours. I imagine I
| would think differently if I came from an aristocratic
| background!
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Indeed, he didn't commit genocide, but his wars ended up
| killing 3.5 to 6 millions people, a staggering amount for
| the time.
|
| Given that those deaths were basically because of his lust
| for territorial extension and disregard for human life, I
| would say we are in a similar ballpark as Mao, Hitler,
| Stalin, etc.
|
| Of course, our history books are quick to state he made
| reforms, particularly legal and administrative ones, that
| benefitted our country a lot and still echo benefits today.
|
| But again, I think if you a responsible for millions of
| deaths because of your desire for conquest, any arguments
| you can make in the other way are instantly moot.
|
| You may, however, made the argument that it would have been
| better to be a French citizen at the time than somewhere
| else, depending on where and how you were born. But it's a
| different point.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I'm impressed with the level of debate in the answers. Thank
| you.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| I'm probably younger than the other Belgian data point in this
| thread but when I went to high school in the late 2000's our
| colonial past, warts and all, was taught during history class.
| Down to the pictures of people with chopped off hands because
| they hadn't met quota.
| loudmax wrote:
| I went to elementary school in Belgium from 1978-1982. I had
| the sense there was some national pride in having had a major
| African colony, but maybe Leopold II wasn't a benevolent
| ruler. Unlike Leopold I or Albert I, who were depicted quite
| heroically. I didn't learn quite how far from benevolent
| Leopold II really was until much later in life.
| jvvw wrote:
| I definitely learned about the Irish Potato Famine when I did
| GCSE history in the UK (England) in the early 90s. I learned a
| lot about British colonial history too in my GCSE.
| dagw wrote:
| I did history GCSE as well in the mid 90s, and from what I
| can recall it was only 20th century history. I'm also pretty
| sure that the curriculum was split into several modules and
| the school got to pick something like 3 out of N modules to
| focus on.
| verzali wrote:
| I don't think the Spanish address it at all. I lived there for
| a while and I remember visting a lot of glorious cathedrals and
| castles. Most of them were funded with gold looted from the
| Americas, but there was never any mention of it. And neither do
| the Spanish (or Portuguese) people seem to associate themselves
| with the historical empires those countries ruled.
| baud147258 wrote:
| Maybe because Spain and Portugal lost their empires earlier
| than Great-Britain?
| xandrius wrote:
| In Italy the Eritrean and Ethiopian parts of our history are
| mentioned and nothing more, at least in the past.
|
| There is a very good documentary about Italian war crimes which
| include the Ethiopian campaign, as well as the treatment of the
| Balkans by the Italian troops.
| pohuing wrote:
| German curriculum is state and school difficulty level
| dependent to a degree, so what I say may not apply to Bavaria
| for example. I was taught quite extensively about the various
| German states with extra detail starting at the French
| revolution and very detailed Weimar and Third Reich.
|
| Germany's role in colonialism was always limited compared to
| the other European powers. We were late to the game and lost
| them after WW1, so it was more of a footnote. It did mention
| our colonies in East Africa and South East Asia but only
| mentioned the genocide against the Herero without a mention of
| details. The Atlantic Slave and trade was covered in great
| detail both in history and English lessons. Same for the
| Spanish and Portuguese exploitation of South and Middle
| America.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Spain is still in complete denial. In fact, the national day is
| still Columbus day or as they call it, Dia de la Hispanidad.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Columbus was a monster.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I went to school in the UK. Unsurprisingly, I don't think the
| Irish or Bengal famines were mentioned
|
| There's a _lot_ of British history, and world history. There
| are several (5?) competing exam boards offering GCSEs and A
| Level's in history, and generally schools are free to choose
| between exam boards on a subject-by-subject basis. Each of
| these will offer an absolute multitude of historic periods,
| crises, etc, that again schools are free to choose from;
| history exam papers will offer students choices of questions
| depending on what they actually studied.
|
| What you get taught in your history class at school in the UK
| is down to your school's Head of History, rather than a complex
| government-led conspiracy. If your school's Head of History
| wants to teach "Empire is Bad", they will have no trouble
| finding approved materials to do so!
| arp242 wrote:
| > Are these taught a schools in these countries? Genuine
| question - I'm curious.
|
| When I went to secondary school from about 1997-2001 Indonesia
| in particular was covered fairly extensively. From what I
| recall it wasn't white-washed either: I remember one chapter
| describing how a young Indonesian woman was punished with hot
| chilli pasta (sambal) on her vagina. Pretty graphic stuff to
| teach a 14-year old.
|
| Experiences seem to differ though, because I've heard other
| people describe that it's barely covered and/or white-washed.
| Maybe it depends on the school? I don't know. Also the
| schooling system completely changed since then.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Based on the responses here, it seems to vary a lot between
| countries, within countries and over time.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Although written earlier, Jonathan Swift's _A Modest Proposal_ is
| a chilling satire about the destitute of the Irish at the time
| and the English attitudes toward it:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal.
| ggm wrote:
| During this time, Ireland exported food to the mainland, lest
| british contracts be voided creating future doubt about the
| integrity of trade (or so I was taught)
| 0003 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZIB6MslCAo Sinead O'Connor -
| Famine
| ww520 wrote:
| I spent some times in Ireland and Northern Ireland recently. What
| the locals told me about the famine were:
|
| - Most land were controlled by large land owners. Most peasants
| had very small farm land, which couldn't feed the people if
| normal crops were planted so they had to plant the higher yield
| potato to have enough food. When the disease wiped out the potato
| crop, most people went without any food.
|
| - The land controlled by the large land owners were planted with
| cash crops for export. They were unwilling to stop the export to
| help the locals.
|
| - The ruling class consisted of large land owners and British
| transplants in the Northern Ireland after the conquering of
| Ireland by Britain could care less about the shortage of food.
| They actively hid the problem from the central government in
| Britain. The governor/duke/whoever tried to sweep the problem
| under the rug to avoid appearing as incompetent.
|
| - When the central government in Britain learned of the famine,
| they acted too late and too little, unwilling to spend money to
| deal with the emergency. Britain at the time looked down on the
| Irish people in general.
|
| This led to great animosity of the Irish people to Britain,
| driving the subsequent independent movements.
|
| Fun fact, about 10% of the U.S. population are of Irish descent,
| due to massive immigration from Ireland in the following years
| after the famine.
|
| Edit: Just looked up the Irish population in U.S., about 11%.
| https://uscanadainfo.com/irish-ancestry-in-america/
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Another fun fact: useless buildings were commissioned as a form
| of charity to the starving poor under the guise of gainful
| employment
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conolly%27s_Folly
|
| https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/10/irelands-famine-follie...
|
| Blindboy did an interesting podcast on this:
|
| https://shows.acast.com/blindboy/episodes/pineapplefolly
| masklinn wrote:
| Buildings and roads yeah. Britain was nearing its peak "no
| free charity" back then, this was the time of the New Poor
| Law (oft called the starvation act) and the workhouses.
|
| Being poor was considered a major personal failing.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Yeah, it's definitely a change to the narrative for people
| outside of Ireland. The podcast opened my eyes to it, and
| also the Famine song by Sinead O'Connor
|
| FTA (for anyone's benefit):
|
| > In London, the realization that this was not a temporary
| crisis coincided with the coming to power of a party with a
| deep ideological commitment to free trade. The Liberals,
| under Lord John Russell, were determined that what they saw
| as an illegitimate intervention in the free market should
| not be repeated. They moved away from importing corn and
| created instead an immense program of public works to
| employ starving people--for them, as for the Conservatives,
| it was axiomatic that the moral fibre of the Irish could
| not be improved by giving them something for nothing. Wages
| were designed to be lower than the already meagre earnings
| of manual workers so that the labor market would not be
| upset.
|
| > The result was the grotesque spectacle of people
| increasingly debilitated by starvation and disease doing
| hard physical labor for wages that were not sufficient to
| keep their families alive. Meanwhile, many of the same
| people were evicted from their houses as landowners used
| the crisis to clear off these human encumbrances and free
| their fields for more profitable pasturage. Exposure joined
| hunger and sickness to complete the task of mass killing.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| It would be darkly poetic if Brexit brought these same
| conditions to the UK as a whole if they had crop failures
| one year.
|
| (To make it clear for the pedant literal crowd - I'm not
| saying it's a _good_ thing, nor do I want it to happen. I
| 'm simply commenting on how poetic it would be.)
| concordDance wrote:
| > Britain was nearing its peak "no free charity" back then
|
| That particular peak is probably much older. Charity at a
| non-negligible scale to distant (meaning "not literally in
| visual range") people has been very rare throughout
| history.
| ww520 wrote:
| Another fun fact, the current population in Ireland is about
| 5.3 millions. That means there're more Irish in U.S. than in
| Ireland.
| tomcam wrote:
| And yet, so few of us Yanks speak it well. Nothing like
| hearing English spoken in Ireland.
| antonvs wrote:
| Are you talking about the Irish language? Very few Irish
| people speak it well. Less than 2% use it daily.
| nwatson wrote:
| I think GP is saying the Irish speak and write a more
| beautiful or clever English, the language adopted from
| their conquerors, than in the USA, or perhaps even
| England.
| dilap wrote:
| We may catch 'em on a per-capita basis too, if current
| immigration, emmigration, and tfr trends continue.
| UltraSane wrote:
| What do you mean?
| brigandish wrote:
| I suspect it means: With mass immigration occurring in
| Ireland at the rate it is, soon the proportion of ethnic
| Irish in Ireland's population may match the proportion of
| ethnic Irish in the US's population.
|
| Hyperbole is a common facet of humour (to make a point)
| in the British Isles.
| defrost wrote:
| All the better for Irish crew diversity:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaaZsBxWeiQ
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It's also one of the few (only?) countries in the world whose
| population is smaller today than it was 150 years ago.
| hinkley wrote:
| Census data I found is that Ireland has about 7.1 people.
|
| But it also says that the year before the shit completely hit
| the fan, the Ireland population topped out at 8.18m. 10 years
| later it was down 1.6m, and another .6m after another 10. And
| it just kept trending downwards until the 1930's, (4.21m) and
| bottomed out again in ~1960 before it started growing again.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| If you include Northern Ireland, it's 7.2 million. But it was
| 8.5 million before the famine; 6.5 immediately after. After
| that emigration drove that number down. The population size
| never recovered to pre famine levels.
| ww520 wrote:
| My mistake. I did only look up the population in Ireland,
| forgot that Northern Ireland was part of Ireland until the
| 1900's.
| przemub wrote:
| Or you could say that Ireland was a part of Northern
| Ireland ;)
| gramie wrote:
| When the Irish crossed the Atlantic, looking for a better life,
| they travelled on what became known as "coffin ships". It was
| common for 20-30% of the passengers to die during transit, and
| sometimes reportedly up to 50%.
| morkalork wrote:
| And not all that survived the trip across made it much
| further. Typhoid or "ship fever" was killing a lot of the
| passengers and when they arrived in North America, they were
| put into quarantine camps where many died.
| somenameforme wrote:
| As an interesting factoid these sort of mortality figures
| were not especially uncommon in naval voyages until
| surprisingly recently. Scurvy is kind of a joke now a days,
| but it killed millions of people. It was such a big deal that
| vitamin c is literally named after it - ascorbic acid, or
| anti-scurvy acid. But that only happened on into the 20th
| century!
|
| The idea that such a brutal disease could have been prevented
| by eating fresh fruits and meats sounded more like a folktale
| than reality. And early experiments to try to demonstrate
| this were also not that conclusive since vitamin c tends to
| break down rapidly in the conditions it was stored in
| (prejuiced - metal containers). For instance during Vasco de
| Gamma's journey from Europe to India he lost more than half
| his crew, mostly to scurvy.
| begueradj wrote:
| In the Akkadian empire, archeologists found that every family
| house had a place to store wheat and other grains. That
| suggests that every family had the right to own enough land to
| survive.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| The fact that food was still being exported while people
| starved is just staggering. No wonder it left such deep scars
| and fueled the push for independence
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > The land controlled by the large land owners were planted
| with cash crops for export. They were unwilling to stop the
| export to help the locals
|
| This is still happening in parts of the world.
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| With all the respect and admiration I have for vast swathes of
| the population of that fair and noble land, one could nonetheless
| answer this title-question in a historically accurate and quite
| pithy manner, by stating simply:
|
| "The English".
| padjo wrote:
| Exactly the answer I gave in my head after reading the title
| alextingle wrote:
| It's almost as though you didn't read the article.
| jd3 wrote:
| I'm Irish and this is the correct answer
| concordDance wrote:
| Pithy answers don't work. Almost everything is multi-causal.
| epistasis wrote:
| > It disproportionately affected those who spoke the Irish
| language, creating an Anglophone Ireland. It led ultimately to a
| radical reform of land ownership, which passed to a new class of
| Catholic farmers. The profoundly uncomfortable truth is that
| Ireland started to become modern when its poorest people were
| wiped out or sent into exile--a reality that is too painful to be
| faced without deep unease.
|
| This makes the struggle to keep the Irish language feel like such
| a vital urge today. Those of you who live in SF be sure to check
| out the Unite Irish Cultural Center by the zoo.
|
| Reading about the export of so much food while people starve
| reminds me also of the Holodomor, a famine where farmers grain
| was stolen from them and exported from the country while children
| starved in the streets. I have never seen a precentage of the
| population represented as here, but the estimates are 3M to 7M
| died from famine in the Ukrainian SSR, and today the population
| is 40M. And it's not as if nobody knew what was going on, when
| Stalin's second wife confronted him on his actions causing so
| much death, she was met with such a verbal assault that she
| committed suicide [ https://archive.is/xsCpP ]. The greed and
| lust for power and money to cause the death of millions is not
| limited to capitalism. I know of many strong connections between
| Ukrainians and Irish people, and have no doubt that this rhyming
| history may play into it.
|
| The cause of these famines may be proximally blamed on a shortage
| of one type of crop, but when food is being exported from
| adjacent farms, as happened in both An Gorta Mor and the
| Holodomor, the true cause is not the lack of growing, the cause
| is the lack of control of the fruits on ones laber. People not
| being able to control their own land, not having a widespread
| group of smallholders of land that can benefit from their own
| work, from not having administrative control by the majority of
| people. There's a lesson for us who farm digital land; do we own
| the land or are we sharecropping?
|
| We must fight autocracy in all its forms, lest many of us starve.
| Those who oppose democracy have killed millions and will do so
| again if given the chance.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Whenever I see a tragedy, calamity, crash or whatever I almost
| always see one common factor: a lack of diversity somewhere. In
| this case it was in domestic food production. Whenever you look
| in nature and say 'that looks like a healthy ecosystem' it is
| almost always a system that is diverse and conversely when you
| see an ecosystem in distress it is generally lacking in
| diversity. As far as I know, diversity is the only real long term
| survival algorithm out there.
|
| [edit] I should point out that I am not commenting on the cause
| of that lack of diversity, just the result of it.
| epistasis wrote:
| The lack of diversity was not in food production, but rather in
| land ownership, and being able to own the fruits of your own
| labor. Plenty of food, just none of it for the Irish because
| they did not own the land.
| baq wrote:
| Don't forget to mention what happened when you tried to get
| some of that not your food so you could attempt to survive...
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| What, like stealing Cromwellian corn so the young might see
| the morn?
|
| Win a free trip to Australia!
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I made a guesstimate that it was cheaper for Britain to
| send unemployed people to Australia than it would be to
| feed them.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Definitely not. My line was from a very famous Irish
| song, called the fields of athenry, about exactly this.
| I_complete_me wrote:
| Is this a deliberate replacement for Trevelyan?
| SwtCyber wrote:
| Diversity isn't just nice to have, it's a survival mechanism
| 7952 wrote:
| And efficiency is mutually exclusive with flexibility. The more
| you optimise to do one thing the less you can easily do other
| things.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I think the evidence says you can have both. When I say 'the
| evidence' I mean just looking at nature. In nature you
| clearly see animals and plants that are massively more
| efficient at tasks than their ancestors all while living in
| more diverse environments and in larger numbers so clearly
| you can get both efficiency and flexibility gains. I think
| though your point has merit but I am finding it hard to write
| a super clear example of it. Maybe this is because there is a
| confusion between efficiency and temporary advantage? I think
| of efficiency more like an attempt to get the maximum
| infinite gain while a temporary advantage attempts to
| maximize the immediate gain only. It isn't an efficiency gain
| if you go out of business in 5 years just so you get a
| windfall now. With that in mind it is clear that you can
| create temporary advantages very easily but they may not be
| long term efficiency gains. Figuring out what is just a
| temporary gain and what is a long term efficiency gain is
| hard though. There are no crystal balls to tell you the truth
| of the future. Diversity in a system means that you will have
| a lot of different approaches to the problem to try which
| gives you more of a chance to find the long term efficiency
| instead of just a temporary advantage.
| froh wrote:
| greed. food was produced in ireland and exported for profits
| while irish were starving. greed is not a matter of diversity.
|
| get me right: I love diversity, diversity is a "must have". but
| greed is unrelated to diversity, isn't it?
| Glyptodon wrote:
| See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts
|
| Ireland was the prototype for the British empire starving
| millions to death because they were poor.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| England. Is it even a question?
| s_dev wrote:
| Look at JetSetWilly's reply above. He's saying the British
| should be proud of their role in the Irish Famine and is being
| upvoted for it.
|
| So no -- this isn't undisputed.
| Accacin wrote:
| I think JetSetWilly's opinion is not the normal in England,
| at least around people my age.
|
| I was always taught what a lot of people here say, that the
| potato blight was a natural disaster, but the British
| government took it as an "opportunity" and purposely did not
| do enough to help.
|
| In my personal opinion, I think that few people would have
| died if the British government stepped up, not the many
| millions that died as a result of their inaction. As an
| English person, I'm not proud of what our government did to
| Ireland over the years. Ireland is a beautiful country with
| great people, and it took a long time even to get the
| relationship between the UK and Ireland to where it is now.
| sunami-ai wrote:
| Answer: The British.
| xinuc wrote:
| After some discussion with some friends from the former
| "colonizer", it just occurred to me that apparently it's very
| hard for people from those countries to appreciate their
| countries' role for a lot of massacre, genocide or any man made
| disaster like this kind of famine. They always find ways to
| deflect their countries responsibilities with some "reasons",
| although they generally agree that any kind of genocide is
| wrong.
|
| I think this is what we witness today too, with some massacres
| and genocides going on. People from those colonizer countries
| just can't relate to the victims. Maybe deep down they
| acknowledge that those genocides are good, or at least
| necessary, because those things are what brings them prosperity
| they enjoy today.
| sunami-ai wrote:
| Ouch. Yes. I agree.
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| "The British" did not genetically engineer the potato blight.
|
| Further, in the 19th century state capacity was small and
| massive modern style relief programmes were not possible.
| Despite this, Britain managed to spend a large degree of GDP
| on relief. Proportionately more than it did on covid response
| recently, for example.
|
| The reason people deny british culpability for "genocide" is
| that there was no "genocide" and britain did what it was able
| to do, to an unprecedented degree in fact. If anything, we
| should be proud of britain's response, especially knowing
| that it would never get aby kind of gratitude for it.
| Peroni wrote:
| >If anything, we should be proud of britain's response,
| especially knowing that it would never get aby kind of
| gratitude for it.
|
| Some examples of Britain's response:
|
| * Establishing soup kitchens for the starving, where, to
| acquire food one must renounce your religion, anglicise
| your name, and abandon your native tongue.
|
| * Provide maize for the starving and destitute but not for
| free for fear it would generate a sense of self-importance
| amongst the millions who are dying of hunger
|
| * Maintaining the exportation vast amounts of food to
| Britain throughout the Great Hunger
|
| * Requiring the starving who couldn't afford to buy food
| from the British to build pointless walls in order to earn
| that food
|
| * Forcibly evicting the starving and dying from their homes
| because they couldn't pay their rent for some reason
|
| * Denying aid to anyone who owned more than a quarter-acre
| of land, forcing starving farmers to give up their land and
| become destitute in order to qualify for relief
|
| So, on behalf of all those before me in Ireland; go raibh
| maith agat.
| alexb_ wrote:
| The entire reason there was a famine was due to absentee
| landlords who demanded absolutely everything but the bare
| minimum from farmers for the "right" to work on "their"
| land.
| jmull wrote:
| Yes, the real victims of the Irish famine were the
| unappreciated, overly criticized British. Will the horror
| ever fade?
| vkou wrote:
| No, but they did engineer an economic system where all the
| food that the Irish grow gets sent overseas while the
| latter starve.
|
| The Soviets built a similar system a century later in
| Ukraine, it's product was called the Holodomor.
| xinuc wrote:
| Well, I can't even comprehend how mind like yours works.
| skellington wrote:
| Not having food.
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| We went to the Dunbrody Famine ship exhibit in New Ross, Ireland
| a few years back. It was a neat exhibit, first they seat you in a
| dark small room and show a movie detailing the situation, then
| the wall opens up and the ship is nicely framed in the view,
| sitting outside in the River Barrow.
|
| They then take you out to tour the ship.
| ETH_start wrote:
| The author wants you to believe the Irish Famine was caused by
| free-market extremism. This couldn't be further from the truth.
| Ireland wasn't starving because of free markets -- it was
| starving because Britain's mercantilist policies blocked it from
| importing food from outside the empire.
|
| The British forced Ireland to rely on their overpriced grain,
| banned direct imports from the U.S. and Europe, and kept tariffs
| high with the Corn Laws -- all while millions starved. That's not
| laissez-faire. That's imperial economic control designed to keep
| Ireland dependent on politically connected domestic producers.
|
| O'Toole's omission of this amounts to deception. He's twisting
| history to fit a narrative, blaming capitalism while letting
| British trade restrictions, protectionism, and outright
| exploitation off the hook.
|
| The Irish Famine was a disaster of Britain's mercantilist
| policies. Whitewashing that to score political points for his
| illiberal domestic agenda is an insult to history.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| The mercantilist economic policy of the UK was an abject
| failure that made its people poorer and prevented the import of
| cheap food.
|
| But the UK's unwillingness to provide sufficient aid once the
| famine had already started _was_ motivated by laissez-faire
| politics and a Malthusian belief that the famine was the
| Irish's own fault for overbreeding.
|
| Remember that the government with the support of the Whigs and
| Radicals actually repealed the Corn Laws, it was just too
| little too late. Ironically the Whig's free market beliefs if
| enacted in policy much earlier might have prevented the famine
| from happening in the first place, while simultaneously meaning
| they weren't interested in properly mitigating it once it did
| happen.
| anovikov wrote:
| Irish famine was deadly because of Catholic church that pushed
| people to reproduce without limits.
|
| No matter what the relief efforts were or not, but population
| growing without limits inevitably put them in conditions where
| they HAD to go with a single most productive crop having no other
| choice. And that was a recipe for disaster because it's only a
| matter of time before that crop fails for one reason or another.
| And no matter how much relief is provided it only keeps
| population unsustainably high for this to repeat once again, and
| no help can be infinite.
|
| Moreover, even without crop failures, population kept on
| unusustainably high levels means Malthusianism: even if we
| imagine same exact crop yields every year (not possible in
| reality), in only a few years population will stabilise simply
| due to infant mortality due to diseases caused by malnutrition.
| And in this case, because there is "no famine", no one will
| provide any help. And even if they will, it only helps kicking
| the can by another few years.
|
| If not the pressure of Catholic Church - reined in in other parts
| of Europe by Reformation or at least a threat thereof -
| population could just stay at sustainable levels.
|
| Ah and yes, the situation as it was in Ireland left no chance for
| industrialisation, because there was no excess product to invest.
| Initial wave of capitalism in Europe resulted from Black Death
| (and preceding great hunger of 1315), which reduced land rents to
| zero and made peasants rich for a generation or two, leaving them
| a lot of money to spend on industrial products, and left lords
| too poor to afford effectively inhibiting growth in trade and
| crafts, and subsequently, of foreign discoveries and industry.
| donall wrote:
| > Catholic church that pushed people to reproduce without
| limits
|
| [Citation needed]
|
| It's hard not to interpret this as just garden variety bigotry,
| of the same sort that caused the famine in the first place.
|
| Let's assume it's correct, though. The Catholic church had been
| one of the most powerful organisations in Europe for well over
| 1000 years by the time if the famine. Why did it take until
| Ireland in the 19th century for their population mismanagement
| to become truly problematic? Also why did this not also happen
| in a country like Spain? Hard to find many more
| enthusiastically Catholic countries than Spain in that time
| period.
|
| The population density of Ireland at the time of the famine was
| comparable to England (it is now much lower). Ireland produced
| enough food to feed itself and millions of people in English
| cities at the time of the famine. The issue was not a lack of
| food but the "ownership" of the food.
|
| The account of capitalism emerging from the black death is a
| fine theory for continental Europe. At the time of the black
| death, Irish society was controlled by Irish people. After the
| 1600s it was increasingly run as a colony, with the indigenous
| culture outlawed and intensive resource extraction for export
| to England (timber, food, etc).
|
| You might as well ask why industrialisation didn't take off
| among the Choctaw or the Cherokee. Or maybe they also just have
| the wrong religion?
| anovikov wrote:
| Easy peasy, famines were commonplace in Spain during the
| Middle Ages (not sure how about part of it that was
| controlled by the Muslims though, but i don't think it was
| much different). During the Middle Ages, famines (and
| epidemics) were the natural regulator of population and were
| seen as a normal thing. By the XIX century of course, things
| were very different....
|
| In Spain at the period, there were no famines because people
| kept emigrating to the colonies. Ireland was itself a colony.
| That's the difference. In Eastern Europe where countries
| didn't have colonies, famines were a norm.
|
| Irish one is seen as something special because it happened in
| the West, and because overpopulation there built up for a
| considerable time being allowed by potatoes farming that for
| the time being, provided plenty of food allowing population
| to build up. Then it backfired.
|
| As for local populations pre-existing in the colonies, sure
| they almost all died out. To a much larger proportion than
| the Irish, and sometimes, went entirely extinct. That is the
| normal part of absorbing new lands. It's just that Ireland
| was Christian almost since Christianity became a thing, and
| was never "discovered", that made it special. But we
| shouldn't pretend like it wasn't normal or in any way
| exceptional overall. Genocide is a natural way in which
| nations interact.
| donall wrote:
| > Irish one is seen as something special because it
| happened in the West, and because overpopulation there
| built up for a considerable time being allowed by potatoes
| farming
|
| There was no overpopulation problem in Ireland! It was
| _less_ dense than England, while having similar climate and
| agricultural capacity. The reason for the famine was that
| the food that was abundantly produced in Ireland was
| transferred to England to support their cities (which did
| have an overpopulation problem). There was more than enough
| food produced in Ireland to feed everyone in Ireland. That
| is not what overpopulation looks like.
|
| It's also easy to say no major famines happened in Spain
| because of her colonies, except that by the time of the
| famine she had very few remaining. Spanish people had the
| same capacity to emigrate to the Americas as the Irish did.
| Your argument was that Irish people were too Catholic to
| control their population but you haven't addressed the fact
| that that wasn't a problem in any of the other Catholic
| countries. The same should be true of Italy, who didn't
| even have a former empire to call on.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> [Citation needed]_
|
| What, exactly, indicated to you that the above is a quote
| from elsewhere?
| epistasis wrote:
| That does not indicate that it's thought to be a quote,
| [Citation Needed] indicates that it needs a supporting
| source to validate the statement. It is commonly used on
| Wikipedia to denote statements on a page that do not have
| proper supporting information, and should therefore not be
| uncritically accepted.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> That does not indicate that it 's thought to be a
| quote_
|
| So you are indicating that a summons is necessary? That
| makes even less sense...
|
| _> [Citation Needed] indicates that it needs a
| supporting source to validate the statement._
|
| But, logically, the person making the comment is the
| supporting source. That is, after all, why you are taking
| time to speak to them instead of some other source. If
| you find another source is more valid to what you seek,
| why not go directly to it instead? A middleman offers
| nothing of value.
|
| _> It is commonly used on Wikipedia to denote statements
| on a page that do not have proper supporting information_
|
| Sure. The entire purpose of Wikipedia is to aggregate
| information about topics from external sources. Citations
| are needed. It would not serve its intended purpose
| without them. But a wiki is quite unlike a discussion
| forum. A discussion forum is a venue to speak with the
| primary source...
|
| ...which is what ended up happening anyway, making the
| "[Citation Needed]" of any interpretation even stranger.
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't understand much of your comment.
|
| Maybe this page will help us come to common
| understanding: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/citation-
| needed
| 9rx wrote:
| _> I don 't understand much of your comment._
|
| I'd have offered you a citation, but repeating what
| someone else said seems rather silly.
|
| _> Since gaining its catchphrase status, "citation
| needed" has been used in online discussion forums to
| humorously point out biased or baseless statements made
| by others._
|
| So what you are saying is that someone thought could be
| funny by posting a tired meme? That may be true, but
| still doesn't make sense.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| The parallels to modern crises are unsettling, especially the
| idea that -the market must be obeyed at all costs-
| switch007 wrote:
| Brits alive in 2825 will still have to put up with being blamed
| for everything in Ireland
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Ireland is full of resilient people who fought and bombed their
| way to their own freedom from the British. I think they will
| overtake the British economy before 2825
| rsynnott wrote:
| The Irish economy overtook the British one by most measures
| some time ago (arguably partially as a result of the UK's
| problems with regional development; the British economy, at
| this point, is verging on basically just being London and its
| immediate area).
| automatic6131 wrote:
| Yes, the Irish economy is bigger than the British, all you
| have to do to get that answer is: count all the revenue of
| famous Irish corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, Intel
| (and others) as Irish revenue, and divide by the respective
| populations (6M and 70M).
|
| Definitely do not think any further about these measures,
| just report them as Ireland ^ and UK v.
| switch007 wrote:
| Lol exactly
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yes, GDP figures for Ireland and other small open
| economies (and, for that matter, _London_, which has the
| same sort of dynamic) are pretty useless; this is fairly
| well-known. However, Irish average wages overtook UK ones
| after the financial crisis, concrete economic activity is
| generally higher (for instance, Ireland builds about 2.5x
| the number of housing units per capita per year), the
| Irish state pension is higher, Irish unemployment is
| lower, Irish inflation is much lower, and so on.
|
| And it's much starker when you compare Ireland to
| Northern Ireland (the bit of Ireland that the UK still
| runs), or, really, to the North of England or most other
| UK regions (again, really, the whole UK economy hangs off
| the south-east). The idea that Ireland would be _better
| off in 2025_ if it had stayed part of the UK is... pretty
| out-there, to be honest. The UK is simply very bad at
| regional development.
|
| Ireland _was_ an economic basketcase for a very long
| time, but then, realistically, so was most of the UK;
| more or less since WW2 the UK outside of London and the
| south-east has been looking pretty unhealthy.
| switch007 wrote:
| Dublin's GDP is a greater % of Ireland's GDP than London is
| of the UK's.
|
| Ireland has a "regional development" problem too
| rsynnott wrote:
| You'd expect that, though; the Greater Dublin Area isn't
| far off half the population. And most of the GDP-skewing
| activity is in Dublin; Irish GDP numbers in general just
| aren't very useful. You don't see the same gap in wages
| and standard of living between Dublin and the west that
| you see between, say, London and Wales, though.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| ...such a shame for all the kids that were killed, though.
| Accacin wrote:
| I've never met an Irish person that "blames" the modern English
| for what our ancestors did. I might be talking out of turn, but
| I think they mainly just want us to acknowledge what happened
| and not downplay what the British did.
| switch007 wrote:
| I met plenty when I lived there and plenty in the UK too.
|
| Even while trying to acknowledge the sins of our past and
| sympathise with them (in all honesty), they still treated me
| like crap for who I am and where I'm from. That's just
| xenophobia
| rorytbyrne wrote:
| I grew up on a farm near the hills of The Burren in the west of
| Ireland. If you look closely, you can see walls made of stacked
| stones cross-crossing the hills, as if to demarcate farmland -
| but those hills are not arable farmland, so why? The British
| refused to offer free food to the starving, so they made people
| build these completely pointless walls to "earn" the food.
| They're now known as the Famine Walls.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_walls
| t43562 wrote:
| My parents were Irish,English so I'm always caught in the middle.
| It's obvious that many English people are inclined to ignore the
| opium trade or the famine and think about bits of history that
| make them feel good. I'd just mention that almost nobody is
| without skeletons in their national closet of one kind of another
| - probably less bad.
|
| I am 50 and my understanding has changed over time. Like every
| teenager I wanted to be proud of who I was but fortunately being
| a mongrel creates a note of discord in one's head - who to be
| proud of?
|
| The need to feel proud is a driver of all sorts of shit. We
| shouldn't feel ever more than a little proud or proud of what we
| personally have done but I'm not even sure of that. It's always a
| simplification. One should not have to call on history to respect
| oneself.
|
| Irish people made use of the Empire too and went to the colonies
| to seek their fortunes. My dad was one. I was born in one and saw
| the recent Irish immigrants behaviour - they were a mixed bag
| like everyone else. Most were sort of ok and one or two were
| atrocious but not more or less than anyone else.
|
| As a gross over-simplification, I think history is about people
| conquering other people and building larger and larger groups
| which become kingdoms then nations then empires or federations or
| unions. I get this feeling that it's mathematical. Whoever can
| organise on a large scale will absorb whoever is smaller.
|
| So if we want to have a reasonable future, we must learn to
| organise on a large scale with negotiation and rules/laws so that
| someone can't absorb us by doing it the violent way.
| pbiggar wrote:
| The use of official wording to describe a crime against humanity
| against the Irish (speaking as an Irish person) continues today.
| Almost every western news media has used official speaking
| language to under-report the situation in Gaza or to excuse
| Israeli crimes against humanity. Consider this report [1], where
| Israeli children get emotions, and Palestinian children are
| "found dead" with no culprit or explanation for how that might
| have happened. This has happened repeatedly throughout Israel's
| genocide on the Palestinian people (lots of examples at [2]), and
| the same things are now being used to underplay Trump/America's
| attacks on migrants and trans people.
|
| [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DGYlvC1tHnR/
|
| [2] https://www.instagram.com/newscord_org/
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| The brits made it deadly
| g8oz wrote:
| This discussion is a relevant time to recommend the fantastic
| book called "Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the
| Making of the Third World" by the indomitable late Mike Davis.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Calling it a "famine" is a controversial choice.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-11 23:01 UTC)