The Great Famine
The Great Famine. The Famine. An Gorta Mór. The Great Hunger. I've mentioned it before on the blog, but today, I want to delve a bit deeper. For those wanting a historical approach, I strongly recommend Finn Dwyers The Great Hunger series on his podcast, the Irish History Podcast. Over about 40 episodes, he really dives into the Famine, exploring the common narratives and a few things that we as a nation would prefer to brush over. (Yes, there is evidence of cannibalism for example. And yes, we did manage to fit in a rebellion even during the Famine years...)
As to why I'm choosing today to write about this? Well ok, I owe ye a blog post for this week and I'm a week behind for those who pay for the early access option! But also, because I'm being asked a lot from various people about why the Irish are so affected - even now, 180 years later - by stories from around the world on hunger, genocide, oppression...
A lot of people don't understand the trauma that comes from an event like this in history. There are loads of authors writing about this from all sorts of perspectives - go onto Google Scholar and search for "Irish trauma famine". Although, honestly, if you search hard enough, you'll probably find someone, somewhere has written a paper and interpreted the evidence to suit your current views.
So let's start with the facts
The Famine started with the failure of the potato crop in 1845. The failure of the potato crop meant anyone who was depending on the potato as their main source of food was screwed. It ended in 1852 (ish) despite the British government's attempts to decree otherwise!
Now, to understand why this is, we need to get into absentee landlordism, colonialism, etc. Basically, Ireland at the time was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, after being sold out by the Ascendency in 1800, with the Act of Union. The bastards. They all then decamped to Britain (not all, but absentee landlords were a fact of life in Ireland and the so-called middleman system.
Rent collection was left in the hands of the landlords' agents, or middlemen. This assured the landlord of a regular income and relieved them of direct responsibility while leaving tenants open to exploitation by the middlemen. The ability of middlemen was measured by the rent income they could contrive to extract from tenants. Middlemen leased large tracts of land from the landlords on long leases with fixed rents and sublet to tenants, keeping any money raised in excess to the rent paid to the landlord. This system, coupled with minimal oversight of the middlemen, incentivised harsh exploitation of tenants. Middlemen would split a holding into smaller and smaller parcels so as to increase the amount of rent they could obtain.
- Great Famine (Ireland) - Wikipedia
Can you see some of the issues with this approach? Yeah?
Land doesn't produce crops year after year after year, especially not the same crop, without failing in some nutrients or other. That's a basic of crop rotation and leaving land fallow. But the Irish tenant didn't have that luxury. And frankly - spuds were the only crop that could feed a family of 10+ on a quarter acre or less...
You throw in the fact that most of these families also had to labour on the landlord's land as well, and didn't get compensated for any improvements they made to the property, could be kicked off at a moment's noticed (you think "employment at will is bad?) and well... it was a shitshow.
Just for context now, there were approx. 100,000 deaths due to the potato blight across the rest of Europe. Ireland lost 1,000,000+. (To famine. We lost another 1,000,000 to emigration)
But why?
Along with most families having to survive on spuds, most of them were surviving on a particular type of spud. One we don't hear too much of anymore for some reason: The Irish Lumper. Perfect for growing in low nutrient, wet land. Perfect for Ireland, right?
But not when the majority of the population was depending on it for survival. The exact nature of the blight has been identified as Phytophthora infestans, which also affects tomatoes, apparently. Tomatoes were not a major food stuff in Ireland in the 1840's. Just FYI.
The Irish Lumper though? That was the foodstuff of the poor. And a lot of Ireland was poor. The population had exploded in the 18th century, from approx 2,000,000 in the last years of the 17th century (so the 1690's, when the Williamites and Jacobites were ravaging the country) to over 8,000,000 in the 1841 census (Finn Dwyer suggested in one of his episodes that was probably an underestimation as the census takers avoided some of the wilder and more remote parts of the country and so missed a fair few people)
So the land was under more and more strain. The people were under more and more strain. In previous famines, of which there were many, the ports closed to food stuffs. In this one?
Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel wrote to Sir James Graham in mid-October that he found the reports "very alarming", but allayed his fears by claiming that there was "always a tendency to exaggeration in Irish news".
- Great Famine (Ireland) - Wikipedia
The British government's primary motive appears to be to not stifle private enterprise. Weirdly to modern ears, the Torys were slightly more effective than the Whigs. As one Charles Trevelyan said at the time:
We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country.
And yes, that Trevelyan.
While there were elements in Britain that recognised this was wrong, the ruling parties and the Ascendency saw it as their rights to cleanse the countryside.
The phrase from John Mitchel's The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps), published in 1861, sums it up best, I think: "The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine."
The Great Famine - the basics
1845 - 1852
1,000,000 died
1,000,000 emigrated.
No, Ireland has not yet reached the levels of population from before the Famine.
Less than 25% of Irish (growing) soil was devoted to growing spuds. >75% were devoted to foodstuffs exported during the Famine.
In History Ireland magazine (1997, issue 5, pp. 32-36), Christine Kinealy, a Great Hunger scholar, lecturer and Drew University professor, relates her findings: “Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. The food was shipped under military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland; Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed. The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding 9 gallons. In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins were shipped to Liverpool. That works out to be 822,681 gallons of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of the Famine.”
- Learn | Ireland's Great Hunger Museum
Technically, this wasn't genocide. The British government were not trying to murder the entire population. Just - slim it down a bit. (<-- sarcasm there, people) After all, 8,000,000 is an awful amount of people taking up valuable land the Ascendency could be using to enrich themselves.
(Sorry, I keep trying to just give a list of facts here and it's not possible)
Why isn't the Great Famine genocide?
Mainly because the Brits weren't trying to eliminate everyone of the Irish race from the face of the planet. That's it. The fact they saw the elimination of the 25% of the population from the island as a good thing, is beside the point. They weren't trying to kill us all.
It's really that simple.
Plus - let's face it - the British Empire have form in this regard. There were 12 famines in India during British Rule.(24 in Ireland during British rule, but to be fair it took them an extra 450 years or so to get to India) (Check out this list for loads more worldwide, not just British Empire)
It still doesn't change the fact that had the ports been closed and the food that had been grown in Ireland, kept in Ireland, the Great Famine would have had far less of an impact on the nation.
Why am I writing about this now?
To explain the empathy and relationship the Irish feel with Palestinians. Honestly, most of us have no issue with Jews or with the fact that Israel exists.
But we have major issues with children, or indeed anyone, being shot trying to get food.
Major issues with people starving with food waiting for them a few miles away.
Massive issues with hospitals, schools and other public institutions being bombed.
That sort of thing strikes a chord in our hearts, because we recognise the Israeli tactics.
We recognise the punishment of an entire population for the actions of a few.
We know what a family member will do to get food and water for their tuath.
Collective punishment is something we got really familiar with during British occupation. The only reason the Brits didn't cut off water and electricity in the North was because the communities were too intertwined. But where they could cut people off, they were known to do so. They didn't give a shit about hungry children, starving babies.
To be clear - this is not an endorsement of the actions of Hamas on 7th October, 2023. That too was horrendous, horrible, grievous, painful attack that should never have happened. Babies, children, the elderly - no one was spared.
But the numbers don't add up:
1200 Israeli causalities, 800 of them civilians
5000 people injured
240 hostages taken.
All of which is traumatic to a nation open to attack pretty much on all sides.
But there have been more than 50,000 Palestinians killed since then.
And I understand the deep need to have the remaining 50 hostages returned to Israel. When there are so few people in the nation, the loss of even 1 feels personal to everyone. The loss of so many and under such gruesome circumstances... horrendous.
But it doesn't make the killing of 16,000 children ok.
Do human lives come down to numbers?
This isn't a numbers game. But there comes a time when it is. The Irish know what it's like when a colonising force initiates collective punishment. We know what it's like to have brother turned against sister, parents against child, people turning to ever more dangerous acts to either escape or get food or just to do something.
The Black and Tans in Ireland were probably the best IRA recruiters of all time. And the current Israeli forces are probably the best campaigners for gaining sympathy for Palestine right now.
To the people who have lost family, friends, loved ones - it doesn't matter whether they were one of 1200 or one of 50,000. The loss is the same to that person.
But to governments, to aid workers, to the rest of us - it has to matter.
Israel has better fire power, better funding, better weapons, better intelligence, better everything.
I keep getting told that if the IDF wanted to, they could have wiped out the whole of Palestine in a week after 7th October. And maybe they could. But they haven't. They've gone for a slow, extended death of a people, rather than a surgical strike. There are reports of some truly inhumane thinking.
This approach has links to Trump's calling immigrants "vermin" or worse. It has echoes of the Nazi approach to Jews in the 1930's and 1940's. it has definite shades of the British approach to Ireland - not just during the Great Famine, but throughout their occupation.
Some lives are worth more than others is the start of a very, very slippery slope to second class citizens and a very divided society.
And if you're a Brigid follower - think of Brig Ambue.
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