Making a Documentary on The Famine

Qualitymark

ElChe32 wrote: »

The awkward moment a Protestant offers you soup..

Heh, yes, especially if they whistle the S as they say "soup". And if they hand you a Bible you know to run!

goodie2shoes

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

I'll take all that at face value. What's it telling us that we can actually use today? I don't see what it's telling us that would even assist in avoiding a future famine.

In fact, would it be fair to say that we don't really do much to ensure our food security, or even our energy security. Which, I suppose, means I'm saying something a little different - we don't seem to learn much from it, and what we could learn isn't evident.

Because, indeed, the story does seem to be told as a prelude to emigration. Then it gets subsumed into the story of the path to political independence. Yet, perhaps ironically, it's hard to see any particular connection between themes pursued with that independence, and the Famine.

Perhaps because its a failure, instead of a victory, there's nothing in it that can give us a positive sense of what we can collectively achieve. I mean, contrast it with the Battle of Britain - which might be an historical event with similar resonances in the UK. Anoraks can pick over whether the Spitfire was really so good, and wonder what might have happened if German fighters had larger fuel tanks. But it doesn't matter - the basic story is still "we won".

But, whatever way you look at it, the Famine is a downer. There's nothing in it to bring a sense of triumphing over adversity. Well, perhaps for Quakers.

And, apologies, because I know my post is even self-contradictory. I do see study of the Famine as pointless, yet here I am banging on about it. I suppose I'm aware that others seem to take an interest in it, and I suppose I wonder if it does give them something postive and life-affirming to make such an interest worthwhile.

Absolute nonsense.
If the Irish famine demonstrates one thing then that is the indomitable nature of human spirit. There are more Irish people scattered throughout the planet now than ever.
as with the Jewish experience of the holocaust, SURVIVAL is what it's about.
Lest we forget ...

GRMA

There was no overpopulation.

MadsL

GRMA wrote: »

There was no overpopulation.

Mayo could support 400,000 people then from subsistence farming?

MadsL

woodoo wrote: »

Nobody here ever governed or was responsible for somalia

So you are steadfast that there was intent to kill people?

Qualitymark

As for "what could we learn", we could learn - though we have not - that making the rich richer and grinding down mercilessly on the poorest is not a good survival strategy for a country or a people.

162 years after the end of the Famine, the idea of TDs paid a package of almost €200,000 is to crack down on old age pensioners - generally, the poorest single group, and the people with the least ability to increase their earnings - in the Budget.

Irish household income since 2010 has dropped drastically for the poorest and risen for the wealthiest, exactly as it did during the Famine:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/austeritys-wake-why-irelands-spending-cuts-should-scare-us-too/255181/

Zebra3

MadsL wrote: »

For those being quite free with the word genocide, let me ask you, 29,000 children under 5 died of starvation in Somalia in just 90 days in 2011. Do you consider that you committed an act of genocide in allowing them to die?

Yes, atm I'm on my way to the Hague to hand myself in.

:rolleyes:

Fratton Fred

OP,

UCC Multitext on Irish history has some excellent stuff.

http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Famine

http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Landlordism

http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Private_Responses_to_the_Famine3344361812

there's a lot more there as well.

Fratton Fred

My name is URL wrote: »

Disputed but not disproved afaik.

They're making a film about it so it must be true =p

http://www.nationalturk.com/en/ottoman-aid-to-ireland-in-19th-century-to-be-pictured-at-screen-with-famine-21672

Jesus, that's embarrassing

Drogheda was given it's crescent by King John in 1210 when it received it's Royal Charter.

Just as Portsmouth received their's from King Richard the Lionheart. That's why the club's badges are strangely similar.

SEPT 23 1989

At GAA matches during the famine,visiting Dublin fans especially when playing in the west of Ireland taunted the home supporters by waving various food stuffs and cookery books at them

Siuin

I was doing some geneology work the other day and realised that a whole host of my relatives died in the famine- it's one thing to learn about the famine in an abstract way, but I must say that really brought it close to home...

9959

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

At GAA matches during the famine,visiting Dublin fans especially when playing in the west of Ireland taunted the home supporters by waving various food stuffs and cookery books at them

Does anyone know just who was the Darina Allen of the late 1840's?

Qualitymark

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

At GAA matches during the famine,visiting Dublin fans especially when playing in the west of Ireland taunted the home supporters by waving various food stuffs and cookery books at them

Really? That's impressive. I didn't realise time travel was perfected in 1884 when the GAA was founded, allowing members to appear on the sidelines in 1847.

The Darina Allen of the 1840s was Alexis Soyer, by the way. His help during the Famine crashed his stellar career.

9959

Qualitymark wrote: »

Really? That's impressive. I didn't realise time travel was perfected in 1884 when the GAA was founded, allowing members to appear on the sidelines in 1847.

The Darina Allen of the 1840s was Alexis Soyer, by the way. His help during the Famine crashed his stellar career.

It was perfected in 1884, so they travelled backwards in time to wave their 'coffee table' cookery books in 1847. Simple.

billybudd

steddyeddy wrote: »

She still gave feck all. They were both useless to us really.

I agree, just adding an interesting fact.

Qualitymark

OP, have you thought of posting your request in the History forum, and perhaps also in some of the regional forums where it'll be seen by Cork, Donegal, Clare and Mayo people - areas that were the hardest hit by blight, famine and fever?

In the History forum you're going to find people with an educated interest in history and ancestry. There's also a Genealogy forum.

CruelCoin

http://bbsimg.ngfiles.com/1/23924000/ngbbs4f99f04a1e7a2.jpg

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Qualitymark wrote: »

Those who fought for independence knew that a self-governing Ireland would be committed to its citizens, whereas the British government of the time had an attitude of racist contempt towards the Irish population.

Is it fair to say that this was their intention, and the position is a logical one taking that account of the significance of the Famine - that institutions didn't exist that would help organise our resources to best effect in difficult times, so we needed our own.

Yet, we then have to cope with some of the failures of that independent State. That revolutionary generation had a belief that, with the British gone, Ireland would achieve great things. Instead, 80% of people born in the 1930s emigrated in the 1950s. The language revival became a farce. And you can take your own read on what happened when the Catholic Church found that 90% of the population were subscribers.

All of which is terribly disillusioning. But, I suppose, what I'm feeling around for is the positive message.

Qualitymark wrote: »

And yes, the British feel that they "won" the Battle of Britain. Perhaps if they'd been invaded and conquered by the Nazis they mightn't, though.

Oh, indeed, and I half recall that novel SS-GB where Len Deighton speculated over what an occupied Britain might have been like. My point is more that, if you've a national achievement, it can give collective confidence in the ability to achieve good things together.

Qualitymark

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Is it fair to say that this was their intention, and the position is a logical one taking that account of the significance of the Famine - that institutions didn't exist that would help organise our resources to best effect in difficult times, so we needed our own.

Yet, we then have to cope with some of the failures of that independent State. That revolutionary generation had a belief that, with the British gone, Ireland would achieve great things. Instead, 80% of people born in the 1930s emigrated in the 1950s. The language revival became a farce. And you can take your own read on what happened when the Catholic Church found that 90% of the population were subscribers.

All of which is terribly disillusioning. But, I suppose, what I'm feeling around for is the positive message.Oh, indeed, and I half recall that novel SS-GB where Len Deighton speculated over what an occupied Britain might have been like. My point is more that, if you've a national achievement, it can give collective confidence in the ability to achieve good things together.

I agree with everything you say. The idealists of 1916 were executed; those who remained were largely driven out after the Civil War. Our Republic inherited the merciless right-wing Catholic values of the colonial era.

And yes, national achievement gives collective confidence. We were getting there with the Celtic Tiger - multinationals hiving off tech and pharma and finance SMEs, a growing export business - until those corrupt ... people ... took it all from us by artificially pumping up the cost of housing and land to make profit for themselves and their buddies.

9959

Qualitymark wrote: »

I agree with everything you say. The idealists of 1916 were executed; those who remained were largely driven out after the Civil War. Our Republic inherited the merciless right-wing Catholic values of the colonial era. ............

I refer you to 'the Bible' of historical research Wikipedia (joke), but here goes:

"Pearse's reputation and writings were subject to critisism by some historians who saw him as a dangerous, fanatical, psychologically unsound individual under ultra-religious influences"

So perhaps the "merciless right-wing Catholic values of the colonial era" might have remained intact, or even strengthened, under the leadership of the god-fearing Pearse.

podgemonster

OP I'd recommend visiting the Famine Heritage Centre in Skibbereen, West Cork and from there walking down to the mass graves in the Abbey Graveyard where 8,000 - 10,000 bodies are buried.

LivelineDipso

Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid decided to send 10,000 pounds in aid to Ireland after being informed of how devastating the famine was in Ireland. However, Britain’s evil Queen Victoria replied, stating they would only accept a thousand pounds in aid. In response, Sultan Abdülmecid secretly sent five ships full of food, as well as cash, to Ireland in order to help the Irish, who were shunned by England, the evil of all.

I love editorial impartiality.

Rasheed

OP, you probably know it yourself but the National Famine Museum in Strokestown, Roscommon is really interesting.

http://www.strokestownpark.ie/famine-museum

The landlord that was in the 'big house' is Strokestown at the time, Major Dennis Mahon, gave £4000 to help 1000 of his tenants to emigrate. Some refused to go so he evicted them. He was murdered in 1847, the height of the famine, even though he was thought to be one of the fairer landlords.

http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Major_Denis_Mahon_of_Strokestown_Park_Co_Roscommon


Also in Roscommon town, you can see the old work house with a famine memorial beside it showing how the famine affected the different parishes. It is thought that Roscommon was one of the worst hit counties with a 32% drop in population from the famine.

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Roscommon/

LivelineDipso

Putting on my tin foil hat but is it not just a little curious that these workhouses were all constructed in the years leading up to the famine?

Where the landowners planning a future austerity programme of their own?

Fratton Fred

LivelineDipso wrote: »

Putting on my tin foil hat but is it not just a little curious that these workhouses were all constructed in the years leading up to the famine?

Where the landowners planning a future austerity programme of their own?

it was a result of the Poor Laws enacted in Ireland in 1833 and in England and Wales in 1834.

johnr1

OP, you might want to read the first few chapters of "The Lansdowne Estate in Kerry under Stuart Trench" (2001) by Gerard J Lyne, - it outlines how one of the most detached absentee landlords of all and his despotic agent ran their estate during and after the famine.

The tenants who were forcibly deported en-masse to New York were "the poorest and most ill-prepared the city had ever seen"

I'd also second the poster who suggested the Famine museum in Skibbereen, - to me the place has the same atmosphere as Auschwitz.

.

Grayson

Seaneh wrote: »

Bollocks!

Nice rebuttal. have you got any facts to back it up?

9959

johnr1 wrote: »

OP, you might want to read....

I'd also second the poster who suggested the Famine museum in Skibbereen, - to me the place has the same atmosphere as Auschwitz.

.

Eek!
Does your own personal view of the similarities in 'atmosphere' between the museums of Skibbereen and Auschwitz extend to extrapolating a genocidal equivalence between The Famine and The Holocaust?

Please tell me no.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

9959 wrote: »

Eek!
Does your own personal view of the similarities in 'atmosphere' between the museums of Skibbereen and Auschwitz extend to extrapolating a genocidal equivalence between The Famine and The Holocaust?
Please tell me no.

Although it could be helpful to compare reactions of people who experience these extreme events. I’m thinking of the ending of Daniel Defoe’s novel "A Journal of the Plague Year"

I can go no farther here. I should be counted censorious, and perhaps unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of reflecting, whatever cause there was for it, upon the unthankfulness and return of all manner of wickedness among us, which I was so much an eye-witness of myself. I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year therefore with a coarse but sincere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end of my ordinary memorandums the same year they were written:—

A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!

Or Primo Levi’s famous reflection on his experience in Auschwitz

I might be alive in the place of another, at the expense of another; I might have usurped, that is, in fact, killed. The "saved" of the Lager were not the best, those predestined to do good, the bearers of a message: what I had seen and lived through proved the exact contrary. Preferably the worst survived, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the "gray zone," the spies.... I felt innocent, yes, but enrolled among the saved and therefore in permanent search of a justification in my own eyes and those of others. The worst survived, that is, the fittest; the best all died.

Do we have those perspectives in our Famine accounts? Maybe we do, I just wouldn’t know. I’m not conscious of comment that explores how we’re not descended from the people buried in Skibbereen. We’re descended from the people who buried them.

LordSutch

brosy wrote: »

I'm currently doing my college dissertation as a radio documentary about An Gorta Mór, The Great Hunger.

I'm wondering if any of you fine people with an interest in this period of Irish history would have any information on perhaps less well known stories or personalities from the period, or even characters around Cork or Ireland with a deep knowledge who might be open to an interview.

Any help or discussion is greatly appreciated.

Go raibh maith agat

I have always wondered about 'other foods' that were eaten (not eaten) during this period. Was the humble potato the only food available in Ireland/Britain at the time? What about fish for example, or other vegetables like carrots, cabbage, runner beans, and then all the livestock + rabbits, hares etc etc? what about making & baking bread to fill the Carb deficit? did bread even exist at the time? and if it did, then why . . . .

I have little or no knowlewdge of the period myself, but I have always wondered why people couldn't survive on other food stuffs for the duration of the potato blight.