What would Ireland be like now if the famine never happened?

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

If the British had helped us out would we have stayed in the union?

What would our population be? Would our sports teams be much better? Would the troubles never have happened?

We had a population of over 8 million.

What I do know is that Conan O'Brien would be presenting The Late Late Show, Wayne Rooney would be playing up front for us as team captain, JFK would have been our best Taoiseach and the Gallagher Brothers would be well renowned trad musicians. :pac:

So many questions, can the intelligent people of AH's answer?

Mr. CooL ICE

We'd have to find something else to complain about.


Also, all surnames with the "O" prefix would have it removed.

Amirani

I think I've heard it said before that we'd be the most densely populated country in the EU had the famine never happened.

snickers

Helped us out ? how about if they the british had not been plundering our country of the rest of its food supplies we might of been ok on our own.

FreshKnickers

Makes me wonder how different the aul U S of A would be too...

Podgerz

No no; Conan would not be presenting the Late Late ; he would just be co-hosting the Graham Norton Show in the BBC

On a serious note we would have had one hell of a soccer team

Sunnyisland

We be the biggest exporters of potatoes in the world...

Amirani

Podgerz wrote: »

No no; Conan would not be presenting the Late Late ; he would just be co-hosting the Graham Norton Show in the BBC

On a serious note we would have had one hell of a soccer team

Not necessarily. Our youth football structures would probably still be equally as crap, which is far more important in terms of producing good players than population size.

stefan idiot jones

The Chinese would be complaining about our one child policy.

RedXIV

we'd be screwed on international relations, the whole "ah sure my granny was 1/8th Irish" wouldn't exist anymore

mojesius

Lucky charms wouldn't exist.

Podgerz

NiallSparky wrote: »

Not necessarily. Our youth football structures would probably still be equally as crap, which is far more important in terms of producing good players than population size.

A yea but you know potatoes, increased populations, youth football structures, that whole link there

DoozerT6

We'd be fecked for tourists. No famine =no mass emigration=no 6th generation Americans coming over to see the shack the ancestors lived in before they shipped out to Boston.

Conmaicne Mara

Fatter?

mattjack

snickers wrote: »

Helped us out ? how about if they the british had not been plundering our country of the rest of its food supplies we might of been ok on our own.

When I get my time machine going I'ma gonna open a Super Macs back in 1840s Ireland.

Lapin

We wouldn't be much different than we are now, with the probable exception of having larger urban centres.

We never had the natural resources to sustain an industrial revolution on the scale of Britain and Europe, and only a small amount of fertile land capable of supporting large families.

I reckon emigration on a mass scale was still inevitable. Even before the Great Famine of the 1840s emigration was commonplace in Ireland.

Mardy Bum

DoozerT6 wrote: »

We'd be fecked for tourists. No famine =no mass emigration=no 6th generation Americans coming over to see the shack the ancestors lived in before they shipped out to Boston.

We wouldn't be as reliant on this if we had a larger population.

fryup

if it was 8 million population at the time of the famine then today it would be...what 20 million??.. maybe more??

any mathematicians out there give a more accurate estimate

Filibuster

Probably would have invented Chocolate Taytos in the 1970's

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

*waits patiently for a response from Wibbs*

Sleepy

Lapin wrote: »

We wouldn't be much different than we are now, with the probable exception of having larger urban centres.

We never had the natural resources to sustain an industrial revolution on the scale of Britain and Europe, and only a small amount of fertile land capable of supporting large families.

I reckon emigration on a mass scale was still inevitable. Even before the Great Famine of the 1840s emigration was commonplace in Ireland.

And let's face it, we're still at it and have been for all bar a couple of years during the celtic tiger.

rustedtrumpet

Robots

wolfpawnat

We'd have kicked British arse in 1916!!!!

If it did happen but our other food sources were kept here, we would have been fine, Britain would have lost food revenue.

If it never happened, we still would have had mass immigration in times of financial crisis, perhaps the numbers would be even larger than they were.

Saab Ed

Dublin would have even more Mayo guards and teachers to ride each others cousins in Coppers.

CrabRevolution

Maybe more chance of a greater number of us speaking Irish, the great hunger really accelerated it's decline.

wolfpawnat

CrabRevolution wrote: »

Maybe more chance of a greater number of us speaking Irish, the great hunger really accelerated it's decline.

We'd probably be like most other European countries. It would probably still be the first language, but fluent in English too. 50/50 between the two languages even. That would be great.

Legs.Eleven

Those statues of famine victims down by the Liffey in Dublin wouldn't be there.

Shout Dust

fryup wrote: »

if it was 8 million population at the time of the famine then today it would be...what 20 million??.. maybe more??

any mathematicians out there give a more accurate estimate

There was something published a while back, saying if it wasn't for emigration and the famine we'd be at around 22-30 million, we had a similar population to England at one stage.

I'd say we'd be somewhere 12-15 million if it wasn't for the famine, be somewhere between Belgium and Holland. If we became a free country before the colonial era ended, I think we'd have been harsh enough masters

jill_valentine

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

Those statues of famine victims down by the Liffey in Dublin wouldn't be there.

Good. They've scared the jaysus out of me on more than one tipsy occasion. :mad:

Aineoil

"If the Famine didn't happen, there could be 12 million people living in Ireland and eight million could be native Irish speakers."

Eamon O Cuiv

downonthefarm

there was no famine to begin with it was just them bloody civil servants making a balls of it again

bizmark

Tbh its not unfair to say the world would be a difference place so many irish people where fairly pivotal in their adopted country s history s and cultures from little things like ned kellys impact on the aussie culture to JFK and his extended family to the founder of the Argentine navy and henry ford etc

Our people did some great work regardless where they ended up and i kinda like our little island as it is now even with its problems

Calibos

I think I read somewhere that at the time of the famine our population was the aforementioned 8 million and England was 10 or 11 million. They have a population of about 65 or 70 million now. If the same ratio was maintained we'd be at 40 or 50 million by now....which actually tallies with the the number of Irish Americans/Australians/kiwis/Canadians etc plus our current 32 county population (minus the Poles )

Henlars67

There was no famine.

Yes the potato crop failed & people had to emigrate while others starved to death.

But it wasn't a famine. A famine is when a country cannot produce enough food to feed its population, but that didn't happen here.

There was more than enough food to feed the population, however it was exported.

I think it's high time that the myth of the famine was put to bed.

Whether it was genocide overseen by Travelyan or not is debatable, but one thing it certainly wasn't is a famine.

KungPao

The national dish would be mashed potatos and roasties served with a side of chips. All washed down with some delicious potato juice.

Richard Hillman

House prices would be huge. The Cities outside of Dublin would be Dublin sized with Dublin being a concrete jungle. I would imagine Dublin could have had a new city/old city feel to it with the new city on the westside.

It doesnt sound too nice in fairness.

Aineoil

Richard Hillman wrote: »

House prices would be huge. The Cities outside of Dublin would be Dublin sized with Dublin being a concrete jungle.

It doesnt sound too nice in fairness.

There would be no bungalow bliss, for sure.

wolfpawnat

downonthefarm wrote: »

there was no famine to begin with it was just them bloody civil servants making a balls of it again

Landlords, as well as the British Government, not civil servants, were the issue. Grains were grown and sold to pay rents. Had the landlords not charged such exorbitant rates or even left people have the grains (they were not exactly broke), they would have lived. The government took meat and other vegetables to sell in England, again taking from the starving Irish.

According to the poem "The Nation" by Miss Jane Francesca Elgee (later Lady Wilde)

Weary men, what reap ye? Golden corn for the stranger.
What sow ye? Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing
Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffing.
There's a proud array of soldiers—what do they round your door?
They guard our master's granaries from the thin hands of the poor.
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping? 'Would to God that we were dead—
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.[69]

Back then, the civil servant was nothing like what they are today. We always seem to ignore the horrific things the British Government and landlords did to us.

wolfpawnat

KungPao wrote: »

The national dish would be mashed potatos and roasties served with a side of chips. All washed down with some delicious potato juice.

you mean poteen?

steddyeddy

We would probably be less susceptible to heart disease and diabetes.

hfallada

In fairness half the country left in the 1950s and then again in the 1980s so our population probably wouldn't have been that large. With the way the economy was poorly run after independence it's amazing we have a modern economy now.

danoc

There would be much more people on boards saying 'your aul one' jokes.

KungPao

wolfpawnat wrote: »

you mean poteen?

Only on special occasions, when entertaining etc. But on a boring weekday, just regular spud juice

Mike 1972

Ireland (if not still part of the UK) would have had to join the Allied side in WW2 post 1941 in order to be able to import the foodstuffs and supplies it would need.

Sulla Felix

None of us or a good proportion of the world's population would be alive. Other humans would be here in our place.
The causal chain that lead to your parents meeting, and your grandparents before them, and your great.. etc would undoubtedly be broken without the massive trauma of the famine. Your great great grand ma would have spread her legs for one of the OReilly brothers (who all died as children during the famine) instead of the Oconnor that she did in this timeline and so on and so forth.

diomed

The absentee landlords would be richer collecting rents from 40 million peasants.

BillyMitchel

Lagos

CrabRevolution

Sulla Felix wrote: »

None of us or a good proportion of the world's population would be alive. Other humans would be here in our place.
The causal chain that lead to your parents meeting, and your grandparents before them, and your great.. etc would undoubtedly be broken without the massive trauma of the famine. Your great great grand ma would have spread her legs for one of the OReilly brothers (who all died as children during the famine) instead of the Oconnor that she did in this timeline and so on and so forth.

Bit of a needless point, you could say the same about anything that ever did or didnt happen in the history of existance....

Toby Take a Bow

CrabRevolution wrote: »

Bit of a needless point, you could say the same about anything that ever did or didnt happen in the history of existance....

Well, some people are suggesting that famous Irish americans would be alive and present in today's Ireland, so it apparently it does need to be said.

Super-Rush

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

*waits patiently for a response from Wibbs*

Yeah i'd like to hear how he survived the famine.







Sorry

Sulla Felix

CrabRevolution wrote: »

Bit of a needless point, you could say the same about anything that ever did or didnt happen in the history of existance....

Toby Take a Bow wrote: »

Well, some people are suggesting that famous Irish americans would be alive and present in today's Ireland, so it apparently it does need to be said.

What Toby said. Conan O'Brien wouldn't be presenting the LL, Rooney wouldn't be striker for Ireland etc etc.