The Irish Famine

samson09 · 25-06-2009 01:51AM #1

All down to potato blight or did something else happen?

indough · 25-06-2009 02:01AM

of course there were more factors but what conspiracy are you thinking of? you have to be a bit more specific really

samson09 · 25-06-2009 02:12AM

In a nutshell...Brits carted off shiploads of food to England, forced farmers to work the land or threatened to kill them and their families,Ireland starved.

indough · 25-06-2009 02:13AM

but isnt that just accepted history? i mean as in it occurred aswell as the actual blight thing

suey71 · 25-06-2009 02:16PM

I read somewhere that there where 8,000,000 people in Ireland before the Famine and 2,000,000 after it. Is this true? and if it is, how many died here and how many emigrated?
I think it was Geniside.
What was the population of England back then? Maybe they felt threathened.
200 years previously they sent over Cromwell and he killed 500,000 of us

.

samson09 · 25-06-2009 02:31PM

The Irish Famine was a holocaust greater than that experienced by the Jews at the hands of nazi Germany. I remeber reading old records detailing the amount of food that was exported out of the country to Britain during the height of the famine (as Britain was also going through crop failures of its own). I cant for the life of me find the documents but I'll keep trying. Does anyone have any stories passed down from relatives about what happened back then. I feel the version we were taught as children isnt a true reflection of what actually happened.

getz · 25-06-2009 02:38PM

suey71 wrote: »

I read somewhere that there where 8,000,000 people in Ireland before the Famine and 2,000,000 after it. Is this true? and if it is, how many died here and how many emigrated?
I think it was Geniside.
What was the population of England back then? Maybe they felt threathened.
200 years previously they sent over Cromwell and he killed 500,000 of us.

we can all look back after the event and say thats bad,but in that day and age things like this was just a part living[by the way it was not hunger that killed most people it was the diseases that malnutrition brings] even to day billions around the world are also have the same problem,and the strange thing is that to-days ireland,is a member of a club that is causing a large part of the problem, the EU when they put a 20% tariff on any country bringing food into the EU,it ment that most of these countrys that used to import food could no longer do so [sound familiar ?] that ment that land that used to grow food had to be turned over to growing tea or tobacco, but why should we care making money is far more important than a fewbillion people.just think what our ancestors will say about us.

Liber8or · 25-06-2009 02:44PM

samson09 wrote: »

The Irish Famine was a holocaust greater than that experienced by the Jews at the hands of nazi Germany.

That is an astounding statement riddled in hyperbole. Firstly, the best estimates of Jewish victims from the Holocaust are around 6 million. Secondly, best accounts of the Irish Famine estimate 1 million died and 1 million emigrated.
So, you should dispense with whatever Anti-British piece of garbage you read for your figures.

How and why the Famine happened is still being debated. However, it is widely accepted that Potato Blight was the primary instigator but, the response from Britain (at the time) certainly did not help events occuring in Ireland.

samson09 · 25-06-2009 03:15PM

Liber8or wrote: »

That is an astounding statement riddled in hyperbole. Firstly, the best estimates of Jewish victims from the Holocaust are around 6 million. Secondly, best accounts of the Irish Famine estimate 1 million died and 1 million emigrated.
So, you should dispense with whatever Anti-British piece of garbage you read for your figures.

How and why the Famine happened is still being debated. However, it is widely accepted that Potato Blight was the primary instigator but, the response from Britain (at the time) certainly did not help events occuring in Ireland.

Yes, more Jews died overall but relatively speaking a higher percentage of the Irish race died at the time of the famine. I hold no grudges against the British people but I do think that the British government at the time of the famine was nothing more than an oppressive power hungry establishment that inflicted horrendous attrocites on the people of Ireland. And for the record I'm not pro IRA or anti England and would hope that nobody else in this day and age are either.

fatheadjuju · 25-06-2009 03:21PM

Liber8or wrote: »

Firstly, the best estimates of Jewish victims from the Holocaust are around 6 million.

what holocaust? :pac:

sneakerfreak · 25-06-2009 03:25PM

Census figures are eluding me,as far as I know census figures were collected by the British Authorities and showed a large annual increase of population year by year until the "Potato Famine" but no census was organised for a large number of years before the Górta Mór making putting a correct figure on the amounts dead impossible but very likely more than is claimed.The Jewish "Oxygen Famine" may have killed 6 million but this is not a competition,mass murder is mass murder.
To be honest I find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that most Irish people think it was just a potato blight,you cannot have a famine when there is an overabundance of food in a country.

sneakerfreak · 25-06-2009 03:26PM

LOL

25-06-2009 03:26PM

samson09 wrote: »

Yes, more Jews died overall but relatively speaking a higher percentage of the Irish race died at the time of the famine.

Not exactly true either.
Ireland's population decreased by about 25%. That includes roughly 1 million immagrants.
The Holocaust however:

There were about 8 to 10 million Jews in the territories controlled directly or indirectly by the Nazis (the uncertainty arises from the lack of knowledge about how many Jews there were in the Soviet Union). The six million killed in the Holocaust thus represent 60 to 75 percent of these Jews. Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, over 90 percent were killed. The same proportion were killed in Latvia and Lithuania, but most of Estonia's Jews were evacuated in time. Of the 750,000 Jews in Germany and Austria in 1933, only about a quarter survived.

.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust#Jews

louliewan · 25-06-2009 03:29PM

Population of Ireland before famine was 8 mil, after famine it was down to 4 mil, 1 mil died, 3 mil emigrated. Blight caused potato crop to fail and as cattle and grain were exported to feed the English people, Irish starved. It is said that many English people were unaware of the severity of the situation here, there was a donation of $710 (or possibly $170) sent by the Choctaw Indians .

samson09 · 25-06-2009 03:36PM

King Mob wrote: »

Not exactly true either.
Ireland's population decreased by about 25%. That includes roughly 1 million immagrants.
The Holocaust however:
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust#Jews

I remain skeptical that this figure is accurate but in the grand scheme of things the cause of the deaths is what is being discussed here.

Focus on the main topic...was the main cause of the famine a shortage of potatoes? Try offering something constructive to the discussion please!

Liber8or · 25-06-2009 03:38PM

samson09 wrote: »

Yes, more Jews died overall but relatively speaking a higher percentage of the Irish race died at the time of the famine. I hold no grudges against the British people but I do think that the British government at the time of the famine was nothing more than an oppressive power hungry establishment that inflicted horrendous attrocites on the people of Ireland. And for the record I'm not pro IRA or anti England and would hope that nobody else in this day and age are either.

First of all, the Irish are not a race - we are a nation. Jews are a race.
How are you estimating a greater number of Irish people died at the time of the famine in comparison to the Holocaust? If you are implying that a greater number of people belonging to the same nation died than the Jews, because the Jews that died were from a multitude of nations, i.e Poland etc, then you would be wrong again since over 2, almost 3, million Polish Jews died.

The British Government inflicted horrendous attrocities on the people of Ireland? Another bold statement fuelled by anti-British propaganda (im not accusing you of being anti-British, but I dare say the material you read was). Would it surprise you to hear that Queen Victoria visited Ireland in 1849 and received a tremendous welcome from the Irish people? Would it also shock you to learn that, for the most part, the people of Ireland enjoyed belonging to an Empire due to the prestige and renown it received?

Ultimately, it is extremely difficult to find information pertaining to the attempt by the British Government to massacre or instigate a genocide on the Irish people. However, there is a plentiful supply of documentation which details reports between Ireland and England relating to the seriousness of the Famine. Much of it is played down and not truly revealed to be a serious problem, probably due to the fact that the Famine was not evident in the East as much as the West and most reports came from Dublin.

I will not dispute the fact that Britain acquired a huge amount of resources from Ireland each year, but that was no different to previous years of harvest. The only quandary involved was a Blight was killing the remains of Irish crops and there was very little left for the people after exports had left the country.

samson09 · 25-06-2009 03:47PM

The Great Irish Famine

What became known as the great famine occurred between 1845 and 52 and was one of the greatest catastrophies of the nineteenth century. It resulted in the deaths of millions of people from starvation and disease and a decline in Irelands population through emigration. It was thought by many to be an English induced famine used by a greedy government to solve the Irish question. The potato failed from blight but the country was full of food, which was taken away from those who grew it, to be consumed by the expanding workforce of the industrial boom in England or by its army overseas. The English hid behind the fact that they were the constitutional government for the Irish people pretending to be concerned by begging food for her people abroad while at the same time by constitutional policies taking the food from the people. They were ruthless in putting down all attempts by the Irish for self-government and all attempts of resistance. They passed laws that made it a crime for a father to protect his children or his home from destruction. They passed coercion laws that made it a crime for the Irish to leave their homes between sunrise and sunset or to hold arms. They had a well-fed armed guard of military and police watch over them while they starved. Never in the history of mankind was there a government who acted so cruelly to its people. Ireland never needed the begging bowl it had its own food grown in its own land and only needed its own concerned legislatures to pass laws to save her people. The constitutional Government of England was then the most powerful in the world and had the ear of the world through its influence and press. They manipulated the facts to cover up the real truth of what was happening in Ireland the mass murder of its people and the destruction of Ireland. An English induced constitutional famine.

For rest of article see:

http://www.wolfetonesofficialsite.com/famine.htm

bonkey · 25-06-2009 03:48PM

fatheadjuju infracted.
sneakerfreak warned.

Folks - this is about the Irish famine, not the atrocities carried out by the Germans in WW2.

Stay on topic, please.

Liber8or · 25-06-2009 03:55PM

Brian Warfield, composer and songwriter, plays the five-string banjo and harp, and has written many of the group's best known songs.

Taken from the Wolfe Tones Website. The guy who wrote the article you quoted above. Some musician, who creates (predominantly) pro-Irish, anti-English music and tales wrote an article on The Irish Famine and you expect it to be unbiased and based on facts?

Seriously dude...

Back on topic though. No, the Great Famine was not a plan for genocide on the Irish people and it was not a stealth war to root out Republicanism. It was a failure by a government to properly deal with neglect upon it's citizens, which would have been caused by inaccurate information or carelessness.

sneakerfreak · 25-06-2009 03:57PM

bonkey wrote: »

fatheadjuju infracted.
sneakerfreak warned.

Folks - this is about the Irish famine, not the atrocities carried out by the Germans in WW2.

Stay on topic, please.

Warning accepted with good grace but what is this famine you speak of?

There can be no famine when there is an overabundance of food in a country.

bonkey · 25-06-2009 04:09PM

sneakerfreak wrote: »

Warning accepted with good grace but what is this famine you speak of?

There can be no famine when there is an overabundance of food in a country.

I'm not sure where you get your definition from, but to be honest, I don't really care.

There is no question as to what event is being referred to. If you want to argue that the moniker applied to the event isn't entirely accurate, I would suggest that you need a seperate topic - and that its probably one suited for another forum (unless you want to make the case that there's a conspiracy in referring to it as a famine)

samson09 · 25-06-2009 04:15PM

sneakerfreak wrote: »

There can be no famine when there is an overabundance of food in a country.

This essentially sums everything up in one sentence.

Food was exported from this country in vast quantities during the time of the famine.

The reasons that are documented in history books do not add up and in my opinion are part of a cover up.

The purpose of this thread is not to encourage a negative attitude towards Britain or British people.

We probably all have ancestors who died at the hands of British rule during this time and I feel they deserve at least some form of acknowledgement that what happened was not due to potato blight but
greed and the abuse of power.

Crowhill · 25-06-2009 04:38PM

an often ignored fact is that there were many organisations INCLUDING British (not just Choctaw Indians) ones that set up relief organisations to help the catastrophe occuring in Ireland at the time of the famine.

As per usual it was the wealthy screwing over the poor to make a profit. Not "The" English, not "The" British, but the same breed of rich and powerfull people who have been screwing their fellow man since time began.

but keeping in line with the topic, I suspect the evil kiniving Brits were threatened by the superior Irish intelect and trade and therefore tried to kill us all off. I think the British Gov't introduced a genetically modified spud that rotted away on itsself. An idea that was stolen from a covert "bog lab" in Longford, but was being researched for peacefull uses, like fending of alien invasion. (jeez I could go on all day like this, must visit this forum more often, it's catchy........)

Att-tichoo · 25-06-2009 04:44PM

My nans mother used to work for an english estate during the famine

Nan used to tell us how the english family owned all the land around our area and anything the irish farmers produced on the bits they were renting had to be handed over. She said there were massive shed full of diff produce that used to be cleared out and shipped off for england..the days when this would happen all the locals would crowd around looking for food that had fallen or was left behind. She said sometime it would be so long before food was shipped off it would have been starting to rot and even then the rotting food would be fed to the estate animals rather than the dying locals. My nan was very bitter about english people but she said her mother used to tell her that none of our family would exist if it wasn’t for the english family.

The used to give the staff food on the sly to bring to their families but were all made swear that if they were caught the staff had to say they'd robbed it, because if the authorities found out they were giving food earmarked for england to the irish peasentry they'd be done for treason.

Dunno if its true my nan was a bit of a coot!!

humanji · 25-06-2009 04:50PM

I can't see it as a cover up at all. The British government saw the Irish as being less than animals. When people started to starve, the British government decided to keep the food exports going so they could take care of their own people and they just didn't give a second thought to the Irish. To say there was a conspiracy is assuming the Irish meant something to the government. They were an after-thought that someone else would take care of.

blackgold>> · 25-06-2009 05:09PM

Att-tichoo wrote: »

My nans mother used to work for an english estate during the famine

Nan used to tell us how the english family owned all the land around our area and anything the irish farmers produced on the bits they were renting had to be handed over. She said there were massive shed full of diff produce that used to be cleared out and shipped off for england..the days when this would happen all the locals would crowd around looking for food that had fallen or was left behind. She said sometime it would be so long before food was shipped off it would have been starting to rot and even then the rotting food would be fed to the estate animals rather than the dying locals. My nan was very bitter about english people but she said her mother used to tell her that none of our family would exist if it wasn’t for the english family.

The used to give the staff food on the sly to bring to their families but were all made swear that if they were caught the staff had to say they'd robbed it, because if the authorities found out they were giving food earmarked for england to the irish peasentry they'd be done for treason.

Dunno if its true my nan was a bit of a coot!!

Of course it's true.Your nan is not lying to you.I've heard far worse from the older crowd. The english treated us like dogs.As far as they were concerned, we were barely sub-human.

The famine in Bengal in 1943 took the lives of about 4 million people.
it was a man made fammine. Just goes to show, how these sick people operate.

As for the question of was it caused by the english, well you could argue it was.The irish worked on land that wasn't their own and paid taxes to the english landowners.This was the case throughout the country.All we were good for was exporting.They exported the irish to death you could say.

bonkey · 25-06-2009 05:59PM

This is the conspiracy theories forum.

Surely the question, therefore, is whether or not people conspired to bring about famine once the potato blight hit.

I would argue that they merely continued with the practices that were already in place before the blight hit. They may have caused famine by refusing to react and by doing the same thing they did beforehand, but I don't think there's evidence that there was any conspiring to bring about starvation and death...any more than the people in wealthy nations today are guilty of conspiring to starve those without food in our globalised world, when we have no shortage of it.

GhostInTheRuins · 25-06-2009 08:08PM

bonkey wrote: »

This is the conspiracy theories forum.

Surely the question, therefore, is whether or not people conspired to bring about famine once the potato blight hit.

I would argue that they merely continued with the practices that were already in place before the blight hit. They may have caused famine by refusing to react and by doing the same thing they did beforehand

Sure, you could say that because food was always exported to england then they were just carrying on as they always have, but the fact that food exports increased during the height of the famine surely means something?

The famine "would not kill more than one million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do any good." - Nassau William Senior, economics professor at Oxford University

bonkey · 25-06-2009 08:32PM

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

but the fact that food exports increased during the height of the famine surely means something?

If its a fact (is it?) then it might indeed mean something. The reason for the increase would be telling.

Did exports increase because there was a bumper crop of non-potato crops that year, for example, or did they increase because producers diverted food away from where it was previousy going?

espinolman · 25-06-2009 09:11PM

Potatoes are not our native food , they were introduced to ireland , i'll add to this later , i will look into this .

Undergod · 25-06-2009 09:42PM

Yeah, they are South American aren't they?

The Irish Famine

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