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

bizmark · 13-10-2013 09:20PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:21PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:22PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:22PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:26PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:28PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:31PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:32PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:35PM

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

hfallada · 13-10-2013 09:38PM

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 · 13-10-2013 09:40PM

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

KungPao · 13-10-2013 09:44PM

wolfpawnat wrote: »

you mean poteen?

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

Mike 1972 · 13-10-2013 10:33PM

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 · 13-10-2013 10:43PM

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 · 13-10-2013 10:43PM

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

BillyMitchel · 13-10-2013 10:47PM

Lagos

CrabRevolution · 13-10-2013 10:51PM

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 · 13-10-2013 10:58PM

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 · 13-10-2013 11:04PM

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 · 13-10-2013 11:22PM

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.

getzls · 13-10-2013 11:34PM

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.

The British are still helping Ireland out and likely always will need to.

Ireland will likely always need the help of Britain.

HansHolzel · 13-10-2013 11:40PM

If the Famine had never happened, then the Irish people would never have got to see the operation of the "direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful providence" (Charles Trevelyan).

Or as Mel Gibson put it in Signs (2002):

"People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I'm sure the people in group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation is a fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there's a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?"

Celly Smunt · 13-10-2013 11:55PM

We'd be a mini england, big towns and cities 20km apart from each other.

Duckworth_Luas · 14-10-2013 12:10AM

getzls wrote: »

The British are still helping Ireland out and likely always will need to.

Ireland will likely always need the help of Britain.

Pfffffft! We didn't need their help when we were clocking up back to back to back skip one to back Eurovision titles. The true measure of a successful nation.

dd972 · 14-10-2013 12:48AM

Scousers would all talk like normal Lancastrians

Rangers would have won 115 Scottish titles

NI if it came about, would be 2 counties and not 6 !

MadsL · 14-10-2013 01:25AM

Henlars67 wrote: »

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.

That you, Sinead?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZCe8Fw8vyM

Rubeter · 14-10-2013 05:35AM

Henlars67 wrote: »

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.

Where did you get that idea from?
A famine can be caused by a number of things and irrespective of its causes if there if widespread hunger over a wide geographical area it's called in English, A Famine.
The word itself comes from the French/Latin famine/fames meaning hunger, and even if you want to call it a genocide then the method used was by creating a famine.

iDave · 14-10-2013 06:57AM

We wouldn't have a pathological fear of renting

Wibbs · 14-10-2013 08:36AM

Super-Rush wrote: »

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

Sorry

*Adds SR to hitlist. Come the revolution...*

Celly Smunt wrote: »

We'd be a mini england, big towns and cities 20km apart from each other.

It seems logical alright CS.

Then again maybe not and I reckon there is an even bigger factor in why Ireland was different in it's demographics. We never had the level of industrialisation here like they had in Britain, or the rest of Europe. Even by the time of the famine, the country was agrarian(ironic), with pockets of industry in the North of the country, but that was about it. No mining towns, no furnaces belching flame, no towns of satanic mills all over the place. We were more like the highlands of Scotland. The UK, particularly England was able to sustain such a large population because of the industrial revolution and we simply didn't have that.

With the industrial revolution, there was a large migration of people from rural to urban areas throughout Europe. Your peasant farmer in Lancashire could move to the towns where he might find work. That wasn't an option here, at least the option wasn't going to be local to the country. Other countries had a huge shift from rural to urban. So did we it's just we had to travel outside Ireland to find the towns.

I suspect, famine or no, we would have had mass emigration anyway. OK not to the same degree, but not far off. There was a steady trickle of flight from Ireland from the mid 1700's onward. The peak didn't even come with the famine, more people left afterwards when things had apparently settled down.

Precious flower · 14-10-2013 08:52AM

I have a feeling if the famine hadn't hit in the 1840's it would have hit at some other time. The reliance on one single variety of potato was never going to turn out well. To be honest, Ireland was experiencing famines all the time. Before the 1840's there was one in the 1740's that killed more people, not to mention the one in 1879. Famine was definitely not new to the Irish population. Though if that whole idea about there being several dimensions in our world, maybe there is an alternative universe where we didn't die of famine. It was mostly the peasant population that suffered so who knows all the people that would exist today if it hadn't happened. I wonder would be look or sound any different?

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

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