The Famine Plot - Tim Pat Coogan "Famine was genocide"

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide. "

drquirky wrote: »

Tim Pat Coogan= not a historian but a journalist w/ a clear republican agenda- think I'll give it a miss....

Fratton Fred wrote: »

it is a book written for a specific audience, that's all. Nicely timed for christmas and, of course, the filming of the oh so true story of the Turkish aid to Drogheda http://www.drogheda-independent.ie/news/hollywood-stars-for-famine-film-3070886.html

cynical? just a bit.:rolleyes:

Craptacular wrote: »

As will become clear I've not read this but it makes 3 famine books recently released.

Any recommendations on which to pick up? I'd lean toward TPC's because I've read and enjoyed his books but it's subtitle suggests a close focus on the English role rather than the broad picture.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Whether or not TPC is a writer or an historian is not very material to the debate. In his Famine book TPC is holding himself out to be the latter, so as such he is duty bound to present facts. If he disagrees with historic fact he should provide documentary evidence in support of his case. Listening to him promoting his book on radio, he did not do any of this and made several erroneous claims, one being that during the Famine Lord Lansdowne's Kenmare Estate forcefully ‘expatriated tenants to Canada in coffin ships, with inadequate clothing and in poor health, and that the local PP spoke against the practice.’ This is incorrect and totally unrepresentative of what happened. If TPC bothered to read ‘The Lansdowne Estate in Kerry’ by Gerard Lyne he would learn the ignorance of his remarks.

His claims are wrong, because Kenmare emigrants went to Canada AFTER the Famine, starting in 1851, with a 1851/2 total of 1300 landing at Quebec . (see below). The first phase of emigration from the Kenmare Estate was when a small number of emigrants went to the USA in 1843/44, followed by some more in 1845 (many of whom went to grasp the opportunity of a paid passage with cash for seed capital) and the third, the biggest phase went in 1849, when the Famine was over. Many of the last wave were well-to-do, seeking a better life, and had sold their cattle & furniture to have extra cash for when they landed.

Although TPC did not name the Kenmare PP he most likely referred to Archdeacon John O’Sullivan, PP of Kenmare from 1839 to 1874. TPC also is very wrong on his comments about O’Sullivan. Historians (local and academic) generally agree O’Sullivan was content to sacrifice the rights of his flock to the advantage of the Catholic Church. Also, he was very close to Lord Lansdowne during the Famine, intervened on behalf of several parishioners to help them obtain passage and did not disagree with Lansdowne unless it was about religion and what he, O’Sullivan, saw as the ‘rights’ of the Catholic Church. Lansdowne was a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, gave O’S £100 to improve his own house and was a generous patron of local schools. O’Sullivan was a Loyalist, and for example, used his lordly connections to obtain a Stipendary Magistrate role for his brother on the island of Granada. (The Nun of Kenmare, Sr. Cusack, the noted contemporary historian, pointedly said of O’Sullivan ‘he dearly loves a lord.’)

Much later, O’Sullivan ‘turned’ on Lansdowne’s Agent, Trench (reasons not relevant here) and made some outlandish claims while providing no evidence to support the claim that close on 2,000 Kenmare emigrants died on arrival in the New World. There is a hard statistical fact that mortality among emigrants (during the voyage & immediately after landing) in the 1850’s averaged about 1% (Donnelly, ‘Excess mortality and Emigration’, in New Hist., V, 356.) Elsewhere, (Buchanan, ‘Report on emigration to Canada during 1851’) the mortality of Irish emigrants going to Quebec in 1851 was 187 out of a total of 26,521 or a mere 0.7%. That alone shows TPC to be talking through his nether regions and more than sloppy on checking his comments.

From a cold economic perspective many Irish Estates (including Kenmare’s Lansdowne Estate) were very badly managed in the years up to the Famine, uneconomic and totally unviable for both landlord and tenant. Trench, the Lansdowne agent was no angel, but he was a businessman, understood commercial reality and initially gained his unpopularity by stopping the practice of sub-division of small uneconomic holdings. What had been happening was totally unsustainable viewed from any perspective, (other than an unhistorical and bigoted nationalistic one.)

The radio interview with TPC confirmed my opinion of him as having an agenda, loose with facts and no historian. On the basis of the language and errors used in his interview I believe I would be entitled to be more unkind.

I won’t bother to buy the book, even when it is remaindered.