Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Was the Irish famine a famine or genocide

245678

Comments

  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 19,219 Mod ✭✭✭✭Bannasidhe


    Personally I would not term it a genocide as the failure of the food supply was not the result of a deliberate action but a natural disaster. Unlike the Bison Slaughter in the US in the 19th Century where a primary reason was the removal of the food supply for Native Americans
    The US Army sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds. The US federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, to allow ranchers to range their cattle without competition from other bovines, and primarily to weaken the North American Indian population by removing their main food source and to pressure them onto the reservations. Without the bison, native people of the plains were forced either to leave the land or starve to death.

    Having said that, once the disaster hit, I have no doubt that both in Ireland and GB there were those - often in positions of influence and power - who ruthlessly exploited the situation for financial and political reasons.

    There was also a complete and utter failure by government to deal with either the fragility of the food supply which had been identified many years before the blight hit and the living conditions which allowed famine related diseases (which claimed the majority of the lives lost) to spread unimpeded.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,284 ✭✭✭dubhthach


    What point? Please answer.
    Mod
    You are all very welcome to the forum and all but reduce the confrontational tone. I won't tolerate behaviour that's borderline on trolling/shít-stirring.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Ok, now you're putting words in my mouth. I never posted any such thing. Link me to a post where I said that.

    It's not my intention to do so.

    What I am saying is that the Wellselley family who were bigshots in Britain at the time felt it was wrong and predictable no matter what the law said.

    I am willing to discuss the famine on a purely historical basis and the belief systems at the time & comparatively too.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,116 ✭✭✭archer22


    CDfm wrote: »
    I can appreciate that Archer but the typhoid epidemic was as a result of the famine and the conditions that existed because of it.

    In fact, Irish nuns took over fever hospitals in the Crimea during the Crimean War for the British Army and pioneered the treatment of typhus.




    I suppose that if you don't feel that something like the Derryveagh Evictions were morally wrong and they followed the famine, then, you won't get the whole famine thing.

    That would put you at loggerheads with the views of the Ist Duke of Wellington and his brother.




    So this was the mindset - eviction meant starvation , death or emigration.

    Of course, that may not do it for you. That's up to you.

    There is not really an english equivalent and sad and all as the Tolpuddle Martyrs story is, it is fairly small compared with Ireland.

    http://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/index.php?page=martyr-s-story

    Those guys tried to organise for better money, the Irish rural economy did not know the meaning of money.
    It is true that there were some appaling landlords,but it is unfair to tar them all with the same brush.In the area where I live I done some research into the 6 local landlords behaviour during the famine..5 of them never evicted anybody and donated everything they could to help the starving..one even had his prize herd of cattle slaughtered.The 6th landlord was the type we always hear about..a total B/stard who threw all cottiers off his property.So at least in this area one bad egg out of six..and guess whose deeds are remembered and whose are forgotten...ok no prizes for getting that.I wish somebody would do a survey of Landlords in Ireland during that era to see what percentage were bad.I have no doubt it was only a minority.I dont think we should focus so much on the Landlords...from what I can see the Irish strong farmers and merchants were the most callous and exploitative..profiteering and totally lacking empathy for the plight of their fellow countrymen.They emerged from the famine better off than ever and now the dominant force in Ireland...the Cottiers and the Landlords were finished.Remember it suited the farmers to be rid of the Cottiers on their land as farming was changing to more profitable dairy farming rather than the previous more labour intensive tillage.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    I really don’t understand why people get so emotive on the Famine ‘blame game’ and start using words like ‘genocide’ and 'deliberate atrocity'. Yes there was bad management in dealing with the issues, but social policy as we know it today is a recent development. The mindset prevailing in all countries at that time - not just Victorian Britain – was that self help was the cure. Famines always hit the bottom strata of society, the transient beings that had nothing and hope of little more than subsisting on the margins. Any economy/society that is dependent on a single commodity be it palm oil in West Africa, maize in Eritrea or potatoes in Ireland is awaiting disaster. Famines were nothing new in Ireland, they were a regular occurrence. Apart from those resulting from wars/civil disturbance in earlier centuries there were localised famines in the 1700’s; for example the prominent obelisk and many walls on Killiney Hill near Dublin were funded in 1741 by the landlord because ‘the times being hard with the people.’

    Because of the Famine social change happened more quickly in politics, society and land distribution. The wheel was turning; the Famine gave it added impetus. Politically, economically and socially Ireland had been in turmoil for the half century before the Famine. The 1798 Rebellion was followed by the Act of Union, which led to many ‘key influencers’ moving to London. Increased exports (e.g. butter and salt beef from Cork), driven by the needs of the wars with Napoleon, created work and wealth (comparative for many) and must have been a factor in family size among the poorer classes. Add Catholic Emancipation, and the fact that the landlord class was squeezed between the threat of agrarian unrest (whiteboys, shanavests, etc) from their tenants and interference from the Government at Westminster, which largely did not understand Ireland. Quasi-total dependence on the potato by the poorer classes was a recipe for disaster and when that crop failed they paid the price accordingly.

    From the land and landlord’s perspective, many Irish estates were not profitable and from the early 1800’s the cash income – primarily from rent – usually was not sufficient to support a desired lifestyle, let alone a minimal re-investment in agricultural improvements. That inevitably saddled heirs with debts which inevitably, like death duties and other taxes, were raised by loans secured by mortgage on the estate.

    When the cost of Famine relief was placed on the Irish landlords, many of whom were incapable of proper financial management, it caused the bankruptcy of many and led post-Famine to more than five million acres of land changing hands. This allowed the graziers and middling farmers (those with 30 acres or more) to become better off and take a more dominant role in the community. The arrival of the secret ballot in 1872 further reduced the power of the landlord over his tenants, who could now vote for their own candidate without fear of reprisal. These circumstances brought about significant change; when the Government completed a survey in the early 1870’s, it found* that roughly 6,500 men and women owned estates of 500 acres or more. Of these, about 71 percent of these landlords lived on their estates or elsewhere in Ireland. While the richest owners were mostly Anglicans, some 43 percent of all proprietors were Catholics, 48 percent belonged to the Church of Ireland, and 7 percent were Presbyterians.

    The various Land Acts of Windham, Gladstone, etc., ensured the transfer of more land. By the early 1900’s the old landed “gentry” was supplanted in most places by middle-class professionals, small businessmen, shopkeepers and strong farmers, most of whom were Catholic and many were nationalist. The Land Commission then finished off most of the old estates that remained.

    Would that have happened without the Famine? I doubt it.

    *http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FKX/is_3-4_38/ai_111265621/pg_2/


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    archer22 wrote: »
    It is true that there were some appaling landlords,but it is unfair to tar them all with the same brush.In the area where I live I done some research into the 6 local landlords behaviour during the famine..5 of them never evicted anybody and donated everything they could to help the starving..............Remember it suited the farmers to be rid of the Cottiers on their land as farming was changing to more profitable dairy farming rather than the previous more labour intensive tillage.

    Absolutely and I posted about this earlier too.


    CDfm wrote: »
    Do you have any links to the famine graves where you live.

    It might be interesting to look at it as a local area thing, the lore, the landlords , the relief or non relief effort etc.
    CDfm wrote: »
    How land was held , landlord, agent, tenant , sub tenant etc does not get discusssed.

    All landlords were not absentees, you had native Irish too.

    The questions are challenging.

    It would be great to say here were the good guys.And no doubt there are a few Schindlers there.

    Now WS Trench's book needs to be approached with some scepticism as do claims by some Irish politicians of the era about the amount of food produced in Ireland.

    And , while the concept of freedom is all very well in practice the Irish had less rights and protections than medieval serfs.
    The distinction between the ancient slave and the medieval serf in law and custom may seem a fine one, but was significant. The man (and of course there were women slaves) who was enslaved in ancient times was considered to have died; all that was his passed to his master, including the power of life and death. The slave who resisted his master for any reason could be killed, or killed for no reason at all if the master wished to do so.

    The serf, by contrast, was a free man except for the obligations he owed to his lord and the rights his lord claimed over him. Both servile obligations and noble rights could be very extensive, but since the serf was a living creature with a soul, they could not be unlimited. The master could not deny his serf the amenities of the Church, work him on holy days, or demand actions of him that were immoral. As a living creature, the serf had the rights accorded him by natural law. He could resist a lord attempting to take his life or one attempting to withhold the necessities of life from him and his.

    The distinction was just as significant in practice. The ancient laboring slaves who formed the vast majority of the slave class, even if the literature of the times deals far more with the servant class, were segregated by class and lived in prison-like barracks on the villa. They were under the tight control of a slave-driver who punished any sign of rebelliousness quickly and harshly. They were worked in gangs and possessed nothing to call their own.

    Even though the word "serf" comes from the Latin "servus," and means "slave," the situation of medieval serfs was quite different from that of the slave of Classical times. There were two kinds of serf: those who were bound to the soil and those who were bound to the lord. Servants were drawn from the latter class, but the insecurity of their tenure probably made the condition of being bound to the soil preferable. The serf usually had a separate hut with an attached garden and lived with his family. His marriage was a holy union, and married couples were not supposed to be separated. The serf had duties assigned to him by the steward of the manor and was responsible for the tilling of demesne land and the provisioning of the manor house. He received, in return, food and clothing for himself and his family, and often had time to supplement his rations by gardening and, especially during the enforced idleness of the winter, could produce things which he was often allowed to keep for himself or sell. Although the life of the medieval serf was very hard, it was probably preferable to that of the ancient slave.

    http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/serfdom.html


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    OK took me a while but I have typed out some stuff from a Scottish reference. I have a few Scottish history books and some don't even mention the famine of the 1840s as being significant but T. M. Devine in his The Scottish Nation a History 1700-2000 gives details of Scotland's experience of the potato crop failure of the 1840s. Devine is a much respected Scottish historian and holds the Fraser chair of history at The University of Edinburgh. Interestingly he contrasts the experience in Scotland in the 1840s with Ireland and makes no bones about saying that the Irish famine was an order of magnitude worse. Emigration was large from Scotland but actual death from starvation was not as significant at all. He begins the discussion with:

    The Irish Famine of the 1840s was the greatest human disaster in western Europe in the nineteenth century.
    He does a good analysis of why Scotland did not suffer starvation to the enormous extent that Ireland did.

    However the reasons why the Highlands did not starve were wider and deeper than the relief effort itself. Many landowners were active in supporting the inhabitants of their estates in the early years of the crisis. ..Civil Servants even contrasted the positive role of Scottish landowners with the indifference of their many counterparts across the Irish Sea. A prime factor in the Scottish case was that many proprietors had the financial resources to provide support for their small tenants. Since the early nineteenth century there had been a great transfer of estates from the indebted hereditary landlord class to new owners who were often rich tycoons from outside the Highlands. Over three quarters of all land in the famine zone had been acquired by merchants, bankers, lawyers, financiers, and industrialists by the 1840s....

    The different stages of economic development between Scotland and Ireland was also a crucial factor. The Scottish famine took place in an industrialised society with urbanisation occurring at a faster rate than virtually all European countries. By the 1840s Scotland had much greater per capita wealth than Ireland and an industrial economy that offered a range of jobs in general and casual labouring to temporary and permanent migrants from the Highlands.
    BTW his take on Trevelyan is similar to many Irish historians and calls the report ‘racist’.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    Bannasidhe wrote: »
    .........Unlike the Bison Slaughter in the US in the 19th Century where a primary reason was the removal of the food supply for Native Americans


    Not in full agreement on that – the primary motive was profit, created by the need for leather, exacerbated by the greed of the buffalo hunters, who massacred whole herds for their hides, usually leaving the meat to rot.

    Several ‘British’ aristos were involved in cattle ranching in 1870’s Wyoming and when over there the 4th Earl of Dunraven regularly shot a bison or two for the Native Americans. Curiously for that era his father had converted to Catholicism in the 1850’s it is said as a direct result of his close friendship with his brother-in-law, William Monsell, later Lord Emly. Monsell‘s Famine experience had brought him closer to his Catholic tenantry; working with Catholic clergy on relief work and political activity brought him closer to that church, into which he was received in 1850. When back in Ireland later in life the 4th Earl was the one who was a driving force in the Windham Act of 1903 on tenant land purchase. Both the Dunravens and the Monsells were good landlords; the writer/historian Emily Lawless was of the latter family.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Not in full agreement on that – the primary motive was profit, created by the need for leather, exacerbated by the greed of the buffalo hunters, who massacred whole herds for their hides, usually leaving the meat to rot.

    I am not so sure that the intention was not there to eradicate the plains native american's. It was mighty convenient.

    Jack Adair had massive landholdings in Texas.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    I would prefer not to become involved in the blame game for the Great Famine but thought that some spatial facts might be of use to the OP.
    Total agricultural land available: 10.4 million acresª
    Population in 1841: 8,175,124º

    10.4 million acres/8.2 million people = roughly 1.3 acres per person.

    (Opinions vary too wildly on the quantity of land required to feed one person.)
    Of course, this figure would give the false impression that those 10.4 million acres were available to all, which of course they were not.
    I'll leave it to others to argue about how much land was really available.
    That said, it hard not to get away from the concept of massive overpopulation

    ªhttp://www.teagasc.ie/agrifood/
    ºhttp://www.libraryireland.com/articles/CensusIrelandDUM23-137/index.php


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    CDfm wrote: »
    I am not so sure that the intention was not there to eradicate the plains native american's. It was mighty convenient.

    Jack Adair had massive landholdings in Texas.

    The objective was to get the natives into reservations, not to eradicate them (I know, I know, 'The only good, etc., etc.,;)) Adair was the one responsible for bringing the 'aristos' over, first to his ranch in Texas and they then went to Montana and Wyoming. The American women (in search of a title) and the aristos (in search of cash) did the rest. That's how Winston Churchill had an American 'Mom'.
    It was not the Indians that put a stop to the northern ranching, it was a series of unusually bad winters and overgrazing by sheep farmers.
    See http://www.amazon.com/British-Gentlemen-Wild-West-Intensely/dp/0029356016
    Rs
    P.
    PS Horace Plunkett also was involved in ranching around the Powder River


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    The causes and impact of the Famine are very complex.

    One thing that was a major component part of the situation was the exploitation of the shortage of food by Irish tenant farmers who hoarded food supplies in an effort to drive up prices so they could make a killing selling produce. They further exploited the situation by charging exhorbitant interest for food and forcing labourers to work at below wage rates to pay off their debts. Finally, when landlords did cut rents, the tenant farmers refused to pass on the cuts to cottiers and labourers renting 'potato land'.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Here is a link to estimates of the population drop by county.

    http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/ire1841.htm

    So anyone can look up their county.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    slowburner wrote: »
    That said, it hard not to get away from the concept of massive overpopulation
    The idea that Ireland cannot or could not support pre-famine population levels is a disingenuous myth. The problem is not the amount of arable land available vs the population (and if it was then England would have a population little larger than Ireland's) but the distribution of this land and the level of agricultural development. In both cases economic policies pursued by London played a major role in setting the stage for mass starvation. A growing population with limited access to land and trapped in a state of subsistence agriculture is a recipe for disaster; not population growth itself

    That said, I do not believe that the famine was genocidal. London must bear the blame for its gross mismanagement of the Irish economy, and its disastrous response to the crisis, but I do not believe that the famine was deliberate. And if it wasn't then I find it very hard to compare it to intentional acts of ethnic slaughter


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    slowburner wrote: »
    I would prefer not to become involved in the blame game for the Great Famine but thought that some spatial facts might be of use to the OP.
    Total agricultural land available: 10.4 million acresª
    Population in 1841: 8,175,124º

    10.4 million acres/8.2 million people = roughly 1.3 acres per person.

    (Opinions vary too wildly on the quantity of land required to feed one person.)
    Of course, this figure would give the false impression that those 10.4 million acres were available to all, which of course they were not.
    I'll leave it to others to argue about how much land was really available.
    That said, it hard not to get away from the concept of massive overpopulation

    ªhttp://www.teagasc.ie/agrifood/
    ºhttp://www.libraryireland.com/articles/CensusIrelandDUM23-137/index.php

    I fully agree with the overpopulation; like India & Africa today it is always the poorest families that have the largest families.

    It’s not exactly easy to compare farming of the Famine era with today’s version. For starters, the 10 million acres you quoted is today’s farmland estimate, and excludes forestry and built-up urban, much of which was in use in the 1840s. The Coillte woods around me in Kerry held numerous families who eked out an existence in Famine times until most left or died. It is hard to believe how and where people lived, but back then the standard accommodation of 80% of Ireland’s tenant farmers was a one-roomed cabin, usually with a sack for the window.
    Today’s food producers have access to markets, a cash economy and a transport network. In the worst Famine-affected areas there was no decent road network and trading boats were the norm around west Cork & Kerry. The railway did not get to Killarney until the 1850’s, and only later was extended to Cahirciveen and Kenmare. Nowadays anyone farming less than 100 acres is almost at subsistence level and needs a second income, hence the huge drop in numbers farming and the aging population of fulltime farmers. Long argument potential, I’m not going to go there.;)

    In the 1840’s generally a five acre plot rented by a cottier family was big by the standards of the day, and the purpose (a la Trench) of evicting the smaller cottiers was to consolidate these marginal plots into viable units by giving them to the more hardworking/progressive farmers. The math is easy. Lyne in his book on the Kenmare Estate says that in 1846 it cost more than £5 a year to maintain a pauper in the workhouse, but the cost of a passage to America was on average about £3 and cheaper still to Canada, where more ships were beginning to dock. I’ve researched (local history) some evictions in Kerry - not Kenmare Estate- and fact and oral tradition are poles apart.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    The causes and impact of the Famine are very complex.

    One thing that was a major component part of the situation was the exploitation of the shortage of food by Irish tenant farmers who hoarded food supplies in an effort to drive up prices so they could make a killing selling produce. They further exploited the situation by charging exhorbitant interest for food and forcing labourers to work at below wage rates to pay off their debts. Finally, when landlords did cut rents, the tenant farmers refused to pass on the cuts to cottiers and labourers renting 'potato land'.

    Interesting.

    Can you explain some more.

    Do you have any links or sources.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,491 ✭✭✭Yahew


    Right this needs some sorting out.

    1) It is dubious that Ireland was in famine, or food shortage in 1845. Certainly food was being exported at the time, and were borders closed to exports, and the food distributed internally - as it would be with an Irish Catholic run parliament ( one hopes) then the loss of life would have lessened, or zero.
    2) The claim that the "poor" suffer in famines is a travesty of the truth. In the dark and middle age famines the urban poor, and middle classes even, died off. This is the main reason for the collapse in Rome's population after the fall of the Empire. Without a central authority the rural poor, without food surplus in famines, hoard - and the urban poor ( and rich) die. If rural food producers are dying then it is because their individually produced food surplus is taken from them and sent to cities. This is generally enforced by a central authority, and backed by laws.
    2.1) Ergo, a free market of independent producers would not starve in the 1845-1848. The famine was down to the social structures of the time and the seizure of the produce of food producers to feed everybody else by a feudalistic society.
    4) Ireland was part of the UK. If Ireland had a deficit - which it probably didn't - and the Island of Britain had a surplus then the non-transfer of the surplus from Britain was genocidal and intentional.
    4.1) If the UK as a whole ( both Islands) had a deficit then the failure of the potato crop in Ireland merely reduced a subsistence crop in an area which produced more food per capita than London, the rest as cash crops. The failure of London ( where everybody is a net food consumer) to starve, despite the UK wide deficit, means that transfers came from Ireland to England to solve a UK wide problem. Act of Union and all. This is genocidal.
    5) Most deaths were disease driven and caused by policy : including the working houses, the roads built to nowhere, the deliberate destruction and clearances, not by food deficit, a deficit which could have been ratified by about 500 extra calories per capita.
    6) If UK rationing could have saved Irish lives, failure to ration was genocidal. If the UK has pursued the policy in 1940 it pursued in 1845-1848, then Britain would have starved. It didn't, it rationed.
    7) Ireland was no more over-populated than England, and England's grew 200% after the famine. The Island of Britain is about twice the size of Ireland, but half of that is the Highlands ( well, Scotland). At the time of famine it had 12 million people, 9M in England which has about the same agricultural land as Ireland.
    8) If the UK was to increase its population from 1845 on because it imported cheap American food, then failure to do that in the famine was genocide. Ireland probably wasn't in food deficit in 1845, but even if it was, food deficits didn't kill millions in England subsequently. They imported food. As they do now. Hence they have 60M people in food deficit, and we have 4.5 ( 6 on the island) in food surplus. Both countries produce about enough for 20M people afaik.

    Food deficits don't kill people in modern states, people kill people.

    ( And the modern age was well under way in 1845, if food can be transferred out, it can be transferred in).
    Bengal in 1943 was also genocide.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,491 ✭✭✭Yahew


    CDfm wrote: »
    Interesting.

    Can you explain some more.

    Do you have any links or sources.

    I doubt he does. Whatever "food hoarding" took place from Ireland'd independent farmers would be insignificant since the majority of Ireland's famers were tenant farmers

    EDIt:


    Christ, he is blaming "tenant" famers for hoarding. This is effectively holocaust denial on an Irish level. Irish tenant farmers didn't own their non-potato crop, it was paid in rent. It was tenant farmers who were kicked out of the land, and onto the parish.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    followed by the Act of Union,

    The Act of Union - "the fur coat no knickers" of all economic
    unions ever.

    MarchDub has quoted Devine that Ireland was undeveloped industrially as a result of economic policies hampering industrial development.

    Laissez faire ,
    my arse
    , it was more like economic sabotage. The people were on the land as a result of protectionism of the British economy, it was not a union, Ireland was a colony.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12,078 ✭✭✭✭LordSutch


    When I think of Genocide I think of Rwanda or the Jewish Holocaust, and when I think of moder day famine I think of Ethiopia, I think of neither when I think about the 'Irish famine' 1845-1852 which was neither genocide as per Rwanda, nor food famine as per Ethiopia. Potato blight saw off the potato crop for sure, but there was other food in abundance. One tribe did not try to wipe out the other, and people were not butcher on the streets, yet so many died, and so many left these shores for ever . . . .


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,491 ✭✭✭Yahew


    When I man drives a lorry of the road and kills another man, in some jurisdictions at least, he can be charged with negligent homicide.

    I propose negligent genocide, for those unhappy with the g word.

    (Me, I think it was more than that, as Ireland wasn't just "left alone" - food was being exported by force, and an independent Ireland would not have done that.)


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,116 ✭✭✭archer22


    Yahew wrote: »
    I doubt he does. Whatever "food hoarding" took place from Ireland'd independent farmers would be insignificant since the majority of Ireland's famers were tenant farmers

    EDIt:


    Christ, he is blaming "tenant" famers for hoarding. This is effectively holocaust denial on an Irish level. Irish tenant farmers didn't own their non-potato crop, it was paid in rent. It was tenant farmers who were kicked out of the land, and onto the parish.
    There is confusion between tenant farmers and cottiers/labourers here.The system was in this order Landlord rented to tenant farmer..tenant farmer rented plots to Cottiers.The people who produced the food for sale were the tenant farmers,the Cottiers grew subsistence food.The people who starved were the Cottiers/labourers.The people who sold food to the poorhouses were the tenant farmers and the Irish merchants..also the same people who were exporting food.The landlords by and large did not produce or sell food.A good source for evidence of profiteering by tenant farmers and merchants can be found in the minutes of meetings by the poorhouse commitees and poorhouse purchase records.After the famine an awfull lot of tenant farmers were nouveau riche..as can be seen in their ability to purchase their farms from the now semi destitute Landlords.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,491 ✭✭✭Yahew


    archer22 wrote: »
    There is confusion between tenant farmers and cottiers/labourers here.The system was in this order Landlord rented to tenant farmer..tenant farmer rented plots to Cottiers.The people who produced the food for sale were the tenant farmers,the Cottiers grew subsistence food.The people who starved were the Cottiers/labourers.The people who sold food to the poorhouses were the tenant farmers and the Irish merchants..also the same people who were exporting food.The landlords by and large did not produce or sell food.A good source for evidence of profiteering by tenant farmers and merchants can be found in the minutes of meetings by the poorhouse commitees and poorhouse purchase records.After the famine an awfull lot of tenant farmers were nouveau riche..as can be seen in their ability to purchase their farms from the now semi destitute Landlords.

    Gosh the poor landlords. The tenant farmers generally did not sublet. They also did not own the food on their land, they paid the food to the landlords as rent in kind, this is how the landlords made their money.

    Nobody purchased farms from landlords - many of whom had replaced their entire tenant class - until Gladstone introduced land purchase laws in 1870.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,116 ✭✭✭archer22


    Yahew wrote: »
    Gosh the poor landlords. The tenant farmers generally did not sublet. They also did not own the food on their land, they paid the food to the landlords as rent in kind, this is how the landlords made their money.

    Nobody purchased farms from landlords - many of whom had replaced their entire tenant class - until Gladstone introduced land purchase laws in 1870.
    Believe your fantasies all you like,thats your privilege.BTW where do you suppose those "penniless farmers" got the money to purchase anything if "they also did not own the food on their land" can you see the contradiction!!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    RealBlight.gif



    Punch magazine thought it all very funny- here is a Dec 1845 issue with Daniel O'Connell depicted by William Newman as 'The Real Potato Blight of Ireland'.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Here is a guy who had his head fairly screwed on and he was a temperance campaigner and presbyterian moderator who was active in famine relief for Connaught.

    An evangelist , the aid he organized was not linked to religious conversion.

    The Rev Dr John Edgar (1798-1866), a moderator of the Presbyterian Church
    and honorary secretary of the Home Mission, took a great interest in the schools in
    Connaught, and embarked upon a preaching tour there. Edgar’s preaching seemed
    ambiguous regarding proselytism; he told his audiences never to change religion ‘to
    please any man, or forsake it till convinced it was false’ (Killen 1867: 232). Yet his
    preaching had Protestant overtones, as he declared ‘justification by free grace, through
    faith, and the duty of an immediate and unreserved acceptance of Jesus Christ as the all24
    sufficient and only Saviour’ (Killen 1867: 233). An account of the schools states, ‘Ten
    females were examined, in conversational Irish, on the doctrine of the atonement, and the
    nature of faith and good works’ (Killen 1867: 229). This would tend to suggest a
    Protestant viewpoint which emphasises personal faith in Christ as the sole means to
    salvation, a belief which challenged the Catholic belief in the efficacy of ‘good works’
    and the intercession of saints. Yet Edgar wrote in the 1853 Home Mission report that
    success should not be estimated by counting converts, but changes in behaviour such as
    the abandonment of superstitions, drinking and swearing (Stothers 1981: 90).
    Whatever his views on proselytism, Edgar was horrified by the famine in Connaught in
    1846 and set aside his own evangelical zeal to campaign for aid for the starving. He
    announced in May Street Presbyterian Church, ‘I hope soon to have an opportunity of
    directing public attention to spiritual famine in Connaught, but our effort now is to save
    the perishing body ... Our brother is starving, and, till we have satisfied his hunger, we
    have no time to inquire whether he is Protestant or Romanist’ (Killen 1867: 217-218).

    The famine wreaked havoc in Connaught in 1846 and 1847, bringing an end to the work
    of the charity schools in that province. Dr Edgar’s behaviour demonstrates that some
    evangelists abandoned their work during the famine. After the famine English-language
    ‘industrial schools’ were established by the Presbyterian Church in Connaught to
    stimulate local crafts. They had proselytising features, of which Dr Edgar wholeheartedly
    approved (Killen 1867: 248).
    The Home Mission denied that it was interested in proselytism, often employing Catholic
    teachers, and claimed Catholic priests attended the lessons, although they probably
    attended as suspicious observers. As with the Irish Society, the Catholic teachers were
    paid after being questioned by an inspector who was usually a clergyman or a converted
    Catholic. Several of these teachers eventually joined the Presbyterian Church.

    http://www.ultach.dsl.pipex.com/ForLearners/Prodhistory.pdf


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    Yahew wrote: »
    Right this needs some sorting out.

    .
    A rather condescending remark.

    You presume to accept that the UK Govt was aware that the Famine would last for several years, when nobody – including the starving - had the faintest idea of how long; most thought it was, like previous failures, a one-off crop failure. You also use present-day mores to judge what happened 150+ years ago which is fallacious, like most of your arguments.



    Hoarding? The Irish cottiers were so poor that they could not hoard at any time. They died because they were entirely dependent on a single commodity that failed. The poor then pawned their clothes, the fishermen pawned their nets and sails to buy not only food but seed potatoes, to sow for the following year, a crop that also failed, miring them further. To compare Famine Ireland with ancient Rome is unrealistic. Equally, to cite London’s ‘failure to starve’ is another non sequitur. London had industry, even for the poorest as homeworkers and produced goods, it had trade; yes there was poverty, but the people could get cash and buy food– not an option for cottiers half way up a mountain in the West of Ireland.
    If you bothered to read the thread, you would have seen in #36 that when the Government completed a survey in the early 1870’s, it found that roughly 6,500 men and women owned estates of 500 acres or more. Of these, about 71 percent of these landlords lived on their estates or elsewhere in Ireland. While the richest owners were mostly Anglicans, some 43 percent of all proprietors were Catholics, 48 percent belonged to the Church of Ireland, and 7 percent were Presbyterians.
    enough. goodnight.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    Yahew wrote: »

    Nobody purchased farms from landlords - many of whom had replaced their entire tenant class - until Gladstone introduced land purchase laws in 1870.

    Yes, but it was actually later than that. The first organised meeting of the Land League to address the issue of the land was held in Irishtown in Mayo in 1879 - organised by Michael Davitt and quickly supported by Parnell.

    After much 'boycotting' and other stresses the Land Act of 1881 passed by the Gladstone government - with the support of the Irish Home Rulers- was the most important development in allowing Irish tenants the guarantee of fixity of tenure, fair rent and the right to sell their tenancy.

    It was the Ashbourne Act of 1885 that made accommodation for purchasing large amounts of land from landlords and allowing tenants to purchase their holdings. This was further extended in 1889. It is frequently referred to by Irish historians as 'killing Home Rule with kindness' as it was the result of the Conservative Party trying to quell the social unrest in Ireland and the massive support for Home Rule.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    LordSutch wrote: »
    When I think of Genocide I think of Rwanda or the Jewish Holocaust, and when I think of moder day famine I think of Ethiopia, I think of neither when I think about the 'Irish famine' 1845-1852 which was neither genocide as per Rwanda, nor food famine as per Ethiopia. Potato blight saw off the potato crop for sure, but there was other food in abundance. One tribe did not try to wipe out the other, and people were not butcher on the streets, yet so many died, and so many left these shores for ever . . . .

    When I think of the Act of Union I see economic sanctions very much like Iran & Iraq and UN sanctions

    That is hardly indicative of a union and more of a colonial relationship and more hostile than benevolent.

    It was quite a corrupt and unequal relationship and the phrase Catholic Emancipation from the era is a misnomer too as presbyterians and others also were disadvantaged under the penal laws.

    So representation in government was limited to a particular religion and class who protected their own interests.


  • Advertisement
  • Site Banned Posts: 2,037 ✭✭✭paddyandy


    The Potatoe was almost our complete diet .There were warnings from mini- famines and we left ourselves at the cold mercy of nature and of the church who saw emigration as 'spreading the faith ' and english rule who wanted rid of us anyway and alas we could'nt find enough unity among ourselves as is the case today .Competitive attitudes set in very quickly when we have problems in Ireland .Every Issue becomes Football .We ate grass and rodents because we had no unity and were mistrustful of rules .It continues today .Every stream and hedge was a line in the sand and is today much the same .It's many years since i read a very serious account about it and i may have jumped in at too deep an area .Other posters probably understand a lot better than i do .


Advertisement