Was the Irish famine a famine or genocide

CDfm wrote: »

Numbers ?

All I am saying is that if you sat down with Wellington and his brother Mornington and took tea,you would have had a hard time convincing them that famine on a major scale was not on its way from 1832.

Wellington was the more conservative of them.

A medieval farmer would have been against monoculture and pro crop rotation etc. So to expect anything else would take a fundamental shift in belief systems. No surprise for him either.

There may have been surprise at the blight but there was no surprise at the famine.

So I think it would have been much harder to convince the Wellselley brothers and the excuses are a bit lame in that context.

Once you accept that the Establishment were very aware that a major famine was due and that the death toll would be large , all you are left with is debating numbers.

Of all generations, the Victorians were more aware of public health than previous generations so famine fever would have been forseeable.




When people have to resort to french it is bad.

But there were already famine's happening in Ireland -1830–34, 1836, and 1839 so if one sat down for tea with the Wellesley Bros in 1832 - that was 2 years into an existing famine in Ireland.

Wellington was old school Tory - deeply conservative with, as pedroeibar1 has said a sense of noblesse oblige - a paternalistic bent not uncommon among the landed gentry which was beginning to die out at the time rendering Wellington one of a dying breed.
In his world view one looked after one's people, be they troops or peasants. But, and it is a big but, they were and could never be equal to you (so the chances of you ever having tea with either of the Wellesley Bros was slim to none). One kept a firm but fair (by the standards of the time) eye on the lower orders and supplied the strong hand of the father figure they needed to to control their lives - one couldn't expect them to, well, act independently now could one? Of course the lower orders 'required' very little to survive and needed few personal possessions being simple folk.

But during the mid 19th C there was a shift in power as the laissez Faire philosophy of the Industrialist Whigs began to gain the upper hand. The source of money was moving away from land and towards manufacturing. Factory owners rarely felt any obligations towards their employees so that paternalistic attitude was dying out to be replaced by an attitude of 'eh, if I can do it any bugger can' that Dicken's describes in Hard Times. Self made men became the rage.
Later on in the century during the Gladstone/Disraeli years there was a bit of an ideological shift again - with by the end of the 19th/ beginning of the 20th the Whigs abandoned laissez faire to a great extent and began to regulate industry and bring in the first welfare policies.

Now, with the exception of Belfast and Dublin there was little industry in Ireland and land was still the main source of wealth. The problem was that the farm labouring class did not tend to emigrate and also routinely sub divided their already small allotments of land equally among their sons until the plots were so small the only life sustaining crop they could produce was the potato.

So were Wellington to have acted - what could he do?

Over population was the main problem - too many poverty stricken people trying to scratch a living from too little land. How could he realistically have dealt with that problem? To ease the pressure on the land would have necessitated the removal of some of those dirt poor farm labourers from that land - how would that be achieved?

There was little industry in the cities so unlike in England the rural poor had not migrated to the likes of Cork, Limerick etc to get factory work.

They could have adopted a policy similar to the Highland Clearances - forced evictions - but that could easily have resulted in shifting the problems associated with poverty to Belfast and Dublin or across the Irish sea to cities such as Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield -all of which were already overflowing with urban poor and newly arrived rural poor.

Or forcing people to go to the colonies.

One option would have been the redistribution of land - but even suggesting that would have been be considered anarchist insanity. Whose land exactly would one redistribute? - not the landed gentry's that's for sure!!

There was a horrible inertia in place - sympathetic landowners who felt they had an obligation to even their lowliest tenants knew overcrowding was a serious issue but were reluctant to evict and throw their 'people' on the mercy of an unmerciful world - so many of them went bankrupt.

Those land owners who were less sympathetic to the plight of the poor and their ties to the land - or were just pragmatic, hardnosed businessmen - and did evict are cast as the villains in Irish history - yet, how else was the cycle of chronic over crowding and a fragile subsistence level of food production to be stopped?

In the end, a landlord was damned if he did and damned if he didn't and nothing changed until nature provided a horrible solution to the endemic overcrowding and killed off the most vulnerable.

Everyone knew there was a problem, everyone knew a disaster was bound to happen. But no-one knew what the scale of that disaster would be or how to avoid it without mass evictions - which would have created a whole new set of problems.

Pourquoi?

CDfm wrote: »

The idea I am challenging is that it somehow was a surprise and that you can't judging it by today's standards.

So setting it at Wellington's standards seems objective.

John Mitchell may not have been so far out after all or so dismissible.

The woeful underdevelopment of the country, such as its fishing down to what Wellington called its "proprietors".

Accept that & you have to accept what happened afterwards.



Pourquoi -pas ?

I don't think the fact that a famine happened was a surprise at all, they were a regular feature of life and death in Europe, they even happened in Gaelic Ireland - but the scale was unexpected as was the duration.

In terms of 'under development' by which I think you mean lack of industrialisation - that made sense in the context of the times. Most of the Industrial Revolution was steam driven. That required coal and Ireland simply didn't have any. The coal fields in the north of England, and in Wales played a large role in why most heavy industry was situated in a band running from Manchester to Newcastle - the raw materials were situated locally.

No - one was going to build a factory in the Irish midlands or west as the cost of transporting the raw materials required would be prohibitive. Dublin had long been a trading port and had close ties with Bristol, Cork came into it's own as a trading port in the late 17th C - aided in no small part by the arrival of Huguenots and their trading contacts in Holland. Cork also became involved in ship building.


What Ireland did have was excellent soil and a moderate climate (even Gerald of Wales was impressed by the fact that Irish cattle could feed on grass in the winter) so agriculture was the obvious use for the land. Ireland's role was to produce the food to supply the industrial cities of England, Wales gave them coal, Cornwall supplied tin etc.

Now there were native Irish light industries such as linen production that could not compete with the cheap cotton coming out of Manchester - but it was never more than a cottage industry and could never have competed on the economies of scale.


We still manufacture very little in this country and have little or no heavy industries plus most native exports are derived from agriculture - so little has changed in terms of industrial development.

As for judging by today's standards I really don't think one can or should. Or at least no historian can or should - that is a slippery slope to subjective judgement.

Wellington (I am beginning to suspect you may have a slight crush on the noble nosed one ) couldn't have begun an industrialisation process - that was down to market forces, neither could he had magically produced the raw materials to feed such manufacturing.
Infrastructure was being dealt with -1757 the Grand Canal was begun to link Dublin to the Shannon - it was completed in 1803 (officially opened in 1804 due to leaks and drought!)
The Royal Canal was begun in 1790 and opened in 1817.
1834 the first train line was opened - Dublin to Kingstown (DKR)
The first section of the Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway (CB&SCR) opened in 1851 but was incorporated in 1845.

There were too many people living below the poverty level - it is really hard to see what could have been done short of mass evictions and enforced emigration to avert the disaster that was, from our perspective, inevitable but from theirs not necessarily so.

It's like WWI - we look back and marvel that it took the various European 'superpowers' that long to kick off on a war that had been threatening since German unification. And many people at the time did feel a war was inevitable - but no-one imagined for a second the sheer scale and horror of a mechanised, global conflict.

parce que!

slowburner wrote: »

Here's a bit of niche history for you
The Avoca mines were powered by steam from around 1860 - two massive Cornish engines which pumped water out of the levels.
The mines actually saw an increase in production of Sulphur from 1840 to 1865 when Britain's supply from Sicily was 'interrupted'.
Around two thousand people were directly employed by the mine companies at the time (the Associated Mine Company and the Hibernian Mine company).



Williams' Engine houses in Avoca today.

Was it water powered before that?

I assume the woollen mill that first opened around 1723 was using the same hydro technology as the grain mill that had been there?

slowburner wrote: »

It was, but slightly different technology - the Handweavers was powered by a wheel on a millstream.
You've caught me out a bit here
I know that prior to the rams being powered by steam they were referred to as being 'powered entirely by water'.
The problem is that the mines are on the sides of a steep valley and there are no rivers or streams to power a wheel - I don't know how the water powered the rams or if the water referred to was steam.
I'd better read up.


By the way, a Cornish Historian (Sharron Schwartz) and her geologist partner (Martin Critchley) are writing a book about the mines of Wicklow - I personally guarantee that it will be fascinating.

A mill related interesting fact (well I think it's interesting anyway) the horizontal water mill was favoured in Gaelic Ireland.

I t took me ages to find a source I could link to - but never fear:

The horizontal watermill was the preferred form in early medieval Ireland, probably because it was better suited to small, fast-flowing steams and, also, because of the absence of gears, it was comparatively simple and cheap to build. Typically the horizontal mill was housed within a two-story, rectangular structure consisting of an upper and a lower room. The upper room contained the grinding stones and the hopper mechanism for the grain, while a vertical shaft connected the upper grinding stone with a horizontal water-wheel, composed of paddles, in the chamber below. Water was channeled by means of a millrace and a chute so that it fell onto the horizontal wheel causing it to turn. One revolution of the waterwheel produced one revolution of the upper rotary stone, which was usually no more than about three feet across.

http://what-when-how.com/medieval-ireland/mills-and-milling-medieval-ireland/

I just LOVE the stuff one can find on the interweb

slowburner wrote: »

They say a picture's worth a thousand words (pinched from your wonderful link)

Wrong picture!

Try this link: http://www.top-alternative-energy-sources.com/water-wheel-design.html

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

That's a vertical wheel, with gears

I also LOVE how pedantic history buffs are...My kinda people.

slowburner wrote: »

I came across this interesting snippet on dietary analysis. It got a bit garbled in the process of pasting and it reverts back to gobbledygook after tidying it up - I hope it is half way legible.

It can be read properly here
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1139421/

On the subject of horizontal/vertical challenges; I remember hearing that the average height in Ireland, prior to the famine, was around six feet - any truth in this?

And the spud of choice was the Apple potato but the reality of life was the Lumper

The Lumper Indicted
Several recent contributions to pre-famine Irish economic history have drawn attention to the apparent contrast between the abject poverty of the Irish masses and their relatively high nutritional status. Poverty, they argue, was mitigated by a potato-dominated diet which, while monotonous, was adequate in terms of calories and protein. Modern nutritional analysis indeed concedes that potatoes are good food - according to one well-known account ‘the potato is the only single cheap food that can support human life when fed as the sole article of diet’. But this raises a question-mark about the potato, since the potatoes consumed in pre-famine Ireland differ from those common today. The poor reputation of the kind most closely linked to the Famine, the notorious Lumper, makes the question all the more apposite. Thus, in assessing calorie intake before the Famine, knowing the acreage under potatoes and the average yield per acre is not enough: potato quality is also important.
In 1810 the Cork agriculturist Horatio Townsend noted that Irish potatoes were ‘pleasant, mealy, and nourishing’ compared to the ‘watery and ill-flavoured’ varieties prevalent in England. Potato quality declined in Ireland thereafter, however, and on the eve of the Famine the very poor were often forced to rely almost exclusively on inferior varieties, notably the Lumper. Thus in 1832 a Kerry campaigner against tithes complained of ‘gan do bhiadh againn ach lompers agus an nídh nach ar bfiudh leis na ministéirighe d’ithead (our only food being lumpers and what the ministers would not eat)’. When the English radical William Cobbett visited Waterford in 1834, he was told that ‘when men or women are employed, at six-pence a day and their board, to dig Minions or Apple-potatoes, they are not suffered to taste them, but are sent to another field to dig Lumpers to eat’.

The Lumper as a food source
For the poor, who evidently preferred the premium Apple potato and even the Cup (hardy but coarser than the Apple), the spread of the Lumper indicated impoverishment. It was tasteless, but was it also poor food? The dry matter content (i.e. starch) in any crop of potatoes is quite variable: climate, pests, soil and agricultural practices all play a role. Variety is also crucial and, given its poor press, the watery and ungainly Lumper probably contained less dry matter than other cultivated varieties. But did it also contain less than modern varieties ? And how widely was it consumed? We cannot assume that the nutritional quality of pre-Famine foods matched that of modern varieties.

http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume1/issue1/features/?id=99

I read that the Irish peasant in the 19th C was notably taller, fitter and healthier then his/her European counterparts - but can't for the life of me remember where - it was about 20 years ago...

I do remember reading in the Sunday Times last year where their gardening person, who is involved in trying to revive 'extinct' varieties of potatoes, grew Lumpers. He dreaded eating them as he heard all his life they were both tasteless and nasty- in fact he said it was one of the nicest variety of spud he had eaten in many a long year. I'm thinking of giving it a go if I can get some Lumper seed potatoes.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

... Do bheadh na prátaí nite brúite agus ithe ag an gConnachtach muna mbéidís ráite ag an Muimhneach. (sp?)

From Dinneen (older spelling): bheadh na fataí nighte, bruidhte, ithte ag an gConnachtach fhaid is béadh an Muimhheach ag rádh "prátaí".

thadiisgirl wrote: »

Thanks everyone, for a very interesting and enlightening thread.

I still can't get my head around every day life for most people at this time though. For example, one of my GG-Grandfathers married in the November of 1848, at the height of the disaster - as per Griffiths a few years later, he was only a co-tenant of 21 acres in Co Roscommon, an area badly hit, so was hardly a wealthy man.

Surely, he must have been near to starving during these years - I really can't imagine he could've mustered up enough cash to pay the parish priest, much less find the energy, inclination (and a decent set of clothes) to get hitched...I have this terrible image of these two emaciated frames, dragging themselves up the aisle in rags - but it can't have been like this, can it?

The vast majority of those affected by the famine were landless labourers, cottiers and tenant with less than 5 acres - tenants with 15 acres and over generally survived with little difficulty during the famine and those on more than 25 acres were relatively comfortable (for the mid-19 century). Many of these tenant farmers actually exploited the famine by hoarding food supplies and then selling it to forestallers for urban markets and/or export.

As a co-tenant of 21 acres - your ancestor would probably have been in a borderline position struggling to survive.

thadiisgirl wrote: »

I suppose those who survived (and all of use descend from them, wherever we are in the world) were/are of a hardier breed? Or just a bit luckier than the unfortunates who perished....?

The deaths during the famine were all down to money - the poor died.

getz wrote: »

from what i can gather[in those times] any land inherited would only go the oldest son,the rest have to find their own way in the world .i think thats what happend to my ancestor

Not so - one of the major problems was the plots of land were usually divided equally between the sons. So more and more people were trying to survive from smaller and smaller amounts of land.
By the 1840s this was reaching the point where is was becoming increasing difficult for enough food to be grown - even if that food was just potatoes - as the plots were becoming too small.
Every available scrap of land was being used. If you walk along the Galway shore of Killary fjord you can still see the remains of the potato beds on the Mayo side - not an inch of land was wasted, but it still wasn't enough.

Drake66 wrote: »

True, primogeniture was outlawed under the penal law system to reduce the size of Catholic land holdings. I if remember correctly only 5% of land was held by Catholics at the beginning of the 19th century. As estates became more subdivided the productivity of each small holding fell. In essence you had an enormous class of agrarian slaves.

That figure of 5% Catholic landownership doesn't take into account the quite common practice of the elder son - and heir- being Anglican while the rest of the family remained Catholic. It was a loophole often exploited as under primogeniture - first I heard of it being banned under the Penal Laws do you have a source for this? - the eldest male heir inherited it all. As long as that person was Anglican there was no problem. He, in turn, insured his heir was Anglican but the rest of his family could, and often were, Catholic.

Drake66 wrote: »

I didn't say that it did.

You posted your bit on primogeniture in direct response to Bannasidhe's post about subdivision. Most of the subdivision in the years leading to the Famine was the splitting of leasehold interests, so the point about primogeniture was largely moot.

Yet it is important to consider why leaseholders split their holdings into ever-smaller parcels. It happened because there were few alternatives available to people. One very important factor has already been mentioned here: the lack of industrial employment.

CDfm wrote: »

Strips of land etc were sometimes split for purposes of irrigation, access to water etc etc.

So what seems stupid had practical applications

Rundale divisions are particularly interesting. They often led to the creation of small outfields and a tilled infield that was like a patchwork quilt, with each shareholder occupying a number of plots. Yes, indeed, there was a rationale for every allocation or re-allocation of plots, but I suspect that the big picture got lost in the working out of the detail. In many cases it became impracticable to develop farming practices, even to the extent of using horses.

The Congested Districts Board (precursor of the Land Commission) did a great deal of work in rationalising landholders' interests in the early years of the 20th century. I imagine that at the time people found it difficult to put up with such outside interference in their traditional ways, but I have the impression that once the tangle had been straightened out, the new arrangement worked well.

CDfm wrote: »

Leasehold interests and possession had something to do with it.

If you ever read a land deed it shows you who owned what going back hundreds of years . It often lists the tenants.

Also , the likes of the O'Connels in Kerry and O'Leary's in West Cork managed to avoid the Penal Laws ?

I have seen someone post about hoarding . Well, Irish stuff is all comparative. Famine all around you and you will ake provisions. If it happens other people it could happen you and in antropology that is the "power of the limited good(commodity)" and that does not mean these slighly better off farmers had a surplus. They were prudently keeping food on the table and a roof over their own heads.

There may have been some profiteering but I can't see how in a non cash economy - it would need to be explained to me.

Re: cash economy. Of course Ireland had a cash economy but the farm labourers existed outside that system. Cash was needed to buy goods in shops, stock the shops, pay wages to non farm labourers, etc etc. Landlords got cash for the agricultural produce they sold.

One of the tragedies of, for example the road building scheme undertaken under the OPW, was that in addition to the amount of calories that were consumed by the physical labour and often long walking distances to the site could not easily be replaced, was that the workers were paid in cash but could not purchase food with it as prices were high or did not have access to shops. I have heard anecdotally that many were reluctant to spend cash, preferring to save it for when it was really needed or to fund emigration - it was a rare commodity to be 'saved' and excavations of famine cottages revealed hidden caches of coins.

Small scale profiteering would have been simple - there was a need for food. The farm labourers went from a situation where they had produced all of their food to one where they needed to purchase it. At the same time relief schemes which required one to work injected cash into the economy. It would be a simple matter for both food wholesalers and retailers to add a farthing on to even basic commodities knowing they had a captive market who were also in possession of cash for the first time and also unused to engaging in a cash economy.
The potential was there for profiteering from the village shop right up to the food producer to inflate prices - after all, it was a free market era and the market sets the price.

We still see it happening - when the water supply in Cork was cut-off during the flooding, blizzards in recent years the price of bottled water shot up and that is with competition. Now, imagine there is no competition...