Submitted 2 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/a1bf0cae-321e-4cf1-b33c-ca1842fdf73b.jpeg
A large contributor to Irish suffering were the British corn laws, a tariff that kept the price of barley, wheat, and oats artificially high. So when potato crops failed, the poor Irish couldn’t afford substitutes. Ironically, American maze was exempt from the corn laws, so much of that was imported to Ireland.
Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.
Not to mention that the Irish people had to sell all of their produce for very little money to their English landlords, who would then graciously offer to sell it back for a lot more than any Irish farmer could afford.
And just in case you ask “why not cut out the middleman and survive penniless on your own produce?”, remember how I said that the English were also their landlords?
Turns out that landlords were even MORE happy to throw poor people out for being unable to pay than they are nowadays and being homeless in mid 1800s Ireland wasn’t very survivable.
It is vitally important to understand that throughout the “potato famine” Ireland was a major exporter of food to the rest of the UK.
Irish farmers were growing all kinds of crops. Grains, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, etc, etc. All of these were sold to pay for the oppressive rents that they were forced to pay to English landlords who had stolen all of their land.
The potatoes the Irish grew were for subsistence, because all of the rest of their crops went to market. Even when the potato crops failed, there was more than enough food for everyone in Ireland, if the English would simply suspend rent collection for a short while, until the crop failures had passed.
Many motions to do so were put before parliament. All of them were rejected.
The Irish famine was not caused by a disease. It was caused by the intentional cruelty of the English.
Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.
That implies that Britain didn’t intend those consequences. But Britain has mastered using starvation as a weapon of genocide, in particular by masking it as an “unfortunate” result of taxes and tariffs.
Britain genocided more than ten million people in todays India about a century earlier and then again about three million in todays Bangladesh during World War II.
Britain murdered the Irish very much deliberately.
That implies that Britain didn’t intend those consequences. But Britain has mastered using starvation as a weapon of genocide, in particular by masking it as an “unfortunate” result of taxes and tariffs.
We do know that the British did try and get the Irish to renounce their heritage to receive aid during the famine as well. Some families had to renounce their Irish name and Catholicism before they would be given food during the famine.
The Irish potato famine wasn’t exclusive to Ireland. It actually first appeared in the US and spread to Europe.
The issue was, unlike other nations, thr Irish ONLY had potatoes as all other crops were cash crops for tax.
Thr British government could have 100% minimized the damage. But they didn’t.
Good Job PM Peel. You fucked up.
The Brits actively shipped beef out of Ireland while people starved. The Brits also forced the Irish to labor in pointless workhouses to “earn” their food. For instance the Brits would force the Irish to build roads that led to nowhere. Apparently those pathways to nothing are still littered around Ireland.
My understanding is the Tories actually tried to provide relief by importing food which was discontinued by the liberals. So more PM Russell who fucked up.
Iirc they imported Corn from the US since it was cheap. But corn is a odd crop, it’s difficult to digest especially for the Irish who weren’t accustomed to the crop. So it provided minimal nutrition for the Irish.
This was framed as “Look, we give them food and they’re still starving! We’re wasting money, giving it to the Yanks, all for nothing! This is clearly god punishing the Irish for their sin!”
I don’t remember the exact responses by different groups in Parliament, infect Peel was probably wasn’t ass harmful as the others.
Although, I think it’s funny to know that the British PM at the time was named Peel.
??? Fake news made up by the liberal media. They probably ruined their own crop. Glug glug if you know what I mean.
Aren’t the Brits more viral historically? Go, inject themselves into another organism and force it to produce more brits.
They’re more like a malignant bone cancer.
So, the EU got rid of cancer? That sounds about right.
I’m just coming off a sever staph infection could have cost me might right leg below the knee, so can relate to devasting bacteria. Was hospitalized for a couple daze to rehydrate and get iv antibiotics that appear to have knocked it out now. If you develop a skin infection that seems to be spreading fast, don’t jack around and have it check ex
Once you learn microbiology you basically go through the process of cleaning the wound ASAP. There are opportunistic pathogens that are just waiting to be pathogens because they moved and that scares me.
Random observation, I had no idea how many languages are spoken in the British isles…
LanguagesEnglish, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, French, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Sercquiais, Shelta, Ulster-Scots, Angloromani, British Sign Language, Irish Sign Language
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
And really it’s not even “the british” that are to blame. It was the rich land owners that continued to export the food grown in Ireland in order to make profit and the conservative (well, whig, but they are the spiritual predecessor to the modern conservatives and where politically conservative at the time) government that stopped and aid and refused to ban exporting food out of Ireland as they believed the famine was divine providence.
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
This is absolutely false. They didn’t cause the potato blight but they absolutely caused the famine by forcing the export of the remaining food stock which was more than enough to feed the population.
We still have not reached pre-famine population levels after 180 years.
Uhm akshually don’t you know that it was a subset of British society and not Britain as a whole. Jeeze, way to not be historically accurate.
Hope the /s is implied but just incase. If you’re British and upset by this take, maybe your ancestors should have rolled out some guillotines when the French did. It’s not too late to get rid of Charles, Starmer, Farage, Johnson and the rest of these chucklefucks.
They didn’t cause the potato blight but they absolutely caused the famine by forcing the export of the remaining food stock which was more than enough to feed the population.
That’s litterally exactly what I said.
yup because the blight was affected the low genetic diversity of the potato cultivar were using, this allowed the oomycetes to infect the potatos, aka water molds, which are not related to fungus.
Sir, you can’t blame class war rather than entire ethnic and cultural groups in here. How else will people know to fight against each other instead of the oligarchs?
Or we should just stick to facts?
The laugh this gave me was appreciated
Wait the Brits? Not the English? Ireland is part of the British Isles, doesn’t that make them Brits too?
Don’t start your car tomorrow
(I jest of course).
I see your argument, but the Irish will absolutely throw hands if you call them Brits. They thing the term should only apply to people on the isle of Britain, not the British isles as a whole.
I wouldn’t ask an Irishman that, lol.
We’ll, they were Brits at the time, but I guess their time in the union was not entirely to their satisfaction.
Not really. British are from Great Britain (the island).
On a linguistic level yes. The ancient Greeks named the islands after the Prythonic tribes, who were active in Britannia and Hibernia (Ireland).
On a don’t-annoy-the-alarm-clock-aficionados level, nope. This guy isn’t with me. Never met them.
Ireland is not part of the British Isles
Ireland is absolutely part of the British Isles, just not part of Great Britain I would say that it’s generally only considered correct to call someone from Great Britain British, rather than the Isles as a whole though. However, in common parlance I would say that people from Scotland and Wales use Scottish and Welsh more than British, with people from England using English and British interchangeably, and people from Northern Ireland (that are unionist anyway) using the term British over Irish. That’s all to say, you’d probably get a smack upside the head for calling someone Irish British, and rightfully so.
It’s not wrong
Equals to calling a study on the corona virus SarsCov-19 dumb because it should be a study on the Chinese instead.
Seems different then.
The British were responsible for those deaths while the Chinese were not.
How does that make any sense?
If the paper was on the micro organism. Then its a paper on the micro organism. It’s completely irrelevant to the situation surrounding it.
Weaponized brain rot take.
The answer is that it’s complicated, and the British made decisions that needlessly complicated things further.
Just so we’re clear, the Irish did too — there were many different bad actors that took advantage of what happened in Ireland. It just so happens that the worst of them were British.
khannie@lemmy.world 2 days ago
We’ve stopped calling it the famine here and now it’s “the great hunger”.
Ireland was producing more than enough to feed itself but the British landlords were forcing the export of non-potatoes and leaving us to die.
The queen at the time politically shamed the Turks into reducing their aid to us because it was lower than hers.
What’s up, Turkey? We haven’t forgotten your generosity.
Massive, massive shout out to our Choctaw brothers and sisters in America who gave what they didn’t have after the trail of tears.
For those not familiar, we have never, ever forgotten that one.
Sculpture in Cork called “kindred spirits”:
Image
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
And when the choctaw faced trouble during the pandemic, Ireland returned the favor
nytimes.com/…/coronavirus-ireland-native-american…
AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Thanks for that :-)
I never knew.
damdy@lemm.ee 2 days ago
The vast majority of Brits still hate British landlords.