The Irish Potato Famine

[MsAmerica]

This would have been better in a history forum, but failing that, I'll try Politics. Interesting article - a book review, really.

What Made the Irish Famine So Deadly
The Great Hunger was a modern event, shaped by the belief that the poor are the authors of their own misery and that the market must be obeyed at all costs.
By Fintan O’Toole

There have been, in absolute terms, many deadlier famines, but as Amartya Sen, the eminent Indian scholar of the subject, concluded, in “no other famine in the world [was] the proportion of people killed . . . as large as in the Irish famines in the 1840s.” The pathogen that caused it was a fungus-like water mold called Phytophthora infestans. Its effect on the potato gives “Rot,” a vigorous and engaging new study of the Irish famine by the historian Padraic X. Scanlan, its title. The blight began to infect the crop across much of western and northern Europe in the summer of 1845. In the Netherlands, about sixty thousand people died in the consequent famine—a terrible loss, but a fraction of the mortality rate in Ireland. It is, oddly, easier to form a mental picture of what it might have been like to witness the Dutch tragedy than to truly convey the magnitude of the suffering in Ireland...

Even before the potato blight, there was a degree of hunger among the Irish rural underclass that seemed like an ugly remnant of a receding past. In 1837, two years after Alexis de Tocqueville published the first volume of “Democracy in America,” his lifelong collaborator, Gustave de Beaumont, went to Ireland, a country the two men had previously visited together. The book de Beaumont produced in 1839, “L’Irlande: Sociale, Politique et Religieuse,” was a grim companion piece to his friend’s largely optimistic vision of the future that was taking shape on the far side of the Atlantic. De Beaumont, a grandson by marriage of the Marquis de Lafayette, understood that, while the United States his ancestor had helped to create was a vigorous outgrowth of the British political traditions he and de Tocqueville so admired, Ireland was their poisoned fruit. America, he wrote, was “the land where destitution is the exception,” Ireland “the country where misery is the common rule.”

The problem was not that the land was barren: Scanlan records that, “in 1846, 3.3 million acres were planted with grain, and Irish farms raised more than 2.5 million cattle, 2.2 million sheep and 600,000 pigs.” But almost none of this food was available for consumption by the people who produced it. It was intended primarily for export to the burgeoning industrial cities of England. Thus, even Irish farmers who held ten or more acres and who would therefore have been regarded as well off, ate meat only at Christmas. “If an Irish family slaughtered their own pig, they would sell even the intestines and other offal,” Scanlan writes. He quotes the testimony of a farmer to a parliamentary commission, in 1836, that “he knew other leaseholders who had not eaten even an egg in six months. ‘We sell them now,’ he explained.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/17/rot-padraic-x-scanlan-book-review

I think it is a very powerful song.

ok, the irish administrators then, if you want to quibble and be pedantic - the irish with power in ireland, who were given aid, and failed to distribute it

The administration in Ireland at the time of the famine were appointed by the Westminster Parliament because that's the only Parliament and power there was. Ireland was not a colony of the UK at the time of the famine, it was the same jurisdiction and so all appointments were made by Westminster - see Charles Trevelyan.

Tony Blair acknowledged this, you can too!

From his statement in 1997:
"Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy.”

If you're going to ask others to be factual and also not use argumentative language, please do the same yourself. There was nothing pedantic about the previous post, the poster was being factual!

The Irish didn't distribute the aid to the starving, did they- that is the point. The aid was useless, it was stolen and sold, or it rotted, or it was distributed without the information to make it edible. Again, lessons for modern times

I wonder about the guilt that must have been felt by those who survived especially in the years shortly after the Great Hunger. My family comes from one of the worst impacted counties and I sometimes wonder - how did my great grandparents survive and what was the psychological impact on them.

Reflecting on our history doesn't mean we blame people today or are looking for reparations. I may have missed the posts but I haven't seen any that are doing that.

I'm Irish, a professional historian, and my grandfather fought in 1916, facts. My great-grandfather was born in the last years of famine, in a place where the fields to this day still bear the outlines of mass burials. I know my history, I know my people. Interesting that you think that a person who doesn't share your views is probably not Irish - says more about you than me.

The Holocaust survivors of WW2 were pretty loud voices when it comes to suffering during that period. I have also read some memoirs written by their children on the impact on their lives for example. I have also read that trauma can be passed on inter generationally, not just with mental impacts on children through parenting style but also physiologically as well. For example Dutch people who starved in WW2 tended to have underweight children even some time after the food shortage event had passed and it was postulated that genetic changes had taken place for evolutionary survival purposes.

I also read a theory in a book about ultra processed foods that suggested that the reason why so many African Americans are bigger than other people today was because the long period when the slaves were basically starving in filth at sea naturally selected for those whose bodies were better at conserving fat stores, whereas those who fat storage weren’t so efficient perished faster. The author made the same case for Pacific Islanders, who had spent long periods at sea to colonise those areas. The problem is today that modern ultra processed foods is far worse for people with that genetic profile than for those not, though all are affected to some degree. It’s not that no one has had suffering and sometimes hungry ancestors in the past, but some events were more extreme than others and relatively recent in the scale of our evolutionary past.

So we aren’t all equally blank slates with no past when we are born, as this new political thinking of today is suggesting. I cynically wonder looking at the US today, if that’s ultimately for tax rate reduction purposes? Our DNA is so obviously inherited from parents and there is a complex interplay with epigenetics in our lives as well.

Tuber famine? Facetious, much?

The Irish didn't distribute the aid to the starving, did they- that is the point

No, that isn't the point. The responsibility for the administration of aid was with the British government, in Westminster; which was also the ruling government of Ireland due to the Act of Union.

It is not the case that the British government sent aid to Ireland and just left it to the Irish to distribute. It was the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, in London, not Ireland.

Maybe examine why you're so personally uncomfortable with the British role in the famine and are trying badly to deflect from it. As I said, the British government has acknowledged the failings, its on record.

Lessons for modern times are only lessons if people are willing to accept the reality of the past.

@RosaMundi27 I am curious do you as a professional historian delve into psychological impacts on people or inter generational trauma. it is something that really interests me as I have a suspicion I can see it manifest on one side of my family.

Until recently the staple diet of the Sherpas of Nepal was the potato. Introduced by the British in the 1840s with the result that they became less nomadic and settled to subsistence farming. I know. Irrelevant.
There was a fairly high death toll in the west of Scotland too in the 1840s. Not as high a percentage of the population, but significant.

What Irish administrators? What Irish with power in Ireland? What Irish who were given aid and failed to administer it? I don't think you have even the smallest grasp of how Ireland was governed in the 19th century.

Reparations and blame aren't the point. Understanding history and why and how events happened is the point. And facing that even if it is uncomfortable reading.

Britain has a long history of revolts and uprisings but it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge. Arguably England was also the first country in early modern Europe to depose a monarch and challenge the divine right of kings. It’s fascinating to see how persistently the social order asserted and reasserted itself, right down to the present day. I think that the Protestant reformation, in part, acted as a sort of safety valve, creating a sense of individualism within a national identity that maybe made it harder to disentangle imperial pride from social injustice. (That’s probably a debate for another thread though. I’d love a deeper chat about the Chartists too, always interested in family histories.)

There’s been a distinct shift among British historians over the last decade or so, away from the old established tenets, not shying from the harder questions or the darker aspects. I am hearing modern events being considered as a lens for looking at the past differently. eg considering Elizabethan England’s isolationism as comparable in ways with Brexit, etc. It’s a very dynamic subject at the moment.

It’s easy to assume to Irish history is taught in simplistic terms but it really isn’t. Each generation of historians asks tougher questions than the last and history is widely debated, not just taught as some sort of nationalistic propaganda. In fact, a deeper nuanced look at history was considered necessary because of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The first wave of revisionism was a responsible attempt to tone down anti-British sentiment. If anything, where there is simplification it is often to edit out atrocities.

Currently in secondary school history is taught with a great deal of nuance, consideration of sources, weighing up of bias and reliability. It’s also a compulsory subject up to junior cycle meaning that everyone up to the age of 15/16 has a good grounding, not just in facts and events but in critical analysis. And not just in Irish history.

It’s normal to debate and challenge history in Irish public discourse. Reflection is encouraged, precisely because it undermines extremism.

I understand why people are feeling defensive and rejecting generational guilt but I think that is not what is intended by most posters.

Thank you for that. Yes, The Great Hunger sounds familiar.

I think another reason for the small plots were the penal laws put in place by the British preventing Catholics from owning land.

Essentially, the British ruling classes considered the poor Irish to be deserving of death so allowed no dignity in the face of starvation.

Telling the Irish to get over this past would be fine if there weren't continued echos of that attitude towards the Irish that we are inferior. "Naughty boy" names often being Irish names, jokes about the Irish being stupid or drunken, I even had someone saying to me that the Irish were so stupid they couldn't think to plant another crops for 4 years. I've had to deal with people here making "jokes" about Ireland being backwards and people not being educated and assumptions that I must be Catholic and I must have a large family.

The famine is not out of our psyches because we are still seen as inferior. The irony is that this is borne out of ignorance of the people who don't actually understand the history or context but still put the Irish down as uneducated yokels.

The big difference though is the holocaust is within living memory, and within the three generation scope of epigentics, and many people, even young people, alive today had loved ones who suffered directly. People young today have seen scars on their grandparents, and great grandparents, and have spoken to them about their losses and their suffering in concentration camps

Nope. I provided the article. If people object to the content, they can complain to the journalist or the author.

Yes. I get impatient by people who get all upset over a single word AND don't bother to clarify the problem.

But the linked article didn’t refer to the famine as The Irish Potato Famine. It was your thread title, not the content of the article, that people objected to. And when the issue was explained, you doubled down.

Do you live in the republic? Just seems very odd to say that Catholicism is linked with “self righteousness “

And yes I think that, like many countries in the world who have experienced colonialism that Irish people identify with Palestinians. Not sure - what because revolutionaries- means. Surely you can see that in the Republic of Ireland there is little support for terrorism. Or do you see a lot of support for terrorism where you live?

The author didn’t call the article the potato famine. This term is not used in Ireland.

You are being obtuse here. And you know it 🤷‍♀️.

I think you’ve misjudged your fellow countrymen and women then. I found your previous post objectionable and, as it seems to be deleted now, it’s clear I’m not the only one who thought that.

I don’t think Irish people have a hive mind. You were the one speaking of a ‘national mind’, not me, though it’s now clear you didn’t include your own as part of it, of course not.

When you are looking at when the Irish potato famine happened, you are looking at great to great great grandparents of people alive today.

This really isn’t a long time ago. Of course descendants are going to be interested and feel a personal connection to what happened to their near ancestors they might not have met but were told about by parents or grandparents.

I also have spoken to Australians whose ancestors were convicts as well. They will often recount with disbelief that their ancestor was transported for stealing a handkerchief.

It’s human to connect to a major historical event in the comparatively recent past.

There are always lingering impacts, thats why these issues shouldn't be so easily dismissed and forgotten. Also why forget anyway? It's good to remember how low people can go

NZ is a good example too the effects of British colonisation are still very, very apparent. To those people impacted today, it's not long ago at all.