"No one denies the Irish famine was a tragedy or that more could have been done and should have been done."

Only two things wrong with that sentence. First, the word "famine." Oh, how that little word conveys the sense of of calamitous and unavoidable hunger brought on by nature. But the Irish "famine" was no such thing. Read on. Second, the word "tragedy." Again, the sense of a cruel and unavoidable act of God. Again, no such thing. There was abundant food in Ireland all the way through that "famine." From wiki.


Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food. In the magazine History Ireland (1997, issue 5, pp. 32-36), Christine Kinealy, a Great Hunger scholar, lecturer, and Drew University professor, relates her findings: Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women, and children died of starvation and related diseases. She also writes that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon, and ham actually increased during the Famine. This food was shipped under British military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland; Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee, and Westport. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue, and seed. The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding 9 imperial gallons; 41 litres. In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins (509,010 imperial gallons; 2,314,000 litres) were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins (313,670 imperial gallons; 1,426,000 litres) were shipped to Liverpool, which correlates with 822,681 imperial gallons (3,739,980 litres) of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of the Famine.The problem in Ireland was not lack of food, which was plentiful, but the price of it, which was beyond the reach of the poor.

The historian Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote in The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 that no issue has provoked so much anger and embittered relations between England and Ireland "as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation." John Ranelagh writes that Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five-year famine.

Calling it a tragedy, rather than an inhuman outrage, misrepresents the situation entirely.