The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #163884   Message #3916042
Posted By: Jim Carroll
09-Apr-18 - 05:27 AM
Thread Name: BS: On the cause of Famines
Subject: RE: BS: On the cause of Famines
Another aspect of the famine too often forgotten
Well worth chasing up for those wishing to understand how natural disasters were preyed upon
Predatory religious practices played a large part in colonising the poorest countries (in Ireland - The Quakers shone like principled and humane beacons over those scrabbling to win souls in the "God for food" stakes
Jim Carroll


What is "souperism"
Wiktionary
souperism
n. (context historical derogatory English) During the (w: Irish Potato Famine), the setting up of schools by non-Roman Catholic Bible societies in which starving Catholic children were fed but were subjected to Protestant religious instruction at the same time.

Souperism
Souperism was a phenomenon of the Irish Potato Famine. Protestant Bible societies set up schools in which starving children were fed, on the condition of receiving Protestant based religious instruction at the same time. Its practitioners were reviled by the Catholic families who had to choose between their faith and starvation. People who converted for food were known as soupers, a derogatory epithet that continued to be applied and featured in the press well into the 1870s. In the words of their peers: they "took the soup".