BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 10:35 AM

Musket has said about a different era, "those historians should know better."
Like he does.
And Jim and Greg.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 10:29 AM

I am not going to argue history with you Jim.
It is safe to assume that historians are aware of all that and take it into account with all the other evidence available to them.

When they have done that, most of them find that Britain can not be blamed.
You have had many opportunities now to deny that fact, but you can't.
Can you Jim?
Greg?
Musket?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 10:18 AM

"I just thought it dishonest to state Britain's culpability as an undisputed fact, knowing that is not the case."
Now you are being maliciously dishonest - you have deliberately refused to respond to the actual statements of Britain's representative in Ireland at the time - instead you have manufactured claims by selected "historians" writing a century and a half later to prove (sic) "Britain never dunnit Guv" (again)
I have extracted every single contemporary account of Trevalyan's policy on Ireland from the Time-Line you refuse to acknowledge.
He was Britain's representative and was carrying out their policy.
You will ignore this as you have ignored every other fact put before you - hopefully, you will bow slink away in shame - but I doubt it
Jim Carroll


1846
Charles Trevelyan, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, told the Relief Commissioners that 'the landlords and other ratepayers are the parties who are both legally and morally answerable for affording due relief to the destitute poor'.
On the 20th, the chairman of the Relief Commission, Edward Lucas, said he believed that current and contemplated measures could not 'provide an effectual remedy'. 1400 out of 2049 electoral divisions in Ireland had reported the appearance of the blight.
Medical officers recorded a rise in cases of influenza, jaundice, and small pox, but particularly of diarrhoea and dysentery, caused by eating rotten potatoes.
Charles Trevelyan commented that 'indirect permanent advantages will accrue to Ireland from the scarcity, and the measures taken for its relief[...] Besides, the greatest improvement of all that could take place in Ireland would be to teach the people to depend upon themselves for developing the resources of the country, instead of having recourse to the assistance of the government on every occasion'.
The first shipment of Indian corn arrived in Ireland. It was unloaded in Cork where it was to be ground ready for consumption. Indian corn was difficult to prepare and not known in Ireland. It was bulky and filling. Sir Randolph Routh of the Relief Commission believed it kept off fever, but people referred to it as 'Peel's brimstone'. The decision to order something so obscure and unpalatable had been taken deliberately by the government, calculated not to interfere with private trade.
On the 20th, Trevelyan informed Routh that government plans should be 'promulgated'.
On the 3rd, a report by the Treasury condemned the payment of people on public works regardless of their results. It recommended that food should be given instead of wages, and if money wages were paid, they should only be sufficient to prevent starvation. This report had been written personally by Trevelyan and had not been reviewed before publication.
On the 21st, a Treasury Minute announced that all public measures for combatting the famine would be brought to a close. Trevelyan believed that relief operations should be ended despite the reappearance of the blight 'or you run the risk of paralysing all private enterprise and having this country on you for an indefinite number of years'
Depots re-opened on the 28th. Trevelyan insisted that grain should be sold at market prices, or 'the whole country will come upon us'.
Routh accused the Treasury of not having made enough effort to obtain food. Trevelyan maintained that food shortages were general in the United Kingdom, and supplies had to be controlled. 'The whole world was ransacked for supplies.' He also said that 'the ordinary mercantile interests of even the greatest trading nation in the world is unequal to such a novel emergency'.

1847
The British Relief Association was established in London by a group of English businessmen. Their representative Count Strzelecki travelled to Ireland.
Queen Victoria wrote the 'Queen's Letter', an appeal for money to relieve distress. The Queen, Trevelyan and Thackeray were among those who contributed. A total of £171, 533 was raised.
On the 25th, government officer Captain Pole remarked that 'outside Dublin, the country is uncivilised'.
The Times described the Irish as 'a people born and bred from time immemorial, in inveterate indolence, improvidence, disorder, and consequent destitution'. It accused them of 'astounding apathy [...] to the most horrible scenes under their eyes'. Punch magazine was also carrying articles and caricatures of this type. This media pressure, fed by Trevelyan and Charles Wood, had an impact on British public opinion.
A separate Poor Law Commission was set up in Ireland. The Treasury, e.g. Trevelyan, was to be more prominent in administering poor relief.
The Poor Law was also amended during 1847 to increase the powers of guardians to assist the poor, particularly smallholders, to emigrate. If a person who occupied land valued at less than £5 turned it over to their landlord, the landlord was obliged to pay two thirds of their emigration costs, and the guardians would pay the rest. The emigrant no longer had to be a workhouse inmate. However, it was not until the 1849 Mansell Act that guardians would be allowed to borrow the cost of emigration from the Exchequer Bill Loan Commissioners. As a result, Poor Law emigration rose sharply, but always made up a small proportion of all emigrants.
Soup kitchens were closed in 55 unions on the 15th, mainly in the east and the midlands. The rest were scheduled to be closed on the 29th. This was later adjusted so that the 'impotent' sick and poor could receive relief until the 30th of September. Twenty-two unions were listed as 'distressed', meaning that they would require external assistance.
Trevelyan himself wrote to the Times that financial assistance to Ireland should be limited, because 'the change from an idle, barbarous isolated potato cultivation, to corn cultivation, which frees industry, and binds together employer and employee in mutually beneficial relations... requires capital and a new class of men'.
A separate Poor Law Commission was set up in Ireland. The Treasury, e.g. Trevelyan, was to be more prominent in administering poor relief.
The Poor Law was also amended during 1847 to increase the powers of guardians to assist the poor, particularly smallholders, to emigrate. If a person who occupied land valued at less than £5 turned it over to their landlord, the landlord was obliged to pay two thirds of their emigration costs, and the guardians would pay the rest. The emigrant no longer had to be a workhouse inmate. However, it was not until the 1849 Mansell Act that guardians would be allowed to borrow the cost of emigration from the Exchequer Bill Loan Commissioners. As a result, Poor Law emigration rose sharply, but always made up a small proportion of all emigrants.
Soup kitchens were closed in 55 unions on the 15th, mainly in the east and the midlands. The rest were scheduled to be closed on the 29th. This was later adjusted so that the 'impotent' sick and poor could receive relief until the 30th of September. Twenty-two unions were listed as 'distressed', meaning that they would require external assistance.
Trevelyan himself wrote to the Times that financial assistance to Ireland should be limited, because 'the change from an idle, barbarous isolated potato cultivation, to corn cultivation, which frees industry, and binds together employer and employee in mutually beneficial relations... requires capital and a new class of men'.

!848
On the 29th, Trevelyan intervened in a scheme to send female Irish orphans aged between 14 and 18 to Australia. He recommended that Protestant rather than Catholic girls should be sent because of their better 'moral education'. Only girls trained in needlework and washing should be sent, which effectively ruled out any from the poverty-struck western unions. The guardians were also supposed to provide emigrants with an outfit.
On the 13th, Trevelyan asserted that assistance should be given only if absolutely essential, because otherwise 'the demands upon us would become infinite'. He criticised the Poor Law Unions for the way they had handled the resources available to them.
Trevelyan wrote to Twistleton that he wanted small farmers to emigrate. 'If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to selling portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital, we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country.' Russell also commented that 'it is better that some should sink, than that they should drag others down to sink with them'.
On the 24th, Russell said to Clarendon that 'the great difficulty concerning Ireland this year is one that does not spring from Trevelyan and Charles Wood but lies deep in the breasts of the British people. It is this - we have granted, lent, subscribed, worked, visited, clothed the Irish; millions of pounds worth of money, years of debate, etc. etc. - the only return is calumny and rebellion - let us not grant, clothe etc. etc. any more and see what they will do... Now, without borrowing and lending we could have no great plan for Ireland - and much as I wish it, I have got to see that it is impracticable'.
On the 7th, the Commissioners, having tried to get more money from the Treasury, said they felt 'absolved of any responsibility'. Trevelyan was unsympathetic, but admitted that the government was obliged to provide a minimal form of relief, or 'the deaths' would be 'an eternal blot on the nation'. He called paupers 'prodigal sons' who should not be given 'the fatted calf' but only 'the workhouse and one pound of meal per day'.
On the 2nd, the Poor Law Commissioners appealed to Trevelyan to apply some of the government's grant to defray the expense of treating cholera. The Treasury said this could be done 'with caution'. It was not long before the Treasury was accusing the Poor Law Commissioners of being too liberal with the money.
Trevelyan suggested that all children should be put out of workhouses to make room for able-bodied men. Twistleton refused to do this. The number of people receiving relief in Irish workhouses had reached its peak at 227,329 a day.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 09:12 AM

I have nothing else to say.
I just thought it dishonest to state Britain's culpability as an undisputed fact, knowing that is not the case.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 09:09 AM

I closed the thread. You TWO weren't talking about the song, and I didn't want another installment of the "Keith & Jim sbow to take over a good music thread. I moved it below so you can carry on your public relationship where it's easier for your unwilling audience to ignore you.

But seriously guys -- it's not one of you. It's BOTH.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Allan C.
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 08:42 AM

From what I have read the blight was the icing on the cake. A huge amount of the land and houses were owned by British businessmen and some of higher rank. Rents were often, if not generally paid in potatoes and turnips. In many instances these were brought directly to the docks where they were weighed and then credit was issued by the ship owners who, in turn, paid the landlords from the profits gained when the produce was sold to British markets. In some places the landlords became so greedy that they created what I would call reverse quotas. A family was allowed to retain only a specified amount of potatoes. As few as two per day were allotted per adult and per pig, if pigs were kept. Children were allotted one potato per day. All else was considered as rent.

Things were clearly already bad enough and then the blight struck.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 08:42 AM

Britain's culpability is disputed by historians, a verifiable fact.
Do you deny that FACT Jim?

Kinealy stated that those who blame Britain are the minority, and have been for over eighty years.
Do you deny that FACT Jim?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 08:38 AM

"That is all I have to say."
You have the Government's attitude to the famine in its representative Trevelyan's statement.
""effective mechanism for reducing surplus population" as well as "the judgment of God""
That is the nearest we have to an official government statement - not from "historians" a century and a half later
YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO COMPLETELY IGNORE IT
You have been given the chronological list of the Great Irish Famine containing further statements by Trevelyan stating that the British economy was more important than feeding the Irish people (Government official policy)
YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO IGNORE IT – NOT EVEN AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
You continue to hold Christine Kinealy up as your star witness even though you have said that you "don't understand" her description of the British policy towards Ireland as "inhuman and callous"
You had me worried for a moment – I really did begin to wonder whether somebody who confesses to never having read a book on the subject really does know more than every single contributor to this forum, including those of us whose understanding of it is based on the fact that many of our ancestors (not only mine) fled from Ireland directly because of England's genocidal policy – whew what a relief!!
Just in cases you ever decide to read something - 'yr 'tis again
http://www.irishhistorian.com/IrishFamineTimeline.html

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 07:13 AM

"YOU HAVE HAD NOT ONE IOTO OF SUPPORT"

Not surprising when generations of school children have been brainwashed to believe Britain should be blamed, keeping hate alive.

Irish schools at least since 1922 and NY State schools since 1996 by decree.
Massachusetts?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 06:49 AM

I did state that Britain's culpability is disputed by historians, a verifiable fact.
Does anyone deny that fact?

I am also repeating Kinealy's statements that those who blame Britain are the minority, and have been for over eighty years.
Does anyone deny that fact?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Musket
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 06:40 AM

Reading a lone sympathetic to your own outlook historian who has to rubbish history in order to get their moment of fame...

Not for the first time eh Keith?

A bit like going to a church and coming out smug and sanctimonious because someone who is paid to "forgive" absolves you of your less tasteful traits.

On the subject of the Irish famine, this was also the time when economics was being seen as a science in a way not seen before. Whilst Trevallian and his cohorts had political reasons for their callous attitude, they also were of the mind that Adam Smith was right and to interfere in trade was ultimately folly.

I would say that in the past, people oppressed others for their own ends. The snag is, the past is ever present, as gays, ethnic minorities, religions and lack of religions find out each and every day.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 06:17 AM

Jim, I made no "attack."
I want no argument.

I did state that Britain's culpability is disputed by historians, a verifiable fact.
Does anyone deny that fact?

I am also repeating Kinealy's statements that those who blame Britain are the minority, and have been for over eighty years.
Does anyone deny that?

That is all I have to say.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 05:09 AM

"Jim? Greg?"
font color=red>AND PLEASE STOP ADDRESSING JUST TWO PEOPLE - THIS HAS BEEN A ONE-MAN CAMPAIGN ON YOUR PART TO PROVE THE BRITISH EMPIRE DIDN'T DO IT - AGAIN - YOU HAVE HAD NOT ONE IOTO OF SUPPORT ON EITHER THREAD
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 04:58 AM

You have my offer - take it or leave it, simple as that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 04:44 AM

Kinealy is a historian who does support the old Nationalist view and is not a revisionist.

However she stated that revisionist historians are now "dominant" and have been for over eighty years.
She has also said that she thinks the balance might change in the future.

So, does anyone deny that there is historical debate, and right now most historians do not find that Britain can be held culpable?

Jim?
Greg?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 04:39 AM

You have linked us back to a thread in which Kinealy's statements described exactly the opposite and you admitted you could not understand why she came to such conclusions.
I have no intentions of re-opening a subject with you that you have admitted you have no personal knowledge on whatever.
I'll do you a deal.
You opened your attack on the Skibbereen thread in response to a note I have done for song we are putting up as part of our collection on our County Library website.
It is based around a statement made by the man responsible for distributing famine relief.
Ye was an appointee of the British Government so it can be safely assumed that it reflects the official view of that Government, otherwise they would never have left him in charge of such a vital task.
The statement says plainly that the Irish famine sufferers were evil people being punished by God for their evil ways and the famine was His way of controlling them.
Show me where this was not the prevailing view at the time and I will withdraw the note and replace it with one based on your evidence - I will not accept the usual carefully selected cut-'n-pastes that you substitute for knowledge - real evidence only.
Now - to Mr Trevelyan:
Skibbereen –(Roud 2312) Pat MacNamara
See also, Skibbereen – Tom Lenihan OK
The first known appearance of this song was in a 19th-century publication, The Irish Singer's Own Book (Noonan, Boston, 1880), where the song was attributed to Patrick Carpenter, a poet and native of Skibbereen. It was published in 1915 by Herbert Hughes who wrote that it had been collected in County Tyrone, and that it was a traditional song
Ireland's Great Famine remains one of history's worst cases of a natural disaster mismanaged; locked warehouses stuffed with supplies, enough food to feed the population being shipped out of Ireland by the boatload, and a man in charge of famine relief who believed the famine to be God's punishment on the Irish
In a letter to Thomas Spring-Rice, Lord Mounteagle, Sir Charles Trevelyan described the famine as an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population" as well as "the judgment of God"   
From the 'Cork Examiner' of March 19th, 1847, reporting on a court case in which a man had been charged with stealing food.   
In his defense he said that he was driven to it by what had happened to his wife.   
The Court was told:

"The starving woman lay in her hovel next to her dead three-year old son, waiting for her husband to return from begging food.   When night fell and his failure to return led her to imagine him dead in a ditch, she lay there in the faint fire's dying embers, caressing with her eyes her dead son's face and tiny fists.   With death searching her, and now with her own fists clenched, she made one last effort to stay alive. Crawling as far away from her son's face as she could, as if to preserve his personality, or at least her memory of it, she came to his bare feet and proceeded to eat them."

Illustration inserted here
Skibbereen 1847 by Cork artist James
Mahony (1810–1879), commissioned by
Illustrated London News 1847.

The legacy of the famine remains a part of the Irish psyche, particularly in its long and unbroken history of emigration.
It can also be found in folk-memory – my mother said her mother always claimed it was a "mortal sin not to eat the whole potato". This was echoed by Kerry Traveller Mikeen McCarthy, who said he once met an old woman who had lived during the famine and told him exactly the same thing.
The last generation had it in their lore; we were told several times of the "Hungry Grass", patches of land supposedly containing unmarked famine graves; it was said that anybody who walks over it is stricken by hunger pains.
One such piece of ground is said to be not far from The Hand Cross on the slopes of Mount Callan.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 04:02 AM

The moderators moved my post to this thread, reopening it.
What I said about historians and Kinealy is an easily verifiable fact.
Does anyone deny it?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 03:57 AM

This is intolerable
You have reopened this thread in defiance of the administrator's decision to to close the topic - grounds for being discipled at the very least on a discussion forum.
It is a subject on which you have admitted you have no personal knowledge whatever - you have said you have never read a book on the subject; nobody on the last thread baked your arguments and you have no support your support here.
You are now mounting a one-man campaign on something to which you have admitted to being totally ignorant on
You appear now to be taking on the administrators of this thread,
What the **** are you on?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 02:27 AM

The threads have been messed up and mixed up.
This one.
thread.cfm?threadid=151520&messages=452#3555978

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 14 - 02:23 AM

My short post, repeated here, did not get the thread closed.
It was your hysterical and wildly abusive reply.

I have stated the truth.
There is debate and most historians now do not find Britain culpable.
You know that to be true, and you know that Kenealy confirmed it because it was all laid out in this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Mar 14 - 04:00 PM

Can I just make clear why Keith has re-opened this thread
He has just managed to get the song thread 'Skibbereen' closed and now wishes to re-trawl over this subject once more.
I have little oubt that this will meet the same fate.
Irish famine timeline -it's all here
Jim Carroll

http://www.irishhistorian.com/IrishFamineTimeline.html

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Greg F.
Date: 11 Mar 14 - 02:42 PM

Piss of, Keith - it is incontravertable that "God sent the blight, but Britain sent the famine" and this has been proven and documented time and time again, despite what morons like yourself and/or your cadre of tame WWI apologist-type "historians" might blather on about.

Fur Jesus' and all our sakes, don't pollute another thread with your idiotic bullshit.

And if you're talking about Christine Kinealy - none of whose books I am sure you have ever read - you are prostituting and misrepresenting her theses regarding Britain's involvement & responsibility.

So fuck off.

Subject: RE: Folklore/History: Irish Famine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Mar 14 - 12:48 PM

In the last couple of posts to the just closed Skibbereen thread, two people state that Britain was culpable as if there was no dispute.
For the record many historians find that Britain can not be blamed.

Renowned historian Dr. Christine Kenealy stated, quoting others, that such historians were "dominant" and had been since 1930.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 27 May 13 - 05:00 AM

'I have read that Irish potatoes before the blight, were particularly nutritious, close to being a "perfect food" - far more nutritious that the potatoes we have nowadays. Is that just hogwash, or is there truth to that? '

THat Joe, is definitely hogwash of the first order. Recently a number of growers have put the potato that was popular around the famine, the Lumper, back on the market. It's generally accepted as an ugly, unpleasant tasting, poor quality tuber.

National Geographic article (google will throw up loads, there's been a lot of publicity surrounding this)

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 27 May 13 - 04:19 AM

"UK or Great Britain -- it does nothing to absolve the leadership"

Never suggested it did. In fact I pointed out that they could be blamed for political dogma mixed in with incompetence. But the statement that Ireland was a part of Great Britain was just plain and simply incorrect. Some things can be debated and depend on a point of view but other things are just basic incorrect statements.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 May 13 - 03:12 AM

"if you want to come to my home and sing songs about killing me."
I have little doubt that, had we a living, creative traditions up to the 1940s we would all be travelling around the world and singing songs about killing Germans, (particularly if we found a cosy beirkeller after we'd just beaten Bayern Munich) just as we sing songs about killing the French, and just about every other nation we have fought with down the centuries.
The famine was a tiny, if horrifically spectacular incident in Anglo-Irish relations and its aftermath still haunts Ireland. Songs about this relationship (there are few, if any Irish songs contemporary with the famine) are very much a continuing part of her history, which is still regularly re-visited via her songs about '98, '67, the evictions, the emigrations, the Land War, Easter Week, the War of Independence..... and long may that continue to be the case.
We visited this town throughout 'the troubles'; I remember one particularly moving occasion during the Willie Clancy Summer School around the time the hunger strikers were dying and the main street was bedecked with black flags.
We heard plenty of 'those' songs but we never encountered s minute's hostility from those Irish people who had travelled from all over the country to take part in the music making - if there was any hostility it was aimed at politicians, not the visiting Brits.
A rather odd incident sums it up for me.
A friend was visiting a town in the south of this county at the time England was playing a European football team in a final.
He went into a pub where the match was being shown on television; the locals, packed into the back room, were screaming themselves hoarse for the English side and were ecstatic when they won the game.
As the trophy was being presented a band struck up 'God Save the Queen" - two beer glasses sailed through the air simultaneously from different part of the room, right through the screen.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 May 13 - 12:15 AM

Sudden Oak Death has been an issue recently here in Northern California, destroying trees in our beautiful woodlands. Apparently, it's caused by Phytophthora ramorum, and it's related to the cause of the Irish potato blight, Phytophthora infestans. It kills our beautiful oak trees amazingly fast. It makes me reluctant to use oak firewood, because I might be contributing to the spread of this disease.

I have read that Irish potatoes before the blight, were particularly nutritious, close to being a "perfect food" - far more nutritious that the potatoes we have nowadays. Is that just hogwash, or is there truth to that? Are there potatoes nowadays that are closer to "perfect nutrition"?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 May 13 - 09:48 PM

UK or Great Britain -- it does nothing to absolve the leadership. Not in Ireland, not in Scotland, and not among those who suffered in England.

There is a time and place for laissez-faire, but a famine isn't among either.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 26 May 13 - 04:37 PM

"And this was done to a part of Great Britain! The Act of Union made it such."

Ireland was never a part of Great Britain as such. It was part of the UK. The famine was pretty significant in part of Britain too though in the Scottish Highlands. The govt again reacted intiially far too slowly but this was down to their idealogy of laissez-faire (do nothing as the market will fix things)rather than wanting people to starve. When they were finally pushed into action they still baulked somewhat at giving things free preferring work schemes etc. Again their rigid ideology. Nothing more useless during a catastrophe than people in power who are convinced their way is correct despite all the evidence being to the contrary.

I read a lot of Scottish history volumes and the prevailing thought seems to be that the Highland famine didn't go into the apocalyptic scale of the Irish famine because despite it being during the Clearance phase the Highland landlords were still for the most part native and even if they were anglicised they still held some sense of responsibility towards their tenants. Likewise the Church of Scotland was the established native church. Organised charity often prevented it from being much worse than it could have been. On the other hand the ruling class in Ireland were the anglo-Irish rather than native and were more estranged plus of course the scale was simply more massive.

I think the Scottish famine of the 1690s (the ill years) which particularly hit the north-east Lowlands, was perhaps worse than the later potato blight in scotland. Some counties lost 30% of the population. People fled to the cities, fled overseas mostly to Ulster then perhaps across the ocean, or simply starved to death.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Triplane
Date: 26 May 13 - 02:43 PM

Irish-American Famine Relief by Christine Kinealy


Throws some non politically? motivated light on how the rest of the world reacted to the famine and the plight of the Irish people affected.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 May 13 - 10:52 AM

Having studies several works on the Potato Famine and made several tri ps to Ireland and seen for myself both the records and the graveyards, I can only say that the policies of the British government would lead to international condemnation today.

Too few ships, refusal to use British naval vessels to ship grain, stinginess...meanness...on the part of the government and merchants, a view of religion that makes the Taliban look nice, and above all, an attitude of "well, they're only Irish" killed millions.

And this was done to a part of Great Britain! The Act of Union made it such. But then there is the example of the Highland Clearances and "To Hell or Connaught" as precedents.

It was not England's finest hour.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 26 May 13 - 07:58 AM

I haven't found the nettle and comfrey tea mentioned very effective, haven't tried the horsetail. I do use the Burgundy mixture, again not 100% but it does seem to slow things down. But I admit saying that from a background of not bothering with potato growing at all for over ten years after loosing a few crops to blight and only having gone back to it on a small scale in the past few years.

The thing is, not a lot of things will grow very succesfully here (I do not like cabbage at all so won't grow that, pakl choi and some chinese cabbage aside). Two years ago I even lost all tomatos, courgette etc in the polytunnel to blight. And anything not affected by it is likely to be eaten by slugs. It's overall just more frustration than it's worth, it's great when you get a good year though (rare as they are).

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Martin
Date: 26 May 13 - 07:39 AM

I make an organic treatment for blight making a tea using horsetail - here's a recipe:

http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/about1313.html

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 May 13 - 07:29 AM

Olly, whatever the rights and wrongs of the UK's treatment of the Irish during and in relation to the famine (in which particular area I may be less pro-English than you expect) you have a lot of bottle if you want to come to my home and sing songs about killing me.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,ollaimh
Date: 26 May 13 - 07:04 AM

Planting too early, racist anglos come up with a million "reasons"for famine. When I was young follies in vancouver used to say it was caused by the irish refusing to eat fish. The idea being that on an island there was fish everywhere. Rationalizations worthy of the Nazi paper der sturmer.
They still follow the nzai holocaust denial tactics of minimumizalizing the number. Once an irisman steps on a ship his death is not part of the famine. There are quarantine islands all over eastern Canada. With hundfed"so of thousands of irish grave. Those poor souls died of disease brought on by malnutrition and inhuman transport conditions. A quarter million irish(and some Scotts gaels) are hurried on grosse Isle alone, but they don't,t count. Like all gaels they were not human to the racist militaristic empire. The same empire, I might add, that terrorized iraqi civilians and tortured many people there.

New brunswick has thirty five thousand irish graves on the quarantine island in the mouth of the mirimicl river. The English settlers let them die. Brave acadiens roed over at night to free a few and nursed them back to health. Onfortunatelt the numbers were too big to make much difference in the death rate. There were less than seventy thousand acadiens, and at least one hundred and fifty thousand on quarantine islands in the maritimes(new brunswick, nova Scotia, and prince Edward island).

The cruelty and barbarism of the English has few equals in human history. And some Anglo folk song circles banners singing irish rebel songs. Anglo racism knows no bounds.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 26 May 13 - 05:24 AM

The potato blight may have been helped out by another factor - planting the crop too early.

Not quite sure what to make of that. To this day the only chance potato growers in the West of Ireland have to get any chance of a crop without blight (other than spraying the bejayses out of it) is to plant as early varieties as possible. I plant a bed of first earlies and hope I can get most out of the ground before the blight get at them.
There's the alternative of a few blight resistant varieties ofcourse, there are a few, but most people don't seem to like the taste of those.

If too early planting has the tubers rot, it's not the blight that causes the rot.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: LadyJean
Date: 25 May 13 - 11:06 PM

My dad spent some time in a German POW camp. The Germans gave the British and American officers corn meal, ground Indian corn, among their provisions. Before the Americans came, the British had used the cornmeal, which is very absorbent, to clean the floor. Americans taught them that the stuff was food. I can imagine what the Irish thought of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 May 13 - 10:07 AM

Interesting stuff, bruce!
=========
DNA detectives

The researchers studied 11 historic samples from potato leaves that were collected about 150 years ago in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe and North America.

The scientists found these ancient samples, which were preserved at the Botanical State Collection Munich and the Kew Gardens in London, still had many intact pieces of DNA. In fact, the DNA quality was so good the researchers were able to sequence the entire genome of Phytophthora infestans and its host, the potato, within just a few weeks...

According to the study, Phytophthora infestans originated in Mexico's Toluca Valley. When Europeans and Americans first came to Mexico in the 16th century, the pathogen experienced increased genetic diversity, and in the early 1800s, the HERB-1 Phytophthora strain emerged and was brought out of Mexico, the researchers said.

By the summer of 1845, the HERB-1 strain had arrived at European ports, and the potato disease spread throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom, causing the Irish potato famine. In the 20th century, as new varieties of potatoes were introduced, the HERB-1 strain was eventually replaced by the US-1 Phytophthora strain, the researchers said.
=======
The potato blight may have been helped out by another factor - planting the crop too early. People didn't realize that the potato pieces will simply rot if put into ground that's too cold. The sky may be blue, the weather warm, but soil is much slower to heat up.

We had crazy weather this spring, and it was a relief to read in the paper that tomatoes should not be transplanted outside until the soil temp is at least 60 at a depth of 2-4 inches. We got out the instant-read thermometer (up till now used only for roast beef) and checked. Soil temp was 65, so the tomatoes could safely go outdoors.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: Jim Martin
Date: 25 May 13 - 08:20 AM

The "Lumper" (so named because of its' lumpy appearance)was the variety of potato which caused the problem, being particularly susceptible to blight and with a regime of monoculture (have we learned nothing?) being in place, disaster was assured - but they didn't realise that at the time, of course!

http://www.celtictraveler.com/famine-potato.html

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 May 13 - 06:40 PM

It was Charles Trevelyan. He also said that the potato blight was a lucky act of providence!!

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 May 13 - 06:11 PM

And some of that corn, by 1847, was being hoarded by profiteers in Ireland. There were not enough mills to grind it -- although "corn meal" had been sold and given away in Ireland as early as the 1830s.

Remember too that Germany, France, the Low Countries and England suffered from the potato blight. Unlike Ireland, however, these countries were not nearly as dependent upon potatoes as their primary article of diet. There was some suffering, but not nearly on the scale as in Ireland.

See The Graves Are Walking for more info.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 24 May 13 - 05:28 PM

I was posting TIC, bb, not meaning to question the thread name. Sorry to draw it a bit off course, but all interesting stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: GUEST,Lorgain Guest
Date: 24 May 13 - 05:15 PM

The Famine Plot has all the answers, by Tim Pat Coogan.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 May 13 - 04:05 PM

The name "Corn," applied in UK-Ireland of that time, was a generic term for cereal crops.

In N. Am., nowadays maize comes to mind when someone says corn.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 May 13 - 03:41 PM

"Even in her day, there were signs on B&Bs and lodgings in London, NO IRISH OR COLOUREDS."
Still around in Liverpool when I was a child were signs in lodging houses saying "no blacks, no Irish, no dogs".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 May 13 - 03:37 PM

As has been pointed out, The Famine was only part of the problem of what happened in Ireland.
Mismanagement was common and misappropriation of relief supplies occurred regularly. Relief supplies were stolen by those given the task of distributing them and resold; relief money was misappropriated regularly.
Around here they still refer to the walls around the fields on one of the old landlord's estates as "the shilling walls" because, although the workers on famine relief where supposed to be paid half-a-crown for their labour, they were in fact given one shilling, the landlord pocketing the rest.
A local building here is still referred to as "Balls' school; it was run as a school by a clergyman, Mr Balls, who was what they still call "A souper". The children were given free soup, but only ON CONDITION THAT they changed their religion to Protestant.
Landlords evicted tenants who were unable to pay their rent and knocked the houses down so they could not return to them. If the evicted tenants were lucky the local County Home (workhouse) would take them in, but usually they died at the sides of the road.
There is a tradition here called "the hungry grass" - they are stretches of land said to contain unmarked famine graves, and if you walked over them it is claimed that you get hunger pains.
One of the positive stories from that time was of how a cart going around collecting the bodies of those who had died on the roads turned from the main street and up the hill towards the graveyard. One of the bodies rolled off and landed at the side of the road outside a smithy.
The smith ran out and found that the 'corpse' wasn't dead; took him in, fed him up and offered him a job. He survived for another 20 years.
One of the best historical accounts of the Famine the book, 'The Great Hunger', written by an Englishwoman, Mrs Cecil Woodham Smith, and probably the finest fictionalised reconstruction, simple entitled 'Famine' was by Irish Author Liam O'Flaherty.
The most horrific episode I've come across of this time took place in Cork - I think in Skibbereen, one of the worst hit places in Ireland.
Jim Carroll

From the 'Cork Examiner' of March 19th, 1847 reporting on a court case in which a man had been charged with stealing food.
He said he was driven to it by what had happened to his wife. The court was told: The starving woman lay in her hovel next to her dead three year old son, waiting for her husband to return from begging food. When night fell and his failure to return led her to imagine him dead in a ditch, she lay there in the faint fire's dying embers, caressing with her eyes her dead son's face and his tiny fists.
With death searching her and now with her own fists clenched, she made one last effort to remain alive. Crawling as far away from her son's face as she could, as if to preserve his personality or at least her memory of it, she came to his bare feet and proceeded to eat them.
When her husband returned and saw what had happened, he buried the child, went out, and was caught trying to steal food. At his trial the magistrate from his immediate district intervened on his behalf, citing the wife's act as a circumstance deserving special consideration. The baby's body was exhumed, the flesh of both its feet and legs found to have been gnawed to the bone, and the husband released and allowed to return to his wife.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 May 13 - 03:01 PM

Ah, thank you Alan. It was maize then. How cruel to try to sell it to them. Am I right (sorry about senile questions, wait until you get to my age!) in saying there's a reference to this in Fields of Athenry, about some British politician and his cursed corn?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: GUEST,Alan
Date: 24 May 13 - 02:55 PM

Eliza, Indian corn was sold to the Irish during the great hunger, it wasn't gifted.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 24 May 13 - 02:52 PM

mea culpa accepted, bb

Not every variety of potato is equally suceptible to blight and in the Andes were they originated, there are dozens if not hundreds of cultivars/varieties. Most of the irish potatos were all basically the same plant, since it is replanted from the cut up tuber... vegetative reproduction as opposed to sexual reproduction from fertilized seeds.

but another "ironic" point is that prior to the introduction of the potato - which many Europeans distrusted due to it being a member of the nightshade family, it often took drastic measures to force people to eat them- a mainstay of the Irish was the turnip (the original jack o lantern) which was not affected by the blight. But there was no real effort to provide seed for other crops and not everyone probably remembered how to grow much of anything else.

I guess this is an good reason to help preserve heritage varieties of food crops and livestock.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Famine- Cause found
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 May 13 - 02:46 PM

Am I right in thinking that the British offered the Irish corn for famine relief, which was rather stupid of them as such grain was not known and the people had no way of grinding/preparing it? I'm sure I read that somewhere. Also, despicably, the poor souls were regarded as little better than animals and not worth bothering about. My mother was Irish, a Duffy from Cork. Even in her day, there were signs on B&Bs and lodgings in London, NO IRISH OR COLOUREDS. The particular strain of potato blight caused the spuds to go black and turn to stinking mush in the ground.