BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Teribus
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 07:57 AM

"The effects of that blight lasted from 1845 to the present day"

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA - Utterly derisible

I shudder to thing of your views on the Great Flood, the Black Death, and the Mongol Hordes.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: kendall
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 08:03 AM

I doubt that anyone will care, but I've been on a long leave from Mudcat, and today I checked in out of boredom, and as usual, the name calling is still here.
It's one of the reasons I left.
All this vitriolic crap about something that took place 150 years ago is pretty petty compared to what is going on in OUR lifetime.
Adios

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 08:17 AM

"An authority on merchant ships of the 19th Century now are we Christmas?"
No - but I've read several people who are - try it
Read what has been put up then dispute it - you appear to adopt the ignore and denyapproach to history like your fick friend (who is now apparently disagreeing you in spades.
Read what has been written about Emigration Terrytoon
Emigration became an answer to Ireland's problems in 1847 and remains a prominent feature of Irish life
That is the legacy left by Britain, along with sectarian conflict
You are now becoming a bit of a nuisance Keith - go and play in the garden
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 08:17 AM

"An authority on merchant ships of the 19th Century now are we Christmas?"
No - but I've read several people who are - try it
Read what has been put up then dispute it - you appear to adopt the ignore and denyapproach to history like your fick friend (who is now apparently disagreeing you in spades.
Read what has been written about Emigration Terrytoon
Emigration became an answer to Ireland's problems in 1847 and remains a prominent feature of Irish life
That is the legacy left by Britain, along with sectarian conflict
You are now becoming a bit of a nuisance Keith - go and play in the garden
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 08:39 AM

like your fick friend (who is now apparently disagreeing you in spades.

If you mean me Jim, I remind you again that I am not disagreeing with anyone.
I merely stated that the version you posted at such great length was not the only version recognised by historians.

Why do you attack me for stating that demonstrable truth?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: sciencegeek
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 08:49 AM

if you were half as good at deduction as you are at fabrication & leaping to conclusion, you might actually post something useful... but instead we get more of your BS

By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Baltimore.

Ellis Island is just part of the long history of immigrants arriving in NYC... a fact that you seem bound & determined to contest. In your view... they obviously landed in Quebec and then travelled on until they reached New York.

"Ah but somehow it is perfectly rational and reasonable in your view for you to cite two examples to argue that 75% of those who made the crossing died."

Well... since I DID NOT make that argument... those are your words, not mine... I only have to point out that the irrationality come from you.

I gave two links to a educational website that includes first hand reports and caveats when there is uncertainty about accuracy of a source. How you choose to contrue or miscontrue them is on you.

And after critizing my reference to Ellis Island, you then use the criteria from decades after the famine to justify why they couldn't have come thruough NY. The following is the Ellis Island Foundation   http://www.ellisisland.org/genealogy/ellis_island_history.asp

From the very beginning of the mass migration that spanned the years (roughly) 1880 to 1924, an increasingly vociferous group of politicians and nativists demanded increased restrictions on immigration. Laws and regulations such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labor Law and the institution of a literacy test barely stemmed this flood tide of new immigrants. Actually, the death knell for Ellis Island, as a major entry point for new immigrants, began to toll in 1921.

This from Hostra.edu:
Most of the canal diggers were Irish immigrants. One reason that Canvass White recruited the Irish to work on the canal because he was impressed with Irish canal maintenance engineer named J.J. McShane. Many Irish immigrants who were living in cities in New York State found it difficult to get work because they were looked down upon by native-born Americans. What other reasons might Canvass White been glad to hire the Irish to build the canal?

And this from the National Park Service

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/ohioeriecanal/ethnicity.htm

The Irish wave of immigration to the Cuyahoga Valley was a result of canal construction. After the Napoleonic Wars peace settlements of 1815, Irish emigration intensified. Before the potato famine of 1846, more than a million Irish resettled in a foreign country. Many Irish immigrants who landed in New York City were recruited to work on New York State's Erie Canal, completed in 1825. Upon completion of the Erie Canal, many of these Irish workers came to northeast Ohio to work and made up the bulk of the labor force on the northern segment of the Ohio and Erie Canal. In fact, the 1850 State of Ohio Census lists 22.4% of the state's immigrants as coming from Ireland. The Irish Town Bend Archeological District in Cleveland's Flats District reflects the settlement era working class status of this ethnic group. Many of the early German settlers in the southern region of the Canalway were motivated by religion. In 1772 Moravian missionary David Zeisberger led a group of 28 Delaware Indians to the Tuscarawas River Valley to establish Schoenbrunn – the first settlement in the Northwest Territory. This mission settlement grew to include 60 dwellings and more than 300 inhabitants. Today it is a reconstructed village that is managed by the Ohio Historical Society.

America was settled by immigrants... and every local and regional historical society has records supporting the facts of who they were and just where they went... untouched by those who would deny those facts.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 08:53 AM

In detail - for those who have trouble with paragraphs with more than two sentences.
The evictions (yet to be responded to) continued to the end of the 19th century, leading to a devastated rural economy Nothing was done By Britain to relive that devastation.
The result was land wars and political unrest - Britain total expenditure was policing that unrest.
Enforced emigration led to a permanent drain of manpower.
More political unrest at the beginning of the 20th century until finally a settlement was brought about.
New Ireland immediately inherited a civil war caused by an enforced agreement, a partitioned Ireland and permanent sectarian conflict in the most arable part of the Island.
The inherited Empire economy had established emigration as a major feature of Irish life.
Despite blips in the economy, that remains the case (not helped, of course, by open, bloody warfare caused by a divided Ireland.
As I said - right up to the present day - not centuries ago.
This pattern has been repeated throughout the colonial world, but not to the same extent as in Ireland
As I said to your friend - go buy a book and stop making things up
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Teribus
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 09:02 AM

You might have read Christmas, but your only problem is that you don't understand what it is you are reading. Example - passenger accommodation on merchant ships of the time.

How many thousands arrived in Canada and America? That's the proof that the vast majority survived the crossing. But that was not the inference given in the article was it?

That between 1851 and 1975 some 4.7 million Irish citizens emigrated to America, doesn't surprise me for a second, those who went prospered and kin left behind in Ireland moved to share their prosperity. Nothing to do with Britain's legacy - more like a matter of personal choice - True? If you dispute that I would like to see your evidence substantiating the charge that they were driven out by the big bad British

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 09:06 AM

The English and Scottish rural populations were displaced too.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 09:25 AM

For T-Bird's benefit, one site of many. I can't be arsed to make clickies.


http://www.moytura.com/grosse-ile.htm

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/qc/grosseile/index.aspx

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 09:29 AM

"You might have read Christmas"
Now you are adopting a hit-and run line
-answer the points that have been made.
As far as thge coffin sheps are concerned -how many survived in no way contrqadicts the fact that they were shipped like cattele, wjhhich was my point
Some figures
"By the end of 1847, the awful toll could be calculated from the 200 immigrations ships that had made the crossing. Of 98,105 passengers (of whom 60,000 were Irish), 5293 died at sea, 8072 died at Grosse Isle and Quebec, 7,000 in and above Montreal. In total, then, at least 20,365 people perished (the numbers of those that died further along in their journey from illnesses contracted on the coffin ships cannot be ascertained) ? one-third of each vessel's passenger list. "
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Teribus
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 09:55 AM

"By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Baltimore."

And??

"Ellis Island is just part of the long history of immigrants arriving in NYC... a fact that you seem bound & determined to contest. In your view... they obviously landed in Quebec and then travelled on until they reached New York. "

Not one single Irishman, woman or child who fled the famine between 1845 and 1851 landed at Ellis Island – True?

"Ah but somehow it is perfectly rational and reasonable in your view for you to cite two examples to argue that 75% of those who made the crossing died."

Well... since I DID NOT make that argument... those are your words, not mine... I only have to point out that the irrationality come from you.

Please correct me if I am in error here but isn't the following yours:
"The Virginius from Liverpool, with 496 passengers, had lost 158 by death, nearly one third of the whole, and she had 180 sick; above one half of the whole will never see their home in the New World."

The example I used is based a friend's family history... they waited weeks for the ship their relatives were on to arrive in New York. It was never heard from again."

Now that is two ships – in one only half the people arrive and in the other nobody survives – expressed in very basic terms that is a 75% loss rate isn't it?

As for the rest I couldn't give a toss about Ellis Island it has got about as much to do with the emigration of the Irish and Scots from Great Britain in the period under discussion as London Heathrow Airport has.

"From the very beginning of the mass migration that spanned the years (roughly) 1880 to 1924,

And the relevance of that fact to the period 1845 to 1851 is??

The "Irishmen" who worked on the Erie Canal were Scots Irish (about 5,000 of them) and their presence had nothing whatsoever to do with fleeing anything let alone a famine seeing as how the work was carried out long before the blight struck in Ireland (1817 to 1825) – they saw it as an opportunity as at the time there were very few civil engineers in the USA.

Many of those same workers moved on in 1825 to build the Ohio & Erie Canal (1825 to 1832) so once again what relevance this has to the subject under discussion mystifies me.

America was indeed settled by immigrants... and the bulk of Irish immigration into the USA during the period 1845 to 1851 came via Canada.

Oh Christmas your post of 21 Mar 14 - 08:53 AM - biggest load of twaddle I have ever read in my life - always somebody else's fault isn't it - how convenient

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: sciencegeek
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 09:59 AM

it is always amazing and sad to see how far people will go in their denial of history...

like the guy who stood up in a session during the 2013 Republican convention ( please bear in mind that the Republican Party was the party of abolitionists and the session was presided by a black Republican on the issue of how to attract more American Blacks into the Republican Party) and asserted that it was absurd for American Blacks to be upset about the issue of slavery... they had it pretty good back then... free food and lodging. WTF?????

or those who insist that the Holocaust never happened...

I suspect that these people have such delicate egos that they must take their feelings of self worth from external sources, rather than being secure in their own value. They take their identity and self worth from the group they identify with... I'm American... white... black ... Christian... Muslim... the list goes on. They then perceive any less than glowing approval of that group as a direct attack upon themselves... how else to explain how personally they react to what I perceive as fairly neutral comments.

Facts are facts... take them and learn from them. Try to avoid repeating past mistakes... which you can't do if you can't acknowledge that mistakes were made.

Some useful links were posted and most of the posters have been reasonable, so there has been some value to this thread... but arguing with the wall is not very productive and has only served to demonstrate the lengths to which some will go to avoid altering their mindset.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:05 AM

" biggest load of twaddle I have ever read in my life - always somebody else's fault isn't it - how convenient"
Banks of Denial again -
]You have had the facts on immagration
You have had the facts on Britain's solution
You have had the facts on the conditions on the coffin ships
You have had a summing up of post famine history
Denial doesn't hack it
Your proof?
Won't hold my breath
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:05 AM

" biggest load of twaddle I have ever read in my life - always somebody else's fault isn't it - how convenient"
Banks of Denial again -
]You have had the facts on immagration
You have had the facts on Britain's solution
You have had the facts on the conditions on the coffin ships
You have had a summing up of post famine history
Denial doesn't hack it
Your proof?
Won't hold my breath
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Teribus
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:10 AM

What's the matter Christmas you seem to stuttering or frothing a great deal today?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Teribus
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:13 AM

Thank you once more sciencegeek (Date: 21 Mar 14 - 09:59 AM) for another contribution that has got S.F.A. to do with the subject being discussed - if one thing has been demonstrated you are at least consistent.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: sciencegeek
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:24 AM

OK... in terms that you might understand, though I'm not holding out much hope.

Entering into "discussions" with you on the topic of the Irish Potato Blight is as productive as trying to discuss the Holocaust with a NeoNazi...

or the issue of segregation and discrimination of Blacks with a White Supremacist...

or the scientific study of evolution with a Christian Fundamentalist...

are you getting it yet????

you are a waste of my time.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:26 AM

Jim,
You have had the facts on historians.
Most do not support your version of events.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:28 AM

"What's the matter Christmas you seem to stuttering or frothing a great deal today?"
Nothing but bluster - damn - thought we were on the point of a real breakthough
Ah well!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: pdq
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:45 AM

"The Famine was the greatest calamity in Irish history. People needlessly died due to cold-hearted indifference and the elevation of the market above the lives of people. Nowhere near enough aid was given as prejudice won out over compassion. Laissez faire turned into Leave them to die."

This is a very telling statement. It shows that the Irish history revisionists and the Marxist Lefties are working together to divide people and foment hatred, just about all that they ever offer.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:55 AM

You forgot 'or the First World War with Keith', there, Science.

T-Bird, you should have read up on Erie Canal history before making an arse of yourself: The first enlargement of the Erie Canal took place between 1835 and 1862- and employed more men that the initial construction. Ditto the interconnecting Champlain Canal. So shove your 1817 to 1832 "Scots Irish" engineers.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:57 AM

"Marxist Lefties "
Ah - leftie plot!
Never thought of that
Came from one of Keith's historians (see Nielson) and haas been reiterated by every single historian writing on the subject - read the thread
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 10:59 AM

PeeDee, what the hell are you going on about?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: mg
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 12:53 PM

I am a bit confused about some of the Erie Canal proclamations. My ancestors were not Scots-Irish, they were not civil engineers and we believe they worked on the Erie and other canals. They ended up in Iowa as laborers and farmers. This would be the early 1850s.

Many ships landed in Quebec, and very many in New Brunswick, especially at first because of the trade of carrying big timber to England and then having basically empty ships. Those were prime coffin ships because they were absolutely unsuited to human transportation..they would just rig up some bunks, have no accomodations for toilets, and were generally awful. Many people took them with no other recourse, and ended up walking through Vermont I believe and on to the Niagra Falls area and further south.

Ellis Island came later. There was Castle Gardens before...mg

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 01:16 PM

I would have read Terribulus's posts but he isn't fucking important enough.



Why does Keith tend to use the words true and truth when referring to historian opinion? Has he any idea what historians actually write?

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: sciencegeek
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 01:44 PM

yes indeed, mg the settlement of North America has a long and tangled history. Which is why you can not take one single fact and then try to apply it to all situations.

And is why I posted links to the National Park Service so that folks could look for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

There was a period of time when canal building was extensive since water transport is cheaper than overland... or at least it was until the boom in building railroads - thanks to advances in engine design.   Some canals were only half constructed when railroads were built past them. But both require large labor forces to construct... so the labor force went where the jobs were.

The reference to Ellis Island was me being more than a little annoyed about the blythe dismissal of New York being a major port of call for immigrant ships because Quebec was also a major port of call. Like there was only room on the continent for one? I'm still unclear as to what point that was supposed support... it just felt like one more distortion.

Oh.. and the term coffin ship was in common usage prior to the famine... meaning a ship that was overloaded and unsafe to sail. The term was then later used to describe the many ships that had no business carrying passengers, much less packing them full of immigrants. Since Lloyds of London insured shipping, they established some rules in an effort to ensure that cargo shipping met some safety standards... but they did not copyright the term and as long as you define the context in which you use the term, no reason to carry on about its use.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 01:50 PM

"I am a bit confused about some of the Erie Canal proclamations"
Terry Coleman's 'Passage to America' carries a great deal of information of who left from where and landed where - excellent starting point for anybody following up queries.
Jim Carroll
His account fo the early disasters
Jim Carroll
"In the first week of May 1847 the Liverpool Telegraph and Shipping Gazette carried a paragraph saying the King of Holland had strongly recommended the Emperor of Japan to throw open his country to the Europeans so as not to run the risk of being bombarded into civilization like the Chinese, and a letter, on something nearer home, from a correspondent who signed himself as One Long Connected with the Shipping Interests of Liverpool. He wrote:
Another emigrant ship has foundered and 248 of our fellow creatures have been launched, unshrived, into eternity. And another, and another, will share the same fate unless a strict and searching inquiry be instituted to ascertain if man is not guilty in some measure of causing so great a sacrifice of human life. The tale of one unfortunate vessel is the tale of many ... A few days and the circumstance is forgotten - it is only the foundering of an emigrant ship - remembered but by relatives. Of the 251 passen¬gers (the supposed number on board) only three escaped. The rest were drowned 'between decks' or washed from the wreck. No agonizing cry was heard - no piercing scream for help arose above the howling of the waves - all were silent, speechless, and sank into the sleep of mute death... O God! it is a most harrowing picture.1
The ship was the Exmouth, out of Londonderry bound for Quebec, and wrecked on the west coast of the Scottish island of Islay. She was an old vessel, launched in 1818, but she was in good repair. She foundered in a chasm. Later 108 bodies were recovered, hooked up by men who were lowered by ropes from the summit of the rocks on either side. Most of the dead were women and children, who were naked and mutilated, some without faces, others without heads or limbs. They were separately wrapped in sheets by two men named Campbell, who saw to their decent interment in a spot near the cliffs.
Fifty-nine emigrant ships to America were lost in the years 1847—53, and the Foundering Emigrant Ship was a clas¬sical Victorian disaster, much reported. The Powhattan, bound for Philadelphia, was wrecked on 16 April 1854 off the coast of New Jersey. She was stranded within eight yards of the low-water mark, so near that the passengers and crew could hear and reply to the suggestions made by those on shore, and though she did not break up for nearly twenty-four hours after she struck, no one from her reached the shore alive. The California Packet, a brig of 292 tons carrying pig iron, advertised to sail on 29 August 1853, finally did sail on 6 October, put back the next day, sailed again only on 3 November, and was abandoned the next day when she began to leak. The boats were not provisioned, the master abandoned the passengers seventy miles off the coast of Ireland, and made off. Three adults and fourteen children died.6 The summer of 1849 was a bad one. The brig Hannah, 287 tons, having had large repairs, and a new deck, sailed from Newry for Quebec, and struck an iceberg; 129 passengers were saved but fifty or sixty were crushed by the ice.6 In mid-July the Maria, with 111 passengers from Lim¬erick to Quebec, also struck an iceberg, and there were only nine survivors.' That same month the brig Charles Bartlett of Plymouth, Mass., bound from London to New York, was run down by the Cunard steamer Europa, 1,918 tons.
Forty-two of the brig's 142 passengers were saved, and the steamship company 'voluntarily intimated to the Mayor of Liverpool their intention of forwarding, free of charge, by their next two steamers to America, the persons saved from the wreck'.
The best-documented wreck of all was that of the OceanMonarch, which burned and sank in the Mersey barely out of Liverpool on 24th August 1848, with the loss of 176 lives"

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Mar 14 - 04:14 PM

Musket, I did not use the words "true" or "truth" to describe anyone's opinion.
Only to describe absolute facts, i.e. that many historians do not find that the government was culpable, and that Kinealy stated that they are the majority.

Jim,
and haas been reiterated by every single historian writing on the subject

Of course it has not!

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: sciencegeek
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 07:48 AM

well, thanks to "debate" above, the name Christine Kinealy came up. The geek did some searching & found this interesting book for young people co-authored by her. I dare say, good reading for any age... especially us old foggies.


Making Sense of History: Evidence in Ireland for the Young Historian (Ulster Historical Foundation Publications)

This book will help you find out about the different types of evidence which historians study when doing their historical research. It also provides examples of this evidence, on which you will be able to carry out your own research. Some sources are very rare and are the only remaining evidence of a time in the past; other periods, especially the recent past, have lots of evidence which must be tested for bias and accuracy. This book will give you background information and advice about evidence in all its forms. This will enable you to develop the skills of a young historian.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: sciencegeek
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 07:59 AM

found another gem from wiki... it would seem that the US has set a legal standard for "historians", thanks to right wing Holocaust deniers.

During the Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial it became evident that the court needed to identify what was an "objective historian" in the same vein as the reasonable person, and reminiscent of the standard traditionally used in English law of "the man on the Clapham omnibus".[3] This was necessary so that there would be a legal bench mark with which to compare and contrast the scholarship of an objective historian against the methods employed by David Irving, as before the Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial there was no legal precedent for what constituted an objective historian.[3]

Justice Charles Gray leant heavily on the research of one of the expert witnesses, Richard J. Evans, who compared illegitimate distortion of the historical record practice by holocaust deniers with established historical methodologies.[4]

In summarising Gray's judgement, in an article published in the Yale Law Journal, Wendie E. Schneider distils these seven points for what he meant by an objective historian:[5]

       The historian must treat sources with appropriate reservations;
       The historian must not dismiss counterevidence without scholarly consideration;
       The historian must be even-handed in treatment of evidence and eschew "cherry-picking";
       The historian must clearly indicate any speculation;
       The historian must not mistranslate documents or mislead by omitting parts of documents;
       The historian must weigh the authenticity of all accounts, not merely those that contradict a favored view; and
       The historian must take the motives of historical actors into consideration.

Schneider uses the concept of the "objective historian" to suggest that this could be used as an aid in assessing what makes a historian suitable to be an expert witnesses under the Daubert standard in the United States. Schneider proposed this, because, in her opinion, Irving could have passed the standard Daubert tests unless a court was given "a great deal of assistance from historians".[6]

Schneider proposes that by testing a historian against the criteria of the "objective historian" then, even if a historian holds specific political views (and she gives an example of a well-qualified historian's testimony that was disregarded by a United States court because he was a member of a feminist group), providing the historian uses the "objective historian" standards, he or she is a "conscientious historian". It was Irving's failure as an "objective historian" not his right wing views that caused him to lose his libel case, as a "conscientious historian" would not have "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence" to support his political views.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 09:07 AM

"Of course it has not!"
Yup it has - prove it hasn't
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 01:57 PM

reiterated by every single historian writing on the subject

I do not need to prove that such a ridiculous claim is false!

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 02:03 PM

Then feel free to contradict
You've had Kinealy's statement on who is to blame - you've ignored it
You've had Neilson's statement on who is to blame - you havew ignored it
You have had Trevelyan's statement - you won't even acknowledge it   
You have had entire documents specifically blaming British inaction and leaving it to the open market - you have ignored them
You have had the stated policy of forced immigration - you have ignored it
Game, set and match
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 02:09 PM

So that's two historians then.
I accept that.
Kinealy also states that most do not find the government culpable.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST,Stringsinger
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 03:04 PM

This is a very informative debate with many facts being presented.

One point I think that is overlooked is the religious war between the "Proddies" and the "Papists", an ongoing war since Henry VIII.

There will apparently be defenders and deniers of oppression whether emanating in England, US or Israel, offering rationalizations for the abuse of human rights based on some spurious and prejudiced propaganda fostering nationalist views.

These views are tantamount to Holocaust deniers hiding behind some warped idea of history.

It's the same as the whining of Creationists about not having "equal time" with scientific discoveries.

I think it's rational to accept that the Irish famine happened because England wanted it to happen and did nothing to alleviate it. The real cause of the Irish famine was oppression.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 03:32 PM


I think it's rational to accept that the Irish famine happened because England wanted it to happen and did nothing to alleviate it.

This is obviously another subject you know nothing about but have lots of opinions on.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 03:55 PM

"This is obviously another subject you know nothing about but have lots of opinions on."
You mean he hasn't read a book?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 04:41 PM

The Famine Plot- has all the answers, by Tim Pat Coogan. Amazon will provide it.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: sciencegeek
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 05:28 PM

The Famine Plot blurb...

During a Biblical seven years in the middle of the nineteenth century, Ireland experienced the worst disaster a nation could suffer. Fully a quarter of its citizens either perished from starvation or emigrated, with so many dying en route that it was said, "you can walk dry shod to America on their bodies." In this grand, sweeping narrative, Ireland''s best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, gives a fresh and comprehensive account of one of the darkest chapters in world history, arguing that Britain was in large part responsible for the extent of the national tragedy, and in fact engineered the food shortage in one of the earliest cases of ethnic cleansing. So strong was anti-Irish sentiment in the mainland that the English parliament referred to the famine as "God's lesson."

Drawing on recently uncovered sources, and with the sharp eye of a seasoned historian, Coogan delivers fresh insights into the famine's causes, recounts its unspeakable events, and delves into the legacy of the "famine mentality" that followed immigrants across the Atlantic to the shores of the United States and had lasting effects on the population left behind. This is a broad, magisterial history of a tragedy that shook the nineteenth century and still impacts the worldwide Irish diaspora of nearly 80 million people today."

Of course, the lower classes of their own nation were hardly treated any better. But their hard labor was needed to keep the mills and factories running... so they got the food instead of the Irish.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Greg F.
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 06:23 PM

Once our resident I-saw-it-on-the-internet-so-it-must-be-true bumper-sticker "historian" and professional fuckwit Keith has read Coogan - assuming that he actually is able to read, that is - he might also pick up Cecil Woodham-Smith's "The Great Hunger".

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 06:59 PM

Jim and I discussed both books at length on previous thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Greg F.
Date: 22 Mar 14 - 08:19 PM

How did you do that, Keith, since you have never read either one?

Fuckwit.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 23 Mar 14 - 03:03 AM

The discussion is here.
Read it yourself.
thread.cfm?threadid=151520&messages=452

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Mar 14 - 04:14 AM

"Jim and I discussed both books at length "
What!!!!
You are lying - I mentioned the books - you dismissed them both out of hand as "revisionist Republicanism" ; only someone with your twisted imagination can describe that as having "discussed" it.
You have still not read it, nor any other single book
Your not having read anything on the subject makes anything you have to say totally invalid on two counts
You have no knowledge authoritative knowledge on which to base your jingoistic claims - only your "Britain didn't ever do anything bad" jingoism.
Your boastful, "I have never read a book on the subject" indicates that you have no interest in the subjects you vandalise with your studies ignorance, other than to defend Britain's role - in this case, in one of history's great crimes against humanity.
I have since read Coogan's book and find it convincingly impressive, though inconclusive - he, at least attempts to explain Trevelyan's statement - you continue to totally ignore it - further evidence of your flag-wagging agenda (you really have no interest in facts if they don't suit your bigotry.
I'm delighted you have linked to the debate - it shows your dishonest, your ignorance, your inventive lying lying by scooping up undigested quotes because you believe (usually mistakenly) that they back up your case.
The thread is a classic example of vacillation and spectacular u-turns.
As for your on-going ignorance of the term "revisionism"....
You want to be a contender - read a book - then you might have something to say worth responding to
"Jim and I discussed both books at length" - a classic case for framing and hanging on the wall - you are a joke
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 23 Mar 14 - 05:39 AM

You have only read books that tell your chosen version of events.
Read any revisionist historians Jim?

I have an open mind, but I am influenced by the findings of historians.
I know that there is dispute.
You post vast tracts of text that give one version only, and a minority view at that.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Mar 14 - 06:56 AM

"You have only read books that tell your chosen version of events."
You have no idea of either what books I have read or what my 'version of events' might be again, you are diverting the discussion away from the balls you have made of it.
You cannot possibly be influenced by the "findings of historians" if you have never read what those findings are - you have proved that over and over again
My "vast tracts" have largely come from Kinealy, who a fellow Mudcatter introduced to this forum, followed by Neilson - both used by you to support your case and both blown up in your face.
How ****** dare you claim to know what I read, and how dare you suggest I am selective in my reading you dishonest little shit
Have I read any "revisionist" historians - I introduced Cecil Woodham Smith into this discussion - you wrote her off as "revisionist" - Tim Pat Coogan "revisionist republican.
I have always read as widely as possible on any subject that interests me - it's you who "selects" what you never get round to reading.
Try Robert Kee, Cathal Portair, Grieves Barder, Mansegher, Percival, Gallagher - even Marx and Engles... an entire spectrum of writers giving dozens of points of view in Irish history
and the dozen more I have on the shelves here - not counting the countless library books I've borrowed down the years.
You apparently don't even bother to read your own posts - you are apparently suffering from a sever bout of studied illiteracy on every singly subject you choose to foul up with your ignorance.
Now go and read a book
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Mar 14 - 07:28 AM

You vindictively re-opened this thread to try to score some points - you have managed to humiliate yourself further
Go away - you are embarrassing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 23 Mar 14 - 08:48 AM

How can you think Woodham Smith and Coogan are revisionists?!
You still have not worked out the what is being discussed!

Historians dispute blame.
That is a fact and my only case in this whole discussion.

Kinealy tells us that the revisionists are dominant.
She tells us that the nationalist Woodham-Smith's work is derided by academic historians as a work of fiction. A "novel" they said.

Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Mar 14 - 09:10 AM

"Kinealy tells us that the revisionists are dominant."
Kineley doesn't tell anybody who doesn't read her (or anybody's) books anything, you pompous moron.
This has gone far enough
Someone pointed out that they had this thread transferred from the Skibbereen thread and that both of us were to blame for ruining that one - he was right.
We have destroyed thread are thread with these stupid, stupid black-hole arguments
You come to these subjects with no prior knowledge - you go away with none.
You don't even read your own cut-'n-pastes and you certainly don't read what anybody puts up here.
I've done with this - until you actually show enough interest to find out about these subjects I suggest, for the good of this forum and its members I request you do follow suit.
You are a cancerous growth on what is otherwise an excellent source of knowledge.
Stay out of my face - I really am not qualified to deal with special needs children
Jim Carroll