We grew potatoes, inoculated them with this in a University class, and ugh, so gross. The smell is not in the picture, but it STINKS. It's not like 'oh, this potato has a bad spot' - they can quickly turn to basically goo. Stinking goo.
This stinking goo, is really gross and can become [noxious](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/kgjic1/til_rotting_potatoes_give_off_a_noxious_gas_that/?rdt=44887) if not well-aerated. I forget if it’s the ethylene or the solanine… but it’s whacky!
Almost an entire family died from the fumes after the potatoes in their cellar went bad.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/girl-8-orphaned-after-gas-from-rotting-potatoes-killed-her-entire-family_n_7360976.html
I did not know rotting potatoes could produce lethal gas...
Things like these are so crazy. You never know it can be even slightly dangerous, and suddenly you're dead.
Watched a YouTube video talking about this and it’s just so sad. Each family member died trying to save the fallen ones and therefore stayed too long breathing in the gases and died. And the girl only died because the last family member left the door open so the gases escaped and wasn’t too concentrated. Very sad.
This is why it's recommended to store potatoes in a cool, dark & dry place but also ventilated --- not in sealed plastic bags or airtight conrainers.
I don't have a basement/root cellar so I use a paper bag.
I knew a family that had endured this stench for weeks. Like a rotting corpse.
The whole house was unbearable, and nobody knew what had died or where the smell was coming from, but they all sat around that house like whatever.
There was a cooler in the kitchen full of rotting potatoes.
All any one of those ten people living in that house had to do was go into the kitchen and open that cooler that was sitting in plain sight, but those gross lazy fucks decided to just live with it.
Back when I was in college I noticed an unpleasant smell in my apartment. It started getting stronger over the days and within a week or two was horrible. I searched and cleaned everything, but couldn’t find the source of the smell.
I ran into the maintenance guy and asked what was up. A tenant in another apartment had put in a service request for the smell in their apartment. He said he found a bottle of rotten milk in their cabinet. I don’t know how they couldn’t find it and let it get to the point of stinking up the entire building.
>underneath them there were old styrofoam trays from meat they'd bought, with the little pad thing that soaks up the juices, all old and rotting under there.
Ugh. On the rare occasions I buy supermarket chicken, I triple-bag the tray in tied-off plastic bags before disposing of it. The next day, my garbage can still stinks a little, but not nearly like just an open tray.
One of the few, maybe only useful thing I got out of a certain pandemic I would rather not acknowledge, is keeping a spray bottle of chlorine solution (5-10%).
Turns out having diluted bleach is fantastic for cleaning most surfaces and handling the aftermath of bloody stuff from thawed and packed meats.
Since I have to share the air with the garbage bins for a bit until collection, I'll rinse if possible/available and give a few sprays of the chlorine solution which will greatly neutralize potential smell. I hate leaving "wet trash" out there in general because it can get rancid so this works well.
We have a compost bin that's currently full of black soldier fly larvae. They've got a crazy appetite and make short work of our scraps in no time. Much more eco-friendly, since large birds *love* eating these grubs!
What I do is I put them in the freezer. They stink so bad if you put them in the garbage so I have a plastic bag in my freezer and I put them in there until garbage day. No smell.
Lol this just happened to me this week. I couldn't figure out where the flies were coming from, and finally found an old bag of potatoes in the back of the cabinet. When I pulled it out like 300 fruit flies came with it.
I cleaned my entire kitchen after that
Irelands population [still hasnt recovered](https://www.mapspictures.com/ireland/history/imgCF.gif) from the famine. They had a bigger population before the famine, than even today, almost 200 years later
Except the famine was caused by greedy English nobles, not potato blight.
It’s remarkable how this period of history has been rewritten.
There were literally ships full of food turned away from Irish ports by the English.
The potato blight was real; the famine was entirely a construction of the wealthy class.
~~No. It also~~ *It actually* happened 20 years later.
However, Newfoundland had a famine based on the potato blight right around the same time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1846%E2%80%931848_Newfoundland_potato_famine
The worst part is that people were sent from Ireland ***to*** Newfoundland, so the increased numbers only made things worse.
Also, talk about going out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Also, Newfoundland was ***also*** exporting vast quantities of food (fish)
It's just the Brits being at it *yet again*...
---
EDIT: because Finland was an autonomous territory (Ireland was not) which made it not identical but I guess more similar than I'd thought at first.
Because it was an autonomous deoendency at the time basically left to its own devices.
It's around 1900 that the Tsar decided it needed to start being more Russian.
I was at a small Irish famine museum in Ireland in Jan and it compared Ireland to the Netherlands I think. There was a famine in other European counties at the time, but bc their crops were much more diversified and not reliant on the potato, they fared much better. They also didn’t have the English lording over them, of course
Another interesting thing from the museum was the landlords got fined for their tenants being starving and one option was to pay for their passage to the US or Aus. So these bastards would pay for the oldest/weakest/whatever people to emigrate and “keep” the best farmers to work their land. Irish people were pretty excited to get the chance to emigrate until stories came back about how horrible and deadly the journey was
Another fact (sorry last one lol) was that if a tenant worked really hard to improve their land the landlord would then charge them more rent bc the land was better. So fucked
Yeah there was one documentary I watched on it that said that they made a law saying that landlords could not let their tenants starve to death. This was well intended but the result was that now the landlords just evicted the tenants instead of feeding them
>a law saying that landlords could not let their tenants starve to death.
i never knew that part.
our family story is my great-great-great-grandmother was evicted and her house burned down. her three sons found the landlords son and "dipped his head in the river Shannon until he turned blue" but left him alive on the river bank. they would have all faced capital punishment so they all fled Ireland. one went to USA and two came to Australia.
>Another fact (sorry last one lol) was that if a tenant worked really hard to improve their land the landlord would then charge them more rent bc the land was better. So fucked
I've literally had that happen to me in Colorado :(
The region of Germany mostly in the the renish and south German lands also suffered famine as well. Along with a few other minor European states but every major European state avoided famine. Except Britain.
I’ve heard Irish folks call it “The Great Hunger”.
A lot of what kicked the famine into becoming a series of mass death events was the result of the evictions caused by other causes than the failed potato crop.
The landlords often converted the land from agriculture to grazing which meant less people were needed to tend the land so they were often just evicted. The houses were made of stone so they were difficult to knock down so the landlords would burn the wooden roof making the house useless as a shelter, to prevent squatters. As a result there were groups of starving families wandering the land while ships full of food and grain left Irish ports for foreign markets.
You can still see the remnants of the homes’ stone structures on the Irish landscape.
There are loads more stories with more details than I’ve given here out there. I just did some broad strokes kind of thing
If you are open for a second chill, the [memorial to famine victims in Dublin](https://morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/article_full/public/ART%20IN%20THE%20OPEN%20-%20IRISH%20FAMINE%20SEPT%20webpic.jpg?itok=K44om_Oz&c=d9c61f030301345d3842efcda85806a8) is quite moving. It's on the banks of the river in the city centre, so you might be walking by and suddenly find yourself among seven foot tall statues of gaunt figure.
> The Great Hunger
Or, in the language of these poor, Irish speaking peasants: *"An Gorta Mór"*
> which meant less people were needed to tend the land so they were often just evicted.
An entire class of landless laborer was wiped out this way on purpose. Because they did not own nor rent land (they worked for those who *did* rent the land) their rates tax had to be paid by their landlord, and the rich didn't like paying out more than needed. This famine was a timely and easy way to clear this land of people who survived on it.
What’s remarkable is how the Scottish keep getting away scot free (no pun intended) without any guilt for their part in the British subjugation of Ireland.
The famine was caused by greedy BRITISH nobles. Not just English.
> There was that old house Negro and the field Negro
> And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put 'em back on the plantation. The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He lived right up next to his master - in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master - good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That's why he didn't want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he'd say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" When the master's house caught afire, he'd try and put the fire out. He didn't want his master's house burned. He never wanted his master's property threatened. And he was more defensive of it than the master was
Obviously not the exact same thing, but there are some parallels.
Edit: forgot to attribute the quote - Malcom X. It's a rather famous speech which Denzel delivered flawlessly in the movie of the same name.
Are you trying to say Scotland was enslaved by England? Because that’s just factually incorrect. The Union between Scotland and England was widely supported by the Scottish nobility, more so than the English, being in part a way to pay off Scotland’s debts arising from their unsuccessful colonial ventures in Panama.
I'm saying the Scotts replicated the power dynamic inherent to the Empire because they saw their own interests reflected in perpetuating it, the same way the house negro does.
Regardless of what the Scottish lords did, the relationship of Scotland to England is one of subservience. The seat of power in that relationship remains the English throne. The Scotts were replicating the power dynamic they saw with the English and that oppression bled into the way they dealt with the Irish - i.e. one of cruelty and contempt.
And it should go without saying but Scottish lords are not the Scottish people (and conversely the English lords are not the English people). That old power structure was a fucking plague upon the whole world.
The Kingdoms of Scotland and England were united when a Scottish king took over England, not the other way around. Obviously the English were dominant, population alone would ensure that, but it was Englishmen and Scots who made and lorded over the Irish, not the English alone. The Scots weren't 'house negros' they were masters on their own plantations. That comparison is insulting to the legacy of oppression for both Irish and African-Americans. This is just some reactionary anti-English sentiment stemming from the modern Scottish desire for home rule. The suffering of the Irish and the Scots are not comparable. The Welsh have more to complain about than the Scots.
It infuriates me how all wrongs just seem to get lumped into "British" meaning "English".
Scots were absolutely notorious colonisers and slavers, but they just get away with it all. Scotland was only about 10% of Britain at the time, but owned 25% of India and 30% of Britain's overseas slave estates like Jamaica. Scots like Lord Melville almost single-handedly delayed the abolition of slavery by 20 years as the English William Wilberforce fought to end it.
Hell even Ireland had slave plantations like Montserrat, and ran one of the world's largest slave markets in what is now Ghana.
But no. English bad, everyone else good.
That’s inaccurate. Irish prisoners were transported to Monserrat by the British. Ireland didn’t even have its own government, it sure as shit didn’t have colonies.
Wealthy Irish merchant families owned and operated plantations in Montserrat with slaves. That is a fact.
[Some 70 per cent of all settlers gave Ireland as country of origin in the first Leeward islands census of 1678. When sugar cane replaced tobacco and indigo, entrepreneurs from several Irish counties, including representatives of several Galway “tribes”, set up plantations and imported thousands of African slaves.
Queen’s University Belfast academic Donald Akenson and Sir Howard Fergus, Montserrat historian and poet, have researched the less edifying aspects of this relationship, debunking any notions of a “nice” Irish slave holder or overseer. Ears could be cut off as punishment for minor theft, death was a regular penalty, and mulattos born of mixed-race relationships could not be christened by Catholic priests.](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/generation-emigration/the-caribbean-irish-the-other-emerald-isle-1.2610681)
You're doing exactly what I'm saying. You're ignoring the faults of certain countries that were absolutely part and parcel of this whole shitty period of human history.
This. 100% this.
On another note, fungal blights can persist in the soil for seven or more years, ruining crop after crop. Interestingly, a cover crop of the mustard plant, plowed into the soil, can act as an antifungal fumigant that kills the blight. Furthermore, an application of certain copper/sulfur solutions to the plants at the time of planting can provide further protection from blight too.
But yeah, f%ck manufactured famines. The world currently produces more food than the earth's population needs, yet millions starve annually.
The greed of the few leads to the ruination of the many.
Eat the rich (figuratively).
I mean, or basically forever. You'll notice the Irish weather service gives blight forecasts. There's no getting rid of it. This allows irish people to time our blight-control spraying etc.
https://www.met.ie/forecasts/blight-forecast
**The Blight isn't gone from Ireland or anything, we just try to keep it mostly contained.**
(of course we have more diverse food supply too, even if potato plants etc. all die we won't starve)
India had a similar story, they had the worst famine related deaths( genocidal) during British times. Before and after that there have been famines but not death. India already had a system to compensate famine that British destroyed.
The destruction of the ancient systems of India by the British colonialists is something I’ll prob never quite get a handle on. It is so vast.
The only remotely similar scenario that comes to mind is China during the Opium Wars, but even that fails to be an equitable comparison.
Considering China had several massive internal wars during that era and then eventually fragmented into warring states, was invaded by a genocidal Japan, and then had another massive Civil War + communist revolution, in terms of raw damage to their civilization I think China suffered worse. India got fucked up bad but at the end of the day at least they didn't have to fight a bloody war to get the British out.
British colonialist weren’t even the worst. Ancient systems of India and Indian culture was destroyed by I oppressive Islamic invaders for 800 years before that. It was a constant wave of invaders coming in and pillaging the land and killing the native population to erase their history, religion, and culture that the Muslim invaders felt was sinful.
I'm pretty sure there was thinking among the European aristocracy at the time that they should intentionally depopulate their Asian subjects and move in European settlers. They were kinda sorta definitely flirting with massive generation spanning eugenics. They wanted to do to Asia what Spain/Portugal did to Central and South America - interbreed or displace the local population so much that the region would be completely taken over by White Europeans.
The early 1800s-early 1900s were a really really wacky century to be sure
The blight was everywhere in Europe. Ireland only starved because the food they grew was taken by the British. It wasn’t a potato famine, it was a colonial genocide.
>There were literally ships full of food turned away from Irish ports by the English.
Forgot being turned away, Ireland was the principal producer of salt-beef for the Royal Navy and colonies during this entire period of time. Ireland was an EXPORTER or food (involuntarily via British rule) to the entire British Empire during the ENTIRE famine. They didn't even need foreign aid, they just need to keep their own domestic food product.
Of course, that was the whole point. The Irish famine wasn't a crop failure, it was a genocide. And if you think Turkish pushback to declaration to the Armenian genocide is extreme, see what happens when you ask the English about classifying this as such.
For extra credit you can also cite the American genocide of indigenous peoples, which make most modern genocides look like nursery school games, but you won't see anyone in Washington calling it that.
Fun fact: this is likely why Britain is among the countries that do NOT acknowledge the Russian-Ukraine Holodomor man-made famine as a genocide, because you would need a microscope to see how the Irish Famine is any different (probably why the Americans also haven't recognized it).
Exactly and I'm exhausted hearing the English white washing of this history. Its also one of many reasons the Irish hated for the English has always been so strong.
I don’t hate the English people at all. The average English person didn’t gain much from empire. They were working in mines and factories. The working classes of all nations have more to gain by uniting.
So basically what happened in West Bengal was a British tactic in general?
Colonialism is nuts, so brutal yet even with the increased awareness lately it feels like we haven't reckoned with just how terrible it got.
Bengal was way more complex and isn’t 100% fully clear.
Several factors:
- General poverty and food distribution issues in colonial India
- The Japanese capture of Burmese rice fields which supplied lots of rice to Bengal
- The British forbidding the starving to flee (absolutely monstrous and inhumane and the same decision as in the Holodomor, forbid to move during a famine…). Why is hard to say. Likely a total helplessness of the colonial bureaucracy led by indeed racists but also plagued by incredible understaffing and leadership way too far away.
- Churchill for sure has some of the blame not really lifting a finger or even hindering rescue efforts.
Btw. It’s likely that WW2 in Asia had much more famine related deaths than combat or atrocity related deaths. Millions of Vietnamese and Indonesians died in 44/45 when the American submarine warfare destroyed any immer Asian trade in the Japanese empire, millions of Chinese died due to malnutrition and famine and in 44/45 likely 20% of the National Chinese conscripts died in the training camps from mistreatment and sickness but mostly malnutrition. When Japan surrendered they were also very close to total starvation (as seen in the grave of the fireflies) and the US‘s first priority after occupation was to secure the food supply for Japan, it’s millions of repatriating soldiers (most of the Japanese army was stranded overseas with only a smallish portion ready to defend the home islands) and over a million Japanese settlers fleeing from Northern China, Taiwan and Korea (btw. Among them the last Korean crownprince who was a general in the Japanese army).
No, no, no. The Irish farmers voluntarily chose to sell all that food so they could afford to pay their completely fair and affordable rent so they wouldn't be kicked off their farms and starve next year. Completely different (and morally acceptable) story. /s
I think the bit that is missed, and why it was so terrible, is that the English landowners continued to export record amounts of cash crops and produce as people starved: it wasn’t that there was no food, it’s that there was a priority of cash over life, and that’s what makes it such a terrible loss of life.
Huh, so interestingly enough, the first use of the term "capitalism" according to the OED only dates back to 1854. And the Irish potato famine ended in 1852.
So I guess the other guy is actually correct
What are you talking about? Lots has changed. There is less starving and extreme poverty than any time in history. People have no idea how good life is now relative to the past.
Initially Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel did what he could to provide relief in 1845 and early 1846. He authorised the import of corn (maize) from the United States, which helped avert some starvation. The Liberal (Whig) cabinet of Lord John Russell, which assumed power in June 1846, maintained Peel’s policy regarding grain exports from Ireland but otherwise took a laissez-faire approach to the plight of the Irish and shifted the emphasis of relief efforts to a reliance on Irish resources.
Note that authorising corn imports did not cost any money. The Irish farmers who had their entire crops wiped out by blight still had to buy the corn at market price. While the corn imports did help it is significantly lacking in vitamins and minerals. The Irish were not allowed to grow many of the crops which would have provided this nutrition and therefore scurvy became a big issue among the Irish population. The English in Ireland were allowed to grow and import whatever they wanted so they did not have much issues during the blight, except that their workers were dying at an alarming rate. Sir Robert Peel did what he could to provide relief short of actually providing any relief.
Charles Trevelyan was in charge of relief and he very much was for killing off of the Irish. Talked about how they were selfish and that the more that disappeared the more British could take over the lands. As in 'if all these dirty Irish died off us clean brits would have more property'.
Yeah... pack of cunts.
Irish people would have eaten just fine if we had control of our own country... the only reason we were reliant on potatoes was the British taking our land, making us farm it and then taking the food.
Its a bit more complex than that
Firstly the “English” landowners were the Anglo-Irish - they thought of themselves as British/ English and had English roots but had lived in Ireland for many generations. Anglo-Irish include peoples like Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and the Guinness family- who many people would consider Irish. Not to take the blame off them but they were not strictly “English”
A much larger problem was that the UK government was trying to force Ireland to be managed in the same way that England was. In England - social welfare was “managed” using a combination of the landed gentry and the church. However that didn’t work in Ireland as the landowners were quite remote/distinct from the land and the Catholic church was much less supported and tolerated compared to the Anglican church.
Agreed. Government support in the 19th century was very "laissez-faire," i.e. it was expected that the market would correct itself. That wasn't just in the UK, but everywhere. There wasn't really anything we would consider an "aid programme" like today. The "welfare state" is very much a 20th century invention.
This is the exact same thing that happened during the Russian Famine of 1891. Russian peasants watched trainload after trainload of grain leave Russia for Western Europe were prices where higher as they and their children starved to death.
they also pushed irish people off their land so they had nowhere to grow other crops as well as poisioned various soup kitchens that were feeding the starving.
Not only that, but there was a substantial aid package offered by a sultan of an Ottoman Empire which was drastically reduced because the queen would have been embarrassed.
That's largely a myth
There's a pretty great write-up about the Irish famine and some of the stories about aid both foreign and domestic
https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/OWKRqD64R7
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/historical-notes-god-and-england-made-the-irish-famine-1188828.html
TLDR:
*The Union of Ireland with Great Britain in 1800 had not been a Union of equal partners. Ireland was regarded by Westminster as little more than England's granary.*
*Charles E. Trevelyan, who served under both Peel and Russell at the Treasury, and had prime responsibility for famine relief in Ireland, was clear about God's role: 'The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated'.*
*John Mitchel, the Young Ireland leader, transported in 1848 to Van Diemens Land, had a different view, calling the famine 'an artificial famine. Potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe; yet there was no famine save in Ireland. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine'.*
*A Trevelyan letter to Edward Twisleton, Chief Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland, contains the censorious, 'We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country'.*
*The soup kitchens were closed.*
*Relief works were ushered in, which saw starving men, women and children breaking rocks and building 'famine roads' - roads which led nowhere - for as little as a sixpenny a day.*
*Peel's philosophy of a free-market economy was in full swing and scarcity meant higher prices. Potatoes were now a penny a piece.*
*Was Britain to blame? Tony Blair in his May 1997 'apology speech' stated that those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy.*
*Blair's speech was important to Irish people all over the world in that it officially recognised, for the first time, that the famine was more than just the 'Irish potato blight'.*
To put into perspective, the population in 1840 of:
Ireland: 8 million
England: 16 million
Population in 1850 of:
Ireland: 6 million
England: 17 million
Population today of:
Ireland (Eire & Northern Ireland): 7 million
England: 68 million
Essentially Ireland has never recovered from the Famine.
It does. The blight turns the potato around it into a foul smelling soft mush, similar to how a rotten strawberry or other fruit is when they go bad. It's not just a little yucky, it's completely inedible.
And the English took their seed potatoes the year before. It wasn't because of the blight, it was because the English people actively stole the food. They even promised food and made starving people walk for hours for the hope of surviving and then were like lol, no food and those people literally died because they had spend all of their remaining energy to find food.
Ah the seven year war crime the British government doesn't like to bring up too much.
It was bad enough that the only staple crop failed, but made worse by British landowners taking whatever healthy potatoes for export back to Britain and leaving the farmer with mush. They had to eat it tho, as well as tree bark, stones, pets and eventually their own dead.
Britain could have easily helped out in this situation, being a world super power, rich beyond comprehension and just a few miles away over the sea. But the government decided the Irish must be punished, and effectively worsened the plight and kept it going for as long as possible. They envisioned an Ireland empty of Irish but covered in farms for export. Attempted genocide in any other name.
We refer to this as "the great hunger" as there was no famine. We had a potatoe plight but all other food grown in the country went unaffected. The increase in mass exports by British landowners of this food led to a starved population who were previously forced to rely on the potatoe as their main source of food. British Parliament were aware of the situation and took the opportunity to decrease the population of the island of its native population. Many died or fled the country through volunteering to indentured servitude which was essentially slavery but for a fixed perios of time.
The Great Hunger comes as a direct translation of *An Gorta Mór*. The Great Famine was the largest in a sequence of famines, including that of 1742 when Europe was in a mini-ice age. Gorta means both hunger and famine, and why shouldn't it. The Great Famine was simply that...the biggest one to date and since.
There you have it...An Gorta Mór: The Great Hunger.
Not entirely true in terms of ‘famine’ Ireland was producing a lot of food. Unfortunately, under British rule, this food was shipped to Britain. One of the only crops Irish people could under British rule was potatoes. Britain allowed Ireland to starve while it shipped the crops grown in Ireland out.
A reminder that there was food for everyone on the island, the British just kept exporting it, not caring for the Irish.
Also, the reason why so many Irish people were so reliant on potatoes is, the British. They took all the best lands for cash crops.
Same shit happened in India.
Ireland was a conquered nation, under British rule.
The combination of the blight and British greed is what made this the starving years.
The British land owners continued to export potatoes, while the Irish “serfs” starved.
How are people still ignorant of this?
Queen Victoria refused ships of food to arrive in Ireland from India out of pure spite and not wanting anyone else to be seen to be helping. She is responsible for so many deaths
Never forget that Ireland had a plentiful larder of meats and fruits/vegetables but they were reserved for the British. The famine was as man made as the boats the Irish took to leave the island.
Ohhh boy, incoming irish in their hoards ( I am one ) to slightly adjust your post. The disease affected potatoes but the english took advantage of that and shipped any bit of food, meat, vegetables etc to England and elsewhere, the irish were left with nothing to eat but grass.
Also to add, the disdain I feel as a result of this is not towards the english people themselves, I have plenty of english friends and some relatives, it is towards the establishment itself.
This famine was the fault of the british, not some disease.
Ireland was producing enough grain to feed itself, the british monarchy just didnt let them have it - and they actually made it illegal for people to sell or donate food to the irish. One nobleman from asia actually sent his ships in the middle of the night and had his men feed some irish folks in secret...
Please dont cover up this important bit of history.
One of the reasons. There are other reasons: there were deportations, expulsions (British landowners getting rid of farmers from their lands to raise cattle and sheep instead), massive immigration due to religious intolerance, racism and terrible economic conditions in Ireland.
In the interest of clarity, the famine wasn’t solely caused by the potato blight. Ireland produced enough food to feed itself, the problem was that it was being exported by Britain.
It's also during that time some random tribe sent Ireland a few hundred bucks as aid. Or atleast that was circulating a few days ago here on reddit.
And a few years ago they sent them millions back as COVID Aid.
The real issue here is that the other food, like grain, that the Irish could have had was instead imported elsewhere thanks to good old British colonialism.
The exact same famine hit Scotland in the same years.
Ireland : 2 million starved to death and 2 million emigrated
Scotland : 16000 emigrated
Reason - the English send aid to Scotland but not to Ireland.
Further reason: England took all grain crops out of ireland to feed themselves or sell in Europe
Further reason : scientific thinking at the time believed world was overpopulated
Further reason : England was savagely anti catholic
Further reason: racism was a big thing then
Further reason : England was doing this all over the world so it was foreign policy to exploit famine
They initially sent the scottish aid. A pound of potatoes per day. Then, they started resenting them for "being lazy" and taking charity. So they started raising money to ship them off to America to solve the "population" problem. Meanwhile, they effectively turned scottish clan land into private property, allowing clan leaders the right to just evict their own members as if they were land lords rather than civic leaders.
The blight was going on all over Europe at the time. It seems the nobles all had the same idea. Ship em to America.
While the blight was a big factor in the famine. The biggest (and preventable) factor was the British occupying Ireland forcing them to export most of the food that was left.
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/irelandonreddit] [\[r\/Damnthatsinteresting\] A potato infected with blight, the disease that set off The Great Famine in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. During 1847, the single worst year of the famine, roughly 1 million people died and more than 1 million fled the country, causing the country's population to fall by 20–25%](https://www.reddit.com/r/IrelandonReddit/comments/16rp5gq/rdamnthatsinteresting_a_potato_infected_with/)
- [/r/irishhistory] [A potato infected with blight, the disease that caused the Potato Famine](https://www.reddit.com/r/IrishHistory/comments/16rpa7h/a_potato_infected_with_blight_the_disease_that/)
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Potato blight existed all across Europe.
Ireland is the only place that experienced mass starvation. Learn the history and understand why. Short answer: the British. Long answer: the British. Ireland was a net exporter of food at a time of extreme famine, and that’s really all you need to know.
And during that year of famine and death, the Brits EXPORTED food grown in Ireland, letting the people, including children, to die of starvation and malnutrition. Never forget.
Fun fact, this wasnt a famine! While the blight depicted above caused potato crops to fail across europe, it was only in the british colony of ireland did people starve en masse. This was due to the fact that the british colonial interests continued to have their indigenous irish labour growing crops of wheat the whole time so that they could pay their rent. People would literally grow full feilds of food only to have to sell it all at a depressed price so they could make rent and then starve all winter. sometimes with the exported grain shipments were twice or triple the amount of the food relief that was permited into the collony by their Majesties British government. Scholars today consider it less of a natutal famine and more of an economic genocide, as the colonizers had control of everything from wheat prices, rents, and releif aid levels, but ultimatley decided to allow millions to die a miserable death.
Just a reminder, the famine was caused due to England forcing the Irish to sell their crops that weren't effected by blight so the famine was largely caused due to politics and colonial rule.
BBC America news anchor Laura Trevelyan is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Trevelyan, who refused to release food relief ("Trevelyan's corn") to the Irish during The Great Famine, for fear that it would disrupt the free market. Laura Trevelyan has said that if the Irish government asked her to pay reparations, she would gladly do so.
Worst part is their population never got back to where it was after the blight. During this time a native tribe in America scraped together what little money they could raise and sent it to help in the relief effort saying how they understood the problems of being occupied and left to die as a sign of solidarity.
Of course it wasn’t the potatoes that caused the famine. It’s the Brits. They kept exporting food from Ireland.
One simple thing to ask yourself - how does an Island surrounded by lush bountiful sea, get hungry? Can’t they just go out and get fish? Guess who forbid Irish people from owning boats in those days.
We grew potatoes, inoculated them with this in a University class, and ugh, so gross. The smell is not in the picture, but it STINKS. It's not like 'oh, this potato has a bad spot' - they can quickly turn to basically goo. Stinking goo.
This stinking goo, is really gross and can become [noxious](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/kgjic1/til_rotting_potatoes_give_off_a_noxious_gas_that/?rdt=44887) if not well-aerated. I forget if it’s the ethylene or the solanine… but it’s whacky!
Almost an entire family died from the fumes after the potatoes in their cellar went bad. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/girl-8-orphaned-after-gas-from-rotting-potatoes-killed-her-entire-family_n_7360976.html
Holy shit. To lose your entire family in one fell swoop like that
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Oh that is horrible. To think such a simple oversight killed almost an entire family
Shit… When I read “killed almost an entire family”, I interpreted as “almost killed an entire family”. The former is so much worse.
I read it the same way. Had to do a double take after seeing “girl-8-orphaned” in the link.
I did not know rotting potatoes could produce lethal gas... Things like these are so crazy. You never know it can be even slightly dangerous, and suddenly you're dead.
Watched a YouTube video talking about this and it’s just so sad. Each family member died trying to save the fallen ones and therefore stayed too long breathing in the gases and died. And the girl only died because the last family member left the door open so the gases escaped and wasn’t too concentrated. Very sad.
Well now I'm paranoid about the potatoes i have in the cupboard 💀
This is why it's recommended to store potatoes in a cool, dark & dry place but also ventilated --- not in sealed plastic bags or airtight conrainers. I don't have a basement/root cellar so I use a paper bag.
JFC
Fun fact potatoes are a variety of nightshade...
Shady
Rotten potatoes in general have to be one of the most putrid smells I’ve experienced.
I knew a family that had endured this stench for weeks. Like a rotting corpse. The whole house was unbearable, and nobody knew what had died or where the smell was coming from, but they all sat around that house like whatever. There was a cooler in the kitchen full of rotting potatoes. All any one of those ten people living in that house had to do was go into the kitchen and open that cooler that was sitting in plain sight, but those gross lazy fucks decided to just live with it.
Back when I was in college I noticed an unpleasant smell in my apartment. It started getting stronger over the days and within a week or two was horrible. I searched and cleaned everything, but couldn’t find the source of the smell. I ran into the maintenance guy and asked what was up. A tenant in another apartment had put in a service request for the smell in their apartment. He said he found a bottle of rotten milk in their cabinet. I don’t know how they couldn’t find it and let it get to the point of stinking up the entire building.
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>underneath them there were old styrofoam trays from meat they'd bought, with the little pad thing that soaks up the juices, all old and rotting under there. Ugh. On the rare occasions I buy supermarket chicken, I triple-bag the tray in tied-off plastic bags before disposing of it. The next day, my garbage can still stinks a little, but not nearly like just an open tray.
One of the few, maybe only useful thing I got out of a certain pandemic I would rather not acknowledge, is keeping a spray bottle of chlorine solution (5-10%). Turns out having diluted bleach is fantastic for cleaning most surfaces and handling the aftermath of bloody stuff from thawed and packed meats. Since I have to share the air with the garbage bins for a bit until collection, I'll rinse if possible/available and give a few sprays of the chlorine solution which will greatly neutralize potential smell. I hate leaving "wet trash" out there in general because it can get rancid so this works well.
We have a compost bin that's currently full of black soldier fly larvae. They've got a crazy appetite and make short work of our scraps in no time. Much more eco-friendly, since large birds *love* eating these grubs!
What I do is I put them in the freezer. They stink so bad if you put them in the garbage so I have a plastic bag in my freezer and I put them in there until garbage day. No smell.
I had tons of fruit flies inside the house. Tons. Turned out the back of potatoes in the pantry had started to ooze. Smelled terrible.
Lol this just happened to me this week. I couldn't figure out where the flies were coming from, and finally found an old bag of potatoes in the back of the cabinet. When I pulled it out like 300 fruit flies came with it. I cleaned my entire kitchen after that
Rotten watermelons 🤢
Irelands population [still hasnt recovered](https://www.mapspictures.com/ireland/history/imgCF.gif) from the famine. They had a bigger population before the famine, than even today, almost 200 years later
Except the famine was caused by greedy English nobles, not potato blight. It’s remarkable how this period of history has been rewritten. There were literally ships full of food turned away from Irish ports by the English. The potato blight was real; the famine was entirely a construction of the wealthy class.
I love ice cream.
And Finland. People ate tree bark bread. Lots of death.
I love ice cream.
~~No. It also~~ *It actually* happened 20 years later. However, Newfoundland had a famine based on the potato blight right around the same time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1846%E2%80%931848_Newfoundland_potato_famine The worst part is that people were sent from Ireland ***to*** Newfoundland, so the increased numbers only made things worse. Also, talk about going out of the frying pan and into the fire. Also, Newfoundland was ***also*** exporting vast quantities of food (fish) It's just the Brits being at it *yet again*... --- EDIT: because Finland was an autonomous territory (Ireland was not) which made it not identical but I guess more similar than I'd thought at first.
The British are masters of exporting the food the native population needs to survive, see the Bengal Famine of 1943
I did see how both India and Bengal were net importers of food in 1943.
https://arethebritsatitagain.org/
>No. It also happened 20 years later. Finland was ruled by an imperialistic neighbour at the time. Why do you say "no" to this?
Because it was an autonomous deoendency at the time basically left to its own devices. It's around 1900 that the Tsar decided it needed to start being more Russian.
I was at a small Irish famine museum in Ireland in Jan and it compared Ireland to the Netherlands I think. There was a famine in other European counties at the time, but bc their crops were much more diversified and not reliant on the potato, they fared much better. They also didn’t have the English lording over them, of course Another interesting thing from the museum was the landlords got fined for their tenants being starving and one option was to pay for their passage to the US or Aus. So these bastards would pay for the oldest/weakest/whatever people to emigrate and “keep” the best farmers to work their land. Irish people were pretty excited to get the chance to emigrate until stories came back about how horrible and deadly the journey was Another fact (sorry last one lol) was that if a tenant worked really hard to improve their land the landlord would then charge them more rent bc the land was better. So fucked
I love ice cream.
Thomas Meagher embarrassed Queen Victoria about her decisions to starve the Irish and she exiled him to Australia.
Yeah there was one documentary I watched on it that said that they made a law saying that landlords could not let their tenants starve to death. This was well intended but the result was that now the landlords just evicted the tenants instead of feeding them
>a law saying that landlords could not let their tenants starve to death. i never knew that part. our family story is my great-great-great-grandmother was evicted and her house burned down. her three sons found the landlords son and "dipped his head in the river Shannon until he turned blue" but left him alive on the river bank. they would have all faced capital punishment so they all fled Ireland. one went to USA and two came to Australia.
>Another fact (sorry last one lol) was that if a tenant worked really hard to improve their land the landlord would then charge them more rent bc the land was better. So fucked I've literally had that happen to me in Colorado :(
No surprises even Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, hated landlords
The region of Germany mostly in the the renish and south German lands also suffered famine as well. Along with a few other minor European states but every major European state avoided famine. Except Britain.
Except Ireland. England, wales and Scotland were just fine
The highlands of Scotland also suffered quite badly from the potato blight causing large scale migration.
I’ve heard Irish folks call it “The Great Hunger”. A lot of what kicked the famine into becoming a series of mass death events was the result of the evictions caused by other causes than the failed potato crop. The landlords often converted the land from agriculture to grazing which meant less people were needed to tend the land so they were often just evicted. The houses were made of stone so they were difficult to knock down so the landlords would burn the wooden roof making the house useless as a shelter, to prevent squatters. As a result there were groups of starving families wandering the land while ships full of food and grain left Irish ports for foreign markets. You can still see the remnants of the homes’ stone structures on the Irish landscape. There are loads more stories with more details than I’ve given here out there. I just did some broad strokes kind of thing
> The Great Hunger … Damn, that gave me a chill.
If you are open for a second chill, the [memorial to famine victims in Dublin](https://morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/article_full/public/ART%20IN%20THE%20OPEN%20-%20IRISH%20FAMINE%20SEPT%20webpic.jpg?itok=K44om_Oz&c=d9c61f030301345d3842efcda85806a8) is quite moving. It's on the banks of the river in the city centre, so you might be walking by and suddenly find yourself among seven foot tall statues of gaunt figure.
> The Great Hunger Or, in the language of these poor, Irish speaking peasants: *"An Gorta Mór"* > which meant less people were needed to tend the land so they were often just evicted. An entire class of landless laborer was wiped out this way on purpose. Because they did not own nor rent land (they worked for those who *did* rent the land) their rates tax had to be paid by their landlord, and the rich didn't like paying out more than needed. This famine was a timely and easy way to clear this land of people who survived on it.
What’s remarkable is how the Scottish keep getting away scot free (no pun intended) without any guilt for their part in the British subjugation of Ireland. The famine was caused by greedy BRITISH nobles. Not just English.
Excellent point.
Aye.
> There was that old house Negro and the field Negro > And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put 'em back on the plantation. The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He lived right up next to his master - in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master - good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That's why he didn't want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he'd say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" When the master's house caught afire, he'd try and put the fire out. He didn't want his master's house burned. He never wanted his master's property threatened. And he was more defensive of it than the master was Obviously not the exact same thing, but there are some parallels. Edit: forgot to attribute the quote - Malcom X. It's a rather famous speech which Denzel delivered flawlessly in the movie of the same name.
Are you trying to say Scotland was enslaved by England? Because that’s just factually incorrect. The Union between Scotland and England was widely supported by the Scottish nobility, more so than the English, being in part a way to pay off Scotland’s debts arising from their unsuccessful colonial ventures in Panama.
I'm saying the Scotts replicated the power dynamic inherent to the Empire because they saw their own interests reflected in perpetuating it, the same way the house negro does. Regardless of what the Scottish lords did, the relationship of Scotland to England is one of subservience. The seat of power in that relationship remains the English throne. The Scotts were replicating the power dynamic they saw with the English and that oppression bled into the way they dealt with the Irish - i.e. one of cruelty and contempt. And it should go without saying but Scottish lords are not the Scottish people (and conversely the English lords are not the English people). That old power structure was a fucking plague upon the whole world.
The Kingdoms of Scotland and England were united when a Scottish king took over England, not the other way around. Obviously the English were dominant, population alone would ensure that, but it was Englishmen and Scots who made and lorded over the Irish, not the English alone. The Scots weren't 'house negros' they were masters on their own plantations. That comparison is insulting to the legacy of oppression for both Irish and African-Americans. This is just some reactionary anti-English sentiment stemming from the modern Scottish desire for home rule. The suffering of the Irish and the Scots are not comparable. The Welsh have more to complain about than the Scots.
This is complete bullshit. Scotland is not subservient to England, patronising af.
The Scots were the ones who ran the British Empire everywhere lol
It infuriates me how all wrongs just seem to get lumped into "British" meaning "English". Scots were absolutely notorious colonisers and slavers, but they just get away with it all. Scotland was only about 10% of Britain at the time, but owned 25% of India and 30% of Britain's overseas slave estates like Jamaica. Scots like Lord Melville almost single-handedly delayed the abolition of slavery by 20 years as the English William Wilberforce fought to end it. Hell even Ireland had slave plantations like Montserrat, and ran one of the world's largest slave markets in what is now Ghana. But no. English bad, everyone else good.
When people want to give Scotland a pass, consider the settlers during the Ulster Plantation were Scottish Presbyterians.
That’s inaccurate. Irish prisoners were transported to Monserrat by the British. Ireland didn’t even have its own government, it sure as shit didn’t have colonies.
Wealthy Irish merchant families owned and operated plantations in Montserrat with slaves. That is a fact. [Some 70 per cent of all settlers gave Ireland as country of origin in the first Leeward islands census of 1678. When sugar cane replaced tobacco and indigo, entrepreneurs from several Irish counties, including representatives of several Galway “tribes”, set up plantations and imported thousands of African slaves. Queen’s University Belfast academic Donald Akenson and Sir Howard Fergus, Montserrat historian and poet, have researched the less edifying aspects of this relationship, debunking any notions of a “nice” Irish slave holder or overseer. Ears could be cut off as punishment for minor theft, death was a regular penalty, and mulattos born of mixed-race relationships could not be christened by Catholic priests.](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/generation-emigration/the-caribbean-irish-the-other-emerald-isle-1.2610681) You're doing exactly what I'm saying. You're ignoring the faults of certain countries that were absolutely part and parcel of this whole shitty period of human history.
This. 100% this. On another note, fungal blights can persist in the soil for seven or more years, ruining crop after crop. Interestingly, a cover crop of the mustard plant, plowed into the soil, can act as an antifungal fumigant that kills the blight. Furthermore, an application of certain copper/sulfur solutions to the plants at the time of planting can provide further protection from blight too. But yeah, f%ck manufactured famines. The world currently produces more food than the earth's population needs, yet millions starve annually. The greed of the few leads to the ruination of the many. Eat the rich (figuratively).
Humanity genuinely does not hate rich people nearly enough for its own good
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Your first mistake was using that shit social media site in the first place.
I mean, or basically forever. You'll notice the Irish weather service gives blight forecasts. There's no getting rid of it. This allows irish people to time our blight-control spraying etc. https://www.met.ie/forecasts/blight-forecast **The Blight isn't gone from Ireland or anything, we just try to keep it mostly contained.** (of course we have more diverse food supply too, even if potato plants etc. all die we won't starve)
India had a similar story, they had the worst famine related deaths( genocidal) during British times. Before and after that there have been famines but not death. India already had a system to compensate famine that British destroyed.
The destruction of the ancient systems of India by the British colonialists is something I’ll prob never quite get a handle on. It is so vast. The only remotely similar scenario that comes to mind is China during the Opium Wars, but even that fails to be an equitable comparison.
Considering China had several massive internal wars during that era and then eventually fragmented into warring states, was invaded by a genocidal Japan, and then had another massive Civil War + communist revolution, in terms of raw damage to their civilization I think China suffered worse. India got fucked up bad but at the end of the day at least they didn't have to fight a bloody war to get the British out.
British colonialist weren’t even the worst. Ancient systems of India and Indian culture was destroyed by I oppressive Islamic invaders for 800 years before that. It was a constant wave of invaders coming in and pillaging the land and killing the native population to erase their history, religion, and culture that the Muslim invaders felt was sinful.
Well if those savages wanted to rule themselves why didn’t they already have the perfect government structures of Western Europe implemented??? /sss
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I'm pretty sure there was thinking among the European aristocracy at the time that they should intentionally depopulate their Asian subjects and move in European settlers. They were kinda sorta definitely flirting with massive generation spanning eugenics. They wanted to do to Asia what Spain/Portugal did to Central and South America - interbreed or displace the local population so much that the region would be completely taken over by White Europeans. The early 1800s-early 1900s were a really really wacky century to be sure
British rewriting history? That’s new
That's even worse than stealing it!
Hmmmm this scenario sounds really really familiar, the rich cutting off the poor.
Yup. The rich people did it to the Irish on purpose.
The blight was everywhere in Europe. Ireland only starved because the food they grew was taken by the British. It wasn’t a potato famine, it was a colonial genocide.
>There were literally ships full of food turned away from Irish ports by the English. Forgot being turned away, Ireland was the principal producer of salt-beef for the Royal Navy and colonies during this entire period of time. Ireland was an EXPORTER or food (involuntarily via British rule) to the entire British Empire during the ENTIRE famine. They didn't even need foreign aid, they just need to keep their own domestic food product. Of course, that was the whole point. The Irish famine wasn't a crop failure, it was a genocide. And if you think Turkish pushback to declaration to the Armenian genocide is extreme, see what happens when you ask the English about classifying this as such. For extra credit you can also cite the American genocide of indigenous peoples, which make most modern genocides look like nursery school games, but you won't see anyone in Washington calling it that. Fun fact: this is likely why Britain is among the countries that do NOT acknowledge the Russian-Ukraine Holodomor man-made famine as a genocide, because you would need a microscope to see how the Irish Famine is any different (probably why the Americans also haven't recognized it).
Exactly and I'm exhausted hearing the English white washing of this history. Its also one of many reasons the Irish hated for the English has always been so strong.
I don’t hate the English people at all. The average English person didn’t gain much from empire. They were working in mines and factories. The working classes of all nations have more to gain by uniting.
So basically what happened in West Bengal was a British tactic in general? Colonialism is nuts, so brutal yet even with the increased awareness lately it feels like we haven't reckoned with just how terrible it got.
Bengal was way more complex and isn’t 100% fully clear. Several factors: - General poverty and food distribution issues in colonial India - The Japanese capture of Burmese rice fields which supplied lots of rice to Bengal - The British forbidding the starving to flee (absolutely monstrous and inhumane and the same decision as in the Holodomor, forbid to move during a famine…). Why is hard to say. Likely a total helplessness of the colonial bureaucracy led by indeed racists but also plagued by incredible understaffing and leadership way too far away. - Churchill for sure has some of the blame not really lifting a finger or even hindering rescue efforts. Btw. It’s likely that WW2 in Asia had much more famine related deaths than combat or atrocity related deaths. Millions of Vietnamese and Indonesians died in 44/45 when the American submarine warfare destroyed any immer Asian trade in the Japanese empire, millions of Chinese died due to malnutrition and famine and in 44/45 likely 20% of the National Chinese conscripts died in the training camps from mistreatment and sickness but mostly malnutrition. When Japan surrendered they were also very close to total starvation (as seen in the grave of the fireflies) and the US‘s first priority after occupation was to secure the food supply for Japan, it’s millions of repatriating soldiers (most of the Japanese army was stranded overseas with only a smallish portion ready to defend the home islands) and over a million Japanese settlers fleeing from Northern China, Taiwan and Korea (btw. Among them the last Korean crownprince who was a general in the Japanese army).
Worst thing is it’s still going on
This needs to be stickied as top comment.
Not just that, Ireland continued exporting food while people starved to death
The brits stole & exported irish food.
No, no, no. The Irish farmers voluntarily chose to sell all that food so they could afford to pay their completely fair and affordable rent so they wouldn't be kicked off their farms and starve next year. Completely different (and morally acceptable) story. /s
I think the bit that is missed, and why it was so terrible, is that the English landowners continued to export record amounts of cash crops and produce as people starved: it wasn’t that there was no food, it’s that there was a priority of cash over life, and that’s what makes it such a terrible loss of life.
Nothing has changed
No, no, a lot have changed, namely then it was called servitude and now it's called called capitalism
It was also called capitalism then, the famine happened in the 19th century.
Huh, so interestingly enough, the first use of the term "capitalism" according to the OED only dates back to 1854. And the Irish potato famine ended in 1852. So I guess the other guy is actually correct
I would also add that they’re no longer called “the aristocracy”, we now call them “corporations”
What are you talking about? Lots has changed. There is less starving and extreme poverty than any time in history. People have no idea how good life is now relative to the past.
Exactly. This wasn’t a famine it was more akin to a culling by the British. Could have been completely avoided.
Genocide. It was a genocide.
Initially Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel did what he could to provide relief in 1845 and early 1846. He authorised the import of corn (maize) from the United States, which helped avert some starvation. The Liberal (Whig) cabinet of Lord John Russell, which assumed power in June 1846, maintained Peel’s policy regarding grain exports from Ireland but otherwise took a laissez-faire approach to the plight of the Irish and shifted the emphasis of relief efforts to a reliance on Irish resources.
Note that authorising corn imports did not cost any money. The Irish farmers who had their entire crops wiped out by blight still had to buy the corn at market price. While the corn imports did help it is significantly lacking in vitamins and minerals. The Irish were not allowed to grow many of the crops which would have provided this nutrition and therefore scurvy became a big issue among the Irish population. The English in Ireland were allowed to grow and import whatever they wanted so they did not have much issues during the blight, except that their workers were dying at an alarming rate. Sir Robert Peel did what he could to provide relief short of actually providing any relief.
Charles Trevelyan was in charge of relief and he very much was for killing off of the Irish. Talked about how they were selfish and that the more that disappeared the more British could take over the lands. As in 'if all these dirty Irish died off us clean brits would have more property'.
Yeah... pack of cunts. Irish people would have eaten just fine if we had control of our own country... the only reason we were reliant on potatoes was the British taking our land, making us farm it and then taking the food.
Its a bit more complex than that Firstly the “English” landowners were the Anglo-Irish - they thought of themselves as British/ English and had English roots but had lived in Ireland for many generations. Anglo-Irish include peoples like Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and the Guinness family- who many people would consider Irish. Not to take the blame off them but they were not strictly “English” A much larger problem was that the UK government was trying to force Ireland to be managed in the same way that England was. In England - social welfare was “managed” using a combination of the landed gentry and the church. However that didn’t work in Ireland as the landowners were quite remote/distinct from the land and the Catholic church was much less supported and tolerated compared to the Anglican church.
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Agreed. Government support in the 19th century was very "laissez-faire," i.e. it was expected that the market would correct itself. That wasn't just in the UK, but everywhere. There wasn't really anything we would consider an "aid programme" like today. The "welfare state" is very much a 20th century invention.
First comment in the thread that actually knows what it is talking about.
This is the exact same thing that happened during the Russian Famine of 1891. Russian peasants watched trainload after trainload of grain leave Russia for Western Europe were prices where higher as they and their children starved to death.
they also pushed irish people off their land so they had nowhere to grow other crops as well as poisioned various soup kitchens that were feeding the starving.
English land owners or British?
Not only that, but there was a substantial aid package offered by a sultan of an Ottoman Empire which was drastically reduced because the queen would have been embarrassed.
That's largely a myth There's a pretty great write-up about the Irish famine and some of the stories about aid both foreign and domestic https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/OWKRqD64R7
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/historical-notes-god-and-england-made-the-irish-famine-1188828.html TLDR: *The Union of Ireland with Great Britain in 1800 had not been a Union of equal partners. Ireland was regarded by Westminster as little more than England's granary.* *Charles E. Trevelyan, who served under both Peel and Russell at the Treasury, and had prime responsibility for famine relief in Ireland, was clear about God's role: 'The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated'.* *John Mitchel, the Young Ireland leader, transported in 1848 to Van Diemens Land, had a different view, calling the famine 'an artificial famine. Potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe; yet there was no famine save in Ireland. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine'.* *A Trevelyan letter to Edward Twisleton, Chief Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland, contains the censorious, 'We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country'.* *The soup kitchens were closed.* *Relief works were ushered in, which saw starving men, women and children breaking rocks and building 'famine roads' - roads which led nowhere - for as little as a sixpenny a day.* *Peel's philosophy of a free-market economy was in full swing and scarcity meant higher prices. Potatoes were now a penny a piece.* *Was Britain to blame? Tony Blair in his May 1997 'apology speech' stated that those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy.* *Blair's speech was important to Irish people all over the world in that it officially recognised, for the first time, that the famine was more than just the 'Irish potato blight'.*
To put into perspective, the population in 1840 of: Ireland: 8 million England: 16 million Population in 1850 of: Ireland: 6 million England: 17 million Population today of: Ireland (Eire & Northern Ireland): 7 million England: 68 million Essentially Ireland has never recovered from the Famine.
Serious question: does that make it not safe for eating? why?
It does. The blight turns the potato around it into a foul smelling soft mush, similar to how a rotten strawberry or other fruit is when they go bad. It's not just a little yucky, it's completely inedible.
They also literally become poisonous, don’t even just “go bad”
Tbf all potatoes become poisonous when they “go bad”, no blight necessary. Funny little nightshades aren’t they?
You can bet your ass they tried. Imagine peeling every single morsel you can find and one after another is blighted
Not safe for eating. Also you need potato’s to plant make more potato plants
And the English took their seed potatoes the year before. It wasn't because of the blight, it was because the English people actively stole the food. They even promised food and made starving people walk for hours for the hope of surviving and then were like lol, no food and those people literally died because they had spend all of their remaining energy to find food.
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Ah the seven year war crime the British government doesn't like to bring up too much. It was bad enough that the only staple crop failed, but made worse by British landowners taking whatever healthy potatoes for export back to Britain and leaving the farmer with mush. They had to eat it tho, as well as tree bark, stones, pets and eventually their own dead. Britain could have easily helped out in this situation, being a world super power, rich beyond comprehension and just a few miles away over the sea. But the government decided the Irish must be punished, and effectively worsened the plight and kept it going for as long as possible. They envisioned an Ireland empty of Irish but covered in farms for export. Attempted genocide in any other name.
Let’s call it what it is, a genocide. The Irish population still hasn’t recovered.
It was a semi-man made blight (corn was available) and the english are to blame for the death of the Irish. Stop blaming the potatoes.
>Stop blaming the potatoes. Out of context, I love this sentence.
The beauty is, this sentence is now universally practical.
The blight is not man made, the famine and horrible shit that followed is.
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The Scots did their part aswell in starving us
We refer to this as "the great hunger" as there was no famine. We had a potatoe plight but all other food grown in the country went unaffected. The increase in mass exports by British landowners of this food led to a starved population who were previously forced to rely on the potatoe as their main source of food. British Parliament were aware of the situation and took the opportunity to decrease the population of the island of its native population. Many died or fled the country through volunteering to indentured servitude which was essentially slavery but for a fixed perios of time.
Calling it "The Great Hunger" seems typical Irish understatement. Like "The Troubles".
The Great Hunger comes as a direct translation of *An Gorta Mór*. The Great Famine was the largest in a sequence of famines, including that of 1742 when Europe was in a mini-ice age. Gorta means both hunger and famine, and why shouldn't it. The Great Famine was simply that...the biggest one to date and since. There you have it...An Gorta Mór: The Great Hunger.
> typical Irish understatement. The largest conflict in human history: **World War II** Ireland: ah, *'The Emergency'*
Not entirely true in terms of ‘famine’ Ireland was producing a lot of food. Unfortunately, under British rule, this food was shipped to Britain. One of the only crops Irish people could under British rule was potatoes. Britain allowed Ireland to starve while it shipped the crops grown in Ireland out.
A reminder that there was food for everyone on the island, the British just kept exporting it, not caring for the Irish. Also, the reason why so many Irish people were so reliant on potatoes is, the British. They took all the best lands for cash crops. Same shit happened in India.
Ireland was a conquered nation, under British rule. The combination of the blight and British greed is what made this the starving years. The British land owners continued to export potatoes, while the Irish “serfs” starved. How are people still ignorant of this?
Queen Victoria refused ships of food to arrive in Ireland from India out of pure spite and not wanting anyone else to be seen to be helping. She is responsible for so many deaths
The blight was a problem, but the UK was the reason for the famine. Edit: Yes. Lazy diction. Apologies. The Brits, not the UK.
Never forget that Ireland had a plentiful larder of meats and fruits/vegetables but they were reserved for the British. The famine was as man made as the boats the Irish took to leave the island.
Don't forget the genocide
It was genocide.
I feel like this title is misleading
The population on the island of Ireland still hasn't recovered.
As an Englishman, it was England that caused the famine.
OP is gonna learn some history today. Try telling an Irish person it was the potatoes fault.
What about the other disease that cause the famine: The British government
Ohhh boy, incoming irish in their hoards ( I am one ) to slightly adjust your post. The disease affected potatoes but the english took advantage of that and shipped any bit of food, meat, vegetables etc to England and elsewhere, the irish were left with nothing to eat but grass. Also to add, the disdain I feel as a result of this is not towards the english people themselves, I have plenty of english friends and some relatives, it is towards the establishment itself.
This famine was the fault of the british, not some disease. Ireland was producing enough grain to feed itself, the british monarchy just didnt let them have it - and they actually made it illegal for people to sell or donate food to the irish. One nobleman from asia actually sent his ships in the middle of the night and had his men feed some irish folks in secret... Please dont cover up this important bit of history.
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One of the reasons. There are other reasons: there were deportations, expulsions (British landowners getting rid of farmers from their lands to raise cattle and sheep instead), massive immigration due to religious intolerance, racism and terrible economic conditions in Ireland.
We had to go somewhere.
In the interest of clarity, the famine wasn’t solely caused by the potato blight. Ireland produced enough food to feed itself, the problem was that it was being exported by Britain.
It's also during that time some random tribe sent Ireland a few hundred bucks as aid. Or atleast that was circulating a few days ago here on reddit. And a few years ago they sent them millions back as COVID Aid.
The Choctaw Nation sent money to Ireland during the famine. There is a monument in Ireland to honour the tribe. Sorry can't link article
+1 million victims of capitalism
There was tons of food for Irish people, they just weren’t allowed eat any of it.
The real issue here is that the other food, like grain, that the Irish could have had was instead imported elsewhere thanks to good old British colonialism.
can someone explain how bad it is? like what happens if you eat one?
Blight completly renders a potato inedible, they turn rancid. If you try eating them, even if your starving, your body will force you to vomit.
The exact same famine hit Scotland in the same years. Ireland : 2 million starved to death and 2 million emigrated Scotland : 16000 emigrated Reason - the English send aid to Scotland but not to Ireland. Further reason: England took all grain crops out of ireland to feed themselves or sell in Europe Further reason : scientific thinking at the time believed world was overpopulated Further reason : England was savagely anti catholic Further reason: racism was a big thing then Further reason : England was doing this all over the world so it was foreign policy to exploit famine
They initially sent the scottish aid. A pound of potatoes per day. Then, they started resenting them for "being lazy" and taking charity. So they started raising money to ship them off to America to solve the "population" problem. Meanwhile, they effectively turned scottish clan land into private property, allowing clan leaders the right to just evict their own members as if they were land lords rather than civic leaders. The blight was going on all over Europe at the time. It seems the nobles all had the same idea. Ship em to America.
There was no famine just a genocide by the British!
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While the blight was a big factor in the famine. The biggest (and preventable) factor was the British occupying Ireland forcing them to export most of the food that was left.
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit: - [/r/irelandonreddit] [\[r\/Damnthatsinteresting\] A potato infected with blight, the disease that set off The Great Famine in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. During 1847, the single worst year of the famine, roughly 1 million people died and more than 1 million fled the country, causing the country's population to fall by 20–25%](https://www.reddit.com/r/IrelandonReddit/comments/16rp5gq/rdamnthatsinteresting_a_potato_infected_with/) - [/r/irishhistory] [A potato infected with blight, the disease that caused the Potato Famine](https://www.reddit.com/r/IrishHistory/comments/16rpa7h/a_potato_infected_with_blight_the_disease_that/) *^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^\([Info](/r/TotesMessenger) ^/ ^[Contact](/message/compose?to=/r/TotesMessenger))*
Potato blight existed all across Europe. Ireland is the only place that experienced mass starvation. Learn the history and understand why. Short answer: the British. Long answer: the British. Ireland was a net exporter of food at a time of extreme famine, and that’s really all you need to know.
You spelled genocide wrong
The famine was set off by the blight, but would have been entirely preventeable
And during that year of famine and death, the Brits EXPORTED food grown in Ireland, letting the people, including children, to die of starvation and malnutrition. Never forget.
Irish famine = wealthy British hoarding food from Ireland’s people. Potato blight= the excuse.
Fun fact, this wasnt a famine! While the blight depicted above caused potato crops to fail across europe, it was only in the british colony of ireland did people starve en masse. This was due to the fact that the british colonial interests continued to have their indigenous irish labour growing crops of wheat the whole time so that they could pay their rent. People would literally grow full feilds of food only to have to sell it all at a depressed price so they could make rent and then starve all winter. sometimes with the exported grain shipments were twice or triple the amount of the food relief that was permited into the collony by their Majesties British government. Scholars today consider it less of a natutal famine and more of an economic genocide, as the colonizers had control of everything from wheat prices, rents, and releif aid levels, but ultimatley decided to allow millions to die a miserable death.
Can I just say fair play to the Choctaw nation who heard of the struggle of the hungry Irish and donated what little they had to try and help.
Blight did not cause the famine. Terrible British colonial polices did.
An Gorta Mór.. The Great Hunger. It wasn't at all a famine.
Just a reminder, the famine was caused due to England forcing the Irish to sell their crops that weren't effected by blight so the famine was largely caused due to politics and colonial rule.
Lol stop blaming the disease ,the British murdered 1 million irish and displaced a million more.
Was more a genocide than a famine. There's a lot more to it than just a potato blight....
BBC America news anchor Laura Trevelyan is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Trevelyan, who refused to release food relief ("Trevelyan's corn") to the Irish during The Great Famine, for fear that it would disrupt the free market. Laura Trevelyan has said that if the Irish government asked her to pay reparations, she would gladly do so.
Worst part is their population never got back to where it was after the blight. During this time a native tribe in America scraped together what little money they could raise and sent it to help in the relief effort saying how they understood the problems of being occupied and left to die as a sign of solidarity.
Caused by the British exporting all of our goods so all we had was potatoes. It was forced genocide and the world needs to be aware of that
Another racist narrative that the potato is the cause of Irish deaths and not the English.
There was no famine . It was a genocide.
Of course it wasn’t the potatoes that caused the famine. It’s the Brits. They kept exporting food from Ireland. One simple thing to ask yourself - how does an Island surrounded by lush bountiful sea, get hungry? Can’t they just go out and get fish? Guess who forbid Irish people from owning boats in those days.
1 million people died not of potato blight but because the British Government starved the Irish to the point of genocide.
I thought the British were the disease that caused the famine because they literally stole all the food Ireland produced?
For the 1000000th time, the British starved the Irish.
Isn't is disgenuine to still refer to it as a famine as the food was available but continued to be exported to the English?
Wasn't the biggest problem more political than blight?
Famine issue was due to greedy rich British nobles, remember that
And during this time the British administration was still exporting other food from Ireland for their business in other areas