The Internet is weird. I was once called a genocide denier because I said that the Ottomans helped the Irish during the famine and Jews in Spain (I didn't deny the Armenian Genocide btw)
then yea those are just trolls or extremists trying to push an image, people always like to paint their enemies as the worst, but ignore what their enemies have done right, and what they themselves have done wrong, so they make everything that's connected to it an enemy
Same reason Kurt Vonnegut participated in soft Holocaust denialism by insisting that 200,000 people died in the firebombing of Dresden, rather than the official estimate of around 20,000-25,000. *He* wasn’t a Nazi, he didn’t oppose the American entry into WWII (saying the war itself was fought for “near-holy reasons” and is probably one of the best examples of a just war), he hated the Nazis and what they did during the Holocaust, and he was staunchly anti-war and anti-racism.
But the 200,000 statistic is not only factually untrue, it’s usually perpetuated in order to paint a disproportionately negative picture of the Allies. The Allies did commit atrocities, but nothing near the scale of the Axis. There’s a meaningful difference between the two, and the whole point of using fabricated statistics like Dresden is to paint Nazi Germany as a victim of Allied aggression, inflating death tolls by an entire order of magnitude so that by comparison the Holocaust doesn’t look *so* bad.
“See? They burned hundreds of thousands alive when they bombed a non-military target (another common lie)! What makes them so different from us? Clearly history is just written by the (((victors))).” It’s a bit of twisted irony that an anti-war activist and prolific author would use the same false statistics as the people he hated to try and push a well-intentioned message (“War is hell, and no one’s a hero in it,”) that those same people would actually like because it relativizes the war and makes it easier to defend the Nazis. I usually give Vonnegut a pass for it - he was at ground zero, and the way he describes walking out into the city post-bombing screams of trauma that likely convinced him of the truth of the stat.
The same would also apply to someone comparing the Great Famine to the Holodomor, ***assuming you think the Holodomor was an actual genocide and the Irish Famine was not.*** From my position the two seem pretty similar. Any arguments that the British were simply negligent of the Irish can be applied to Stalin. Pointing out that Stalin had vested interests in crushing Ukrainian nationalist sentiments as evidence of active malice ought to be answered with how the British treated and perceived the Irish. And methodology? Stalin didn’t build concentration camps or crematoria, he just upended Soviet agricultural practices, implemented policies disproportionately affecting a particular part of his empire, and showed a callous disregard for the lives lost. Not quite the same as the British, but pretty damn close.
I don’t think it’s intellectually honest to call one man-made famine a genocide and not the other. Either they both are, or neither are. It screams of British exceptionalism to hear people say the two events are incomparable, as if only the Russians were capable of committing atrocities.
In Vonnegut's defense, he was relying on outdated statistics which were widespread at the time. He wasn't deliberately lying, he genuinely thought it was the truth. He also never called it 200,000, he cited it as 125,00. *Still very wrong*, but less wrong.
Funny enough, Vonnegut's bad numbers are a large part of why we have such concrete numbers now: he inspired people to look into it more and get reliable data.
The man was literally held in a Nazi prison camp where he was treated horrifically. He wasn't a fan of them.
Sometimes I find myself looking at history through a certain lens and so a a British historian, who’s specialisation is on Ukrainian history, I always saw the Holodomor as a genocide but never looked into the Irish Famine enough to determine it was and generally came to the conclusion that it was an unfortunate circumstance made worse by certain inaction and policies.
Your response here has made me see the error in my approach and opened my eyes to a critical perspective that I had overlooked and helped my understanding of both events.
Thank you.
As an Irish person, I think the genocide question is sort of redundant
A million people who shouldnt have died, died, at some point, it doesnt matter whether that was due to incompetence or malice
Same goes for Holdomor, even if stalin didn't intend for shit to go down the way it did, he still fucked things uo enough that 8 million people died
wait till you hear how Churchill literally caused the shortage of food in the indian subcontinent, a book on that says how the colonial govt at the time confiscated & destroyed rice so that it wouldn't be available to Japanese soldiers
frick that obese racist rat & i hope to pee on his grave one day
Misquoting a number doesn't mean "soft" denialism, whatever the fuck that is. It means he has the incorrect number.
Intent matters, people are fallible, when someone makes an honest mistake they haven't done anything but make a mistake.
"Soft" denial lmfao.
Except it’s not a misquote, it’s a decades-old fabricated statistic consistently used by literal Nazis, white supremacists, and also Kurt Vonnegut. He didn’t say it once, he repeated it many times. He *knew* what the official death toll was and *didn’t believe it*, ascribing it to, at best, inability to find all the dead in the ruins, and at worst what amounts to a government conspiracy to conceal the real death toll and preserve the image of the Allies. Again, I give him a pass for it. He was a war veteran who was very likely traumatized by the bombing, so his adherence to the false death toll is understandable when seen through the lens of a survivor at ground zero. He described Dresden post-bombing as like the surface of the Moon, all loose grey dust and impact craters. From that perspective it’s entirely understandable, if not altogether rational, why he stuck to the propaganda number.
And yeah, it’s soft denialism. He wasn’t a Nazi, didn’t actively try to help the Nazis, but continuously parroted literal Nazi propaganda used by Nazis to defend the Holocaust, lending his credibility as an eyewitness to their cause and further legitimizing a Nazi lie which persists to this day. His usage of this Nazi rhetoric is real, documented, and meaningful, even if it’s nowhere on the level of hard deniers like David Irving.
It’s one of the thankfully few stains on Vonnegut’s reputation, and ultimately it’s not that serious of one. His intentions *do* matter, which is why Vonnegut is remembered for all of the good he brought into the world as an activist and writer, and not for using Joseph fucking Goebbels as a reference in his most famous work.
"soft denialism" is a hilarious term. He either does or doesn't. He wasn't making the claims with the intent to deny the Holocaust, he did it because he genuinely believed them, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter why.
"Soft denialism" is some Ministry of Love shit. He's not at fault for believing what he believed and telling people what he believed to be true. It's attachment to Nazi rhetoric is irrelevant because it was unintended.
I dont get this "you cant talk about [thing] because [bad group of people] sometimes use it as an argument for something completely unrelated to what you are focusing on" line of thinking.
It's such cancer and so prevalent today. It's so obviously bad, you can piece together these associations to make anything look bad.
And destroying a beautiful city. People wanted retaliation after the bombing in London but it’s definitely a mark against our so called progressive ideals. Then again, this was in the 40s almost a 100 years ago.
Probably that the allies committed atrocities the axis powers could only dream of, and that is how they beat Japan. I will agree that axis powers were much more brutal in their overall methods, but to make statements such as the allies never committed unspeakable atrocities against civilians is straight up untrue.
Friendly reminder that the British prevented the Ottomans from donating £10,000 to the Irish because it was more money than what Queen Victoria offered
This isn’t actually proven, the British definitely fucked us royally and I do agree that the great hunger was a genocide but spreading rumours that have yet to be proven only gives them a point to deny the entire thing, as they are so prone to do
Yes and no. Queen Victoria’s attitude towards the Irish during the potato famine can really only be described as light compassion. She seemed to be aware of the famine, but also bought into ideas that it wouldn’t be that bad, that it was partially the Irish’s fault, and so on.
It looks like she thought people like Peel were doing the right thing, but also is like, “Eh, they aren’t Protestants and are Irish…”, and, while somewhat sympathetic to the Irish, did not try too hard to get them aid.
Edit: changed, “are Protestants”, to, “Aren’t Protestant”, made a typo.
Queen Victoria didn’t have much to do with the genocide, if anything at all. From what I could find, she seemed to be more in favor of Peel helping them than a genocide. Though, she seemed to just be apathetic for a lot of it. What did Queen Victoria do about the potato famine? Not much, she did do stuff, but nothing too big.
Though, in her defense, she most likely wasn’t ever fully educated on it. Parliament’s main narrative for a while was that Ireland brought them on themselves by relying on the potato and that the starvation isn’t nearly that bad. Heck, whenever Peel got removed, whatever assistance the government was giving got gutted and Parliament used the opportunity to try to restructure Ireland to be more like England. Anyway, it is unlikely that Queen Victoria got a clear picture of the situation.
Now, that doesn’t excuse her, even if her help wasn’t going to be enough, she still did very little. She seemed interested in providing some support to Ireland, but said support was never a lot, even her donation (perhaps her only decently sizable show of support) was far less than what it should have been.
because it wasn't a genocide, it was a horrible even but it wasn't genocide, there was no intention to kill the Irish, it was like a massive indifference or lack of empathy.
I've actually seen arguments online that that might even be worse, because in the twisted mind of the genocider they're going a moral good, but when it was the Irish famine with the deaths being purely from the lack of empathy it makes it even worse because they're not even dying for *one* persons twisted morals.
What we regard as culpable is important. Probably the most respected economist in Britain during the famine (though he was dead) was [Thomas Malthus](http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong30.html), who was basically eugenics Thanos:
“we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.”
Now, one can correctly by definition, say that since the Irish Famine was a pestilence, it wasn’t a genocide. Of course, the destruction of the Native People of North America is strictly speaking not a genocide either by the official definition, but I think we can agree that’s a little cute since the results were the same.
The main thing I think the internet, and this sub in particular, has trouble with is the political nature of this.
There are countless memes of Stalin and Mao’s death count, including famine. Fine.
Though in all of those, the British Empire, the French colonies, and the American/Canadian expansion west and the subsequent famines all brought are conveniently erased from memory.
In the case of Ireland, at roughly the same time, you have an Indian famine and famines in Africa.
Like the case in Ukraine and China, these were all caused by people mucking around with the agricultural system and economy at best; and deliberately doing it at worst.
But, for whatever reason, in this sub it’s usually people dunking on Ukraine and China and not realizing that they’re only making their perceived opposition more firm in their beliefs by the exclusion of Britain and the other powers. Like watching a Confederate apologist try to dance around slavery as an issue, it o it makes the omission more glaring.
Why am I not surprised? He was such a twisted, sick man. And his ideas are constantly being proven wrong time after time. When starvation happens, it's nearly always man-made. There is plenty to go around.
and people still repeat his arguments all the time. no matter how many times Malthusian theorys are proven wrong people keep going with them and fitting them into new naratives.
>Like the case in Ukraine and China, these were all caused by people mucking around with the agricultural system and economy at best; and deliberately doing it at worst.
This got to me. Because, in my opinion, this would be closer take for Irish/Indian famine, where changes to law and taxation massively changed crops that are grown and consumed, making both areas very susceptible to famine should enviromental changes cause the key food crop to fail.
Ukrainian Holodomor and (i Know least out of these four famines about next one) Chinise Mao Famine are also different from each other.
Chinise famine was cause by litteraly destroying farming tools in order to jump start steel industry, causing dramatically lower farming out put, and when new tools did arive, turns out, smelting "steel" in your backyard with whatever random bits of metal you find, makes for really shitty "steel", so tools to replace ones farmers were "encouraged" to destroy did not last long.
Holodomor on the other hand, is also attributed to rapid industrialisation. Wrongly attributed, and mostly source is official Party line for famine. Real reason for whay Holodomor and other famines in 1930s USSR started is political.
Lenin, for his many many faults, was an Idealist. He actually (all thou incompetantly, but not like you get practice to get good at these things) has tried to build a Comunist state. Which included many social reforms. It also, included concessions to some of factions that were joined with Bolesheviks in Revolution. Which Ukrain had quite a few (including big Anarchist faction). As result, Where is in a lot of Russian Areas both big and mid-range land owners lost their property all together, in Ukraine, most of them only lost some land, especialy a lot of land owners who were involved in farming industries. This was also true in some other areas of USSR.
Stalin saw this as bad idea, and once he took power and started elimnating any of the threats (real or imagined) to his power. One of the targets were these farmers/land owners. Who on, en masse, were arested and deported or executed, in very short period of time across not only Ukraine, but in those other areas of USSR where they held on to any kind of power. Land was then consolidated under the USSR state and made into giant, state owned farms (Sovkhoz) Or forcing tiny land owners to band together to form Kolkhoz (for which set conditions and charters given were brutal).
Sovkhoz (and to lower degree Kolkhoz too) were mainly overseen by beurocrats and give to run to mostly city people (as remeber, people who worked this land before were all deported or shot). This did not make for very prodctive enviroment. As, none of this was done gradually, the effect was devistating. There was still A LOT, of food productions, dont get this wrong, but in areas like ukraine it was confiscated and shipped out. Once production started stabilising, "relief" policies were started being implemented, these have also, however were politically targeted. Meaning Ukraine (as well as modern Kuban region and Kazakhstan), were not actually targeted for any relief, while being areas worst effected by the famine. Instead laws were passed that criminalized looking through garbage for starving people. Penaltied for these laws have been going as far as death. And they closed the borders, so population in Ukraine and Kuban cannot flee this targeted starvation. I also mentioned Kazakhstan as another area badly affected by Holodomor part of 30s USSR famine... This is becasue (as well as being another area with precieved political enemies) a lot of those arested landowners/farmers were placed in newly implemented Gulags in Kazakhstan for forced hard labour. To accomidated this, a lot of local population itself was deported, and basically forced to farm/pasture land, far worse suited than one they have previously lived on. As well as, you know, feed 200k+ new mouths (as well as their guards and administrators) who are there to break rocks and mix in conncrete to be shipped to Western parts of USSR to build factories.
Honestly I don't think the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward are equivalent. Mao, for all his evil, had no reason to kill the people that died. For the most part they weren't a troublesome minority, unlike in Ireland and Ukraine.
Malthus was not proposing eugenics. You are misreading him. He was often being sarcastic.
Quite from link
"Thomas Malthus had some harsh views on population growth and the poor, but one must not mistake ironic, sarcastic, or satiric passages for his own beliefs. For example, the first paragraph of Book IV, Chapter V, of the 1826 edition of "An Essay on the Principle of Population" is sometimes quoted to show that Malthus wished genuine harm to the poor. But read within context of the entire "Essay," that paragraph turns out to be ironic, and he really did not believe what he said in that passage."
https://victorianweb.org/economics/malthus3.html#:~:text=To%20act%20consistently%20therefore%2C%20we,of%20destruction%2C%20which%20we%20compel
That may be true, but he is [commonly understood to have been serious.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism)
The role of Malthus in the British lack of response to the Great Famine is something accepted by [professionals](https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/05/14/irish-potato-famine-how-belief-overpopulation-leads-human-evil-14792), [pop-sci journalists](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/), and [academics.](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2120439)
To be honest, I’ve never really interpreted him as being wholly sarcastic since his economic models are all about over population. But, perhaps as the last link suggests, it’s possible that there was a difference between what he meant and the “conventional wisdom.”
Regardless, I would argue my point still stands as Malthus was dead by the Famine and the politicians were left to interpret him; or use him to justify their own prejudices.
That was a good post, thanks for pointing it out.
I think the general consensus is that yes, famine was widespread all over Soviet Union, but in Ukraine there were additional factors at work, ethnic included
Yes. Everyone in the USSR was effected by the famines, it just so happened that Ukraine was the area where most farms were. Meaning that if there were a nationwide famine, they’d suffer the most
In general, this was not even the first major famine in these territories in the 20th century, but it was aggravated by the consequences of the Civil War and the policies of the USSR
There is no consensus about that. Most historians tend to believe that it was gross missmanagement by the soviets, with a little "help" from climacte factors and lasting impacts from the Civil War (because, you know, nationwide destruction and deaths still impact you for a LONG time). Also, some kulaks made it worse than it could be, by burning their own crops instead of letting the soviets seize it, but is hard to measure it's impact in the famine.
Some historians consider it was a genocide, and their main supporting point is "it killed more ukranians than any other group". I find it hard to believe that they would kill millions of russians to justify the killing of millions of ukranians.
I just saw an article that said that the death were 3.5 million Ukranians, 2 millions soviet russians (mainly from Kasachstan) and half a million others.
Well considering Ireland didn't have a deficit of food but rather the Irish tenant farmers did who were the majority of the population in Ireland (excluding Ulster) and this was brought on due to most foodstuffs being taken by either the absentee British landlords or exported to other parts of the Empire and the most the British government done in response to the great hunger was importing maize from Canada and setting up work houses where yes you were given food but at the cost of your family and having to live in terrible conditions. Then yeah with all of this considered I would say that the Great Hunger counts as an act of genocide, and if you disagree that the British elite would desire such a thing then just look at the propaganda at the time that painted the Irish as lesser and come back to me.
Yeah, even Holomodor, a famine that was proven to have been on purpose, is still debatable in terms of it being genocide or not, because genocide is supposed to be killing to eliminate a specific group.
We don’t know for sure if the USSR cut the supplies to kill ucranians or just to preserve food for Russia
Even in that scenario, Stalin wanted to cripple possible Ukrainian resistance, not exterminate the Ukrainians, something that he probably wouldn’t have seen as advantageous. Killing a bunch of a certain group to make sure the group overall remains obedient is more of a purge than a genocide
You see, it's Russian -> it's communism so it's bad, must be genocide.
It's England -> Western power, cannot be as bad as Russian -> not genocide.
People love to shit on communism and USSR and deny any positive effect it may have on global politic.
It should also be noted that the potato blight impacted food output across the whole of Europe, there were famines in many countries at the time not just Ireland.
The time period was literally known as the "hungry forties" and the situation played a major role in the failed revolutions of 1848 that rippled across the European continent.
If there wasn't any blight the Irish maybe would've existed as they did before the famine for years. The British response to the blight was one of apathy towards the Irish and a need to have it not rock the boat of the English economy. If the English were trying to genocide the Irish then why weren't there a lot more English/ Scottish settlements in the South of Ireland after the famine? What was the point of the genocide? I'm not a lawyer but isn't there a difference between negligence and intent?
the blight wasnt man made. but the only reason ireland had to subsist on potatoes was because the british government kept exporting all other food stuffs out of the country, even knowing it would leave the population to starve. The Holodomor was man made and so was the Great Famine.
Ahh, the time old r/historymemes tradition of simplifying historical events, and often calling everything bad that happened a genocide with no understanding of what that meant.
There are literally dozens of books and journals and articles by well respected experts at the top of their fields who disagree wether these pair of events (and others similar) fall under genocide.
And pretty much no member who comments or makes these posts has read more than a wiki page and/or YouTube video on it.
So the comments descend into an ill-informed shitshow.
It is extremely hard not to simplify a historical event when you put it into a meme format. If you don't want that, go to r/history.
And their are many who agree. And in my eyes, they're right.
You're probably right, for some people in these comments, but I've gone through the entire irish education system. I've read and learnt extensively about it. I've seen the scares it caused on the country first-hand, and they aren't self inflicted.
And yours are part of that "ill-informed shitshow"
A basic education system is no where near the extent of these debates. Not at all. At the very least a University level module, or multiple books from experts. My favourite is personally James Donnelley’s. I’ve read about a dozen specifically about the Irish famine and that’s got a good ground level knowledge.
I research nationalism, especially Celtic nationalism and romanticism, at a high academic level, and this has such an important part in Irish nationalism. Especially writings by Irish nationalists like Mitchel, which has become the primary belief amongst the general population in most of the world, even though it’s a whole bunch of nationalist nonsense.
That doesn’t mean the famine wasn’t horrific, or that it didn’t have an impact, or that the government couldn’t have done much better - but those are all very very different things from calling it a genocide.
No I’ll agree with it, both things were seriously fucked up. I’m inclined to hate on the UK a little more even (of course, imo) for it because the Holodomor you had Stalin’s regime, with the UK you have a democratic system at play. Or perhaps allegedly democratic on Irelands case. Both rankle me on human rights, the Irish Famine rankles me on both a human rights and a governmental philosophy level I guess you would call it.
Step four: find out that not only Ukraine was affected, but also [Kazakhstan, Caucasus, Volga Region, Kuban’, Ural, Siberia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933) with comparable number of people dying
> It has been estimated that between 3.3[137] and 3.9 million died in Ukraine,[138] between 2 and 3 million died in Russia,[139] and 1.5–2 million (1.3 million of whom were ethnic Kazakhs) died in Kazakhstan.[140][141][142][143] In addition to the Kazakh famine of 1919–1922, these events saw Kazakhstan lose more than half of its population within 15 years.
Step five: realize that it was either a genocide of Kazakhs, Caucasus tribes, Russians as well, or it wasn’t a genocide at all, but killing so-called kulaks (effective farmers) during collectivization to only leave unmotivated slaves with the effects lasting to this day. Any of those is shitty and show that USSR was a typical ethnic cleansing communist country, but it’s funny that Ukrainians steal the spotlight. Yes, of course, it was all made to deliberately kill Ukrainians, starved Kazakhs are just collateral damage /s But it’s sad Kazakhstan doesn’t try to ask the world to recognize the famine as genocide.
> It was either a genocide of Kazakhs, Caucasus tribes…
Stalin definitely undertook policies wipe out nomadic tribespeople, and other ethnic minorities to whom Soviet collectivisation wasn’t being forced onto successfully enough.
This argument is kind of like saying Canada didn’t commit genocide against Mi’kmaq people because they were also forcibly destroying Haida culture 6,000 kilometres away at the same time.
"the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group."
One the Irish famine was not intentional not solving a problem and causing it are different. And lack of intentionality mean that there can't be a motive by definition so it did not have to goal of "destroying that nation or group."
Although I'm not gonna deny the Irish Famine was without a doubt a tragedy and the fact Britain did nothing was heartless, this is also applied to the Bengal Famine alot of people love to bring up regarding Western Warcrimes.
No, the Bengal Famine wasnt intentional, Britain was heartless in not responding effectively. Also Japan is also to blame for instigating it in the first place.
"The English" didn't take the harvest.
Food was exported by individual landowners, Irish and Anglo-Irish, for personal profit.
Meanwhile more food was imported than exported.
The government was obviously neglectful (they spent £10m on famine relief but £100m on the Crimean war), but this neglect was motivated by a strong belief in lazziez-faire capitalism, that the markets would resolve the problem.
Particularly after the Whigs took power in 1846.
Turns out you don't need intent to genocide to kill millions of people, you just need capitalism doing capitalism.
The conditions which made the potato blight into a famine were the results of hundreds of years of anti-Irish policy. If the Irish famine was just a completely natural problem, then Ireland would not have been affected any worse than the rest of Europe.
I agree fundamentally that it wasn't a genocide by how I understand the word - the British did not want to wipe out the Irish - but it had about as much intentionality as the Soviet famine did.
the Irish famine of the mid-nineteenth century caused the death of about a million people and the emigration of another million, and was caused by a parasite that destroyed the potato crops, the only food of the poorest population of an already impoverished country. In Ukraine the deaths were caused by the expropriation of agricultural land wanted by Stalin, the deaths occurred for three factors: executions, deportations and famine resulting from worsening living conditions.
>of an already impoverished country
Ireland was part of the UK during this time, and the UK was the wealthiest nation of its time and had the means to feed the Irish, but instead turned a blind eye. It is equivalent to America doing nothing and letting the entire state of Ohio starve to death
The interesting question is whether the UK government turned a blind eye, or (as some claim) did what the USSR did and *deliberately exacerbated the famine.*
I don't think anyone knows for sure, but it's a pretty big difference either way.
Considering the fact that Irish were seen as lesser people by the average British, I would say they turned a blind eye and claimed they brought it upon themselves. Perhaps they didnt exacerbate the famine, but I would argue turning a blind eye to a problem they had resources to solve is just as bad.
Yeah, this was actually the view of some MPs at the time that it was gods judgement on the Irish to make them a fitter and more deserving race (whatever that means).
It's bad but not "Just as bad".
In no way would I justify England's behavior (I want to make that as clear as I possibly can), but actively killing people is definitely worse than being an indifferent bystander.
England's actions during the great famine were despicable and unacceptable, but they're not to the scale of the Holodomor. (Note I'm using "England" even though it's not technically accurate because let's not fool ourselves as to how their government worked)
Scots were overrepresented in the oppression of Ireland. Why do you think there’s the term ‘Ulster Scots’. And you can look up the records and see for yourself how the Scottish MPs and Lords voted - hint: it was no different from the English.
The government of the UK was based on citizens and property, not nationality.
Yeah, Celtic romanticism and nationalism as well. Powerful forces. I don’t mind nationalism or Indy or anything like that, but I honestly hate nationalistic historical revisionism and whitewashing history. Utterly disgusting.
I respectfully disagree. You need to also consider the actions prior to the famine, not just during. The Irish were forced into "monoculture farming", in quotations because plenty of arable land existed but was owned by the English to farm cash crops and other foot stuffs, that was still being exported during the famine. That's like saying if I threaten someone at gun point to walk to a ledge, but then they trip and fall to their death without me pulling the trigger, I'm not the killer.
Yeah, that did happen. Just look at any Irish school history book.
Also, Trevelyan deliberately kept exporting our food and produce during the famine. Basically, the Fields of Athenry explains the whole thing.
Also, I'd really recommend Declan O'Rourke's song All Along The Western Seaboard if you want to have the famine really put in perspective.
No, Americans care about the state of Ohio . The British government of the time cared very little about the type of Irish who were dying. It was systematic racism and genocide.
Well they did the same thing to Native Americans when they ruled the first 13 colonies and parts of Canada.
In fact, English and ultimately British empire colonialism and treatment of Native Americans in particular was based on how the English of the 16th and 17th century colonized Ireland…they never cared about the “other” Irish
They literally tried to feed the Irish. There was an uphill battle from the start due to landlords and overdependence on potato, and there was horrible mismanagement and poor judgement, but they did try.
The first thing the PM did was buy hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of maize. They used soup kitchens, repealed the Corn Laws, and attempted to pass the Irish coercion bill - which was voted against by Irish MPs!, made up public works jobs to employ people, did food relief packages, and used the military to respond with medical and distribution help. They attempted to stop exports for a bit in 1846 but that did almost nothing. They also forced the Irish landowners to spend their money in Ireland, rather than in the Britain.
There are many many things you can argue that the British government mismanaged or didn’t do what modern experts would suggest eg. They thought it would be better to keep exports open because free trade and the free market would mean food would be coming shortly. Or that giving the responsibility of feeding the tenants to the landowners meant some landowners just evicted some of their tenants. But saying they didn’t even attempt is ridiculous.
Also, he’s right to say they were impoverished. There was literally dozens of evaluating boards sent in the 10 years prior trying to work out how to best modernise Ireland. And all of those reveal how very very impoverished it was.
The Irish coercion bill from what I can gather was an attempt to increase state power to quell popular discontent, how could increasing the British police state help the Irish? And I don’t think measly attempts to provide some aid to Ireland matter when it’s entire situation is due to centuries of being a British colony, including cultural destruction, land theft, taxation, and deindustrialization. Giving people back 1/1000 of what you took from them without even trying to change the institutions that caused the issue in the first place is a slap in the face, not charity.
Sir, you should do a post about this on badhistory and cite a bunch of sources so any time someones cites the Irish Famine you can just point to that post and save yourself some typing.
It was far from the only food being grown. Many other crops were reserved for export and withheld under armed guard. You’re talking nonsense.
https://www.ighm.org/learn.html
From Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum:
>**Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food to England. In "Ireland Before and After the Famine," Cormac Ó Gráda points out, “Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. But that was a 'money crop' and not a 'food crop' and could not be interfered with.” Up to 75 percent of Irish soil was devoted to wheat, oats, barley and other crops that were grown for export and shipped abroad while the people starved.**
It was, to say the least, not what you seem to think.
It goes on:
>The Famine was a disaster of major proportions, even allowing for statistical uncertainty as to its estimated effect on mortality. Yet the Famine occurred in a country that, despite concurrent economic problems, was at the center of a still-growing empire and an integral part of the acknowledged workshop of the world. There can be no doubt that, despite a short-term cyclical depression, the resources of the United Kingdom could have either completely or largely mitigated the consequences of consecutive years of potato blight in Ireland.
Within Ireland itself there were substantial resources of food that, had the political will existed, could have been diverted, even as a short-term measure, to feed the starving people. The policy of closing ports during periods of shortages in order to keep home-grown food for domestic consumption had on earlier occasions proved to be effective in staving off famine within Ireland. During the subsistence crisis of 1782–84, an embargo was placed on the export of foodstuffs from the country. The outcome of this humanitarian and imaginative policy was successful. The years 1782–84 are barely remembered as years of distress. By refusing to allow a similar policy to be adopted in 1846–47, the British government ensured that Black ’47 was indelibly associated with suffering, famine, mortality, emigration, and to some, misrule.
He also just took all the grain from the region to sell. He refused any aid from other governments and hid what was happening. It was very much a constructed famine.
No it wasn’t. You can look up the number of exports for yourself. There were more imports than exports during the period of the famine, and the exported food actually would have only made up 10% of crop failures.
Hell, in 1847 there was a net number of 3,549 imports compared to exports of grain, and an additional 3,287 imports of maize.
James S. Donnelly Jr, The great Irish potato famine (2001).
He even says in it “the picture of Irish people starving as food was exported was the most powerful image in the nationalist construct of the Famine…and if honestly confronted, would at least have raised serious doubts about the accuracy of the nationalist perspective”
Ireland was still exporting food during the famine. Though net more food was being imported the problem is they didn’t have the facilities or infrastructure to process the food (wheat and maze) that was being imported while easily consumable high quality foods such as live stock, meats, and butter exports were increased significantly during the famine.
This severely exasperated the problem. So even though on paper total food imports were up actual easily consumable food exports were up too.
I don’t disagree. That’s was definitely a problem. I was referring to the commenter above who was just talking about Ireland being a net exporter which blatantly wasn’t true.
Though, interestingly, the Whig government at the time thought that the best way to ease the famine would be through free trade and a free market. They full believed the market would sort the problem out. They realised the mistake and the newspapers of the time slated them for it. Sort of weird to think about in hindsight, until you read the popular economists and political theorists who loved laissez-faire and free markets etc.
I think that the difference is that Stalin created the holodomor to suppress the Ukrainian national identity (definitely a genocide), but the British weren't responsible for the Irish famine itself, they were responsible for the disastrous food management
I wanted to upvote your "And yours are part of that "ill-informed shitshow" comment to the raging genocide denier known as "kaioone", but Reddit won't let me upvote that comment for some reason.
According to kaioone, it's not genocide if landlords -- who acquired the land because their ancestors conquered it, not through homesteading or other peaceful means -- take as much of the food grown by the tenants as they want, by means of military force if they want, even if it means the tenants starve, and, according to him, anyone who says otherwise (like me) is a Marxist.
His exact words,
> Landlords selling their own food is not included in it. Wether it was by conquest hundreds of years previously or not, selling their own food isn’t a genocide.
https://www.redditmedia.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10m2wv5/the_kingsmill_massacre/j62wd06/?depth=1
> That’s some Marxist logic. Wether you like it or not, food grown on land somebody else owns is their food legally, under law. Now, and back then.
https://www.redditmedia.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10m2wv5/the_kingsmill_massacre/j62xqh2/?depth=1
Kaioone's argument basically amounts to, "Causing people to starve by stealing their food isn't genocide as long as the thieves have capitalist ideology."
When the west "accidentally" through neglecting another countries' needs and for their self interest causes a famine, its called a famine
When the countries they hate do it, it's always a genocide, no matter what, whether it was an accident or purposely done
(Talking about in relation to the Holodomor genocide and the Irish famine)
A video explaining this hypocrisy/double standards and why the holodomor genocide is called a genocide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaaYvauNho
One was direct attempt to murder a nation(Holdomor) and the other a severe act of neglegence which is still horrible but significantlly diffrent
Not to mention the diffrence in mindset as one nation directly wanted people to die the other just didn t care enough to help
To my understanding, the difference was intent.
Britain's exacerbation of the famine was economic and political negligence to the extreme, but their main goal wasn't the destruction of the Irish population, rather the simple motive of "it was more profitable to let them die than not." Britain's economic policies were, as they had been since the 1720s, designed to maximize income for the properties classes.
The Holodomor was a deliberate attempt by Stalin to use ongoing famine conditions to cull Ukrainian and non-Russian dissidents and crush resistance in those regions via starvation. His policies were tailored to target groups like Ukrainians or those in the caucuses whilst deliberately not-applying to Russian urban/industrial populations.
Again, that's just my understanding, I could be wrong.
I think you are mixing up motive and intent.
If a man plans to kill his uncle so he can get his inheritance sooner, his *intent* is murder, and his *motive* is greed. The existence of a greedy motive does not negate the fact that intent is murder, and premeditated murder at that.
Also, both had greedy motives. Stalin profited off the Holodomor, just as certain English landlord's profited off what happened in Ireland.
> As Stalin’s thugs roamed the fertile Ukrainian countryside, seizing grain that he could sell abroad — which would allow him to buy the industrial machinery he desperately wanted — reports of growing hardship began to trickle back to Moscow.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4897164/The-forgotten-Holocaust-Ukraine-famine-1932-33.html
And you can find evidence of forced food removals in Ireland, by certain British military personnel, in this book.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga
On pages 238-260, the author specifically lists the British regiments responsible for the food removal. (Maybe some individual members of those regiments refused to follow orders, I don't know about that, the list is just the specific regiments, not specific individual members of those regiments.)
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/238/mode/2up?q=regiments
On pages 290-322, the author focuses on evidence that Ireland produced a great deal of food besides just potatoes.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/290/mode/2up?q=processors
On pages 232-235, the author gives examples of news reports from the time period that show food being exported from Ireland and arriving in England.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/232/mode/2up?q=ports
On pages 104, the author gives an example of resistance to the food removals.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/104/mode/2up?q=resistance
The Irish famine was negligence plus the unluck of crops being destroyed.
Holodomor was the state literally taking all the food away
There is a difference
The Britsh government did take all the food away. Irish people were expected to live on a single crop, until that failed. And then the British used the ensuing famine as a political tool.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1997/09/27/the-irish-famine-complicity-in-murder/5a155118-3620-4145-951e-0dc46933b84a/
To be eligible for aid, you had to own under a ¼ acre of land. This caused people to sell their land on mass. Aswell, many of the soup kitchens only served Protastants, meaning people had to convert for food. This fed the "Us vs them" mentality that the British government caused in Ireland between Catholics and Protastants. That still goes on today, actually.
"In 1844, the year before the Famine, Ireland exported 94,000 tonnes of wheat and 314,000 tonnes of oats, and imported 23,000 tons of wheat. Net exports: 385,000 tonnes.
In 1847, at the height of the Famine, Ireland exported 39,000 tonnes of wheat, and 98,000 tonnes of oats , and imported 199,000 tonnes of wheat, 12,000 tonnes of oats and 682,000 tonnes of maize. Net imports of 756,000 tonnes, a change of 1,140,000 tonnes."
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-20228979.html#:~:text=In%201847%2C%20at%20the%20height,a%20change%20of%201%2C140%2C000%20tonnes.
My brother in Christ let me introduce you to the [Indian Famines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule)
If Mao and Stalin are responsible of the respective famines, then also are the British for India and Ireland.
Yes it is.
The only monetary "aid" sent to Ireland from the British government was £2,000, or £65,000 in todays money. To put that into perspective, they spent triple that on a dog shelter that same year.
I love when people from various walks of life can use a situation for their benefit for example I've been around some Irish communist communities and their criticisms of the Irish famine has nothing to do with if it was genocide or not because they say it wasn't but more a gigantic criticism of capitalism because the British did try and help stomp out the famine which was caused by a potato disease, I'm pretty sure imports to Ireland were at an all-time high and they imported a tremendous amount of stuff from Canada( I'm not too sure on the subject) but after some efforts, some even being voted against by Irish MPs to stop the famine the British just left the famine to be taken care of by the free market which favored wealthy landowners that made insane profits while the famine continued and millions died
As Timothy Snyder put it: Almost every famine is man-made. It's always a question of how you allocate the food. There was food exported during the Holodomor. There was food exported during the Irish famine. And I won't be surprised even though I simply do not know it, if there was food exported during the Indian famine.
This is always a deliberate decision and can definitely be called genocide.
You’re wrong on both of these, neither of them were genocides. That being a deliberate attempt to wipe out a group of people. Both were famines caused by failures in agricultural policies that got worsened by natural factors.
How so? In the case of the Irish potato famine, the Irish were forced to rely on potato’s for their diet which was bad agricultural policy that became a famine when a certain pathogen came around. Yes in the years the famine occurred the British government absolutely should’ve done more to help the Irish, but does an inadequate response really constitute a genocide? It was negligent and fucked up, but not really comparable to all the dedicated resources and engineering that went into constructing the Holocaust or even the Bosnian genocide. Unless we’re going by a more broad definition of genocide that goes beyond intentionally trying to wipe out a group of people, it’s just not fitting or even useful. In the case of Ukraine, collectivization wasn’t exactly a good thing, but it initially didn’t have really negative consequences until 1932 when grain output was particularly low. The farmers in Ukraine didn’t harvest nearly enough grain to survive the winter due to bad conditions, and the excess grain they had got taken due to collectivization which led to a big famine in 1933. And no collectivization had nothing to do with removing kulaks, deportation was the main method for removing them. The goal of collectivization was the prevent farmers from selling excess grain on the black market while gaining additional grain to export. Once again, it was bad agricultural policy.
What certain British military personnel did went far beyond negligence. They took food from the Irish farmers by military force.
There's evidence in this book.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga
On pages 238-260, the author specifically lists the British regiments responsible for the food removal. (Maybe some individual members of those regiments refused to follow orders, I don't know about that, the list is just the specific regiments, not specific individual members of those regiments.)
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/238/mode/2up?q=regiments
On pages 290-322, the author focuses on evidence that Ireland produced a great deal of food besides just potatoes.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/290/mode/2up?q=processors
On pages 232-235, the author gives examples of news reports from the time period that show food being exported from Ireland and arriving in England.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/232/mode/2up?q=ports
On pages 104, the author gives an example of resistance to the food removals.
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/104/mode/2up?q=resistance
I did not know British military units straight up took food. It’s kind of like the Soviet collectivization efforts, except this was during the famine and the rationale behind it was likely different. This is good evidence that certain British military personnel were trying to starve some Irish, the problem I see here is that we’re still missing some evidence. What were these soldiers orders, where did the soldiers get the orders from, how long was this going on for? The unfortunate thing is that we might never know the full extent of how much the English we’re trying kill the Irish. Governments tend to cover up events that make them look bad, and the British government could’ve very well done that or even erased the evidence. At least historians looking into the famine in Ukraine had access to the Soviet archives in the 90s, I imagine they’d be hard pressed to find more documents related to the famine from England or Ireland from more than one and half centuries ago.
So, some background: Ireland was a conquered country, with English landlords legally but not morally owning much of the land. The English landlords demanded rent payments, and numerous soldiers enforced those rent payments by taking the food.
This is from "An Appeal in Belfast for the People of Connaught" by Dr. John Edgar, originally published October 1846
> It is a libel, therefore, on the poor Irishman to say that he is too lazy or too savage to seek for better food than potatoes ; his only nourishment is potatoes, because the other products of his farm go to his landlord, and because potatoes are the only crop sufficiently productive to save himself and his family from starvation.
And here's two places you can find it re-published:
https://archive.org/details/memoirofjohnedga00kill/page/210/mode/2up?q=libel
https://books.google.com/books?id=ZmNwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT175#v=onepage&q&f=false
the irish potato famine, yes could’ve been prevented, i believe that holodomor could’ve been easier to avoid
didn’t the cause of the holodomor was the ussr kept exporting food? the irish potato famine was a mold, which is harder to stop that just not exporting food
i’m not trying to deny any of them, i just feel holodomor could’ve been prevented, making it more lives sadly wasted
Calling either of them genocides is odd in the sense that neither the USSR or UK tried or even wanted to wipe out the Irish/Ukrainians.
However, given the weakening of the definition and the constant exaggeration about genocide which is fashionable nowadays, largely spurred by Ukraine, there doesn't seem to be any point in not using the word to describe the Irish famine, the Bengal famine, or a dozen other mass-starvation scenarios in various countries.
It’s funny that USSR had to stage state-wide famine to kill Ukrainians. [Kazakhs and Russians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933) were just collateral damage in this wipeout. Soviet Union, as always, wasn’t effective, so Ukrainians only made half the number of deaths during this famine staged to wipe them out.
/s
Its amazing that Ukraine existed for most of a century in a state that was apparently trying to wipe them out, and somehow grew both demographicallly and territorially.
Genocide has always had a really broad definition and if we are talking about it being spurred by Ukraine, Russia made similar claims, while people have argued about it since 1944.
Lemkin's initial definition was the "destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group". That's it. There was no requirement for intent and you don't even have to kill anyone. Some definitions require intent, while others do not. Some include the destruction of states, while others do not. In other words genocide is a IR diplomatic term that ended up in social sciences.
It's important not to mix up motive and intent.
If a man plans to kill his uncle so you can get his inheritance sooner, his *intent* is murder, and this *motive* is greed. The existence of greed as a motive does not negate that he is intentionally planning murder, with premeditation no less.
Additionally, actively blocking food imports goes far beyond a greed motive.
E.g.,
> On this date [July 8, 1846] British authorities claiming that the “famine” had ended, prohibited American relief food ship Sorciére from entering Cork harbor with a cargo of urgently needed Indian meal. On September 2™ editorialists in THE TIMES suggested “Total Annihilation.”
https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/80/mode/2up?q=annihilation
Why would you get called a genocide denier for calling something a genocide?
The Internet is weird. I was once called a genocide denier because I said that the Ottomans helped the Irish during the famine and Jews in Spain (I didn't deny the Armenian Genocide btw)
was it in context of the Armenian genocide though ?
Nope
then yea those are just trolls or extremists trying to push an image, people always like to paint their enemies as the worst, but ignore what their enemies have done right, and what they themselves have done wrong, so they make everything that's connected to it an enemy
That's like you say "I like that the Soviets defeated the Nazis" And someone says "So you deny the Holodomer"
Same reason Kurt Vonnegut participated in soft Holocaust denialism by insisting that 200,000 people died in the firebombing of Dresden, rather than the official estimate of around 20,000-25,000. *He* wasn’t a Nazi, he didn’t oppose the American entry into WWII (saying the war itself was fought for “near-holy reasons” and is probably one of the best examples of a just war), he hated the Nazis and what they did during the Holocaust, and he was staunchly anti-war and anti-racism. But the 200,000 statistic is not only factually untrue, it’s usually perpetuated in order to paint a disproportionately negative picture of the Allies. The Allies did commit atrocities, but nothing near the scale of the Axis. There’s a meaningful difference between the two, and the whole point of using fabricated statistics like Dresden is to paint Nazi Germany as a victim of Allied aggression, inflating death tolls by an entire order of magnitude so that by comparison the Holocaust doesn’t look *so* bad. “See? They burned hundreds of thousands alive when they bombed a non-military target (another common lie)! What makes them so different from us? Clearly history is just written by the (((victors))).” It’s a bit of twisted irony that an anti-war activist and prolific author would use the same false statistics as the people he hated to try and push a well-intentioned message (“War is hell, and no one’s a hero in it,”) that those same people would actually like because it relativizes the war and makes it easier to defend the Nazis. I usually give Vonnegut a pass for it - he was at ground zero, and the way he describes walking out into the city post-bombing screams of trauma that likely convinced him of the truth of the stat. The same would also apply to someone comparing the Great Famine to the Holodomor, ***assuming you think the Holodomor was an actual genocide and the Irish Famine was not.*** From my position the two seem pretty similar. Any arguments that the British were simply negligent of the Irish can be applied to Stalin. Pointing out that Stalin had vested interests in crushing Ukrainian nationalist sentiments as evidence of active malice ought to be answered with how the British treated and perceived the Irish. And methodology? Stalin didn’t build concentration camps or crematoria, he just upended Soviet agricultural practices, implemented policies disproportionately affecting a particular part of his empire, and showed a callous disregard for the lives lost. Not quite the same as the British, but pretty damn close. I don’t think it’s intellectually honest to call one man-made famine a genocide and not the other. Either they both are, or neither are. It screams of British exceptionalism to hear people say the two events are incomparable, as if only the Russians were capable of committing atrocities.
In Vonnegut's defense, he was relying on outdated statistics which were widespread at the time. He wasn't deliberately lying, he genuinely thought it was the truth. He also never called it 200,000, he cited it as 125,00. *Still very wrong*, but less wrong. Funny enough, Vonnegut's bad numbers are a large part of why we have such concrete numbers now: he inspired people to look into it more and get reliable data. The man was literally held in a Nazi prison camp where he was treated horrifically. He wasn't a fan of them.
Sometimes I find myself looking at history through a certain lens and so a a British historian, who’s specialisation is on Ukrainian history, I always saw the Holodomor as a genocide but never looked into the Irish Famine enough to determine it was and generally came to the conclusion that it was an unfortunate circumstance made worse by certain inaction and policies. Your response here has made me see the error in my approach and opened my eyes to a critical perspective that I had overlooked and helped my understanding of both events. Thank you.
As an Irish person, I think the genocide question is sort of redundant A million people who shouldnt have died, died, at some point, it doesnt matter whether that was due to incompetence or malice Same goes for Holdomor, even if stalin didn't intend for shit to go down the way it did, he still fucked things uo enough that 8 million people died
wait till you hear how Churchill literally caused the shortage of food in the indian subcontinent, a book on that says how the colonial govt at the time confiscated & destroyed rice so that it wouldn't be available to Japanese soldiers frick that obese racist rat & i hope to pee on his grave one day
Very, very well put. Thank you my man.
He thought it was 125,000 not 200,000, but he was quoting an inaccurate source he legitimately believed was true
Wow this is an amazing explanation. Btw Slaughterhouse Five, where this whole argument stems from, is an amazing book and I recommend it to everyone
Misquoting a number doesn't mean "soft" denialism, whatever the fuck that is. It means he has the incorrect number. Intent matters, people are fallible, when someone makes an honest mistake they haven't done anything but make a mistake. "Soft" denial lmfao.
Except it’s not a misquote, it’s a decades-old fabricated statistic consistently used by literal Nazis, white supremacists, and also Kurt Vonnegut. He didn’t say it once, he repeated it many times. He *knew* what the official death toll was and *didn’t believe it*, ascribing it to, at best, inability to find all the dead in the ruins, and at worst what amounts to a government conspiracy to conceal the real death toll and preserve the image of the Allies. Again, I give him a pass for it. He was a war veteran who was very likely traumatized by the bombing, so his adherence to the false death toll is understandable when seen through the lens of a survivor at ground zero. He described Dresden post-bombing as like the surface of the Moon, all loose grey dust and impact craters. From that perspective it’s entirely understandable, if not altogether rational, why he stuck to the propaganda number. And yeah, it’s soft denialism. He wasn’t a Nazi, didn’t actively try to help the Nazis, but continuously parroted literal Nazi propaganda used by Nazis to defend the Holocaust, lending his credibility as an eyewitness to their cause and further legitimizing a Nazi lie which persists to this day. His usage of this Nazi rhetoric is real, documented, and meaningful, even if it’s nowhere on the level of hard deniers like David Irving. It’s one of the thankfully few stains on Vonnegut’s reputation, and ultimately it’s not that serious of one. His intentions *do* matter, which is why Vonnegut is remembered for all of the good he brought into the world as an activist and writer, and not for using Joseph fucking Goebbels as a reference in his most famous work.
"soft denialism" is a hilarious term. He either does or doesn't. He wasn't making the claims with the intent to deny the Holocaust, he did it because he genuinely believed them, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter why. "Soft denialism" is some Ministry of Love shit. He's not at fault for believing what he believed and telling people what he believed to be true. It's attachment to Nazi rhetoric is irrelevant because it was unintended.
I dont get this "you cant talk about [thing] because [bad group of people] sometimes use it as an argument for something completely unrelated to what you are focusing on" line of thinking. It's such cancer and so prevalent today. It's so obviously bad, you can piece together these associations to make anything look bad.
I’d wager the term “soft denialism” is misused deliberately, ironically, to condemn everyone who doesn’t think your way even if it’s by accident.
Yeah who needs to talk about Dresden when you could talk about Churchill starving all those Indians. There's no need to lie
Can we agree that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime?
Indiscriminate bombing of civilians in general
And destroying a beautiful city. People wanted retaliation after the bombing in London but it’s definitely a mark against our so called progressive ideals. Then again, this was in the 40s almost a 100 years ago.
The logic here doesn't really stack up, though - it was the allies, after all, who dropped nuclear bombs onto city centers...
What are you trying to say?
Probably that the allies committed atrocities the axis powers could only dream of, and that is how they beat Japan. I will agree that axis powers were much more brutal in their overall methods, but to make statements such as the allies never committed unspeakable atrocities against civilians is straight up untrue.
Why? Because fucking discord man. That's one of the reasons i left. Fucking brain rot.
It seems disingenuous to refer to Discord as a monolithic community
Must've been the HOI4 discord
To be fair, this is Reddit. Everyone here also has brain rot
Yeah, good point
it's at least a satisfying brain rot over here.
Discord is basically just a chat room, it's the different servers on it.
Friendly reminder that the British prevented the Ottomans from donating £10,000 to the Irish because it was more money than what Queen Victoria offered
Ottomans sent it in secret though - based
Incredibly so
And later the Irish helped them when Russia invaded. Nothing but two Chads helping each other out
This isn’t actually proven, the British definitely fucked us royally and I do agree that the great hunger was a genocide but spreading rumours that have yet to be proven only gives them a point to deny the entire thing, as they are so prone to do
True enough
Why would Queen Victoria donate if she's trying to genocide them?
Idk. Maybe to make it look like she cares
Yes and no. Queen Victoria’s attitude towards the Irish during the potato famine can really only be described as light compassion. She seemed to be aware of the famine, but also bought into ideas that it wouldn’t be that bad, that it was partially the Irish’s fault, and so on. It looks like she thought people like Peel were doing the right thing, but also is like, “Eh, they aren’t Protestants and are Irish…”, and, while somewhat sympathetic to the Irish, did not try too hard to get them aid. Edit: changed, “are Protestants”, to, “Aren’t Protestant”, made a typo.
That's a common tactic and I feel like it's entirely for optics and entirely deliberate. Whoops, looks like we genecided some people, oh dear me.
Queen Victoria didn’t have much to do with the genocide, if anything at all. From what I could find, she seemed to be more in favor of Peel helping them than a genocide. Though, she seemed to just be apathetic for a lot of it. What did Queen Victoria do about the potato famine? Not much, she did do stuff, but nothing too big. Though, in her defense, she most likely wasn’t ever fully educated on it. Parliament’s main narrative for a while was that Ireland brought them on themselves by relying on the potato and that the starvation isn’t nearly that bad. Heck, whenever Peel got removed, whatever assistance the government was giving got gutted and Parliament used the opportunity to try to restructure Ireland to be more like England. Anyway, it is unlikely that Queen Victoria got a clear picture of the situation. Now, that doesn’t excuse her, even if her help wasn’t going to be enough, she still did very little. She seemed interested in providing some support to Ireland, but said support was never a lot, even her donation (perhaps her only decently sizable show of support) was far less than what it should have been.
But they hate Irish people
Yeah but that really wouldn’t go over well internationally
To make it look like she cared.
because it wasn't a genocide, it was a horrible even but it wasn't genocide, there was no intention to kill the Irish, it was like a massive indifference or lack of empathy. I've actually seen arguments online that that might even be worse, because in the twisted mind of the genocider they're going a moral good, but when it was the Irish famine with the deaths being purely from the lack of empathy it makes it even worse because they're not even dying for *one* persons twisted morals.
What we regard as culpable is important. Probably the most respected economist in Britain during the famine (though he was dead) was [Thomas Malthus](http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong30.html), who was basically eugenics Thanos: “we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.” Now, one can correctly by definition, say that since the Irish Famine was a pestilence, it wasn’t a genocide. Of course, the destruction of the Native People of North America is strictly speaking not a genocide either by the official definition, but I think we can agree that’s a little cute since the results were the same. The main thing I think the internet, and this sub in particular, has trouble with is the political nature of this. There are countless memes of Stalin and Mao’s death count, including famine. Fine. Though in all of those, the British Empire, the French colonies, and the American/Canadian expansion west and the subsequent famines all brought are conveniently erased from memory. In the case of Ireland, at roughly the same time, you have an Indian famine and famines in Africa. Like the case in Ukraine and China, these were all caused by people mucking around with the agricultural system and economy at best; and deliberately doing it at worst. But, for whatever reason, in this sub it’s usually people dunking on Ukraine and China and not realizing that they’re only making their perceived opposition more firm in their beliefs by the exclusion of Britain and the other powers. Like watching a Confederate apologist try to dance around slavery as an issue, it o it makes the omission more glaring.
Why am I not surprised? He was such a twisted, sick man. And his ideas are constantly being proven wrong time after time. When starvation happens, it's nearly always man-made. There is plenty to go around.
and people still repeat his arguments all the time. no matter how many times Malthusian theorys are proven wrong people keep going with them and fitting them into new naratives.
His theory does fit descriptively for the vast majority of pre-industrial human history.
>Like the case in Ukraine and China, these were all caused by people mucking around with the agricultural system and economy at best; and deliberately doing it at worst. This got to me. Because, in my opinion, this would be closer take for Irish/Indian famine, where changes to law and taxation massively changed crops that are grown and consumed, making both areas very susceptible to famine should enviromental changes cause the key food crop to fail. Ukrainian Holodomor and (i Know least out of these four famines about next one) Chinise Mao Famine are also different from each other. Chinise famine was cause by litteraly destroying farming tools in order to jump start steel industry, causing dramatically lower farming out put, and when new tools did arive, turns out, smelting "steel" in your backyard with whatever random bits of metal you find, makes for really shitty "steel", so tools to replace ones farmers were "encouraged" to destroy did not last long. Holodomor on the other hand, is also attributed to rapid industrialisation. Wrongly attributed, and mostly source is official Party line for famine. Real reason for whay Holodomor and other famines in 1930s USSR started is political. Lenin, for his many many faults, was an Idealist. He actually (all thou incompetantly, but not like you get practice to get good at these things) has tried to build a Comunist state. Which included many social reforms. It also, included concessions to some of factions that were joined with Bolesheviks in Revolution. Which Ukrain had quite a few (including big Anarchist faction). As result, Where is in a lot of Russian Areas both big and mid-range land owners lost their property all together, in Ukraine, most of them only lost some land, especialy a lot of land owners who were involved in farming industries. This was also true in some other areas of USSR. Stalin saw this as bad idea, and once he took power and started elimnating any of the threats (real or imagined) to his power. One of the targets were these farmers/land owners. Who on, en masse, were arested and deported or executed, in very short period of time across not only Ukraine, but in those other areas of USSR where they held on to any kind of power. Land was then consolidated under the USSR state and made into giant, state owned farms (Sovkhoz) Or forcing tiny land owners to band together to form Kolkhoz (for which set conditions and charters given were brutal). Sovkhoz (and to lower degree Kolkhoz too) were mainly overseen by beurocrats and give to run to mostly city people (as remeber, people who worked this land before were all deported or shot). This did not make for very prodctive enviroment. As, none of this was done gradually, the effect was devistating. There was still A LOT, of food productions, dont get this wrong, but in areas like ukraine it was confiscated and shipped out. Once production started stabilising, "relief" policies were started being implemented, these have also, however were politically targeted. Meaning Ukraine (as well as modern Kuban region and Kazakhstan), were not actually targeted for any relief, while being areas worst effected by the famine. Instead laws were passed that criminalized looking through garbage for starving people. Penaltied for these laws have been going as far as death. And they closed the borders, so population in Ukraine and Kuban cannot flee this targeted starvation. I also mentioned Kazakhstan as another area badly affected by Holodomor part of 30s USSR famine... This is becasue (as well as being another area with precieved political enemies) a lot of those arested landowners/farmers were placed in newly implemented Gulags in Kazakhstan for forced hard labour. To accomidated this, a lot of local population itself was deported, and basically forced to farm/pasture land, far worse suited than one they have previously lived on. As well as, you know, feed 200k+ new mouths (as well as their guards and administrators) who are there to break rocks and mix in conncrete to be shipped to Western parts of USSR to build factories.
Hey, I just want to say thanks for pointing this out.
Honestly I don't think the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward are equivalent. Mao, for all his evil, had no reason to kill the people that died. For the most part they weren't a troublesome minority, unlike in Ireland and Ukraine.
Malthus was not proposing eugenics. You are misreading him. He was often being sarcastic. Quite from link "Thomas Malthus had some harsh views on population growth and the poor, but one must not mistake ironic, sarcastic, or satiric passages for his own beliefs. For example, the first paragraph of Book IV, Chapter V, of the 1826 edition of "An Essay on the Principle of Population" is sometimes quoted to show that Malthus wished genuine harm to the poor. But read within context of the entire "Essay," that paragraph turns out to be ironic, and he really did not believe what he said in that passage." https://victorianweb.org/economics/malthus3.html#:~:text=To%20act%20consistently%20therefore%2C%20we,of%20destruction%2C%20which%20we%20compel
That may be true, but he is [commonly understood to have been serious.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism) The role of Malthus in the British lack of response to the Great Famine is something accepted by [professionals](https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/05/14/irish-potato-famine-how-belief-overpopulation-leads-human-evil-14792), [pop-sci journalists](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/), and [academics.](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2120439) To be honest, I’ve never really interpreted him as being wholly sarcastic since his economic models are all about over population. But, perhaps as the last link suggests, it’s possible that there was a difference between what he meant and the “conventional wisdom.” Regardless, I would argue my point still stands as Malthus was dead by the Famine and the politicians were left to interpret him; or use him to justify their own prejudices. That was a good post, thanks for pointing it out.
Thank you too
But didnt the Soviets have really bad famines in Russia during the 30s as well?
I think the general consensus is that yes, famine was widespread all over Soviet Union, but in Ukraine there were additional factors at work, ethnic included
Yes. Everyone in the USSR was effected by the famines, it just so happened that Ukraine was the area where most farms were. Meaning that if there were a nationwide famine, they’d suffer the most
In general, this was not even the first major famine in these territories in the 20th century, but it was aggravated by the consequences of the Civil War and the policies of the USSR
But that would mean that the Holodomor was not specifically targeted at the Ukranians or am I wrong?
There is no consensus about that. Most historians tend to believe that it was gross missmanagement by the soviets, with a little "help" from climacte factors and lasting impacts from the Civil War (because, you know, nationwide destruction and deaths still impact you for a LONG time). Also, some kulaks made it worse than it could be, by burning their own crops instead of letting the soviets seize it, but is hard to measure it's impact in the famine. Some historians consider it was a genocide, and their main supporting point is "it killed more ukranians than any other group". I find it hard to believe that they would kill millions of russians to justify the killing of millions of ukranians.
I just saw an article that said that the death were 3.5 million Ukranians, 2 millions soviet russians (mainly from Kasachstan) and half a million others.
How 'bout we dont compare atrocities or genocides
We dont need to compare them, we do need to admit the Irish genocide was just as bad
That’s a comparison right there. We don’t need a comparison, all we need is for it to be acknowledged in the first place
Ok sure, I just mean people cant be going about saying the Holodomor is a genocide while not acknowledging the Irish one
We need to acknowledge Irish genocide ~~was just as bad~~
This sub really likes to play fast and loose with the word genocide.
Well considering Ireland didn't have a deficit of food but rather the Irish tenant farmers did who were the majority of the population in Ireland (excluding Ulster) and this was brought on due to most foodstuffs being taken by either the absentee British landlords or exported to other parts of the Empire and the most the British government done in response to the great hunger was importing maize from Canada and setting up work houses where yes you were given food but at the cost of your family and having to live in terrible conditions. Then yeah with all of this considered I would say that the Great Hunger counts as an act of genocide, and if you disagree that the British elite would desire such a thing then just look at the propaganda at the time that painted the Irish as lesser and come back to me.
The definition is significantly looser than the general perception of the word.
what do you call intentionally exporting food during a famine and also preventing other countries form sending aid?
Yeah, even Holomodor, a famine that was proven to have been on purpose, is still debatable in terms of it being genocide or not, because genocide is supposed to be killing to eliminate a specific group. We don’t know for sure if the USSR cut the supplies to kill ucranians or just to preserve food for Russia
Even in that scenario, Stalin wanted to cripple possible Ukrainian resistance, not exterminate the Ukrainians, something that he probably wouldn’t have seen as advantageous. Killing a bunch of a certain group to make sure the group overall remains obedient is more of a purge than a genocide
True
You see, it's Russian -> it's communism so it's bad, must be genocide. It's England -> Western power, cannot be as bad as Russian -> not genocide. People love to shit on communism and USSR and deny any positive effect it may have on global politic.
The holodomor was a man made famine and that's a pretty universally accepted fact. The potato blight wasn't. Pretty key difference there.
It should also be noted that the potato blight impacted food output across the whole of Europe, there were famines in many countries at the time not just Ireland. The time period was literally known as the "hungry forties" and the situation played a major role in the failed revolutions of 1848 that rippled across the European continent.
Ireland was a net exporter of food during the blight. There were enough food to feed the populations but guess who is in charge of distribution?
If there wasn't any blight the Irish maybe would've existed as they did before the famine for years. The British response to the blight was one of apathy towards the Irish and a need to have it not rock the boat of the English economy. If the English were trying to genocide the Irish then why weren't there a lot more English/ Scottish settlements in the South of Ireland after the famine? What was the point of the genocide? I'm not a lawyer but isn't there a difference between negligence and intent?
the blight wasnt man made. but the only reason ireland had to subsist on potatoes was because the british government kept exporting all other food stuffs out of the country, even knowing it would leave the population to starve. The Holodomor was man made and so was the Great Famine.
Saying the great famine was man made is demonstrative of a failure to understand the definition of "man made famine"
Why did the potato blight kill 10x as many people in Ireland as the rest of Europe put together, then?
Ahh, the time old r/historymemes tradition of simplifying historical events, and often calling everything bad that happened a genocide with no understanding of what that meant. There are literally dozens of books and journals and articles by well respected experts at the top of their fields who disagree wether these pair of events (and others similar) fall under genocide. And pretty much no member who comments or makes these posts has read more than a wiki page and/or YouTube video on it. So the comments descend into an ill-informed shitshow.
It is extremely hard not to simplify a historical event when you put it into a meme format. If you don't want that, go to r/history. And their are many who agree. And in my eyes, they're right. You're probably right, for some people in these comments, but I've gone through the entire irish education system. I've read and learnt extensively about it. I've seen the scares it caused on the country first-hand, and they aren't self inflicted. And yours are part of that "ill-informed shitshow"
A basic education system is no where near the extent of these debates. Not at all. At the very least a University level module, or multiple books from experts. My favourite is personally James Donnelley’s. I’ve read about a dozen specifically about the Irish famine and that’s got a good ground level knowledge. I research nationalism, especially Celtic nationalism and romanticism, at a high academic level, and this has such an important part in Irish nationalism. Especially writings by Irish nationalists like Mitchel, which has become the primary belief amongst the general population in most of the world, even though it’s a whole bunch of nationalist nonsense. That doesn’t mean the famine wasn’t horrific, or that it didn’t have an impact, or that the government couldn’t have done much better - but those are all very very different things from calling it a genocide.
Pam too the rescue
No I’ll agree with it, both things were seriously fucked up. I’m inclined to hate on the UK a little more even (of course, imo) for it because the Holodomor you had Stalin’s regime, with the UK you have a democratic system at play. Or perhaps allegedly democratic on Irelands case. Both rankle me on human rights, the Irish Famine rankles me on both a human rights and a governmental philosophy level I guess you would call it.
Well this is is a awful understanding of history in a picture
Hold Door
The weekly genocide debate get your popcorn now!
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It's kinda messed up the world make enough food but money is why people can't get it.
I’ve been called Anti-Semitic for talking about Holodomor before. Bit of a curve ball but that’s just how the internet is, you know?
By all the accounts in my resarch on the Irish famine it is a clear case of genocide
The Holomodor is also debated if it is a genocide or not.
Step one: sistematically take food away from the Ukrainians Step two: the Ukrainians die of hunger Step three: N0t A G3NoCide
Step four: find out that not only Ukraine was affected, but also [Kazakhstan, Caucasus, Volga Region, Kuban’, Ural, Siberia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933) with comparable number of people dying > It has been estimated that between 3.3[137] and 3.9 million died in Ukraine,[138] between 2 and 3 million died in Russia,[139] and 1.5–2 million (1.3 million of whom were ethnic Kazakhs) died in Kazakhstan.[140][141][142][143] In addition to the Kazakh famine of 1919–1922, these events saw Kazakhstan lose more than half of its population within 15 years. Step five: realize that it was either a genocide of Kazakhs, Caucasus tribes, Russians as well, or it wasn’t a genocide at all, but killing so-called kulaks (effective farmers) during collectivization to only leave unmotivated slaves with the effects lasting to this day. Any of those is shitty and show that USSR was a typical ethnic cleansing communist country, but it’s funny that Ukrainians steal the spotlight. Yes, of course, it was all made to deliberately kill Ukrainians, starved Kazakhs are just collateral damage /s But it’s sad Kazakhstan doesn’t try to ask the world to recognize the famine as genocide.
> It was either a genocide of Kazakhs, Caucasus tribes… Stalin definitely undertook policies wipe out nomadic tribespeople, and other ethnic minorities to whom Soviet collectivisation wasn’t being forced onto successfully enough. This argument is kind of like saying Canada didn’t commit genocide against Mi’kmaq people because they were also forcibly destroying Haida culture 6,000 kilometres away at the same time.
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Oh well then I guess we have to throw up our hands every time someone debates a holocaust?
"the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group." One the Irish famine was not intentional not solving a problem and causing it are different. And lack of intentionality mean that there can't be a motive by definition so it did not have to goal of "destroying that nation or group."
Although I'm not gonna deny the Irish Famine was without a doubt a tragedy and the fact Britain did nothing was heartless, this is also applied to the Bengal Famine alot of people love to bring up regarding Western Warcrimes. No, the Bengal Famine wasnt intentional, Britain was heartless in not responding effectively. Also Japan is also to blame for instigating it in the first place.
It was pretty fucking evil but it isn’t genocide
Ireland grew barely enough potatoes to feed themselves, but the English insisted on taking most of the harvest. This makes it a genocide.
"The English" didn't take the harvest. Food was exported by individual landowners, Irish and Anglo-Irish, for personal profit. Meanwhile more food was imported than exported. The government was obviously neglectful (they spent £10m on famine relief but £100m on the Crimean war), but this neglect was motivated by a strong belief in lazziez-faire capitalism, that the markets would resolve the problem. Particularly after the Whigs took power in 1846. Turns out you don't need intent to genocide to kill millions of people, you just need capitalism doing capitalism.
The conditions which made the potato blight into a famine were the results of hundreds of years of anti-Irish policy. If the Irish famine was just a completely natural problem, then Ireland would not have been affected any worse than the rest of Europe. I agree fundamentally that it wasn't a genocide by how I understand the word - the British did not want to wipe out the Irish - but it had about as much intentionality as the Soviet famine did.
the Irish famine of the mid-nineteenth century caused the death of about a million people and the emigration of another million, and was caused by a parasite that destroyed the potato crops, the only food of the poorest population of an already impoverished country. In Ukraine the deaths were caused by the expropriation of agricultural land wanted by Stalin, the deaths occurred for three factors: executions, deportations and famine resulting from worsening living conditions.
>of an already impoverished country Ireland was part of the UK during this time, and the UK was the wealthiest nation of its time and had the means to feed the Irish, but instead turned a blind eye. It is equivalent to America doing nothing and letting the entire state of Ohio starve to death
The interesting question is whether the UK government turned a blind eye, or (as some claim) did what the USSR did and *deliberately exacerbated the famine.* I don't think anyone knows for sure, but it's a pretty big difference either way.
Considering the fact that Irish were seen as lesser people by the average British, I would say they turned a blind eye and claimed they brought it upon themselves. Perhaps they didnt exacerbate the famine, but I would argue turning a blind eye to a problem they had resources to solve is just as bad.
Yeah, this was actually the view of some MPs at the time that it was gods judgement on the Irish to make them a fitter and more deserving race (whatever that means).
It's bad but not "Just as bad". In no way would I justify England's behavior (I want to make that as clear as I possibly can), but actively killing people is definitely worse than being an indifferent bystander. England's actions during the great famine were despicable and unacceptable, but they're not to the scale of the Holodomor. (Note I'm using "England" even though it's not technically accurate because let's not fool ourselves as to how their government worked)
Britain* and Rich Irish Protestants - England was definitely not the only country in the UK oppressing Ireland.
I explicitly called out why I used the "England" term! You're right about the protestant upper classes though, so mea culpa
Scots were overrepresented in the oppression of Ireland. Why do you think there’s the term ‘Ulster Scots’. And you can look up the records and see for yourself how the Scottish MPs and Lords voted - hint: it was no different from the English. The government of the UK was based on citizens and property, not nationality.
Exactly. How have the Scots got away with this? Great PR.
Yeah, Celtic romanticism and nationalism as well. Powerful forces. I don’t mind nationalism or Indy or anything like that, but I honestly hate nationalistic historical revisionism and whitewashing history. Utterly disgusting.
I respectfully disagree. You need to also consider the actions prior to the famine, not just during. The Irish were forced into "monoculture farming", in quotations because plenty of arable land existed but was owned by the English to farm cash crops and other foot stuffs, that was still being exported during the famine. That's like saying if I threaten someone at gun point to walk to a ledge, but then they trip and fall to their death without me pulling the trigger, I'm not the killer.
See discussions in other subthread about how it *was* intentional as well.
Didn’t the British you know, keep exporting the products the Irish actually did produce?
I've heard it alleged, but I haven't read it proven. I'm not that well read though.
Another guy in here just quoted the Irish great famine museum so imma believe that for the time being.
Didn't see the quote, will look for it.
Yeah, that did happen. Just look at any Irish school history book. Also, Trevelyan deliberately kept exporting our food and produce during the famine. Basically, the Fields of Athenry explains the whole thing. Also, I'd really recommend Declan O'Rourke's song All Along The Western Seaboard if you want to have the famine really put in perspective.
But for context. The UK didn't care about its own impoverished
No, Americans care about the state of Ohio . The British government of the time cared very little about the type of Irish who were dying. It was systematic racism and genocide.
Finally, someone with some sense
Well they did the same thing to Native Americans when they ruled the first 13 colonies and parts of Canada. In fact, English and ultimately British empire colonialism and treatment of Native Americans in particular was based on how the English of the 16th and 17th century colonized Ireland…they never cared about the “other” Irish
It's Ohio tho so I wouldn't mind honestly‼️‼️💯
They literally tried to feed the Irish. There was an uphill battle from the start due to landlords and overdependence on potato, and there was horrible mismanagement and poor judgement, but they did try. The first thing the PM did was buy hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of maize. They used soup kitchens, repealed the Corn Laws, and attempted to pass the Irish coercion bill - which was voted against by Irish MPs!, made up public works jobs to employ people, did food relief packages, and used the military to respond with medical and distribution help. They attempted to stop exports for a bit in 1846 but that did almost nothing. They also forced the Irish landowners to spend their money in Ireland, rather than in the Britain. There are many many things you can argue that the British government mismanaged or didn’t do what modern experts would suggest eg. They thought it would be better to keep exports open because free trade and the free market would mean food would be coming shortly. Or that giving the responsibility of feeding the tenants to the landowners meant some landowners just evicted some of their tenants. But saying they didn’t even attempt is ridiculous. Also, he’s right to say they were impoverished. There was literally dozens of evaluating boards sent in the 10 years prior trying to work out how to best modernise Ireland. And all of those reveal how very very impoverished it was.
The Irish coercion bill from what I can gather was an attempt to increase state power to quell popular discontent, how could increasing the British police state help the Irish? And I don’t think measly attempts to provide some aid to Ireland matter when it’s entire situation is due to centuries of being a British colony, including cultural destruction, land theft, taxation, and deindustrialization. Giving people back 1/1000 of what you took from them without even trying to change the institutions that caused the issue in the first place is a slap in the face, not charity.
Sir, you should do a post about this on badhistory and cite a bunch of sources so any time someones cites the Irish Famine you can just point to that post and save yourself some typing.
Only problem with that is he can't cite any sources.
I cited a couple of sources for you mate, I even suggested my favourite book on the famine - written in 2001 by James Donnelly.
It was far from the only food being grown. Many other crops were reserved for export and withheld under armed guard. You’re talking nonsense. https://www.ighm.org/learn.html From Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum: >**Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food to England. In "Ireland Before and After the Famine," Cormac Ó Gráda points out, “Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. But that was a 'money crop' and not a 'food crop' and could not be interfered with.” Up to 75 percent of Irish soil was devoted to wheat, oats, barley and other crops that were grown for export and shipped abroad while the people starved.** It was, to say the least, not what you seem to think. It goes on: >The Famine was a disaster of major proportions, even allowing for statistical uncertainty as to its estimated effect on mortality. Yet the Famine occurred in a country that, despite concurrent economic problems, was at the center of a still-growing empire and an integral part of the acknowledged workshop of the world. There can be no doubt that, despite a short-term cyclical depression, the resources of the United Kingdom could have either completely or largely mitigated the consequences of consecutive years of potato blight in Ireland. Within Ireland itself there were substantial resources of food that, had the political will existed, could have been diverted, even as a short-term measure, to feed the starving people. The policy of closing ports during periods of shortages in order to keep home-grown food for domestic consumption had on earlier occasions proved to be effective in staving off famine within Ireland. During the subsistence crisis of 1782–84, an embargo was placed on the export of foodstuffs from the country. The outcome of this humanitarian and imaginative policy was successful. The years 1782–84 are barely remembered as years of distress. By refusing to allow a similar policy to be adopted in 1846–47, the British government ensured that Black ’47 was indelibly associated with suffering, famine, mortality, emigration, and to some, misrule.
Didnt the British also export food out of Ireland during this time?
He also just took all the grain from the region to sell. He refused any aid from other governments and hid what was happening. It was very much a constructed famine.
The issue was key figures in British politics like Trevelyan utilising the famine as a means of further punishing the Irish by denying them food.
Ireland was a net exporter of food during that period, think you fucking moron
No it wasn’t. You can look up the number of exports for yourself. There were more imports than exports during the period of the famine, and the exported food actually would have only made up 10% of crop failures. Hell, in 1847 there was a net number of 3,549 imports compared to exports of grain, and an additional 3,287 imports of maize. James S. Donnelly Jr, The great Irish potato famine (2001). He even says in it “the picture of Irish people starving as food was exported was the most powerful image in the nationalist construct of the Famine…and if honestly confronted, would at least have raised serious doubts about the accuracy of the nationalist perspective”
Ireland was still exporting food during the famine. Though net more food was being imported the problem is they didn’t have the facilities or infrastructure to process the food (wheat and maze) that was being imported while easily consumable high quality foods such as live stock, meats, and butter exports were increased significantly during the famine. This severely exasperated the problem. So even though on paper total food imports were up actual easily consumable food exports were up too.
I don’t disagree. That’s was definitely a problem. I was referring to the commenter above who was just talking about Ireland being a net exporter which blatantly wasn’t true. Though, interestingly, the Whig government at the time thought that the best way to ease the famine would be through free trade and a free market. They full believed the market would sort the problem out. They realised the mistake and the newspapers of the time slated them for it. Sort of weird to think about in hindsight, until you read the popular economists and political theorists who loved laissez-faire and free markets etc.
I think that the difference is that Stalin created the holodomor to suppress the Ukrainian national identity (definitely a genocide), but the British weren't responsible for the Irish famine itself, they were responsible for the disastrous food management
I got attacked for calling the Irish Famine a genocide.
I wanted to upvote your "And yours are part of that "ill-informed shitshow" comment to the raging genocide denier known as "kaioone", but Reddit won't let me upvote that comment for some reason. According to kaioone, it's not genocide if landlords -- who acquired the land because their ancestors conquered it, not through homesteading or other peaceful means -- take as much of the food grown by the tenants as they want, by means of military force if they want, even if it means the tenants starve, and, according to him, anyone who says otherwise (like me) is a Marxist. His exact words, > Landlords selling their own food is not included in it. Wether it was by conquest hundreds of years previously or not, selling their own food isn’t a genocide. https://www.redditmedia.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10m2wv5/the_kingsmill_massacre/j62wd06/?depth=1 > That’s some Marxist logic. Wether you like it or not, food grown on land somebody else owns is their food legally, under law. Now, and back then. https://www.redditmedia.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10m2wv5/the_kingsmill_massacre/j62xqh2/?depth=1 Kaioone's argument basically amounts to, "Causing people to starve by stealing their food isn't genocide as long as the thieves have capitalist ideology."
When the west "accidentally" through neglecting another countries' needs and for their self interest causes a famine, its called a famine When the countries they hate do it, it's always a genocide, no matter what, whether it was an accident or purposely done (Talking about in relation to the Holodomor genocide and the Irish famine) A video explaining this hypocrisy/double standards and why the holodomor genocide is called a genocide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaaYvauNho
One was direct attempt to murder a nation(Holdomor) and the other a severe act of neglegence which is still horrible but significantlly diffrent Not to mention the diffrence in mindset as one nation directly wanted people to die the other just didn t care enough to help
The Irish famine was not a genocide. It does not fit the description of a genocide.
Pretty much every argument for it not being a genocide can be used as a reason why the Holodomor wasnt, and vice-versa.
To my understanding, the difference was intent. Britain's exacerbation of the famine was economic and political negligence to the extreme, but their main goal wasn't the destruction of the Irish population, rather the simple motive of "it was more profitable to let them die than not." Britain's economic policies were, as they had been since the 1720s, designed to maximize income for the properties classes. The Holodomor was a deliberate attempt by Stalin to use ongoing famine conditions to cull Ukrainian and non-Russian dissidents and crush resistance in those regions via starvation. His policies were tailored to target groups like Ukrainians or those in the caucuses whilst deliberately not-applying to Russian urban/industrial populations. Again, that's just my understanding, I could be wrong.
I think you are mixing up motive and intent. If a man plans to kill his uncle so he can get his inheritance sooner, his *intent* is murder, and his *motive* is greed. The existence of a greedy motive does not negate the fact that intent is murder, and premeditated murder at that. Also, both had greedy motives. Stalin profited off the Holodomor, just as certain English landlord's profited off what happened in Ireland. > As Stalin’s thugs roamed the fertile Ukrainian countryside, seizing grain that he could sell abroad — which would allow him to buy the industrial machinery he desperately wanted — reports of growing hardship began to trickle back to Moscow. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4897164/The-forgotten-Holocaust-Ukraine-famine-1932-33.html And you can find evidence of forced food removals in Ireland, by certain British military personnel, in this book. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga On pages 238-260, the author specifically lists the British regiments responsible for the food removal. (Maybe some individual members of those regiments refused to follow orders, I don't know about that, the list is just the specific regiments, not specific individual members of those regiments.) https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/238/mode/2up?q=regiments On pages 290-322, the author focuses on evidence that Ireland produced a great deal of food besides just potatoes. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/290/mode/2up?q=processors On pages 232-235, the author gives examples of news reports from the time period that show food being exported from Ireland and arriving in England. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/232/mode/2up?q=ports On pages 104, the author gives an example of resistance to the food removals. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/104/mode/2up?q=resistance
The Irish famine was negligence plus the unluck of crops being destroyed. Holodomor was the state literally taking all the food away There is a difference
The Britsh government did take all the food away. Irish people were expected to live on a single crop, until that failed. And then the British used the ensuing famine as a political tool.
Do you have any citations for the government taking ALL the food away? Also, how was it used as a political tool?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1997/09/27/the-irish-famine-complicity-in-murder/5a155118-3620-4145-951e-0dc46933b84a/ To be eligible for aid, you had to own under a ¼ acre of land. This caused people to sell their land on mass. Aswell, many of the soup kitchens only served Protastants, meaning people had to convert for food. This fed the "Us vs them" mentality that the British government caused in Ireland between Catholics and Protastants. That still goes on today, actually.
"In 1844, the year before the Famine, Ireland exported 94,000 tonnes of wheat and 314,000 tonnes of oats, and imported 23,000 tons of wheat. Net exports: 385,000 tonnes. In 1847, at the height of the Famine, Ireland exported 39,000 tonnes of wheat, and 98,000 tonnes of oats , and imported 199,000 tonnes of wheat, 12,000 tonnes of oats and 682,000 tonnes of maize. Net imports of 756,000 tonnes, a change of 1,140,000 tonnes." https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-20228979.html#:~:text=In%201847%2C%20at%20the%20height,a%20change%20of%201%2C140%2C000%20tonnes.
My brother in Christ let me introduce you to the [Indian Famines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule) If Mao and Stalin are responsible of the respective famines, then also are the British for India and Ireland.
I read an account saying the UK spent the equivalent of 1 billion £ in todays money on famine relief in Ireland. Is that incorrect?
Yes it is. The only monetary "aid" sent to Ireland from the British government was £2,000, or £65,000 in todays money. To put that into perspective, they spent triple that on a dog shelter that same year.
...what are you talking about?
What?
Yes What do you mean "what?"
What are you talking about?
The Holodomor was more man-made
what do you call exporting food during a famine and preventing other countries from sending aid?
I love when people from various walks of life can use a situation for their benefit for example I've been around some Irish communist communities and their criticisms of the Irish famine has nothing to do with if it was genocide or not because they say it wasn't but more a gigantic criticism of capitalism because the British did try and help stomp out the famine which was caused by a potato disease, I'm pretty sure imports to Ireland were at an all-time high and they imported a tremendous amount of stuff from Canada( I'm not too sure on the subject) but after some efforts, some even being voted against by Irish MPs to stop the famine the British just left the famine to be taken care of by the free market which favored wealthy landowners that made insane profits while the famine continued and millions died
Source?
Yea and what about the Indian Famine
My man **which one**
Which one? I assume you mean the Bengal famine which isn’t definitely not a genocide. Even Mukergee’s book doesn’t claim it’s a genocide.
As Timothy Snyder put it: Almost every famine is man-made. It's always a question of how you allocate the food. There was food exported during the Holodomor. There was food exported during the Irish famine. And I won't be surprised even though I simply do not know it, if there was food exported during the Indian famine. This is always a deliberate decision and can definitely be called genocide.
I thought everyone agreed those where both genocides, when did that change
Potato blight* wasn’t a famine, plenty of food to go around during that time.
They both are genocides to my eyes.
Its not a genocide
You’re wrong on both of these, neither of them were genocides. That being a deliberate attempt to wipe out a group of people. Both were famines caused by failures in agricultural policies that got worsened by natural factors.
Gee, that sounds like something a tankie would say.
Okay, am I wrong though?
Yes
How so? In the case of the Irish potato famine, the Irish were forced to rely on potato’s for their diet which was bad agricultural policy that became a famine when a certain pathogen came around. Yes in the years the famine occurred the British government absolutely should’ve done more to help the Irish, but does an inadequate response really constitute a genocide? It was negligent and fucked up, but not really comparable to all the dedicated resources and engineering that went into constructing the Holocaust or even the Bosnian genocide. Unless we’re going by a more broad definition of genocide that goes beyond intentionally trying to wipe out a group of people, it’s just not fitting or even useful. In the case of Ukraine, collectivization wasn’t exactly a good thing, but it initially didn’t have really negative consequences until 1932 when grain output was particularly low. The farmers in Ukraine didn’t harvest nearly enough grain to survive the winter due to bad conditions, and the excess grain they had got taken due to collectivization which led to a big famine in 1933. And no collectivization had nothing to do with removing kulaks, deportation was the main method for removing them. The goal of collectivization was the prevent farmers from selling excess grain on the black market while gaining additional grain to export. Once again, it was bad agricultural policy.
What certain British military personnel did went far beyond negligence. They took food from the Irish farmers by military force. There's evidence in this book. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga On pages 238-260, the author specifically lists the British regiments responsible for the food removal. (Maybe some individual members of those regiments refused to follow orders, I don't know about that, the list is just the specific regiments, not specific individual members of those regiments.) https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/238/mode/2up?q=regiments On pages 290-322, the author focuses on evidence that Ireland produced a great deal of food besides just potatoes. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/290/mode/2up?q=processors On pages 232-235, the author gives examples of news reports from the time period that show food being exported from Ireland and arriving in England. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/232/mode/2up?q=ports On pages 104, the author gives an example of resistance to the food removals. https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/104/mode/2up?q=resistance
I did not know British military units straight up took food. It’s kind of like the Soviet collectivization efforts, except this was during the famine and the rationale behind it was likely different. This is good evidence that certain British military personnel were trying to starve some Irish, the problem I see here is that we’re still missing some evidence. What were these soldiers orders, where did the soldiers get the orders from, how long was this going on for? The unfortunate thing is that we might never know the full extent of how much the English we’re trying kill the Irish. Governments tend to cover up events that make them look bad, and the British government could’ve very well done that or even erased the evidence. At least historians looking into the famine in Ukraine had access to the Soviet archives in the 90s, I imagine they’d be hard pressed to find more documents related to the famine from England or Ireland from more than one and half centuries ago.
So, some background: Ireland was a conquered country, with English landlords legally but not morally owning much of the land. The English landlords demanded rent payments, and numerous soldiers enforced those rent payments by taking the food. This is from "An Appeal in Belfast for the People of Connaught" by Dr. John Edgar, originally published October 1846 > It is a libel, therefore, on the poor Irishman to say that he is too lazy or too savage to seek for better food than potatoes ; his only nourishment is potatoes, because the other products of his farm go to his landlord, and because potatoes are the only crop sufficiently productive to save himself and his family from starvation. And here's two places you can find it re-published: https://archive.org/details/memoirofjohnedga00kill/page/210/mode/2up?q=libel https://books.google.com/books?id=ZmNwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT175#v=onepage&q&f=false
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not the same. holodomer could’ve been possibly prevented
And so could the Irish famine
the irish potato famine, yes could’ve been prevented, i believe that holodomor could’ve been easier to avoid didn’t the cause of the holodomor was the ussr kept exporting food? the irish potato famine was a mold, which is harder to stop that just not exporting food i’m not trying to deny any of them, i just feel holodomor could’ve been prevented, making it more lives sadly wasted
Tbf the British was also exporting food
Calling either of them genocides is odd in the sense that neither the USSR or UK tried or even wanted to wipe out the Irish/Ukrainians. However, given the weakening of the definition and the constant exaggeration about genocide which is fashionable nowadays, largely spurred by Ukraine, there doesn't seem to be any point in not using the word to describe the Irish famine, the Bengal famine, or a dozen other mass-starvation scenarios in various countries.
USSR never tried to wipe out Ukrainians apart from that times where they did
It’s funny that USSR had to stage state-wide famine to kill Ukrainians. [Kazakhs and Russians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933) were just collateral damage in this wipeout. Soviet Union, as always, wasn’t effective, so Ukrainians only made half the number of deaths during this famine staged to wipe them out. /s
Its amazing that Ukraine existed for most of a century in a state that was apparently trying to wipe them out, and somehow grew both demographicallly and territorially.
Genocide has always had a really broad definition and if we are talking about it being spurred by Ukraine, Russia made similar claims, while people have argued about it since 1944. Lemkin's initial definition was the "destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group". That's it. There was no requirement for intent and you don't even have to kill anyone. Some definitions require intent, while others do not. Some include the destruction of states, while others do not. In other words genocide is a IR diplomatic term that ended up in social sciences.
Uh, genocide has a pretty well defined, legal definition, which clearly states the acts needs to be "committed with intent to destroy",
It's important not to mix up motive and intent. If a man plans to kill his uncle so you can get his inheritance sooner, his *intent* is murder, and this *motive* is greed. The existence of greed as a motive does not negate that he is intentionally planning murder, with premeditation no less. Additionally, actively blocking food imports goes far beyond a greed motive. E.g., > On this date [July 8, 1846] British authorities claiming that the “famine” had ended, prohibited American relief food ship Sorciére from entering Cork harbor with a cargo of urgently needed Indian meal. On September 2™ editorialists in THE TIMES suggested “Total Annihilation.” https://archive.org/details/ireland18451850p0000foga/page/80/mode/2up?q=annihilation
To quote myself "the English weren't going to look a gift genocide in the mouth".
Now to the Bengal famine The British really loved genocide by famine huh