Reply #26: Minor Correction for Potato Famine [View All]

[happyslug]

No one had Potatoes in Ireland during the Famine, the problem was the export crop (and what the landowners ate) was WHEAT not potatoes. The Wheat was shipped to London for sale (or made into bread for the landowners).

The poor Irish had become dependent on Potatoes for it was the richest form of food per acre they could plant. What really caused the hatred was the fact that the men worked in the wheat fields and could obtain food by eating the wheat (And that way NOT get caught "stealing") but if they tried to take any wheat home they were called thieves and arrested and the wheat confiscated. Thus you had a situation where the men saw their wives and children starved to death while they lived on. This just breads hatred and while the Irish claim their hatred of the English date back to the Middle Ages, prior activities of the English had been "Normal" massacres between peoples (i.e. what happens when you have two people in conflict, not always nice but also not something to "Hate" a people for. You hate the person who did the crime i.e Oliver Cromwell but not his fellow countrymen). The Irish Famine was something else. The English through their stupidity and greed caused the deaths and the men of Ireland could do nothing about it. This was NOT the product of War and the excesses of one or two men (Going back to Cromwell again as an example) but the product of a System that just did not care if people died. A system that was the product of the English people (as far as the Irish were concerned).

Thus the real hatred of the Irish to the English starts in the 1830s and related to the Irish Potato famine and the shipment of wheat from Ireland to London.

One more fact from the Irish Famine, the first two years of the Famine was elevated by the Prime Minister of England who purchased American Maize to the sold in Ireland (NOT at a profit, just resold to break even). His actions were found out by his Party and he lost the Prime Minster-ship. Thus people wanted to do something but the greed of the people who owned the Wheat prevented it.

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/famine.html
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/irish_pf.html
http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/potato.html
http://www.humboldt1.com/~history/lexiso/

A more pro-British view of the Famine:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/begins.htm