English colonization of Ireland during Potato Famine

Just out of curiousity, just what did Irish peasants eat before potatoes were brought there? I am forever correcting people when they talk about 'Irish' potatoes; I remind them that potatoes come from South America; and I know that some of the dumb shits didn't know that.

Well your basic northern European agriculture mix of cattle, pigs, cereals etc plus fishing.

Things went: Ireland with low population feeds itself -> Potato introduced, is great in Irish climate -> Irish population booms -> Potato removed -> earlier agricultural package that happily fed 2-3 million people can't cope with 8-10 million.
 
Everything I learned about the Scots and Irish I learned from this thread.

In actuality I mostly just wanted someone to respond to my stupid post on this thread but I didn't want to bump it so I tried to make the second closest idea with this one but looks like that thread was bumped anyways so I didn't even need to make this in the first place in conclusion fml.
 
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Deleted member 5719

Strat, I really suggest reading up a bit rather than just posting some Anti-English nonsense. That British government's response to the famine was pathetically inadequate, and trapped in the prevailing liberal free-trade ideology, but they did try to allevaiate the suffering of the Irish.

Ireland already had a substantial protestant Irish population by this time, these people would later reject the label "Irish" and insist on being called only British, but at that time many Irishmen of all religions happily called themselves British, and equally many didn't.

If all you know about Ireland is from the nonsense posted on the linked thread, I suggest you take a trip to Wikipedia, it usually gives you not too bad an overview, or have a look round your local bookshop.​
 
Besides, hadn't Ireland been colonized long before then?

Oh, definately. The Celts aren't even native to it, not that that's relevent, and then you have the Hiberno-Normans, the Vikings, the Anglo-Irish, and finally the Ulster Scots. The social, economic, and political trends which caused all these settlements were long gone by the Famine, however.
 
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Children, I'm certain of it. I even found an essay dating from the 1720s about it...

Like it a lot.


The notion of English colonisation during the famine is ridiculous, the reason for the famine was the over-population and over-reliance on the Potato Crop.
 
What Wolfhound says.
Its just a crazy, silly idea. The Irish (IRISH not Celtic IRISH. You ever tried calling a Englishman a German?) were leaving Ireland for Britain in droves. For people en masse to go the other way is just crazy.


Yes, yes the British did it but surely the majority of British atrocities committed against the Irish were committed by the English British.
What 'atrocities' are you referring to?
Thats a pretty strong word and I can think of nothing it applies to.

If all you know about Ireland is from the nonsense posted on the linked thread, I suggest you take a trip to Wikipedia,
Not a good idea.
Wikipedia is ruled by nationalists and 'Celtic' ones are amongst the most rabid. The Irish articles aren't the worst but they're not exactly neutral.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
When 25% of the of population of a territorium dies and another 25% emigrates you answer shouldn't be:
steve_urkel.jpg


While the Potato Famine also hit other countries, none of them was hit as hard and some them was as agriculture monoculture as Ireland. Ireland continued exporting food under the famine, that what Sudan is condemn for today.

When 25% of the of population of a territorium dies and another 25% emigrates you answer shouldn't be:

While the Potato Famine also hit other countries, none of them was hit as hard and some them was as agriculture monoculture as Ireland. Ireland continued exporting food under the famine, that what Sudan is condemn for today.

This is utter claptrap I'm afraid.

The number of dead due to the famine is around 130,000, of whom 20,000 were starvation deaths and the other 110,000 malnutrition linked diseases*****. That's a log below your figure. The number of emigrants is similarly much lower, and spread out of vast periods of time.

Exaggerated numbers largely come from the erroneous notion that the Irish population was growing. Some pundits say the Irish population should have been 9.3m be 1851, in fact it had turned the corner in 1838 and was starting to shrink. This isn't surprising as the boom that doubled Irelands population in a generation of course created a demographic well* and that the baby boomers were dying off and not being replaced.

That Ireland continued to export some food isn't surprising; there was no food shortage on the island. Government subsidies and free trade turned Ireland from a major exporter to a major importer of food, but the markets were full and the price of food in Ireland halved between 1844 and 1846. The question is the ability to access that food.

Due to the population boom and the vagueries of Irish law**, Ireland had 2m people with no source of income who lived as subsistence farmers. The failure*** of their main crop (the potato) left them destitute. This population ended up largely on state handouts, had no money for the expensive passage to America &c. For this group, things were grim.

As for emigration, while there was a minor upswing, the numbers leaving Ireland weren't much greater than before the hunger****. However, people stopped coming back. Immigation into Ireland collapsed for a period. This combined with the collapse of fertility in the late 1830's is chiefly responsible for the large decrease in the Irish population.

Looking at the US, we tend to forget that there was a largee Irish in the US before 1845. Indeed, the famine cause no "tide or Irish", it was a much longer process....

Enough for now.




* We're on the cusp of one in the west now, with all the associated deflationary pressure.

** The boom also had the effect of causing a collapse in other industries as well. The Province of Connaught, the worst effected by the famine, was a major manufacturing centre in 1815, but had no manufacturing capability beyond making agricultural tools in 1845. In 30 years Connaught moved backwards in development several centuries.

*** While we say failure, in 1845 only 1/3rd of the crop failed , and even in the worst year, 1846, around 1/4th of the potato crop was successful. The non-famine crop was maybe around 15m tons (Bourke's estimates, which many contemporaries criticised as too high, I agree with the criticism, since Potato acrage increased after the famine, but yields were only 6m tons pa), of which 7m tons were eaten by people, 5m tons by animals, 2m were used for seed and the remaining 1m were exports and wastage. The 1.2m tons of extra grain in the market more than made up for this shortfall.

**** The numbers leaving Ireland for America only show an excess in 1847, when about 97,000 left Ireland for the Americas rather than the usual 40-60,000. Much of the emigration must have been via the Port of Liverpool. In 1847, 151,000 Irish emigrated to England via Liverpool. 48,000 emigrated further (including 15,000 who returned to Ireland), mainly to the Americas.

***** We may be able to add about 10,000 victims of "Irish Fever" in England.
 

Deleted member 5719

Not a good idea.
Wikipedia is ruled by nationalists and 'Celtic' ones are amongst the most rabid. The Irish articles aren't the worst but they're not exactly neutral.


The articles aren't that badly skewed. I personally feel Britain, as rulers of Ireland, bear significant responsibility for the disaster, but posting "the saxons have stolen me horse" nonsense is irritating in the extreme.
 
Children, I'm certain of it. I even found an essay dating from the 1720s about it...

I teach school and i definitely need to get my students to read Swift's "A Modest Proposal" this year when we discuss Malthus (which goes right over their heads) and other Enlightenment era philosophers.
 

Deleted member 5719

I teach school and i definitely need to get my students to read Swift's "A Modest Proposal" this year when we discuss Malthus (which goes right over their heads) and other Enlightenment era philosophers.

What don't they get about it? (always curious when someone says that, coz it often means I'm not getting it too)
 
15-16 year olds dont do well with economics. They seem to think money grows on trees sometimes. They also think its funny when we talk about the development of mathematics and the students understand the concept of zero and basic algebra and these ancicent mathematicians had to discover it.
 
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