WI: Irish Food Exports banned to quell Great Famine?

SinghKing

Banned
So, everyone knows about the Great Potato Famine in Ireland, throughout the 1840's, which had such an dire impact on Ireland's population. I was thinking- what would have happened if the British had followed their own establised precedent, and had dealt with the Potato Famine in the same manner that they'd dealt with the last major Irish famine in 1782-83? Back then, the British decided to close Irish ports and enforce a blockade to prevent the Irish from exporting food off the island, keeping Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish people, in spite of the resentment and lobbying by Irish landowners and merchants opposed to the export ban.

If the British had decided to implement the same policy again to counter the Great Potato Famine, imposing a blanket ban on any food exports from Ireland (the working date I'm thinking of going with would be the 25th June 1846, with the imposition of the blockade approved in Parliament on the same day as the Bill to repeal the Corn Laws and the 2nd reading of the Irish Coercion Bill IOTL), how large and enduring an impact could it have had? How much less severe could the Great Famine be, and how many more Irish people would be likely to survive the famine in this timeline? How much more populated would Ireland probably be by the present day?

And conversely, how negative would the impact on the Irish economy be? How many Irish landowners and merchants would go out of business as a result of plummeting prices, and how would the policy be received by the most influential Irish people (such as the Corporation of Dublin and Lord Heytesbury)- well, or badly? Would the British imposing a food export ban on Ireland, thereby lessening the impact of the Famine on the Irish people, lead to increased support for the British government, or lead to a huge boost in support for Irish secessionism?
 
IOTL wasn't the Famine -- or, rather, the British government's inertia in the face thereof -- a major factor in the rise of Irish nationalism in the latter half of the 19th century? In which case, banning food exports would probably lead to less nationalist agitation than IOTL, possibly even to the degree that Ireland would still remain a part of the UK today.
 

SinghKing

Banned
IOTL wasn't the Famine -- or, rather, the British government's inertia in the face thereof -- a major factor in the rise of Irish nationalism in the latter half of the 19th century? In which case, banning food exports would probably lead to less nationalist agitation than IOTL, possibly even to the degree that Ireland would still remain a part of the UK today.

IOTL, it was indeed a major factor. But Irish nationalism had already been on the rise for a long time prior to the famine. The situation's not cut-and-dry by any stretch of the imagination; the Irish (and the rest of the British, in and around Ireland) are going to have whole host of different reactions and opposing views about the Irish food export ban, sending a whole host of butterflies fluttering around in all directions. Over the period of the export ban's enforcement (probably 3 years, 2 at least), Ireland would almost certainly become more self-sufficient and autonomous, with the Irish forced to sustain their own economy themselves and to take a greater role in administering their own affairs.

Without the support of increased food imports and subsidies, there's still going to be significant animosity against the British from the Irish people. Times will be harder for everyone to make profit off the land in Ireland, and the Landlords will probably attempt to balance the books by evicting even larger numbers of tenants from their land than they did IOTL in response. As such, Irish landlords and tenants will probably be even more vehemently opposed to British rule than IOTL, and if the Young Irelander Rebellion gets set into motion ITTL while the Irish export ban is still in place, then they'd probably be able to count on having far more popular support than they did IOTL, perhaps even standing a small chance of succeeding in their goal to establish the Irish Republic. Hence, I wanted to ask people for their opinions before deciding which way to go with this TL. Should I go for the Unionist option, or for the Republican option?
 
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Well the export ban in 1782-3 certainly don´t seem to have much impact on the "suffering" landlords and I cant see why it would during the Great Famine
 
AHC: Large scale British relief during Irish Famine (
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Rinasoir
My contribution from there
1) there actually was large scale relief, just not nearly enough.
2) the government of the day in Britain was "Free trade", non-interventionist. Producing THAT scale of aid would require a rather different political philosophy. Since push for free trade had been under way for a generation or more, you need a PoD at least 20 years beforehand.
3) if they have a 'liberal' (US sense) enough mindset to provide enough relief to feed 8 million 'Poor Irish Papist breeding-like-rabbits peasants', they're going to have a very different attitude toward good Protestant factory workers and slum-dwellers. Which might well impact how successful and productive British Industry is (i.e. make it less competitive).

Feeding 8 million people on imported food is EXPENSIVE, especially as steamships are just coming into service and long distance trade is still quite expensive.

Besides. What are they going to do with all those Irish afterwards? Ireland really doesn't have the carrying capacity for all those people, and the English would really hesitate to set a precedent where they'd be expected to save ever increasing numbers of Irishmen from famine.

Could they have done better? Yes.
Should they have done better? Yes.
How much better could they have done, given the political philosophy of the time, that made Britain the world's great trading empire? Not very much.

Should food EXPORTS from Ireland have happened?
Yes. What was being exported was high price wheat from private farms. 1) to stop the export would involve nationalizing all farms in Ireland, essentially.
2) if you can export (to England) expensive wheat and buy twice as much cheaper grain, wouldn't that be appropriate?


Also. Infrastructure. Even if a sufficient amount of grain miraculously appeared in Irish ports, getting it inland to all the isolated tiny Irish farms was probably impossible.


Ireland simply can't support 8 million in a reality that has potato blight (short of modern fertilizers and crops). The best result possible would be to feed the population an inadequate subsistence diet long enough to ship millions of Irish overseas. OTL, 100s of thousands (I think) were fed, but not enough, and not long enough.
 
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