How bad was it really? Does it count as a genocide?
>>18429319Very bad.Not really a genocide properly speaking but it was definitely exacerbated and permited by British authorities to drastically reduce the number of Irish people. The population actually hasn't recovered to this day.And I'm sure the Malthusians enjoyed the confirmation bias.
>>18429324And the british did cause the famine, they just didn't engineer it.In that sense I think it's kind of like the famines in British India.
There was no famine, the 'tato harvest failed but Ireland was still a major wheat exporter, it was just that the Taig potato farmers in the swamps were completely brainwashed Catholic fanatics that refused to accept food from Protestants, so subservient as they are to the "Bishop" of Rome. They come from a long line of Irish who deliberately starve themselves to death out of spite.
>>18429324Was reducing the number of irish actually something that influenced their decision making though?
>>18429324if it is all confirmation bias it ranks among one of the strongest coincidental correlations
>>18429324That's the thing. Famines like this were natural (though not usually that extreme) for most of history in most areas. Malthus was right in that regard. Just not in europe of the 19th century, when the combined effects of emigration, food imports and rising agricultural yields had much improved the situation.
It was not a genocide, it was a natural disaster made worse by profit-driven agricultural practices and a poor government response.The potato famine occurred all across Europe, even in England the time was known as the "hungry 40s". It caused increased migration from the countryside into the cities across the continent. This happened too in Ireland, but those industrial cities people migrated to were in Britain rather than Ireland, as opposed to internal migration elsewhere. This was the true cause of Irish population decline, and continue to affect the island long after the famine was over.
>so I know that the vulnerabilities in our administration in Ireland were exposed in a famine already in the late 1700s>and I know it's become readily apparant that the way we're running Ireland is extremely unpopular and very retarded>and I know we've been deliberately undermining and under-developing Irish fisheries for years>and I know our land policies have reduced most of the population to a level of poverty that draws criticism from basically anyone who visits>and I know this blight hit the rest of Europe, but nobody suffered quite as badly as this one place that we're in charge of running>but the mass starvation and death isn't our problemAnglos, not even once.
>>18429355Not really a coincidence. Just a somewhat intentional misreading of the situation. Ireland was not overpopulated, what was happening to it was that a class of foreign landholders aggressively immiserated the rural population to the point where most of the island relied entirely on one single crop to feed themselves. This crop failed, which caused a massive crisis, then exacerbated by Britain's refusal to establish a proper response, continued exportation of food into Britain.Not that the urban population fared very much better.>>18429340Not explicitly, anyway.>>18429356There was nothing natural about the Great Irish Famine. That said you are right that periodic famines were common accurrences around the world.
>>18429374>Did we mention that we fucking hate this Island and everyone in it for obtuse reasons?Ireland was basically England's (then Britain's) first colonial possesion.
>>18429339>can't catch the thatch>every single demand made by sands and the hunger strikers was granted>enormous propaganda win for the Irish side, IRA gets a massive boost in support>rioiting all over northern ireland, sands (a relatively untested man even in Republican circles) goes from IRA prisoner #54375976 to an internationally renowned hero and huge martyr>wave of retaliatory attacks against british security forces>biggest jailbreak in british history from the same prison a couple years later>Thatcher's entire "no compromise" approach revealed to not only have been wrong but actually detrimental to British interests in Northern Ireland>people STILL think she's an epic taig obliterator because she said an epic quotekekkedA statue to him was unveiled recently, not long after two Irish revolutionaries got statues at Belfast City Hall. It must be very infuriating to seethe about the Irish all the time.
>>18429380All the more ridiculous given that the permanent answer to the Irish Question was handed to Britain on a plate in the 1780s:>concept of an Irish Republic doesn't exist>Mostly Protestant Parliament starts a Patriot Movement, wants to reform the Irish Parliament to strengthen Ireland as a nation in a British context>Huge political talent behind this idea>Catholic Committee endorses it as a good path to emancipation>Ireland would now be in the hands of Protestants AND Catholics who are loyal to the idea that their nationhood is drawn from rights granted by the parliament which is tied to the Crown>SHUT IT DOWN!!!>MANDATORY UNION>TRILLIONS MUST WORK ON INEFFICIENT SHITHEAP FARMS>YOU WILL REBEL EVERY 20 YEARS FOREVER, OKAY?
>>18429381are there any ulster loyalist statues?
>>18429385Not really. There's Carson, at Stormont, but wasn't an Ulster Loyalist-he was an Irish Unionist from Dublin who was ultimately disappointed by the splitting of Ireland in two. There are no statues to members of the UVF/UDA and so on-there are murals, but that's it. While all belligerents of the Troubles did horrible things, Loyalism doesn't really have "heroes" in the same way Nationalism/Republicanism does; famous Loyalist gunmen were more "infamous" for sectarian killings than they were famous for combatting the IRA.Closest thing are the early progressives of Loyalism (Gusty Spence, David Ervine, etc) they tend to get frowned upon due to "going soft."
>>18429381>britain lost because thatcher's successors cucked out and compromisedwell, yeah, I'll grant you that
>>18429384They weren't going to rest until they made A modest proposal real.
>>18429377>There was nothing natural about the Great Irish Famine.I mean, crop failures WERE natural. For most of history, the state would have been unable to help even if willing. The irish potato famine was a historically unusual case where the state could have helped, but decided not to.
>>18429393Britain didn't lose, the Troubles ended in a military stalemate and a political compromise. The only people who didn't gain anything were the Ulster Unionists.>thatcher's successors cucked outNo, Thatcher herself did the damage. The Irish Republican movement was larger+stronger after Thatcher's attempt to suppress it. Every time Britain took a harsh approach to Ulster, things got worse for them and better for the IRA.
>>18429397And of course, the statered fostered the situation that lead to the famine in the first place. England had a diversified economy that could afford food imports and diversified agriculture that was famine proof in 1845. Ireland didn't because the government didn't foster that kind of development.
>>18429408>the statered fostered the situationUnless you look back a couple hundred years it didn't really, their crime was they did nothing to go against it. Not did they exactly foster "food imports" or "diversified agriculture", the landholding class still dominated British politics in this time period, and the corn laws had long been around to prevent exact that and artificially raise the price of food. In the 1840s the price of bread in England was greater than what the average working man earned in a week. Hence why Britain was so politically volatile in the 1830s and early 40s.
>>18429319The Irish are communists who support trannies and importing browns this is the first in a long line of commie famines
>>18429377>Not explicitly, anyway.So it wasn’t and you’re making it up.
>>18429449Ireland has never, in all its history, had an actual left-wing government. Northern Ireland arguably has, but the ROI hasn't.
>>18429319Definitely a genocide. This is how most genocides have always worked, there is some famine or plague or other mass death scenario and the state decides to make it worse for some people. In other places that suffered the same potato blight with the same level of reliance on potato crops for the peasantry the death rate was significantly lower, because in those places the state was trying to reduce the impact. In Ireland the British state already wanted to reduce the Irish population, already wanted to prevent another Irish uprising, and when an opportunity to accomplish this presented itself they took their chance.
>>18429340No, it's just that that claim is a crucial part of the Irish victim narrative (which is basically the only thing they have these days, as they're not particularly proud of the significant role Irishmen played in the British Empire anymore).
>>18429590Yeah. I think it's important to make such distinctions. See also, how I am now legally obliged to state that the holodomor was genocide, even though there was a legitimate debate among historians about that.
>>18429590>Irish victim narrative Literally a meme, it doesn't exist.Ireland's history from roughly the 16th Century onwards was dominated by extremely negative interactions with England, that's simply the way it is. If Irish people speak about:>modernisation of Gaelic warfare in the 1590s>Luke Wadding and the Franciscan Friars>The evolution of Saint Patrick's Day>The Irish Catholic Confederation>The Patriot Movement>The United Irishmen>The Repeal Movement>The emancipation movement>Home Ruleliterally any of it, it all gets labelled as "muh victim complex" because it's technically "anti-British."No Irish historian calls the famine a genocide, but for every 1 Irish person who does call it that there are 500 britons swooping in to cry about muh victim complex. Mind you, a vey pathetic societal subservience to our eastern neighbours is a big part of this-all jokes aside, many Irish people are simply britbroken.Not because they always cry about the Brits, but because they oppose any and all historiography or politics that might annoy Britain.
>>18429358This is the only decent answer in the thread. It most obviously wasn’t a genocide; Irish historians don’t even call it a genocide. I recommend pic rel as a starting point to understanding the famine. It was genuinely really bad, but almost every British official on the ground wanted to do something to relieve the plight. Most people ignore all the British charity that was very forthcoming despite also experiencing famine conditions, at least until a bunch of very out of touch upper class IRB members tried to start a rising that no one in Ireland supported. If it was a genocide, there wouldn’t have been British soup kitchens feeding millions of Irishmen every day.
