Brian said:
You should look into the legal issues surrounding the facts of the "famine", which was a famine only due to land ownership and who was allowed to eat/use what crop.
Then you will see that your question is actually irrelevant. I don't remember any useful URL's, I studied this a long time ago, and I doubt that I can even name the book, let alone find it at this point.
Shane Costello
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What gave you the impression everyone in Ireland lived by the sea?
There was never a prohibition on certain people growing certain crops. There was a monoculture of potatoes among the poorer classes simply because the potato was a cheap source of food ideally suited to the Irish climate. What really contributed to starvation taking hold were the Corn Laws, which protected UK cereals from foreign competition by erecting tariffs. This made foreign corn prohibitively expensive, and ensured that Ireland actually exported food even at the height of the famine.
Shane Costello said:
Ok, we agree. I badly phrased my original reply, partially because of very fuzzy, long-ago memory.
Stopping the export of food, I seem to recall, also, would have done little but help people in Ireland eat, as well, yes? It wouldn't have affected business elsewhere very much, unless I'm really fuzzy on the details.
It's been much longer since I studied this than it has been since I did a power network model, I fear.
Ziggurat
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jj said:
Well, it would have cut down on the income for british land owners. Couldn't have that now, could we?
The absurdity of the situation was what prompted Jonathan Swift's famous "A Modest Proposal", in which he satirically proposed that, instead of taking any of a bunch of reasonable measures he listed which could have had a significant impact on the famine (such as what you mentioned, but even smaller measures as well), the Irish should just eat their own babies.
My Irish ancestors got lucky. They lived on land owned by Courtown, if I recall the name correctly. He didn't collect rent from any of his tennants during the famine, and nobody on his land starved. The story got handed down through the generations, and one day I'll tell my kids.
Shane Costello
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How do you know that no Irish Catholics were exporting food?
You may have your facts a bit mixed up. Dean Swift died a full century before the Great Famine. And while he was alive Ireland had it's own parliament, and IIRC the aim of his satire was to shock the Irish themselves to improve their conditions.
Ziggurat
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Shane Costello said:
I don't, and that's not actually really my point. My point was that there was enough food. There were plenty of ways to solve the problem, but many of them would have meant at least a short term loss of profit for British land owners. As I mentioned, Courtown, who owned the land my ancestors lived on, didn't collect rent throughout the blight years. His tenants were then able to keep the food they grew (rather than needing to sell it to pay rent), and none of them starved. Many farmers starved not because they couldn't grow any food, but because they couldn't grow enough food to eat AND pay rent, and got evicted. And if you got evicted, it was essentially a death sentence. Had the practice of not collecting rent through those years been widespread, the blight would have had much less impact.
Ah yes, you are correct, my bad . There was irony aplenty in the potato famine, and "A Modest Proposal" seems timely to that period as well.
headscratcher4
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Ziggurat said:
If I am not mistaken...and it is possible (even the Son of the 20th Century has a bad day
) the famine was in 1848, and Swift lived considerably before that...so, Swift, I don't think, was satirizing the Potato famine...he was commenting on general English attitudes toward Ireland and the Irish (as an Anglo-Irishman)....Shane Costello
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It's debatable whether the problem could have been solved once the famine took hold. The factors contributing to famine, such as monoculture of potatoes, rapid population growth, subdivision of land, had been accumulating for decades, making famine a distinct possibility if not an inevitabilty. There's a comprehensive review done here.
Ziggurat
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Shane Costello said:
Some good info there. It was certainly a huge problem and nothing would have prevented it from being a problem. But I think the evidence provided shows that a lot could in fact have been done to keep it from being the catastrophy that it became. As it says under the evictions section,
"From 1846 a disastrous application of the laissez faire economic theory and ignorance in London of the scale of the problem, coupled with the lack of the 'Three Fs' to protect tenants, turned a crisis into a catastrophe."
Doing much to alleviate the crisis would have required significant effort and commitment from the government, but it was possible.
Ziggurat said:
If the whig government had been prepared to abandon its economic and social philosophies, provide large scale food aid and to change the funding of the costs of famine relief then it would have been possible to massively reduce the death toll. This however is a lot to ask of any political organisation. Its rather like asking US republicans ( who would have approved of the whigs ) to embrace socialism.
None of this would have addressed the growing crisis of overpopulation and massive emigration would still have been necessary.
The population of the whole of Ireland today is less than it was before the famine.
Ziggurat
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Yes, it is asking a lot. And when hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, a lot should be asked. The potato blight should have been a MAJOR priority for all of Britain, and the fact that it wasn't is shameful. I'm not saying that there weren't a lot of other governments that have been just as careless, but when the need came for it, the British government failed to rise to the occasion, and others paid the price.
That's probably true, but mass emigration is a whole lot better than the mix of mass emigration and mass starvation that ended up happening.
Shane Costello
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It's important to remember that a vast humanitarian aid effort mightn't have been possible in the 1840's, even if all the will in the world was there. Rail was in it's infancy, and transport of bulk goods was done mainly by canal, so maybe the infrastructure wouldn't have been in place.
Just a couple of details to add:
First, The Irish grew potatoes because they lived on small plots of land owned by absentee, English landlords. These lanlords partitioned their land into as many parcels as possible and turned them over to middlemen who would rent each one to a single family. One and one half acres of potatoes would feed a family of six for up to a year where as the same family would need almost four times the acreage to survive on grain. Also, potatoes are generally self sufficient requiring essentially a spade and minimal labour to grow. Tenants did not need to spend time and money on equipment and labour intensive farming. The result was that they could pay ever more extortionate rents. Hence, the reliance on one crop was risky but necessary as far as the landlords were concerned.
Second, no one knew that the potatoes were infected until a couple of days after they were harvested. This blight caused them to look normal until they were picked. By the time the scale of the problem became apparant, it was too late.
Third, laws written in the 1600's which sought to preserve the monopoly on transportation enjoyed by English shippers banned foreign ships from carrying goods to Britain. So, other countries could not help to alleviate the situation because it was illegal for them to bring food to Ireland. By the time the English acted to repeal those laws, half of the population of Ireland was dead.
Starvation brings disease in its wake. Those who are hungry are weak. They are more vulnerable to cholera, dysentary, typhus and a host of other diseases. These took care of a large percentage of those who survived the initial famine.
Nothing happens in a vaccuum.
Glory
First, The Irish grew potatoes because they lived on small plots of land owned by absentee, English landlords. These lanlords partitioned their land into as many parcels as possible and turned them over to middlemen who would rent each one to a single family. One and one half acres of potatoes would feed a family of six for up to a year where as the same family would need almost four times the acreage to survive on grain. Also, potatoes are generally self sufficient requiring essentially a spade and minimal labour to grow. Tenants did not need to spend time and money on equipment and labour intensive farming. The result was that they could pay ever more extortionate rents. Hence, the reliance on one crop was risky but necessary as far as the landlords were concerned.
Second, no one knew that the potatoes were infected until a couple of days after they were harvested. This blight caused them to look normal until they were picked. By the time the scale of the problem became apparant, it was too late.
Third, laws written in the 1600's which sought to preserve the monopoly on transportation enjoyed by English shippers banned foreign ships from carrying goods to Britain. So, other countries could not help to alleviate the situation because it was illegal for them to bring food to Ireland. By the time the English acted to repeal those laws, half of the population of Ireland was dead.
Starvation brings disease in its wake. Those who are hungry are weak. They are more vulnerable to cholera, dysentary, typhus and a host of other diseases. These took care of a large percentage of those who survived the initial famine.
Nothing happens in a vaccuum.
Glory
The short answer is that most people lived too far away from the best places to get food from the ocean and lacked the knowledge and equipment required to make use of it. Like most things, though, the real answer is much more complicated.
Commercial fishing was controlled by the English, as well. One of the great ironies of the whole disaster was that as people dropped in the streets for lack of food, Ireland continued to do as it was legally bound to do. They exported food on English ships! This food was, of course, grown on land owned by the English or caught with boats owned by the English and law dictated that it was for the English.
You must understand the extent to which the Irish were under English control. The vast majority of Irish owned very little more than the clothes on their backs. They never had an opportunity to own anything else. Virtually all the laws were protecting English monopolies in Britain. You must also understand that most wealthy Englishmen thought of the Irish as slightly more usefull than cock roaches and just about as desirable. They did not act to alleviate the problem in Ireland until they realized that their wealth would ultimately be affected. Certain enterprising individuals used the famine to press for the repeal of the Corn Laws but it was their own bottom line they were actually protecting.
As for kelp, I don't know. Perhaps those living close enough to the ocean to gather it survived on it. Perhaps a number of people were able to get to the ocean by walking a few hundred miles. Perhaps people died trying to get to the ocean. I do know that if the entire country were experiencing famine and I lived near a beach suitable for fishing or kelp gathering, I would fight for it against hordes of desperate hungry people in order to keep my family fed. Consider the amount of blood shed over the little food that was available. It must have been horrifying.
Glory
Commercial fishing was controlled by the English, as well. One of the great ironies of the whole disaster was that as people dropped in the streets for lack of food, Ireland continued to do as it was legally bound to do. They exported food on English ships! This food was, of course, grown on land owned by the English or caught with boats owned by the English and law dictated that it was for the English.
You must understand the extent to which the Irish were under English control. The vast majority of Irish owned very little more than the clothes on their backs. They never had an opportunity to own anything else. Virtually all the laws were protecting English monopolies in Britain. You must also understand that most wealthy Englishmen thought of the Irish as slightly more usefull than cock roaches and just about as desirable. They did not act to alleviate the problem in Ireland until they realized that their wealth would ultimately be affected. Certain enterprising individuals used the famine to press for the repeal of the Corn Laws but it was their own bottom line they were actually protecting.
As for kelp, I don't know. Perhaps those living close enough to the ocean to gather it survived on it. Perhaps a number of people were able to get to the ocean by walking a few hundred miles. Perhaps people died trying to get to the ocean. I do know that if the entire country were experiencing famine and I lived near a beach suitable for fishing or kelp gathering, I would fight for it against hordes of desperate hungry people in order to keep my family fed. Consider the amount of blood shed over the little food that was available. It must have been horrifying.
Glory