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A major contributing factor to the famine was the dependence on potatoes as staple, combined with vast monocultures, the Irish Lumper potato variety in particul
by _ak 11y ago
A major contributing factor to the famine was the dependence on potatoes as staple, combined with vast monocultures, the Irish Lumper potato variety in particular. Blight wasn't just an issue in Ireland, but also in the rest of Europe, but it only hit Ireland so hard because there was very little genetic variation. The outcome was grossly mismanaged, but most definitely does not amount to genocide, as the root cause for the potato famine was very much a home-grown problem.
Ironically, some farmers in Northern Ireland started growing Irish Lumpers again, and with modern farming techniques and more variation on the fields, it grows just fine.
- corin_ 11y agoNobody is accusing Britain of creating the problem, just of letting it kill far more people than it could have.
- tim333 11y agoThe - Let's take all their land... Oops they've starved - thing did help create the problem. See also Tasmania.
- ubernostrum 11y agoThe "genocide" portion comes from the fact that: * Ireland's dependence on potatoes for subsistence was due to forcible appropriation of essentially all arable land by the English government, which redistributed it to absentee landlords. * Despite clear widespread famine conditions, England continued to export food out of Ireland and maintained an official policy of not intervening in the "free market" of Irish exports, at the documented cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. * Meanwhile the English government did see fit to interfere with foreign aid to Ireland and even actively refused large donations and shipments, allegedly on grounds that it would be insulting to English pride for other nations to do more than England itself.
- zeveb 11y ago> England continued to export food out of Ireland and maintained an official policy of not intervening in the "free market" of Irish exports I know that state economics were coming out of their mercantilist phase; did the English state export food from Ireland, or did English agricultural companies export the food they produced? Those are two very different things.