5 ms·

In 1847, one of the bleakest years of the Irish famine, Khaleefah Abdul-Majid I, Sultan of an Ottoman Empire offered £10,000 (which was quite a sum at the time)

In 1847, one of the bleakest years of the Irish famine, Khaleefah Abdul-Majid I, Sultan of an Ottoman Empire offered £10,000 (which was quite a sum at the time) to help alleviate the suffering of the Irish people. Queen Victoria, upon learning of this, requested that he reduce his donation to a more modest £1,000, so as not to embarrass her own relatively meagre offering of £2,000. Reluctantly, the Sultan agreed, but bolstered his contribution by secretly sending five ships loaded with food. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Britain-refuse-Ottomans-aid-to-Ireland-during-the-Irish-Potato-Famine-1846 https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Britain-refuse-Ottomans-aid-to... My conclusion is that the famine was as much political as it was environmental. (as they often are)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
genewitch 2y ago
I wrote a song called greenocide where my Irish friend explained this in a particularly straightforward way. The English already owned all the land so they figured let the Irish die out. In essence.
- mritun 2y ago
  That’s pretty much what the British did in Bengal.
spacebanana7 2y ago
Is there an academic source available for that?
- lolinder 2y ago
  Wikipedia says that the provenance is... sketchy, to say the least: > The claim that he had wanted to give £10,000 first appears in Taylor & Mackay's Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel (1851), but the book is not referenced and no source is given. A second source, dating to 1894, is more explicit: the Irish nationalist William J. O'Neill Daunt claimed to have heard from the son of the sultan's personal physician that he "had intended to give £10,000 to the famine-stricken Irish, but was deterred by the English ambassador, Lord Cowley, as Her Majesty, who had only subscribed £1000, would have been annoyed had a foreign sovereign given a larger sum…" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relat...
- s_dev 2y ago
  https://www.mfa.gov.tr/relations-between-turkiye-and-ireland.en.mfa https://www.mfa.gov.tr/relations-between-turkiye-and-ireland... The 1,000 Pound claim at least can be sourced from this website. It very much was policy that killed the Irish and not the lack of food. Ireland exported enough food to feed the country four times over -- during the Famine.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    This source notably does not make the claim that the amount was lowered in response to a request from Queen Victoria, which is the actually damning claim.
    - thfuran 2y ago
      That entire claim is unnecessary for the given conclusion, which is substantiated by other evidence.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        Agreed. So there's no need to perpetuate claims whose provenance is "someone 40 years later claimed to have heard this from the sultan's physician's son" (see my reply to GP). We have plenty else to use.
      - kortilla 2y ago
        Then there is no reason to include that part. It changes the entire tone of the British govt’s response.
        smcin 2y ago
        Are we 100% in agreement that Queen Victoria's donation in 1848 was inadequate to prevent 1 million people from starving to death, and that Britain had direct responsibility for the gross inequality in land ownership that constituted Ireland in the 1840s, whereas the Ottoman Sultans, or Calcutta (or the Choctaw Nation) had zero responsibility? I mean we could look at British spending (govt and crown) in the period 1845-52. Or note that Queen Victoria was one of the wealthiest women in the world, and Parliament granted her an annuity of £385,000 per year.
FjordWarden 2y ago
Something even more remarkable, the Indians that where only a few years ago forcibly relocated and experienced their own starvations during the events of the Trail of Teers, collected about 700$ in donations and send it as aid to the starving Irish in a grand gesture of empathy amongst oppressed people.
lolinder 2y ago
I agree with your conclusion, but this story is very badly sourced and really should not be used [0]. We only have two sources from the 1800s that claim it: one is contemporary but provides no attribution and we have no reason to believe they had firsthand knowledge. The other is 40 years later and is attributed to a conversation with the son of the sultan's personal physician. Yeah. With such bad evidence for such an incendiary claim, I think we're better off sticking with the enormous amount of other evidence that policy caused the famine and letting this particular story die. (What is true and backed up by evidence is that the sultan sent £1k. The rest has no reliable source.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relat...
- smcin 2y ago
  The Ottoman Sultan's donation (or the US$170/£111 famously donated by a group of Native American Choctaw Nation, which is verified historical fact [0][1][2], or the £14,000 donated by Calcutta in 1846 [0], which is > Queen Victoria's subsequent 1848 donation) have nothing to do with arguing that British policy caused the famine. They're (verified) anecdotes showing the British Crown was embarrassed that their own charitable donations to a famine that killed 1 in 8 Irish people, were not that much and could be rivaled or outdonated (Calcutta) by private groups, even groups like the Choctaw who had just survived the Trail of Tears forced displacement/genocide 16 years before. (This is commemorated today by sculptures in Midleton, County Cork, Ireland "Kindred Spirits" and a companion sculpture in Tuskahoma, OK "Choctaw Ireland Monument"). By implication the Crown wasn't at all exercised about changing the setup in Ireland where most of the population were tenant farmers on the 90% of the land was foreign-owned. The landlords made a lot of money on exporting grain (esp. during the Napoleonic Wars until the price crashed). The tenants had essentially zero political representation in Westminster. Nearly two centuries later, Ireland's population (all-island, Republic + NI) has still not recovered to the pre-Famine peak (1841, 8.175m est.) [3]. Predicted to finally happen sometime in the 2050s. Curious if anyone has documented the massive imbalance in ownership in land in pre-Famine Ireland and compared it to other historical situations (Russia, colonial Americas, Africa, India, 1930s Ukraine) and their eventual outcomes. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Charity [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_Nation_of_Oklahoma#Foreign_Relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_Nation_of_Oklahoma#For... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40304645 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40304645 [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_population_of_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_population_of_Irela...
SwtCyber 2y ago
When political pride outweighs human lives, you know something is deeply broken. Definitely reinforces the idea that famines are rarely just about food shortages

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

genewitch 2y ago

I wrote a song called greenocide where my Irish friend explained this in a particularly straightforward way. The English already owned all the land so they figured let the Irish die out. In essence.

mritun 2y ago
That’s pretty much what the British did in Bengal.

spacebanana7 2y ago

Is there an academic source available for that?

lolinder 2y ago
Wikipedia says that the provenance is... sketchy, to say the least: > The claim that he had wanted to give £10,000 first appears in Taylor & Mackay's Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel (1851), but the book is not referenced and no source is given. A second source, dating to 1894, is more explicit: the Irish nationalist William J. O'Neill Daunt claimed to have heard from the son of the sultan's personal physician that he "had intended to give £10,000 to the famine-stricken Irish, but was deterred by the English ambassador, Lord Cowley, as Her Majesty, who had only subscribed £1000, would have been annoyed had a foreign sovereign given a larger sum…" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relat...
s_dev 2y ago
https://www.mfa.gov.tr/relations-between-turkiye-and-ireland.en.mfa https://www.mfa.gov.tr/relations-between-turkiye-and-ireland... The 1,000 Pound claim at least can be sourced from this website. It very much was policy that killed the Irish and not the lack of food. Ireland exported enough food to feed the country four times over -- during the Famine.
- lolinder 2y ago
  This source notably does not make the claim that the amount was lowered in response to a request from Queen Victoria, which is the actually damning claim.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    That entire claim is unnecessary for the given conclusion, which is substantiated by other evidence.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Agreed. So there's no need to perpetuate claims whose provenance is "someone 40 years later claimed to have heard this from the sultan's physician's son" (see my reply to GP). We have plenty else to use.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      Then there is no reason to include that part. It changes the entire tone of the British govt’s response.
      - smcin 2y ago
        Are we 100% in agreement that Queen Victoria's donation in 1848 was inadequate to prevent 1 million people from starving to death, and that Britain had direct responsibility for the gross inequality in land ownership that constituted Ireland in the 1840s, whereas the Ottoman Sultans, or Calcutta (or the Choctaw Nation) had zero responsibility? I mean we could look at British spending (govt and crown) in the period 1845-52. Or note that Queen Victoria was one of the wealthiest women in the world, and Parliament granted her an annuity of £385,000 per year.

FjordWarden 2y ago

Something even more remarkable, the Indians that where only a few years ago forcibly relocated and experienced their own starvations during the events of the Trail of Teers, collected about 700$ in donations and send it as aid to the starving Irish in a grand gesture of empathy amongst oppressed people.

lolinder 2y ago

I agree with your conclusion, but this story is very badly sourced and really should not be used [0]. We only have two sources from the 1800s that claim it: one is contemporary but provides no attribution and we have no reason to believe they had firsthand knowledge. The other is 40 years later and is attributed to a conversation with the son of the sultan's personal physician. Yeah. With such bad evidence for such an incendiary claim, I think we're better off sticking with the enormous amount of other evidence that policy caused the famine and letting this particular story die. (What is true and backed up by evidence is that the sultan sent £1k. The rest has no reliable source.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland%E2%80%93Turkey_relat...

smcin 2y ago
The Ottoman Sultan's donation (or the US$170/£111 famously donated by a group of Native American Choctaw Nation, which is verified historical fact [0][1][2], or the £14,000 donated by Calcutta in 1846 [0], which is > Queen Victoria's subsequent 1848 donation) have nothing to do with arguing that British policy caused the famine. They're (verified) anecdotes showing the British Crown was embarrassed that their own charitable donations to a famine that killed 1 in 8 Irish people, were not that much and could be rivaled or outdonated (Calcutta) by private groups, even groups like the Choctaw who had just survived the Trail of Tears forced displacement/genocide 16 years before. (This is commemorated today by sculptures in Midleton, County Cork, Ireland "Kindred Spirits" and a companion sculpture in Tuskahoma, OK "Choctaw Ireland Monument"). By implication the Crown wasn't at all exercised about changing the setup in Ireland where most of the population were tenant farmers on the 90% of the land was foreign-owned. The landlords made a lot of money on exporting grain (esp. during the Napoleonic Wars until the price crashed). The tenants had essentially zero political representation in Westminster. Nearly two centuries later, Ireland's population (all-island, Republic + NI) has still not recovered to the pre-Famine peak (1841, 8.175m est.) [3]. Predicted to finally happen sometime in the 2050s. Curious if anyone has documented the massive imbalance in ownership in land in pre-Famine Ireland and compared it to other historical situations (Russia, colonial Americas, Africa, India, 1930s Ukraine) and their eventual outcomes. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Charity [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_Nation_of_Oklahoma#Foreign_Relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_Nation_of_Oklahoma#For... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40304645 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40304645 [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_population_of_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_population_of_Irela...

SwtCyber 2y ago

When political pride outweighs human lives, you know something is deeply broken. Definitely reinforces the idea that famines are rarely just about food shortages