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The BBC...when is the BBC going to "discover" the famine they caused in Ireland in the 1840s? I guess they're too busy digging up the Chinese..."commemorate Em

The BBC...when is the BBC going to "discover" the famine they caused in Ireland in the 1840s? I guess they're too busy digging up the Chinese..."commemorate Empire Day, when we try to remember the names of all those from the Sudbury area who so gallantly gave their lives to keep China British"...China had famines for thousands of years, including in the 20th century before the communists took over. The one they mention is their last one. The unusual thing is not the 1961 famine but that there have been no famines in China for a half century. Because the communists smashing the Four Olds and industrializing the country and kicking out the foreign imperialists got the country on track. Of course the British ignore the famines they cause, and dig up so-called famines by their former imperial conquests. China would not have had to industrialize so quickly if England was not threatening China from Hong Kong and so forth. That does not count of course. Thankfully, anti-imperialists are crashing into the US/UK all the time now, showing those hubris-filled imperialists who live by the sword shall feel the sword coming from the other end as well.

danso 14y ago
1. The author profiled by the BBC is not an agent of the BBC. 2. The author asserts that the Chinese famine is unique in that it occurred despite the lack of pressure from natural disasters. The Irish potato famine was exacerbated by the blight. 3. The estimate for the Chinese famine is 36 million dead and dwarfs the death toll of the previous Chinese famines. The potato famine death toll was about 1 million.
- morsch 14y ago
  FWIW and from what I can tell, that is 1 million out of a total Irish population of 6 million at the time (1845, Wolfram Alpha), versus 36 million out of a total population of 682 million (1960, W.A.). So in 1 in 6 vs 1 in 20. So one could argue that the Great Famine was a much more widespread (factor 100 population), but less severe (factor 1/3 mortality) catastrophe. Disregarding all other factors such as causation. The "baseline" mortality due to starvation may also have been different in both instances. Of course such number games are both cynical and insufficient to deal with the subject (e.g. your point 2). I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Dikötter's 2010 work Mao's Great Famine, seems like a very similar book with very similar conclusions.
  - lukeschlather 14y ago
    As long as we're playing number games, the combined population of Ireland and the UK was 28 million in 1845 according to WA. If we're going to blame the UK, we should probably include citizens of the UK in the tally. Really, it's hard to make a direct comparison since it appears to me that we're trying to compare a problem in a single province controlled by the UK and a general problem across all of China. If Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, and India had all had huge famines in 1845 that might be a little more comparable to the Chinese famine. But as you say it's not incredibly instructive to look at it by the numbers.
    - anthonyb 14y ago
      You might want to read up on UK/Irish history before you call Ireland a province of the UK.
      - anthonyb 14y ago
        Not sure why the downvotes, but it's true. Ireland was an occupied state, and most of its food production went overseas to the UK. Including England in the total population makes no sense.
        lukeschlather 14y ago
        I was using province in the classical Roman sense. Ireland did not have self-determination. Removing England from the tallies would be like removing members of the Chinese communist party from the population of China. You're basically making the tacit assumption that the oppressors had no right to the food and therefore the fact that they did not have a famine is irrelevant. There's an interesting argument there, but you're not actually making it, you're just manipulating the numbers to tell a specific story.
        anthonyb 14y ago
        The whole of Europe had potato crop failures at the same time, but only Ireland had famine. Imagine, in China's case that xighur had a famine while the rest didn't. Now does it make sense to include the whole country in the statistics? You might as well include France in the stats too...
- btilly 14y ago
  Note that the Irish famine was so severe only because the English accepted Malthus' theory that human populations would expand to the carrying capacity of the land and then die back in famines. Therefore intervening would just lay the groundwork for a larger, later, famine. Nobody at the time had come to terms with the fact that improvements in agriculture had massively increased the carrying capacity of the land. Whether we eventually are forced into famine or manage to curb populations before that point is still uncertain. But there is no question that the English could have intervened, stopped most of the casualties, and there would not have been a quick recurrence of the famine.
ximeng 14y ago
The BBC...when is the BBC going to "discover" the famine they caused in Ireland in the 1840s? Don't worry, they've discovered it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...
- derleth 14y ago
  > Don't worry, they've discovered it. Oh. No. Don't you get it: The Western World is exactly the same as the Far East, exactly the same as Africa, and so on. For every Great Leap Forwards there's a Holocaust, for every Congolese war there's an English Civil War, and so on, and so forth, tit for tat, with absolutely no difference at all between Winston Churchill and Mao Zedong. Exactly the same. Otherwise, it's just racist.
  - andybak 14y ago
    I'm quite happy to play this game with you if you set the rules. If we include the 19th and 20th Century and I'm allowed to include Russia as 'The West' then game on... But I think you're getting irate about a sub-text rather than the game at hand so let's discuss what's really bothering you.
    - derleth 14y ago
      > But I think you're getting irate about a sub-text rather than the game at hand so let's discuss what's really bothering you. In simple language: The inability of some people, all of whom I strongly suspect are from stable First World democracies of the type Freedom House ranks highly, being unable to see any difference between, as I said, Churchill and Mao, or George W. Bush and Robert Mugabe. Every single thing they disagree with is exactly equivalent, making their arguments a massive exercise in the False Dilemma: You agree with them or you're morally supporting the Great Leap Forwards, Rwandan Genocide, and female genital mutilation, even if the actual topic is tax policy. In short, they're just annoying idiots who have no real perspective trying to sound like they know something. Their use of 'racism' claims as a convenient dodge is just the icing on the cake.
guscost 14y ago
I'll just leave this here: http://io9.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self+inflicted-disaster-the-campaign-to-wipe-out-the-common-sparrow http://io9.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self+inflicted-disaster-...
nicholassmith 14y ago
Wait, the BBC caused the famine in Ireland in 1840s, nearly 100 years before they were officially founded?
EliRivers 14y ago
"The BBC...when is the BBC going to "discover" the famine they caused in Ireland in the 1840s?" Oh look, the BBC already did and you didn't even bother to check (although how the BBC caused it is a mystery to me, given that the BBC is a Broadcasting company formed in 1922 and the potato famine happened during the previous century). Such self-righteousness that assumes wrong-doing without even checking. It's the worst kind of ideology; to not even care enough about the truth to check. If reality conflicts with political opinion, it's not opinion that's wrong; it's reality that's at fault. This is just the first google hit, but the list of BBC pages covering it goes on and on. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...
easytiger 14y ago
What the hell are you talking about

danso 14y ago

1. The author profiled by the BBC is not an agent of the BBC. 2. The author asserts that the Chinese famine is unique in that it occurred despite the lack of pressure from natural disasters. The Irish potato famine was exacerbated by the blight. 3. The estimate for the Chinese famine is 36 million dead and dwarfs the death toll of the previous Chinese famines. The potato famine death toll was about 1 million.

morsch 14y ago
FWIW and from what I can tell, that is 1 million out of a total Irish population of 6 million at the time (1845, Wolfram Alpha), versus 36 million out of a total population of 682 million (1960, W.A.). So in 1 in 6 vs 1 in 20. So one could argue that the Great Famine was a much more widespread (factor 100 population), but less severe (factor 1/3 mortality) catastrophe. Disregarding all other factors such as causation. The "baseline" mortality due to starvation may also have been different in both instances. Of course such number games are both cynical and insufficient to deal with the subject (e.g. your point 2). I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Dikötter's 2010 work Mao's Great Famine, seems like a very similar book with very similar conclusions.
- lukeschlather 14y ago
  As long as we're playing number games, the combined population of Ireland and the UK was 28 million in 1845 according to WA. If we're going to blame the UK, we should probably include citizens of the UK in the tally. Really, it's hard to make a direct comparison since it appears to me that we're trying to compare a problem in a single province controlled by the UK and a general problem across all of China. If Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, and India had all had huge famines in 1845 that might be a little more comparable to the Chinese famine. But as you say it's not incredibly instructive to look at it by the numbers.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    You might want to read up on UK/Irish history before you call Ireland a province of the UK.
    - anthonyb 14y ago
      Not sure why the downvotes, but it's true. Ireland was an occupied state, and most of its food production went overseas to the UK. Including England in the total population makes no sense.
      - lukeschlather 14y ago
        I was using province in the classical Roman sense. Ireland did not have self-determination. Removing England from the tallies would be like removing members of the Chinese communist party from the population of China. You're basically making the tacit assumption that the oppressors had no right to the food and therefore the fact that they did not have a famine is irrelevant. There's an interesting argument there, but you're not actually making it, you're just manipulating the numbers to tell a specific story.
        anthonyb 14y ago
        The whole of Europe had potato crop failures at the same time, but only Ireland had famine. Imagine, in China's case that xighur had a famine while the rest didn't. Now does it make sense to include the whole country in the statistics? You might as well include France in the stats too...
btilly 14y ago
Note that the Irish famine was so severe only because the English accepted Malthus' theory that human populations would expand to the carrying capacity of the land and then die back in famines. Therefore intervening would just lay the groundwork for a larger, later, famine. Nobody at the time had come to terms with the fact that improvements in agriculture had massively increased the carrying capacity of the land. Whether we eventually are forced into famine or manage to curb populations before that point is still uncertain. But there is no question that the English could have intervened, stopped most of the casualties, and there would not have been a quick recurrence of the famine.

ximeng 14y ago

The BBC...when is the BBC going to "discover" the famine they caused in Ireland in the 1840s? Don't worry, they've discovered it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...

derleth 14y ago
> Don't worry, they've discovered it. Oh. No. Don't you get it: The Western World is exactly the same as the Far East, exactly the same as Africa, and so on. For every Great Leap Forwards there's a Holocaust, for every Congolese war there's an English Civil War, and so on, and so forth, tit for tat, with absolutely no difference at all between Winston Churchill and Mao Zedong. Exactly the same. Otherwise, it's just racist.
- andybak 14y ago
  I'm quite happy to play this game with you if you set the rules. If we include the 19th and 20th Century and I'm allowed to include Russia as 'The West' then game on... But I think you're getting irate about a sub-text rather than the game at hand so let's discuss what's really bothering you.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > But I think you're getting irate about a sub-text rather than the game at hand so let's discuss what's really bothering you. In simple language: The inability of some people, all of whom I strongly suspect are from stable First World democracies of the type Freedom House ranks highly, being unable to see any difference between, as I said, Churchill and Mao, or George W. Bush and Robert Mugabe. Every single thing they disagree with is exactly equivalent, making their arguments a massive exercise in the False Dilemma: You agree with them or you're morally supporting the Great Leap Forwards, Rwandan Genocide, and female genital mutilation, even if the actual topic is tax policy. In short, they're just annoying idiots who have no real perspective trying to sound like they know something. Their use of 'racism' claims as a convenient dodge is just the icing on the cake.

guscost 14y ago

I'll just leave this here: http://io9.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self+inflicted-disaster-the-campaign-to-wipe-out-the-common-sparrow http://io9.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self+inflicted-disaster-...

nicholassmith 14y ago

Wait, the BBC caused the famine in Ireland in 1840s, nearly 100 years before they were officially founded?

EliRivers 14y ago

"The BBC...when is the BBC going to "discover" the famine they caused in Ireland in the 1840s?" Oh look, the BBC already did and you didn't even bother to check (although how the BBC caused it is a mystery to me, given that the BBC is a Broadcasting company formed in 1922 and the potato famine happened during the previous century). Such self-righteousness that assumes wrong-doing without even checking. It's the worst kind of ideology; to not even care enough about the truth to check. If reality conflicts with political opinion, it's not opinion that's wrong; it's reality that's at fault. This is just the first google hit, but the list of BBC pages covering it goes on and on. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...

easytiger 14y ago

What the hell are you talking about