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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
by 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 agoYou might want to read up on UK/Irish history before you call Ireland a province of the UK.
- anthonyb 14y agoNot 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 agoI 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 agoThe 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...