Posted on 03/19/2008 11:33:47 PM PDT by neverdem
THE feast of Ireland’s patron saint has always been an occasion for saluting the beautiful land “where the praties grow,” but it’s also a time to look again at the disaster that established around the world the Irish communities that today celebrate St. Patrick’s Day: the Great Potato Famine of 1845-6. In its wake, the Irish left the old country, with more than half a million settling in United States. The famine and the migrations changed Irish and American history, of course, but they drastically changed Britain too.
Americans may think of the disease that destroyed Ireland’s potato crops, late blight, as a European phenomenon, but its devastations actually started with them. The origin of the fungal organism responsible, Phytophthora infestans, has been traced to a valley in the highlands of central Mexico, and the first recorded instances of the disease are in the United States, with the sudden and mysterious destruction of potato crops around Philadelphia and New York in early 1843. Within months, winds spread the rapidly reproducing airborne spores of the disease, and by 1845 it had destroyed potato crops from Illinois east to Nova Scotia, and from Virginia north to Ontario.
It then crossed the Atlantic with a shipment of seed potatoes ordered by Belgian farmers. They had been hoping that fresh stock would improve their yields. Unhappily, it brought the seeds of devastation.
The warm damp spring of 1845 enabled late blight to become an epidemic. By mid-July, the disease had spread throughout Belgium and into the Netherlands. It went on to infect an area from northern Spain to the southern tips of Norway and Sweden, and east to Northern Italy. It moved inexorably through the British Isles and reached Connemara, on Ireland’s west coast, in mid-October. The ruin of Europe’s potato crops was complete...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Churchill famously said (1942) that “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”
The British were right to stop slavery, but FDR and Eisenhower were also right to insist that Britain and France should abandon their Empires. If Britain was as dominant as the US was after the Second World War, I have no doubt that She would have expanded her empire.
Dismantling the Empire was the right thing to do. True, you get monsters like Idi Amin, Mugabe and probably everyone else in Africa. But you also get stellar success stories like Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Malaysia and India. Would Singapore have been better if it was still under British rule? I doubt it.
It is to the credit of FDR that he did not seek to expand the territory of the United States (unlike Stalin and Britain after the First World War).
Contrary to popular opinion, the British Empire was a very badly run affair. The average annual growth rate between 1820 and 1950 of British India was a miserly 0.12%, this pales in comparison with the average annual growth rate of independent India. In fact, Britain is doing better today economically than She did as an Empire.
Any robber baron can seize raw materials at gun point and transfer them to the home country for processing and sell the finished products to citizens of the home country and colonials - and at the same time ensure that finished goods from low cost competitors like US and Japan are kept out through an elaborate system of tariffs. The real genius is in influencing people and trading with them without taking undue advantage. That is the genius of the United States.
My admittedly shallow understanding of the history is that the response of the ruling and propertied class to the catastrophic loss of crops was to take it out of the hides of those who had nothing, kicking them off the land and leaving them to starve to death. It was a callous, brutal attitude that yielded nothing to the landowners, and left a legacy of bitterness that will last a long, long time, and has a lot to do with the deeply felt Socialist sympathies of many of the Irish. The bastards who treated people this way deserve to rot in Hell. The very worst side of the capitalist system that I believe very deeply in.
” ... Ireland is an expanding power now...their economy is absolutely booming. Partly the result of a high birth rate, partly the result of low costs, partly generous European grants (they do SOME good) and partly a burgeoning enterprise spirit. ... “
MOSTLY due to the very wise tactic of providing the most favorable tax structures for businesses in the EU — BY FAR AND AWAY!!! Credit Capitalism.
“Someone posted that the Irish didn’t like the Brits.
You replied that it was because of nationalism and backward politics.
The first statement was political. Yours was far more general.”
I think its more the other way round.
“Where the hell could the Irish look, except for inward?
To the French or Spanish that would have immediately caused mass slaughter by the incoming British?”
I wasnt talking about then. I’m talking about NOW. This is a perfect illustration of the truth I spoke. I give my opinion of Irish nationalism and the immediate comebacks boil down to “you can’t say that, or its racist of you to say that, because of what happened a century and a half ago. Or longer”. Irish nationalism IS backward looking. It only cares about the past.
As for inward-looking...theres nothing wrong with that in small doses. The problem arises when folk are ONLY inward-looking.
“When you investigate a bit about what actually happened when Britain moved into Scotland, you will learn that the stream of infantry and calvary went North, something like six abreast, for over thirty hours.”
1) England moved, not Britain moved.
2) So the king of England sent a big army north. So what? That was a dynastic struggle irrelevent to Ireland’s problems. Or would you prefer he sent a small one so the Scots could beat them?
“That’s what they did to Scotland.”
No that’s what Edward I did four hundred odd years earlier to various dynastic rivals in the land now called Scotland. His army incidentally, included lots of Scots.
“So do you blame Ireland?”
I don’t blame them for feeling aggrieved then, or for wanting to leave Ireland then. Or for even hating Britain then. I can blame them for holding onto grudges for century upon century and letting them influence their decision making processes now.
I concur absolutely, except I would also add “racist” to “callous” and “brutal”.
Europeans did not have potatoes, until they were “discovered” in The New World. And, what would we do without chocolate?
Yes, that was what I was trying to imply. Both the potatoes and the fungus, came from the Americas.
THey did nothing.... locked the destitute up in “work houses” where they died of rampant diseases and dissentary.
oh, and “sectarian” as well...
“Churchill famously said (1942) that “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”
Well obviously he would say that. The Empire gave Britain power, prestige and wealth. Why would anyone want to give that up?
“The British were right to stop slavery, but FDR and Eisenhower were also right to insist that Britain and France should abandon their Empires.”
Yes but they were advocating that so that the US could move into the resultant power vacumn, not from any great commitment to democracy and freedom.
“If Britain was as dominant as the US was after the Second World War, I have no doubt that She would have expanded her empire.”
This is a popular opinion in the US but I personally doubt it. The Empire was never very popular in Britain, except for a short period at the start of the 20th Century. WW1 was the key event that dealt the empire its mortal wound. Before that Britain was an imperial power, and proud of it. After, Britain was an imperial power increasingly uncomfortable with the idea. The self-confidence drained away on the Somme. The Conservative defeat in 1945, ousting Churchill, would have happened far earlier if WW2 hadnt happened.
“It is to the credit of FDR that he did not seek to expand the territory of the United States (unlike Stalin and Britain after the First World War).”
No, economic dominance was far better!
Annoying factoids:
Ireland was still exporting meat and grain throughout The Famine.
When the Pope (aka "HIMSELF")sitting on some of the richest farmlands in Europe, asked the Irish bishops what he could do, he was assured that "Things were fine." The Church of Ireland actually made some half-hearted attempts to help ... but it wasn't official ... more of a Ladies Aid type of thing.
Although by this time (The Famine) some of the more onerous anti-Catholic Laws had been lifted) the Brits (from Queen Vickie on down) were still treating the Irish in general like shiite. Second-class citizens? Woulda been a promotion!
The English were blind about Ireland. Sophisticated upper-class toffs might have a bust of Mazzini or Cavour in the garden, rave on about freeing Greece from the Turk, but if you mentioned Home Rule, you might never be invited to dinner again.
OTOH, many of the heroes of Irish Independence were Anglo-Irish Church Of Ireland men. No use fighting about all this now, figuring it out would be better.
Well, Well, Well Looks like we have a follower of the Irish Rev Wrights.
The English did try to help, everything from direct aid to importing American corn (the Irish wouldn’t eat it). Up to that time it was the largest relief effort in history.
But after the famine the Irish Nationalists and the Catholic Church in Ireland propagandized and demonized the British about the Potato famine.
The Irish radicals brainwashed down the generations. It is much like Black radicals spreading stories of levees blown up and no help in Katrina.
I have read several books about the Famine. Like Katrina it was an overwhelming situation but the English did help.
And I am more Irish than most Freepers who hold the grudge against the English because their great grandfather came from Ireland. My mother came from Ireland in 1959
Actually that is not true, I have seen figures that during the famine Ireland imported more grain than it exported.
As for so called conservatives who complain about farmers selling the crops for profit instead of just giving it to the poor. All that would of done would bankrupt the landowner and mean more unemployed needing to be fed.
If you mean the government should of bought all the grain and distribute it to the poor. To me that sounds like the government should be in health care because the poor needs it same argument.
People should remember that government disaster aid and FEMA and such was another century away. They did the best they could do.
Nearly none of the modern measures to procure and distribute food to a famine population were in place anywhere in the world in the 1840's. Governments simply didn't do that. Add a food blight to the longstanding political turmoil there, its resulting callous attitudes, poor communication between absentee landlords and the countryside, and an exploding lower-class population, and it was a lethal combination.
Those factors worked alongside one another. Why, one might wonder, did the Irish starve with a sea full of fish for the taking? Well, fish wasn't part of the lower-class diet, and there was no Irish fishing industry beyond hand-rowed boats. Part of the reason for the latter was that political difficulties discouraged its development; part of it was that there never really had been one. And the fish were on the coast and the starving were in the countryside, at least before they migrated to the settled areas in search of food and jobs. And starved when they found none.
Blaming it all on the British is tempting but it is overly simplistic and historically inaccurate. That is not to absolve them either - some in Britain were fine with the Irish starving. Others did their best to do something, and tragically some of that actually made the problem worse. Famine relief is far more distribution than supply, and a good deal of what is known today was learned the hard way back then. A very ugly time.
The French have solved this problem.
Well, everyone tends to judge our forebears by today's standards. The English did TRY. The government mechanisms, (not to mention NGO's) were simply not in place then. Those larger scale farmers in Ireland at the time had well set-up export systems to England (and France), and they merely continued business as usual throughout The Famine, when they could.
Which of course, is not to say that the wealthier Anglo-Irish did not seize upon the opportunity to take over more land, as it was depopulated.
But after the famine the Irish Nationalists and the Catholic Church in Ireland propagandized and demonized the British about the Potato famine.
They placed all the blame where some was undoubtedly due.
Is this why Great Britain has often been called, “dear old Blighty?” I never dreamed they were referring to potato blight.:)
Guess they had to take the bad with the good. Sorry, I misread your post.
You are speaking of the hypovirulent strain that attacks but doesnot kill the European Chestnut. It is a natural condition.
It does not spread naturally in America however. Individual trees can be innoculated with the hypovirulent fugus and will survive, but it doesn’t happen naturally in large populations.
I have actually done the procedure and it was successful in about 3 out of 5 All American Chestnut trees in the groves I tend to.
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