Why did so many people die during the Irish potato famine? Couldn’t they have imported food from the mainland?
In: 17
Britain was taking all the other food grown in Ireland back to Britain for British people to eat and only gave food to those who went to protestant church services, Ireland had over 1 million deaths during famine other European countries has far far less such as France only had 10,000 deaths. Ireland had more due to Britain stealing Irish food and starving Irish people.
Ireland was, at the time, under the control of the British. Irish farmers technically only rented their land and were forced to give crops or money to their absentee British landlords, typically under threats of violence. This means that Ireland generally *exported* crops, even during the famine.
That’s a big reason why the famine was such a problem in Ireland. Potatoes are a staple crop in much of Europe, and the blight that caused the famine was common across the continent. Things were just worse in Ireland because Britain essentially forbid them from substituting in a different crop.
The people who owned the land that was growing food got more money by exporting it than selling it to the Irish. So they did that and argued for less government assistance, and used the collapse to expand their own holdings.
It’s interesting to regard the famine as an early example of disaster capitalism.
The British government thought that capitalism would take care of the famine as long as they kept the market free.
It didn’t.
Suffice to say, economic theory has advanced a bit since then.
Just like the Bengal famine under Churchill, all the food grown was exported to Britain and the locals were left to starve.
Very common under British rule.
The simple answer that leaves out a lot of important political context is that the people who starved were poor. They couldn’t afford to “import” or even buy food.
The context is that British rule had left Ireland with a large population of people who were disadvantaged by sectarian laws that led to a situation where they couldn’t own their own land. This forced them to rent small parcels of land from absentee landlords using the valuable crops they could grow, such as grains, to pay rent.
A tiny area could be planted with potatoes and those were the only food available for eating.
If the Irish ate the grains then they couldn’t make rent and would be evicted from the rented land.
When the potatoes failed, they were left with nothing to eat because the other food was taken, by force in some cases, to pay rent.
As starvation continued, they couldn’t even produce the money crop for rent and lost the farm anyway.
Those on the coast often ended up selling their boat and nets to keep the bailifs at bay. Over fishing of desperate hungry folks left little to catch at the height of the famine.
Some say desperate parents would cook dead infants and toddlers, who were the first to die from hunger, and feed them to their older siblings as they watched in horror, unable to bring themselves to eat. The children were never told what the meat was.
TL;DR Poor people starve unless others are willing to buy food for them. They were poor because the British created the circumstances they were in, so we blame the British for their deaths.
The people who were starving didn’t really have the money needed to import food from the mainland. In addition, British policies at the time were really restrictive in regards to food imports/exports which made this process even more complicated and expensive. A lot of outside countries offered food aid, but the British government declined a lot of it because of reasons
1. At the time, most of Irish land was owned by the English who exported it all to England.
2. The ones that grew potatoes were usually poor, living on marginal land. They couldn’t buy imported food
3. The England blocked charitable food donations from overseas and taxed food purchases.
4. UK Parlement underestimated the full impact of the Potato Blind and didn’t realize that most of the farmers had eaten their seed crop, leaving them with nothing to plant.
Extra History did a series on this. Part 1: https://youtu.be/gAnT21xGdSk?si=NJL5-vDDJO458OkC
Part 2: https://youtu.be/E4Dc0ltgf3I?si=1XPnFUh5KBYPVr1N
Part 3: https://youtu.be/6DP8INm09nY?si=Qn3HQNZlbJ1XpIn3
Part 4: https://youtu.be/csNlKTRJiS0?si=x_8QkMGup0ojVGoH
Part 5: https://youtu.be/csNlKTRJiS0?si=x_8QkMGup0ojVGoH
Very short answer: Britain was deliberately starving them.
They couldn’t import food because Britain wouldn’t let them.
Latest Answers