Why did so many people die during the Irish potato famine? Couldn’t they have imported food from the mainland?
In: 17
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.
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