Why were the Irish so dependent on potatoes as a staple food at the time of the Great Famine? Why couldn’t they just have turned to other grains as an alternative to stop more deaths from happening?
In: 5352
A quick note on potatoes in the 19th century. They tasted like shit but could be grown on poor land and produce a lot with comparatively small plots devoted to them. What wasn’t understood at the time was that they were a really nutritious staple food. Potatoes and milk fulfil the vast majority of the bodies requirements.
So the English ruled Ireland. They were complete fuckers about it. To keep their English landowners from tearing their homes down they had to grow crops that the English wanted to eat, not grubby dirt tasting potatoes but proper wheat and meat products. Of which the English took and exported. Unless they decided they wanted to follow a trend like converting their farms to pastures then they’d destroy the Irish farmers roofs as soon as winter set in to force them to flee the property or freeze to death.
Anyway. Ireland was not in a position to make their own decisions. They ate potatoes because they had to. A mostly potato diet being accidentally very healthy at the time led to many decades of booming population. A massive population of healthy farmers growing lots and lots of crops for the use of their colonial masters and eating potatoes.
The potato blight did not destroy the majority of the available calories in Ireland. It just destroyed the calories the Irish were allowed to consume. England forcefully exported literal armadas laden with food from the staving Irish. Food that their own hands had grown.
Latest Answers