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Re: Potato famine (was Re: HELP NEEDED SUSTAINABLE LIVING IN IRELAND)



The book
                               
Kissane, Noel.                                                           
       
  The Irish famine : a documentary history / Noel Kissane. -- Dublin : 
National 
library of Ireland, 1995. ISBN 0907328253 (cloth)                        
                              
 Is one good source on the famine, particulary as it is mostly 
reproductions of contemporary documents, and as such not easy to dismiss 
as "romantic notions". I have seen about 5 other books on this subject 
and even the most apologetic can't avoid laying the primary blame for the 
famine on British economics. Most Irish peasants (which is what they 
were) had no money with which to buy food. They were tenant farmers, 
their surplus production went to rents. Some landlords tried to forgive 
them rents at first, but only because they had no way to pay. More took 
the opportunity to put them out and consolidate their farms for "modern 
agricultural practices". If you are a farmer without land, you have no 
way to earn money.This book also has some telling quotes from British 
politicians of the day proving that the dominant position was that it 
would violate free market principles. Even when the government that 
supported famine relief came in it was frustrated by the opposition.

                                                     

"Don Dale" <dale@princeton.edu> wrote:
>Jym Dyer wrote, (note trimmed newsgroup list)
 At the time of
>>the potato famine, Ireland still produced enough food for
>>the Irish people to eat; yet the marketplace was controlled
>>by the British, who exported the food.  Their reason?  They
>>didn't want to interfere with the free market!  (And no, I
>>am not making that up -- that is exactly the reason given!)
>
>Given by whom?  This "history" has its roots in a romantic version of Irish
>nationalism and socialism, and has been thoroughly debunked by serious
>historians, both Irish and not.  The Corn Laws (prohibiting the importing
>of grain) were repealed in 1845 mainly so that the Irish could afford to
>buy the food that they could not grow.  
>
>Don
>
>
>
>


-- 
Karen Stark
ks36@cornell.edu


"In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the 
good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the 
bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists themselves 
were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over bodily by the 
Capitalists. They have now added all the bureacratic tyrannies of a 
social state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a Capitalist state. For 
the vital point is that it did not in the smallest degree diminish the 
inequalities of a Capitalist State. It simply destroyed such individual 
liberties as remained among its victims."

G.K. Chesterton

 The habit of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those
 that have not got it.

        --G. B. Shaw



References: