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Comment on More like a bacterial infection imo

A large contributor to Irish suffering were the British corn laws, a tariff that kept the price of barley, wheat, and oats artificially high. So when potato crops failed, the poor Irish couldn’t afford substitutes. Ironically, American maze was exempt from the corn laws, so much of that was imported to Ireland.

Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.

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Saleh@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.

That implies that Britain didn’t intend those consequences. But Britain has mastered using starvation as a weapon of genocide, in particular by masking it as an “unfortunate” result of taxes and tariffs.

Britain genocided more than ten million people in todays India about a century earlier and then again about three million in todays Bangladesh during World War II.

Britain murdered the Irish very much deliberately.

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- T156@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  That implies that Britain didn’t intend those consequences. But Britain has mastered using starvation as a weapon of genocide, in particular by masking it as an “unfortunate” result of taxes and tariffs.
  
  We do know that the British did try and get the Irish to renounce their heritage to receive aid during the famine as well. Some families had to renounce their Irish name and Catholicism before they would be given food during the famine.
  
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Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not to mention that the Irish people had to sell all of their produce for very little money to their English landlords, who would then graciously offer to sell it back for a lot more than any Irish farmer could afford.

And just in case you ask “why not cut out the middleman and survive penniless on your own produce?”, remember how I said that the English were also their landlords?

Turns out that landlords were even MORE happy to throw poor people out for being unable to pay than they are nowadays and being homeless in mid 1800s Ireland wasn’t very survivable.

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- Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It is vitally important to understand that throughout the “potato famine” Ireland was a major exporter of food to the rest of the UK.
  
  Irish farmers were growing all kinds of crops. Grains, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, etc, etc. All of these were sold to pay for the oppressive rents that they were forced to pay to English landlords who had stolen all of their land.
  
  The potatoes the Irish grew were for subsistence, because all of the rest of their crops went to market. Even when the potato crops failed, there was more than enough food for everyone in Ireland, if the English would simply suspend rent collection for a short while, until the crop failures had passed.
  
  Many motions to do so were put before parliament. All of them were rejected.
  
  The Irish famine was not caused by a disease. It was caused by the intentional cruelty of the English.
  
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  - khannie@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Hats off to the historical accuracy of this comment chain. Not sure how many of you are Irish but honestly it’s heartening. ❤️
    
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