THE GREAT STARVATION
AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM IN IRELAND
by Seamus Metress
University of Toledo
from The Irish People
Jan. 10, 1996
In recent months there has been a great deal of discussion about what to call the tragedy that accompanied the failure of the potato crop in Ireland between 1845-50. Our nomenclature today can be an important part of educating the public about what really happened during those awful years. In this context let us consider the nature of what I would prefer to call the "Great Starvation".
One hundred fifty years ago in the late summer of 1845 one of the greatest human ecological disasters in the history of the world began in Ireland. A fungus from North America established itself in Ireland and commenced to destroy the potato crop. When the fungus had run its course at least 1 1/1 million, possibly as many as 2 million, Irish had died and another 1 1/2 million had emigrated. No one can fully capture in words the magnitude or the intensity of the suffering and hardship endured by the Irish people from 1845-1850.
The potato failure of the mid to late 1840's has been variably referred to as "The Great Hunger","The Great Famine" and "The Great Starvation." One's choice of words to describe this colossal human tragedy is often determined by political ideology or personal agenda. Irish landowners referred to the time period as that of "The Great Hunger." Most of these landowners were absentee and did not experience first hand the ravages of the potato blight. They, unlike their tenants, were not dependent on the potato for their survival. While potatoes rotted in the fields, landowners continued to eat a varied diet.
The British call it "The Great Famine." The scarcity of food was blamed on the weather, the potato fungus and, perhaps, most of all on the Malthusian notion of overpopulation. The Irish had overbred and there wasn't enough food to feed them all given the crop failure. However, as Frank O'Connor once observed, "Famine is a useful word when you do not wish to use words like 'genocide' and 'extermination.'"
These latter terms are philosophically embodied in "The Great Starvation," which is a more realistic way to refer to the time period when Irish peasants starved in the midst of plenty, Wheat, oats, barley, butter, eggs, beef and pork were exported from Ireland in large quantities during the so-called "famine." In fact, eight ships left Ireland daily carrying these many foodstuffs. Starvation among the peasants is blamed on a colonial system that made them dependent on the potato in the first place. Racist insensitivity toward the plight of the starving masses also played a major role in the death and large-scale emigration which marked this time. The British failed to take swift and comprehensive action in the force of Ireland's disaster.
In 1861 in The Last Conquest of Ireland, John Mitchel wrote: "The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine," Mitchell further observed that "a million and half men, women and children were carefully, prudently and peacefully slain by the English government. The died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created."
Such sentiment expressed by an Irishman who witnessed the horrors inflicted upon his countrymen will always linger, refuting revisionist attempts to obscure reality.
In recent years there has been an effort among Tory revisionists to soften the trauma of the period and downplay the role of the British. This is especially evident in the tendency to reduce the estimates of the number of deaths related to the starvation. Most of these apologists have suggested there were much less than a million deaths, while some estimates go as low as 250,000. Even these incorrect estimates are appalling given that they occurred only a short distance from the heart of the most powerful and wealthy empire the world has ever known. We suppose that such an approach is an attempt to lessen the blame that should be placed upon the British or insome sense to veil the magnitude of the tragedy.
These same apologist feel that there was nothing that any government could have done to ameliorate the situation. The poor British tried, but were simply overwhelmed by the logistics of the operation. In their view the starvation was the inevitable outcome of demography and the prevalent economic theory of the day.
It would appear that one of the major purposes of Irish revisionism is to undermine the basis of Irish nationalism and leave Ireland without heroes or historical memory. It also plays down the British responsibility for the catastrophic aspects of the Irish experience. Though they alternately whimper or crow about their quest for detached truth, Anglo-Irish revisionists attempt to present sociopolitical propaganda under the guise of scholarly writing. They choose to forget that British rule in Ireland was guided by the rope and the bayonet.
British apologists would do well to ponder the words of the great British writer William Makepiece Thackeray who characterized British colonialism in Ireland as follows: "...It is a frigthful document against ourselves...one of the most melancholy stories in the whole world of insolence, rapine, brutal, endless slaughter and persecution on the part of the English master,...There is no crime ever invented by eastern or western barbarians, no torture or Roman persecution or Spanish Inquisition, no tyranny of Nero or Alva but can be matched in the history of England in Ireland."
It is time for us to stop using the euphemism "Irish potato famine" for two reasons. First, it is wrong because there was no shortage of food in Ireland. Secondly, it was not simply an "Irish famine" but a starvation based on systematic British exploitation of the Irish people, inaction in the face of the potato crop failure, and a vindictive, racist attitude toward the Irish.
The events of 1845-1850 were truly a holocaust. Indeed in 1904 Michael Davitt, the founder of the Irish Land League called it a holocaust. It is not something for the Irish and Irish Americans to forget. Why is it that we are told to stop living in the past or that we have too long a memory? Would anyone ask Jews to forget the Nazi atrocities against their people? Should Native Americans forget the massacres at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee? Would we suggest that African Americans forget the horrors of the middle passage? How can we learn from the past if we are ignorant of its successes, failures, an abominations?
In the words of the Irish patriot labor leader James Connolly, "The English administration of Ireland during the famine was a colossal crime against the human race." We should not forget our holocaust orchestrated by English imperialists and we should not let the world forget. In August 1989, during an address on Grosse Ile, Canada, Dr. Edward J. Brennan, Ireland's ambassador to Canada, noted: "The Great Famine was Ireland's holocaust (which) condemned the Irish to be the first boat people of modern Europe."
None of us can truly understand the nature of their privations, but we all can take this opportunity to pay tribute to the memory of those who died and the courage of those who survived. May their ghosts know that we still care. Let us not dare to forget the terrible death and suffering that occurred between 1845 and 1850. In fact we should indelibly fix it in our personal and collective memory for we are our ancestors.
Edited by - scarabking on 16 August 2002 18:13:46
