irish potato famine a genocide?

[holy king]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29#Suggestions_of_genocide

The famine is still a controversial event in Irish history. Debate and discussion on the British government's response to the failure of the potato crop in Ireland and the subsequent large-scale starvation, and whether or not this constituted genocide, remains a historically and politically-charged issue.

In 1996 Francis A. Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote a report commissioned by the New York-based Irish Famine/Genocide Committee, that concluded "Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnic and racial group commonly known as the Irish People.... Therefore, during the years 1845 to 1850 the British government knowingly pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland that constituted acts of genocide against the Irish people within the meaning of Article II (c) of the 1948 [Hague] Genocide Convention."[138] On the strength of Boyle's report, the U.S. state of New Jersey included the famine in the "Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum" at the secondary tier.[139]

Historian Peter Duffy writes that "The government's crime, which deserves to blacken its name forever ..." was rooted "in the effort to regenerate Ireland" through "landlord-engineered replacement of tillage plots with grazing lands" that "took precedence over the obligation to provide food ... for its starving citizens. It is little wonder that the policy looked to many people like genocide."[140]

Several commentators have argued that the searing effect of the famine in Irish cultural memory has effects similar to that of genocide, while maintaining that one did not occur. Robert Kee suggests that the Famine is seen as "comparable" in its force on "popular national consciousness to that of the 'final solution' on the Jews," and that it is not "infrequently" thought that the Famine was something very like, "a form of genocide engineered by the English against the Irish people." This point was echoed by James Donnelly, a historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who wrote in his work Landlord and Tenant in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, "I would draw the following broad conclusion: at a fairly early stage of the Great Famine the government's abject failure to stop or even slow down the clearances (evictions) contributed in a major way to enshrining the idea of English state-sponsored genocide in Irish popular mind. Or perhaps one should say in the Irish mind, for this was a notion that appealed to many educated and discriminating men and women, and not only to the revolutionary minority...And it is also my contention that while genocide was not in fact committed, what happened during and as a result of the clearances had the look of genocide to a great many Irish..."[129]

Historian Cormac Ó Gráda disagreed that the famine was genocide: first, that "genocide includes murderous intent and it must be said that not even the most bigoted and racist commentators of the day sought the extermination of the Irish"; second, that most people in Whitehall "hoped for better times in Ireland" and third, that the claim of genocide overlooks "the enormous challenges facing relief efforts, both central, local, public and private". Ó Gráda thinks that a case of neglect is easier to sustain than that of genocide.[141] However, people in charge like chief of the Government relief Charles Trevelyan contradict a "neglect" but rather hazarded the consequenses from the colonial perspective that the Famine was a "mechanism for reducing surplus population" and a "judgement of God".[142]
Famine Memorial in Dublin

Well-known Irish columnist and song-writer John Waters has described the famine as the most violent event in a history which was characterised by violence of every imaginable kind and stated that the famine "was an act of genocide, driven by racism and justified by ideology", arguing that the destruction of Ireland's cultural, political and economic diversity and the reduction of the Irish economy to basically a mono-cultural dependence was a holocaust waiting to happen. Waters contends that arguments about the source of the blight or the practicability of aid efforts once the Famine had taken hold were irrelevant to the meaning of the experience.[143]

so, was it a genocide or not?

 

[RedRalph]

No, it wasn't. And John Waters writes songs for Ireland's Eurovision entries, so that should give you an idea how much attention he's due.

 

[Patroklos]

No, British actions exacerbated the disaster but it was not the underlying cause. It was also not a systematic extermination, there were plenty or wealthy protestant Irish who were not troubled by the famine in the slightest.

 

[holy king]

It was also not a systematic extermination, there were plenty or wealthy protestant Irish who were not troubled by the famine in the slightest.

there were plenty of wealthy jews who made arrangements with the nazis, does that mean the holocaust wasnt systematic?

 

[Quackers]

Nazi's already mentioned in record time.

Looks like this thread is over.

 

[holy king]

it's a thread about genocide, what did you expect?

 

[Patroklos]

there were plenty of wealthy jews who made arrangements with the nazis, does that mean the holocaust wasnt systematic?

Is it your position that Jews of any wealth were exempt from the holocaust? Tread carefully...

 

[holy king]

Is it your position that Jews of any wealth were exempt from the holocaust? Tread carefully...

ehm, no, i'm just sayign that a select few managed to save their asses into exile by paying the nazis off.
and i cant give you examples, as this is the internet and all i can find is antisemitic crap.

 

[Patroklos]

Please explain why a select few are of any relevance. The simple fact is that there was no reliable out for the Jews. The Nazi extermination was purposeful with no guarunteed out. In the main wealthy Jews were targeted for extermination first so their wealth could be appropriated.

In the Irish situation, on the other hand, as long as you had money there was food to be bought. The problem was the majority of the population both subsisted on the land for both their food stuffs AND their income. So when the famine ruined their crops, not only did they not have food but they also didn't have income to buy it somewhere else. Or buy anything at all for that matter, which collapsed the town economies and made non agrarian Irish also out of luck.

The fungus that destroyed the Irish potatoe crops was not introduced intentionally, it was an unforseen circumstance.

 

[Quackers]

it's a thread about genocide, what did you expect?

Still, I'm sick of "nazi's did X, so did Y, therefore Y is Nazi".

It wasn't a genocide.

 

[holy king]

Please explain why a select few are of any relevance. The simple fact is that there was no reliable out for the Jews. The Nazi extermination was purposeful with no guarunteed out. In the main wealthy Jews were targeted for extermination first so their wealth could be appropriated.

In the Irish situation, on the other hand, as long as you had money there was food to be bought. The problem was the majority of the population both subsisted on the land for both their food stuffs AND their income. So when the famine ruined their crops, not only did they not have food but they also didn't have income to buy it somewhere else. Or buy anything at all for that matter, which collapsed the town economies and made non agrarian Irish also out of luck.

The fungus that destroyed the Irish potatoe crops was not introduced intentionally, it was an unforseen circumstance.

i'm just saying that "not a 100 percent of an ethnicity were targeted and/or hit, so it wasnt a genocide" leaves a definition of genocide that is so narrow that it is completely useless. (as nothing can constitute genocide under it)

the fungus wasnt introduced intentionally, but the english sure made use of the circumstances to try and break the irish people and wash their identity out.

 

[Yeekim]

Yes, I think it was.

Christine Kinealy expresses the consensus of historians when she states that "the major tragedy of the Irish Famine of 1845–52 marked a watershed in modern Irish history. Its occurrence, however, was neither inevitable nor unavoidable."[131] The underlying factors which combined to cause the famine were aggravated by an inadequate government response. As Kinealy notes,

"...[T]he government had to do something to help alleviate the suffering, the particular nature of the actual response, especially following 1846, suggests a more covert agenda and motivation. As the Famine progressed, it became apparent that the government was using its information not merely to help it formulate its relief policies, but also as an opportunity to facilitate various long-desired changes within Ireland. These included population control and the consolidation of property through various means, including emigration... Despite the overwhelming evidence of prolonged distress caused by successive years of potato blight, the underlying philosophy of the relief efforts was that they should be kept to a minimalist level; in fact they actually decreased as the Famine progressed."[132]

They didn't engineer it themselves, but they did fully exploit the "opportunity".

EDIT: x-post with holy king

 

[Communisto]

The food was there. The British stole it. Millions died or were displaced.

I dunno if thats intentional genocide, but I could call it that by way of neglect. Just like a parent would be charged with abuse for neglecting a child.

 

[bhsup]

In 1996 Francis A. Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote a report commissioned by the New York-based Irish Famine/Genocide Committee

That invalidates the study. Just like when scientists are funded by tobacco companies to determine the health issues of cigarettes and those studies are dismissed due to conflict of interest.

 

[Shekwan]

I suppose if you apply a loose enough definition of the term it could be desribed as a genocide. I don't think it was a phenomenon that naturally occurred and government policy and inaction exacerbated the situation.

I think the problem with the term today is that if it doesn't closely enough resemble the Jewish Holocaust, then it doesn't count.

No, British actions exacerbated the disaster but it was not the underlying cause. It was also not a systematic extermination, there were plenty or wealthy protestant Irish who were not troubled by the famine in the slightest.

There was a clear distintion at the time between the Protestant Ascendancy and the poor rural Catholics. Just because they all fit under the blanket term Irish doesn't mean that the results of the famine weren't targeted at a certain socio-economic group.

 

[warpus]

i'm just saying that "not a 100 percent of an ethnicity were targeted and/or hit, so it wasnt a genocide" leaves a definition of genocide that is so narrow that it is completely useless. (as nothing can constitute genocide under it)

Yeah, that's a bad definition of genocide. Even if you targeted 5% of some ethnic/cultural/whatever group, it could be genocide.

I don't know much about Irish history, so in this particular case I have no idea whether it was genocide or not.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Have this criminal tried at the Hague.

 

[onedreamer]

Of course, it's an ukrainian genocide.

 

[azzaman333]

I've always considered it more of a suicide than a genocide.

I probably wouldn't want to live if I were Irish either.

 

[duckstab]

The food was there. The British stole it. Millions died or were displaced.

I dunno if thats intentional genocide, but I could call it that by way of neglect. Just like a parent would be charged with abuse for neglecting a child.

Exactly. If you let somebody in your care die, you can be charged with negligent homicide, even if you do nothing to actually hasten their death.

So, while the Potato Famine doesn't rise to the level of the Holocaust in terms of outright malice and deliberate mass murder, it should, in my opinion, be considered genocidal.

One disclaimer is in order. I'm an Irish-American on my father's side and at least some of my ancestors fled the Famine. I remember even growing up in the 1960s some of the older members of that side of the family, at least 2 or 3 generations removed from the tragedy, still harbored a residual contempt for all things English.

On the other hand, the most enduring legacy of the Famine for me is that I have a special disgust reserved for anybody of Irish descent who takes a bigoted or racist position. I think it dishonors the suffering our ancestors endured to think of any other group in similar terms.