i already knew this, but it makes me mad all over again to remember the irish famine of the 19th century wasn't caused so much by potato blight as by protectionist, exploitative grain export and sale laws - ThreadSky

swordsjew.bsky.social • 3 days ago

i already knew this, but it makes me mad all over again to remember the irish famine of the 19th century wasn't caused so much by potato blight as by protectionist, exploitative grain export and sale laws

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xrayagent.bsky.social•3 days ago

swordsjew.bsky.social•3 days ago

"Ironically, the ones producing the corned beef, the Irish people, could not afford beef or corned beef for themselves. When England conquered Ireland, oppressive laws against the native Irish Catholic population began. feudal-style plantations were set up..."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-corned-beef-really-irish-2839144/

swordsjew.bsky.social•3 days ago

its from this book, which is rich with tangents

mindfulhedgehog.bsky.social•3 days ago

You have a subfolder in my phone's photo gallery made up entirely of screenshots of books you mention.

The stack of still-to-be-read reading list books in my room is getting jealous.

swordsjew.bsky.social•3 days ago

the 22 books on my tbr keep expanding......

msbean1818.bsky.social•3 days ago

I just saw this at my library, also apparently the 910's is the shipwreck section and I will spend much time there.

thaliamims.bsky.social•3 days ago

The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan goes into wrenching detail about how the starvation during the potato famine was mostly caused by the British government. That book is a fantastic read, even though there's no polar exploration in it!

ekbuckley.bsky.social•3 days ago

I learned recently that the Irish people ended up pawning fishing gear, so even though you could see shoals of mackerel churning up the water, they had no means to fish.

johnryanwrites.bsky.social•3 days ago

It's Irish if it's made from Irish people.

Oh, sorry, I was reading Swift.

elimgarak240b.bsky.social•3 days ago

Something about the sparkling beef region of County Limerick otherwise it’s just carbonated cow

Idk what I’m doing

crazycatladyabroad.bsky.social•3 days ago

There are reasons Ireland will connect with oppressed underdogs around the world.

ironweed.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, & it bears repeating: an Gorta Mór was a deliberate act by a colonial occupation government that saw tremendous upside in starving or driving millions of Irish off the island so that the land could be put to more productive use by a better class of person. A familiar move down through time.

ironweed.bsky.social•3 days ago

It also killed many many native Irish speakers, and the preservation of the language into the 20th century (one of the priorities of the republican movement) was kind of a miracle. But it survived, and now we have Kneecap, and history is full of echoes and threads and strange turns, & hope too.

ironweed.bsky.social•3 days ago

lol sorry Talia!!!

swordsjew.bsky.social•3 days ago

dont be i love learning!

shivvy.bsky.social•3 days ago

Finally FINALLY listened to them last weekend after giving critical support on principal only - and I love em

jackalpants.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think about this a lot; it's very weird to be half-English, half-Irish, and try to come to terms with how badly the Irish have been kicked about historically by the English.

tylercurtain.bsky.social•2 days ago

There is a wonderful moment in the Irish-language rap movie Kneecap (2024) where DJ Pròvai dismisses his wife's demand that he translate for one of the arrested boys, "It’s not the fucking Potato Famine." She responds, "Don’t joke about the Famine." He asks, "Too soon?"

jerseyshoreglen.bsky.social•3 days ago

And the population that was lost (death or immigration) has only been restored in the last couple of years.

lumagoo.bsky.social•3 days ago

The population of Ireland was about 8.5 million before the famine and it's just over 7 million now, so it's still not fully restored. And had not so many died of starvation or emigrated, some estimate the population would now be closer to 30 million.

johnconorryan.bsky.social•2 days ago

The only country on the planet with a population today lower than in the late 19th century.

johnconorryan.bsky.social•2 days ago

Ugh: I meant EARLY 19th century. By the late 19th century, the population had collapsed, from a pre-famine ~8M, to 4.5M (deaths from famine + emigration). Today, the population is about 7.5M.
Every other place has a population today higher than it had in the 1830s -the planet's population grew 8x.

jerseyshoreglen.bsky.social•2 days ago

I know what you are getting at. Thank you, BTW. Always like keeping my info accurate.

lumagoo.bsky.social•2 days ago

I figured that's what you meant.

jerseyshoreglen.bsky.social•3 days ago

See I heard wrong that they finally caught up. Fucked either way

shivvy.bsky.social•3 days ago

5.4 mil estimated for the Republic, 1.9 for the North for anyone keeping score at home. As a diasporic member I have learned some things here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_diaspora

lumagoo.bsky.social•3 days ago

I vaguely remember hearing years ago how the Irish diaspora in proportion to the native population of Ireland is one of the biggest in the world.

jerseyshoreglen.bsky.social•3 days ago

Sounds about right. There is an area in NJ that has so many ethnic Irish there is a slight accent despite being 3/4th generation. They were old as fuck in the 90s and doubt their kids do with a modern world.

duckykrup.bsky.social•3 days ago

And if you’re someone who considers themselves to be Irish-American you have had at least one grandparent rail about how the famine was an English creation

duckykrup.bsky.social•3 days ago

I learned that from my mom whose Irish heritage was back after the Civil War that the food had been sent to England.

duckykrup.bsky.social•3 days ago

My fake grandma who qualified for Irish citizenship would scowl about the English. (Elderly neighbor whose grandkids were the ages of my sister and I and so we were also her grandkids)

duckykrup.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is probably why I hated Maggie Thatcher from a young age.

inkteller.bsky.social•3 days ago

John Kelly?

gabrielsimoes.bsky.social•3 days ago

Is this from Rot?

swordsjew.bsky.social•3 days ago

nah a shipwreck book called Adrift

gabrielsimoes.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thanks! :)

ianford.bsky.social•2 days ago

Ironically the Conservative govt under Peel at the beginning of the Famine rolled out the standard public relief schemes in a (temporary) attempt to alleviate hunger and imported corn from the US. 1
https://www.rte.ie/history/the-great-irish-famine/2020/1117/1178730-the-temporary-relief-commission/

ianford.bsky.social•2 days ago

Once the Whigs took over under Lord John Russell they combined laissez faire economic policies with religious Providentialism (the will of God punishing Catholics)and the idea that they could use the crisis to radically alter Irish agriculture away from subsistence farming to large modern estates.

ianford.bsky.social•2 days ago

British public opinion also changed in relation to providing aid - the argument that the taxpayer was bailing out feckless absentee landlords who had no incentive to modernise the land system - also grew in importance. As more and more Irish refugees turned up in Liverpool etc attitudes changed.

ianford.bsky.social•2 days ago

Also, one of the leading people who pushed the official UK government policy towards the Famine was a guy called Charles Trevelyan - a leading civil servant in the treasury. https://www.rte.ie/history/the-great-irish-famine/2020/0902/1162846-the-truth-about-trevelyan/

justasocprof.bsky.social•3 days ago

Is this Padraic Scanlan's book Rot?

swordsjew.bsky.social•3 days ago

nah a book called adrift, about a shipful of irish emigrants that sank

maggwheel.bsky.social•3 days ago

The Graves Are Walking, by John Kelly, is another great but harrowing book.

txteacher.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’ve known for years that my mother’s family immigrated here during the potato famine with no idea why. I thought it was just bad luck. I’m tired of knowing things.

genxotaku1971.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yep. It was deliberate, obstinate British policy and effectively an act of genocide.

dewterium2.bsky.social•3 days ago

It was ideologues caring more about following their rituals than about people.

mwunicorn.bsky.social•3 days ago

Obligatory Sinead O'Connor tries to tell us post

https://youtu.be/JyLnbjtBLX4?si=0hRYrcmySeKNYkTs

lumagoo.bsky.social•3 days ago

Cash crops grown in Ireland for the British consumer were removed under armed guard to make sure the Irish didn't get any. In the Irish language, we don't call it a famine. It's "An Gorta Mór" or the big hunger.

shivvy.bsky.social•3 days ago

yup yup yup

duddy17.bsky.social•3 days ago

On a tour of the Guinness brewery in Dublin, we asked if they kept operating during that period. The brewery (and its mostly-Protestant workforce) got all the grain they needed...

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