(November 17, 2021 at 7:59 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Looking it up, the picture of An Gorta Mor is getting extremely complicated. I'm finding information that, even with all those exports, imports outnumbered exports 4 to 1 (and those mostly went to feeding the fucking livestock), and a lot of those exports seemed to be the only option many had to pay their rent (due largely to the Irish Poor Laws). And looking up what historians of Ireland have to say, it looks more like the actual historians seem to see it as more neglect than genocide. Quoth Kevin Kenny: "[W]hile few, if any, historians in Ireland today would endorse the idea of British genocide (in the sense of conscious intent to slaughter), this does not mean that government policies, whether adopted or rejected, had no impact on starvation, disease, mortality and emigration."
So, it looks less like an active attempt at genocide and more just plain not giving a shit about how their policies are affecting them. Which sounds a lot like many current American policies towards minorities, to be honest.
If governmental policies contribute to the starvation of a quarter of the population, those policies are genocidal in their effect. The government knew the Irish were starving, and deliberately repealed policies that would have helped.
Please consider this comment from Charles Trevelyan, the architect of those policies, who was knighted in 1848 for - if you can believe it - ‘services to Ireland’:
‘The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse, and turbulent character of the Irish people.’
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
