The Holodomor: Starvation of more than 6 million Ukrainians by Stalin

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Actually 'The British' sent money, lots of money, to buy grain that was on the open market. Unfortunately it was given to the catholic church to disseminate and they spent the cash on Gold plate for church adornments and building church extensions. It was one of the first examples of a mass releif fund being set up.

Not to derail the topic, but An Gorta Mor is something I know more than a little about. The British made one - ONE - grain purchase to help the starving Irish (corn from the US) and the project was a colossal failure that had nothing to do with the church. All other relief came from private charities (a good number of them religious organisations).

The whole situation could have been alleviated by simply closing Irish ports to food exports, as was done in the 1780s.

To be even more boringly pedantic, there was never a famine in Ireland - you can't have a famine in a country full of food.

Boru

[EgoRaptor]

Also, Mao never perpetrated a genocide in China. 45 million people died, but because Mao armed the youth & told them to kill the "intellectuals". Mao was an idiot, he could never had successfully carried out a genocide.

[Belac Enrobso]

That Makes God, Hitler, and Stalin look like noobs. That at least equates to 1000+ tactical nukes.

[theyear12013]

The total number of people killed in WWII 60 million people or 2.5% of world population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

I mean think about that number 60 million. Just wow. And I don't think that includes all of the people killed during the Holodomor or the Great Leap Forward. The 20th century was unprecedented across the world in aggregate numbers of deaths. But since world population is now 8 billion ... humanity has still come out ahead. But we should never forget the 60 million human beings killed in WWII whether in the battles, the starvation, the ethnic cleansing, the concentration camps, or fire bombing.

[là bạn điên]

Not to derail the topic, but An Gorta Mor is something I know more than a little about.

The British made one - ONE - grain purchase to help the starving Irish (corn from the US) and the project was a colossal failure that had nothing to do with the church. All other relief came from private charities (a good number of them religious organisations).

And those charities were ....British. The quakers being foremost amongst them.

The whole situation could have been alleviated by simply closing Irish ports to food exports, as was done in the 1780s.

The grain would still have been in private hands. You seem to think that it would just have been handed out.

To be even more boringly pedantic, there was never a famine in Ireland - you can't have a famine in a country full of food.

There was a collapse of the potato crop due to disastrous practices of farmers using the same strain all across the country coupled with the ludicrous habit of splitting land over and over again so that there was bare subsistence

Anyway you are denying that charity money given to the Catholic church was used to buy gold plate?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

And those charities were ....British. The quakers being foremost amongst them.

Not entirely true. A good deal of the relief monies were raised in the US and Australia, as well as in England. In point of fact, the first several thousand pounds in aid come from India.

The grain would still have been in private hands. You seem to think that it would just have been handed out.

It wasn't just grain. Even at the height of the 'famine' Ireland was exporting - literally - tonnes of food to England. Closing the ports (i.e., prohibiting the export of food from Ireland and keeping it in Ireland to feed the Irish) is precisely what alleviated the famine in the early 1780s. There is no rational reason to think that it wouldn't have worked in the 1840s.

There was a collapse of the potato crop due to disastrous practices of farmers using the same strain all across the country coupled with the ludicrous habit of splitting land over and over again so that there was bare subsistence

I'm unsure how desperately impoverished subsistence farmers were supposed to have varied the varieties of potatoes they had available to grow. I think it was more a case of necessity than an option.

Erm...it was the absentee Irish and English landlords who split the land. When it was leased from them by the gombeen, the latter divided the tracts into as many parcels as he could rent. Tenant farmers were never paid a working wage (repeal of the Penal Laws aside), and his own farm was subsistence for his own family, and he had to work the landlord's property merely to pay his rent. In essence, the abject poverty, the widespread use of the Irish Lumper, and the tiny subsistence plots were the result of British policies, not Irish practices.

Anyway you are denying that charity money given to the Catholic church was used to buy gold plate?

I don't doubt that some of it was. I thought you were referring specifically to the corn and corn-meal purchase made by Peel, which is the disaster I was referring to. Apos if I took you wrong.

Do you have a source for the misappropriation of relief funds by the Church?

Boru

[Minimalist]

Actually 'The British' sent money, lots of money, to buy grain that was on the open market. Unfortunately it was given to the catholic church to disseminate and they spent the cash on Gold plate for church adornments and building church extensions. It was one of the first examples of a mass releif fund being set up.

Not to derail the topic, but An Gorta Mor is something I know more than a little about. The British made one - ONE - grain purchase to help the starving Irish (corn from the US) and the project was a colossal failure that had nothing to do with the church. All other relief came from private charities (a good number of them religious organisations).

The whole situation could have been alleviated by simply closing Irish ports to food exports, as was done in the 1780s.

To be even more boringly pedantic, there was never a famine in Ireland - you can't have a famine in a country full of food.

Boru

I seem to recall reading that while the peasants were starving Ireland continued exporting food for the profit of British absentee landowners.
The potato blight did not damage other crops.

[là bạn điên]

Brian sodding boru -what do you mean by tenant farmers not being paid a wage? tenant farmers are never paid a wage, they RENT the farm from the landlord and they own and sell the produce thereof

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Brian sodding boru -what do you mean by tenant farmers not being paid a wage? tenant farmers are never paid a wage, they RENT the farm from the landlord and they own and sell the produce thereof

That's simply not the case. The Irish tenants rented their plots from the owners (at usually exorbitant rates) and were paid a wage to grow crops. The crops were owned by the landlords and were for export only. The actual smallholding of the tenant (his 'own' plot) was where he grew the potatoes to feed himself and his family. The great majority of his time was spent working land he did not own to grow food he was not permitted to eat and which the tenant farming system left him too poor to purchase.

For the record, I don't think the Great Hunger was a deliberate act of genocide by the British, but a very strong case can be made that it was at least an opportunistic attempt at genocide.

Since it isn't considered good form to ask a question before you've answered one asked of you:

Do you have a source for the misappropriation of relief funds by the Church?

Boru

[là bạn điên]

That's simply not the case. The Irish tenants rented their plots from the owners (at usually exorbitant rates) and were paid a wage to grow crops

if they were paid a wage then it was separately working on a landlords land

The actual smallholding of the tenant (his 'own' plot) was where he grew the potatoes to feed himself and his family.

You mean the bit he rented

The great majority of his time was spent working land he did not own to grow food he was not permitted to eat and which the tenant farming system left him too poor to purchase.

If he worked on someone elses land for a wage then why on earth would he be entitled to the produce? If he was so poor then why did he have 8 fucking children? Blame the fucking Catholic church for the chronic overpopulation of Ireland.