Depends on how willing some societies were for upward mobility, as some would support the nobility at the cost of others whowere more deserving and hard working. Apparently Alexander the Great was famous across Asia and Europe because of ridiculous legendary stories about him. Medieval Europeans had his death as a time bit philosophical, with them asking the reader if perhaps him making friends or associating with commoners led to his death. And knights could marry wealthy women and then divorce them when they ran out of money, claiming they didn’t tell them they hadn’t been informed the women were commoners. It varies place to place and as only the eldest son of English families were allowed to inherit the land or title, there was plenty of spare kids around to eventually end up as the Gentry and Good Families.
Could the Great Irish Famine be handled better?
- Thread starter Vinization
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This best new research on the subject, if anyone wants to read around it, is Charles Read's 'The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain's Financial Crisis'.
The basic thesis of the work is that it was not laissez-faire ideology, but the fact that the new Whig government lacked the ability to borrow the money without panicking markets from 1847 to continue Peel's extensive relief efforts (indeed the Whig's spent 4 times as much as Peel's final year in office in their first 9 months).
I can't think of another topic so warped by myth and nationalism like this one. Largely I think because of outright lies from Irish nationalists. Take for example John Mitchel, who spent his time during the famine attacking the British govt for feeding the Irish poor.
‘The ruling powers in our country … have undertaken the duty of feeding the Irish people …’, he thundered in The Nation in December 1846, ‘the effect of their administration in this matter will be that starvation will be averted for this season at the cost of an excessive outlay in money, a vital injury to that class or interest most in need of being cherished’. (Read pp. 10.)
Of course, he reversed his position later for his best known writings and gave us 'God brought the blight but the Englishman brought the famine.'
This wasn't unique, there were a fair few nationalists at the time that denounced British aid, of course later reversing their position when it suited.
The basic thesis of the work is that it was not laissez-faire ideology, but the fact that the new Whig government lacked the ability to borrow the money without panicking markets from 1847 to continue Peel's extensive relief efforts (indeed the Whig's spent 4 times as much as Peel's final year in office in their first 9 months).
I can't think of another topic so warped by myth and nationalism like this one. Largely I think because of outright lies from Irish nationalists. Take for example John Mitchel, who spent his time during the famine attacking the British govt for feeding the Irish poor.
‘The ruling powers in our country … have undertaken the duty of feeding the Irish people …’, he thundered in The Nation in December 1846, ‘the effect of their administration in this matter will be that starvation will be averted for this season at the cost of an excessive outlay in money, a vital injury to that class or interest most in need of being cherished’. (Read pp. 10.)
Of course, he reversed his position later for his best known writings and gave us 'God brought the blight but the Englishman brought the famine.'
This wasn't unique, there were a fair few nationalists at the time that denounced British aid, of course later reversing their position when it suited.
The famine came at the end of a series of disasters that struck Ireland in the lead-up to the famine.
There had been a series of partial failures of the potato crops and a massive hurricane in the years leading up to the famine.
the very wet weather at the time made it almost impossible to harvest turf for fuel leading to fuel shortage too.
en.wikipedia.org
During the first year of the famine, the British government had provided some very useful famine relief.
The following year was dry and they were no blight leading to a report in Britain that the famine was over. The dry weather result in a much smaller potato crop.
They decided that famine relief would be provided by the poor law to be paid for by Irish ratepayers, not the British government.
en.wikipedia.org
Part of the problem was communication. Reports of how bad the famine in Ireland were not believed in Britain.
They could have provided more relief, but that would have resulted in having to feed millions of Irish at public expense for the indefinite future.
That could be very expensive. The British looked for someone to blame for the problem and decided that Irish landlords created the problem so they should pay for the relief. Many of them were already close to being bankrupt already.
A chemical to stop blight was not discovered until 1882.
en.wikipedia.org
Long-term Irish tenant farms had been made very small due to inheritance rules for Catholics under the penal laws that they had become unviable.
A longer-term solution would have been needed to pay for large-scale emigration to reduce the number of people in Ireland dependent on farming.
There had been a series of partial failures of the potato crops and a massive hurricane in the years leading up to the famine.
the very wet weather at the time made it almost impossible to harvest turf for fuel leading to fuel shortage too.
Night of the Big Wind - Wikipedia
The following year was dry and they were no blight leading to a report in Britain that the famine was over. The dry weather result in a much smaller potato crop.
They decided that famine relief would be provided by the poor law to be paid for by Irish ratepayers, not the British government.
Poor relief - Wikipedia
They could have provided more relief, but that would have resulted in having to feed millions of Irish at public expense for the indefinite future.
That could be very expensive. The British looked for someone to blame for the problem and decided that Irish landlords created the problem so they should pay for the relief. Many of them were already close to being bankrupt already.
A chemical to stop blight was not discovered until 1882.
Bordeaux mixture - Wikipedia
A longer-term solution would have been needed to pay for large-scale emigration to reduce the number of people in Ireland dependent on farming.
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This is a legitimate question based on the post he was quoting. The book quoted may indeed be a work that will become a virtual reference document to be cited over andover as time passes (e.g. Shattered Sword, which is widely seen as the current touchstone regarding the Battle of Midway). It also may simply be the most recent, or even the most revisionist (neither of which would necessarily preclude it from being acclaimed as "the best", the aforementioned Shattered Sword was once a brand new book with no real reputation).
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Hmm, if we want to go prior to when the Famine occurred, and considering as well (as least as for those of us on the other side of the Atlantic are concerned) that events that happened in Ireland were rarely confined to just Ireland and/or the British Empire (cf. transportation to Australia), I'm just wondering a few things. If Britain was not so condescending about Newfoundland as more than just a seasonal fishing settlement that was begrudingly allowed to turn into a year-round settlement, it and Lower Canada (> Canada East > Quebec) could have become early on as "safety valves" for Ireland, at least population-wise, in order to mitigate the impact of those disasters pre-Famine (hence allowing for more survival of Irish if there's a solid linguistic base outside of Ireland). Climate-wise, both Newfoundland and Lower Canada/Quebec are not Ireland by any means (with Newfoundland basically an island extension of the Appalachian Mountains and much of North America this far north on the wrong side of the Gulf Stream), but something like Newfoundland in particular could be somewhat survivable if the techniques learned by the inhabitants of the Aran Islands are used for more than just root vegetables.The famine came at the end of a series of disasters that struck Ireland in the lead-up to the famine.
There had been a series of partial failures of the potato crops and a massive hurricane in the years leading up to the famine.
the very wet weather at the time made it almost impossible to harvest turf for fuel leading to fuel shortage too.
During the first year of the famine, the British government had provided some very useful famine relief.Night of the Big Wind - Wikipedia
The following year was dry and they were no blight leading to a report in Britain that the famine was over. The dry weather result in a much smaller potato crop.
They decided that famine relief would be provided by the poor law to be paid for by Irish ratepayers, not the British government.
Part of the problem was communication. Reports of how bad the famine in Ireland were not believed in Britain.Poor relief - Wikipedia
They could have provided more relief, but that would have resulted in having to feed millions of Irish at public expense for the indefinite future.
That could be very expensive. The British looked for someone to blame for the problem and decided that Irish landlords created the problem so they should pay for the relief. Many of them were already close to being bankrupt already.
A chemical to stop blight was not discovered until 1882.
Long-term Irish tenant farms had been made very small due to inheritance rules for Catholics under the penal laws that they had become unviable.Bordeaux mixture - Wikipedia
A longer-term solution would have been needed to pay for large-scale emigration to reduce the number of people in Ireland dependent on farming.
Newfoundland, after all, used to have its own dialect of Irish (spoken primarily on the Avalon Peninsula, in the SE of the island) and during the Famine and after a ticket to what was then called British North America was cheaper than a ticket to the United States. Furthermore, once permanent settlement was allowed legally, a majority of the new settlers were from southwestern England and - more importantly for our purposes - from southeastern Ireland. In part that explains how Irish came to Newfoundland and how the language somehow persisted until it couldn't - as well as British legislation at the time basically encouraging emigration to Newfoundland as prior to the 1820s Newfoundland was not treated as a colony but as a fishery, as well as Irish people being recruited early on in the early stages of English colonization (amidst disputes with the French) for the Grand Banks fisheries. (Indeed, Newfoundland is one of the few places that has its own dedicated name in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic [cf. Nova Scotia], as the Land of Fish/Talamh an Éisc, reflecting the importance of the fisheries to the island's economy.) So there's one route to get out from under things happening in Ireland at that time, if migration to Newfoundland became more well-established that it would be seen as another extension of Ireland, but with more French speakers (primarily Acadian refugees from ethnic cleansing and French fishermen) and additional people whose ancestry was from southwestern England and whom (even with sectarianism) people would have to learn to get along with.
As for Lower Canada - well, if it was just events happening there alone, there's plenty the British could have done to avoid having the Patriote rebellion in the 1830s from exploding, even with the existing mindset of the times, and thus make the colony more accountable to its people. But, more importantly, prior to the late 1830s French-Canadian nationalism was in its "liberal, inclusive" phase, where while Catholicism was still a presence east of the Ottawa River, it was not really considered an important part to the population - but the Church could be used to bridge the gaps between the two population groups and introduce the Irish to life in Canada, as Canadian nationalism at this point was tolerant of anyone willing to come and partake of its ways. As a result, similar to OTL (but not like it, which was mainly Famine-induced and with all sorts of horrors) the cold reaches of the Canadian Shield along the Saint Lawrence could have been yet another safety valve (with or without Newfoundland as a stopping point) for the Irish, both seasonal and permanent (in which case, the latter would become included as Canadiens). Even with the presence of indigenous peoples, there's still plenty of space for the Irish to spread out or cluster around in certain areas.
If the networks that were established by immigration abroad happened earlier (and if migration was normalized early on before the Famine, much like the seasonal migrations to Newfoundland to help with the fisheries) as a way of mitigating the impacts of disaster at home, that would have made a difference in handling the Famine better - with, of course, all sorts of consequences for British North America, and not just in the popular mind as de facto additional provinces of Ireland.
Arguably, the first example of that was in the north of England.
More significantly, selling sheep made more money than renting land.
Link is in the post - the Harrying of the North, almost immediately after the Norman conquest of England, was at best a brutal subjugation of the population, and at worst genocide.
Maybe I dont understand something but what I got from this is:
So people are starving. Relief has to come from the locals because of the legal situation who to get money sold food for export...
As I see it starving people need food, not money. If they wanted to help they had the food at hand, instead of selling it so they can give money to some kind of relief found - that would supposedly use it to buy and distribute food - they could have distribooted the food in the first place? IF they really wanted to help I mean.
To prevent the Irish famine would have required an entirely different set of values in the British Aisles. As long as property rights, landlordism, xenophobia, and anti-Catholicism were the gods of the day, nothing could ever possibly be done.
The taxes in question were property taxes, so distributing the food that you'd have sold just means that your taxes go unpaid, and you're marched off to Dublin Castle in irons. Although if you're a large landholder, what you actually do is put up the rents, and if your tenants don't pay - on account of the whole 'starving to death' thing - you replace them with something that does. Ideally then getting the peasants out of the district, so that you're not paying rates to feed them - which is why some landowners paid for emigration.
That's if you actually produced any food at all - a blacksmith or weaver might pay rates based on their property, but depend on the income from their trade to both buy food and pay the rates. When the price of food goes up, and the rates go up, they're the ones who are likely to sell what they can't take with them and get on a ship for somewhere with better prospects. And guess who buys their property? The landlords who are busy kicking starving peasants out of their homes, of course.
All of which is to say, this kind of local taxation is a bloody awful way to fund something like famine relief.
So, how exactly does he square these claims with the refusal to accept donations, the arguments in favor of laissez faire, the open glee with which Trevelyan talked about the death of the Irish, the fact that his argument about the financial considerations of 1847 came AFTER the government acknowledged the early laissez faire attitude had failed, etc? Because from the summary it frankly sounds like a load of crap.
The refusal of the British government to accept a donation from the Ottoman sultan because it was larger then Queen Victoria’s.
Nope. Neither was the famine relief provided by the Choctaw a myth. The British were just that callous back then, from what I can tell.