A bird's eye view of the vineyard
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Friday February 25, 2005 14:21
by murphys
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16Previous disscusion of An Gorta Mor on indymedia ie:
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68358
The real reason so many died:
http://www.irishholocaust.org
Thanks helper, I looked for that post, couldn't remember title.
"God sent the blight but the British government sent the Famine."
John Mitchell
Theres a review of a book : "Charles Trevelyan and the great Irish Famine" in the Jan/Feb 2005 History Ireland. Trevelyan was Permanent Secretary at the British Treasury during the Famine period. Depressingly, it looks as if the book is making out that Trevelyan wasnt such a bad chappie after all. Revisionists, dont ya love them.
The revisionists really put me off history in college. I remember writing an essay for a particular lecturer, the title of which asked for an evaluation of the UK government's famine relief measures. Having read across both revisionists and non-revisionists, I came to the conclusion that the measures were inadequate, quoting statements that were overtly malthusian from whigs at the time, etc. The academic in question was pretty irritated and told me that whig economics had nothing to do with the Famine's effects; and also that the values of the time were different, and they did their best in the context, etc.
The problem with revisionism isn't that it is conservative. People are entitled to be that, while we are entitled to disagree with it. The problem is that it purports to be, and masquerades as, value-free, when it is anything but. At least Marxist, feminist or other leftist historiographies are honest about their standpoint, a balancing influence sadly lacking in Irish university history departments at present.
What university was that?
UCD was aklways full of Famine/Holocaust deniers. Prof Mary Daly always claimed that only about 200,000 diedin the famine.
I was referring to Trinity - many of the academics there were fine, but this particular one was ultra-revisionist, and a few of the other Irish historians.
Mary Daly is a good historian, though also quite revisionist in her approach. In the reading I've done, I never remember her making the claim that only 200,000 died. Apart from anything else, I don't think her reputation - that precious commodity for academics - would have survived that particular claim.
Off Course.
The past century "potatoe famine" and its awful outcome was, perpetraded by "RoyalProstituteFascist and Genocidal" England.
I was actually a student of Mary Daly. I remember her saying that the reason so many died during the famine was because we didn't fish. Anyone for a spot of poaching?
..and why didn't we fish? For a country where the Salmon
was key to the early settlers survival, so much so, it becomes attributed with mystical powers and is prominent in folklore, this is strange.
No spuds back then either, they were "introduced" from South America centuries later.
The primary reason why we didnt fish was because the rivers and shorelines were also owned by the landlords. Anyone fishing without permission would face severe and heavy penalties under the law. Irish peasants even had to pay for the right to collect seaweed (rack) for use as fertiliser. This is were the term "rack-renting" landlord came from.
I thought "rack rent" came from the medieval torture device i.e. tenants' rents were continuously and inexorably increased...if it's about sea weed then how could it apply to inland counties?
"Rack" was the commonly used term for seaweed which was traditionally used as fertiliser. Bloodsucking landlords saw an opportunity to squeeze even more money out of the ordinary people by charging them for using even this natural resource .
The term "rack-renting" was then used to describe a bloodsucking, penny pinching bastard of a brit landlord. Other terms such as "boycott" from that period of land unrest also passed into common usage as well.
"Rack" was the commonly used term for seaweed which was traditionally used as fertiliser. Bloodsucking landlords saw an opportunity to squeeze even more money out of the ordinary people by charging them for using even this natural resource
>> This claim is utter nonsense. The seaweed term is WRACK - as in Bladderwrack, (Fucus vesiculosus). This was even taught in Irish secondary schools when I was a lad.
The rack-rent reference is, in fact, an allusion to the torture device.
Barry - Google the following words: Hoist, Petard
Belgian Potato crop failed at same time
was not accompanied by mass starvation
because government was putting measures in place to defeat starvation.
What was response of British state to
failure of potatoes in Scotland.
Also we can say that Ireland in 1840 was
as far from the consciousness of the British middle class (because poor were not
having political power at the time even in UK) as Africa is from Irish consciousness today.
So what are Irish people doing to help Africa?
of Jewish groups in obtaining reparations for property seized before and during WWII, have any of the descendants of Irish people whose land was ethnically cleansed and expropriated by the British during their colonial occupation ever been attempted?
If so, why not?