 | This is an archive of past discussions about Great Famine (Ireland). Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
| Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
Slrubenstein invited me to mitigate the debate between Stevertigo and JTD over what an encyclopedia article should or should not include with regard to the genocide claims. I’m not alone in noticing a tone redolent of a polemic in Stevertigo’s radioactive aside, but I do agree in principle that those claims need to be addressed.
To reconcile the need to address the genocide claims, albeit the claims of those scholars in the minority, and the need to balance the tone of Stevertigo’s controversial section, I’ve tried to weave together other relevant Wikipedia articles, Stevertigo’s polemic, and my own information, hoping to form an article on the origins of the potato famine. This new section tries to trace Britain’s role and briefly introduces Stevertigo’s claims.
I hope this new section can reconcile the debate.
Social, Political, and Economic Origins of the Famine
The Union Act stipulated that Ireland would have in the United Kingdom one-fifth the representation of Great Britain with 100 members in the House of Commons. The union of the churches of England and Ireland also cemented British rule, strengthening the preeminent position in Ireland of the Protestant Episcopalians by securing the continuation of the British Test Act, which virtually excluded Nonconformists (both Catholic and Protestant) from Parliament and from membership of municipal corporations.
Part of the agreement that led to the Union Act stipulated that the Penal Laws were to be repealed and Catholic Emancipation granted. King George III, however, blocked emancipation, arguing that to grant it would break his coronation oath to defend the Anglican Church. A campaign under lawyer and politician Daniel O’Connel led to the conceding of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, so allowing Catholics to sit in parliament. O'Connell mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the “Repeal” of the Act of Union.
Not until 1828-29 did the repeal of the Test Act and the concession of Catholic Emancipation provide political equality for most purpose, including free trade between the British Isles that Irish merchandise would be admitted to British colonies on the same terms as British merchandise.
Political equality and laissez-faire were mixed blessings though. These advantages were not enough to offset the full impact of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. The time of the Potato Famine coincided with the era of Pax Britannica between the Congress of Vienna (after the defeat of Napoleon) and the Franco-Prussian War. Britain then reaped the benefits of being the world’s sole modern, industrial nation. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Britain was the "workshop of the world", meaning that its finished goods were produced so efficiently and cheaply that they could usually undersell comparable, locally manufactured goods in other markets.
Within half a century agricultural produce dropped in value, estate rentals declined, while the rural population increased substantially. When the potato, the staple food of rural Ireland, rotted in the ground through the onset of blight in the mid-1840s, thousands died of starvation of fever in the Great Famine that ensued, and thousands more fled abroad. Unfortunately this coincided with a fashionable economic policy of laissez-faire, which argued against state intervention of any sort. While no one knows how many died (state registration of deaths, even if was possible given the vast numbers dying, did not exist, while the major religion, Catholicism, only just freed from the Penal Laws was poor at keeping records) best calculations suggest somewhere in the region of 500,000 died. One entire class, the cottiers or farm laborers, was wiped out.
Part of the problem was also the small size of Irish landholdings, a result of excessive family size (due in part to the disappearance of traditional methods of contraception and growing sexual activity outside marital relationships), among the poorer segments of society least able to provide for their children. In particular, both the law and social tradition provided for subdivision of land, all sons inherited equal shared in a farm, meaning that farms became so small that only crop, potatoes, could be grown in sufficient amounts to feed a family. Furthermore many estates, from whom these rented, were poorly run by absentee landlords and in many cases heavily mortgaged.
That the Famine "amounted to genocide" by the British against the Irish, is a divisive issue, and largely representative of the difference in perspective and attitudes among the Amercan Irish from Irish nationals. Few Irish historians accept outright such a definition, as "genocide" implies a deliberate policy of extermination. All are agreed that the British policies during the Famine, particularly those applied under Lord John Russell, were misguided, ill-informed and disastrous. Professor Joe Lee once called what happened a holocaust.
There is little or no conflict on the facts; the records are incomplete, for whatever cause, and thus the "debate" is largely a moral one; attempting to ascertain, whether within the policies of the British Empire, lay a racist, forgetful, or simply inconsiderate mentality that, despite its power, was impotent to handle a humanitarian crisis in its own backyard. To British historians, this is so rudimentary and axiomatic, as to be forgotten: Imperial rule was cruel, just as was America's 'Conquering of the West', which America does not, in any sincere way, admit guilt for either, simply because it would raise political issues now.
Irish, British and American historians F.S.L. Lyons, John A. Murphy, Joe Lee, Roy Foster, and James S. Donnelly, Jr., as well as historians Cecil Woodham-Smith, Peter Gray, Ruth Dudley Edwards and many others have long dismissed claims of a deliberate policy of genocide. This dismissal usually does not preclude any assessment of British Imperial rule as inadequate, or ill-mannered to handle the task.
Hope this helps.
- Thanks 172 -- I'd like to know what Sv and JTD think about this. I am not an expert in Irish or British history. For what it is worth, I think the above reads well. I am not sure, thought, how much of it should be incorporated into the IPF article, or into a general article on Irish history. As for the IPF article -- I still think there would be value to separating a historical narrative (what everyone agrees happened) from a review of different interpretations (why it happened, what the events reveal about the world at that time). 172's text is clear, but weaves the two together rather tightly -- and it isn't easy for me to figure out how to incorporate it into the article. What do others think? I want to emphasize that I am commenting only on the style, not on the content. Slrubenstein
Not on the genocide aspect (on purpose - but Nassau Senior does have a bearing on that debate).
I want to make some comments on parts of a recent version, to get feedback before incorporating the changes. They are mostly to try to give wider context, but in some cases that context reveals a flawed insight (e.g. about the need for outworking "proving" farms had failed). Even if the insights are useful, there's a risk that they might prove too much of a digression and so they are bound to need editing to keep their value without straying too far from the main thrust. So here goes, looking for feedback.
"Other lands were used for cash crops like flax." It's a characteristic of the potato that it doesn't work well as a liquid reserve of capital. Rice and potatoes need minimal equipment, so they can start from a low base (though they end up with capital in the form of land improvements), but corn needs special tools to grow it and use it for food; you have to start with some separate source of capital. Rice and corn can however be readily stored and transported to distant markets, whereas potatoes have limited value in this respect - in the "Communist Manifesto" Marx even commented on the Prussian Junkers' dependency on potato spirit as a source of cash. So potatoes could only plug into the cash economy indirectly, by enabling those other activities, and they didn't help much with climbing into greater corn production (N.B., corn is NOT maize) - I'll come back to flax later.
"...the traditional Irish practice of sub-dividing plots among the male children of a family, though reducing was still widely practiced in the poorer areas of the country." Two things:-
- This rested easily on Celtic systems of land tenure, which reflected a bottleneck in the ownership of capital etc. and not of agricultural land as such (Ireland was predominantly pastoral rather than agricultural until it was pacified, and indeed forcing the Irish into a settled agricultural existence was one tactic in repressing endemic resistance). In fact, the provisions in the penal laws enforcing subdivision except where a protestant heir turned up rested on misapplying customs that were already there.
- Nevertheless, many cultures have adopted the subdivision approach when circumstances warranted, even when that was not their tradition, most notably the poor white Boers in the South Africa of a few generations ago. Their ancestors had eventually picked up on customs suited to extensive use of land, even though (as shown by the New York patroon system) the ancestors of those ancestors had customs relating to intensive use.
The point here is that the customs were not uniquely Irish, and also that wherever there were customs relating to intensive or extensive uses, they tended to have a time lag and survive past their best fitness.
The tradition of electing monarchs from among a limited group is merely an analogy with subdivision of inheritances, not an extension of it. It can be found in many cultures, for instance the Yoruba of West Africa, the Accession Council of the United Kingdom, the Cardinals of Rome, the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire and indeed those of the United States of America. It is in fact a flexible mechanism that can be adapted in many different directions - but this in turn shows that it is NOT an instance of personal property. The nearest that the Crown of England ever came to this was probably how it was dealt with under the will of Henry VIII. But even that Crown was indeed reserved by a legal fiction from Philip of Spain when he married Mary Tudor, an exemption in favour of King Arthur should he come again - which shows that this mechanism does NOT handle a crown as property.
"A British Government report carried out shortly before the Famine noted that the scale of the poverty was such that one third of all small holdings in Ireland were presumed to be unable to support their families, after paying their rent, other than through the earnings of seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland." This is highly misleading. It suggests that the need for outworking was itself equivalent to poverty. It is in fact something that occurs before that, with poverty only coming in when it is not enough even so. There are roughly three stages, though agriculture in Ireland did not pass through the first (for Ireland, as with many countries, the first stage happened with less settled and more pastoral forms of activity):-
- Smallholdings are enough to live off, and lifestyles have not changed to generate demands for outside goods and services. It is very hard for outsiders to mobilise local resources, and colonialists in these situations have tried various expedients. The price of labour is high, but the labour market clears.
- Smallholdings are not quite enough, either from taxes or rents or from the best land being somehow taken, or from simple increase of population past the first hints of Malthusian problems, or from some small requirements for things which need to be bought for cash. Then outworking becomes necessary to earn a top up, which is vital but need not be much so competition bids the price of labour down; outworking can be putting out/taking in of commercial work to be done in place, or migrant labour, or whatever. Things like flax become practical, since it can most conveniently be produced with intermittent work in the agricultural year and the passage of time for some stages (e.g. "retting"); it is not well suited to industrial scale regular production. The price of labour is low, but the labour market clears (since wages can fall enough for cutting wages to do this - even below a minimum for subsistence).
- Even with all the expedients, there is still not enough. Workers are now in a developed economy, and cash becomes a good proxy for standard of living. There is more cash but less substance (which is why Dollar and Kraay's work is nonsense, when it is used to claim that globalisation has helped poor countries). Unfortunately, this means that people have to hold out for higher cash wages, so the price of labour is high and the labour market cannot clear (wages have an effective bottom higher than the market clearing rate).
Ireland had long been in the second stage, which is merely a cash oriented extension of the mixed crofting lifestyle known to the Scots, with different seasonal activities none of which were enough to live off in isolation. Only the third stage amounted to poverty. The evidence in the British Government report merely pointed to this second stage, but the faulty inference was drawn that the third stage had been reached. So it had, but that evidence didn't go to show it.
"...Irish emigrated in notorious coffin ships..." It should be noted that while folk memory associates these ships with dangerous emigrations (also including Scots), this is misleading. Coffin ships were ANY ships with high risk of death, and in their day the ships that Samuel Plimsoll campaigned to regulate were also known as coffin ships. These were unseaworthy vessels loaded or overloaded with high risk/high premium cargo, and with unfit (even octogenarian) sailors desperate for a living, and often set up for insurance fraud. Coffin ships were ANY death ships.
It was the work of economists like Nassau Senior in that era - working BEFORE the famine hit - that first brought out a formal understanding of what is or is not harmful about the economics of situations like these. He was in fact involved with setting up laissez faire and workhouses - yet he understood the nature of the problem of exporting staples from Ireland, despite being one of the most notoriously hard hearted in applying stringent remedies that he saw as cures. But the thing is, he and his like were NOT recommending simplistic and harmful measures. The mistakes were not made by the economists but by the statesmen who misunderstood them. Oh, and right now the IMF is REPEATING the screw ups in places like Malawi, and with generic advice that developing countries would be better off if only they could export freely (not if they exported their staples, they wouldn't be).
"...local relief was paid for through the Poor Law Union, which was funded by rates (local taxes) paid by landlords, on the basis of an estate's tenant numbers." A lesser mistake is that there was "a" Union; actually, there were several Unions. There is also a greater mistake, which is repeated under tithes. Since we are dealing with technical matters, it is important to be precise; while rates are LIKE taxes, they are not taxes (see below for the difference between tithes and taxes). The crucial distinction is that rates are not based on the tax approach of "the formula says someone in your position owes this much" - in fact "tax" means "assess", as found in (say) taxing legal fees. Rates are based on "the formula says you should pay this proportion of our budgetary need". It's a proportion, not an amount - and the burden will swing wildly depending on what is hitting the budget. The difference really shows up when numbers of indigent dependent on the rates suddenly blow out; it's another cause of variation like the one that lowers the rate when people get evicted. It produces yet another wrong incentive, in extreme cases - yet it works far better than a straight tax system when the actual local revenue burden is less. The whole area can be analysed by game theory, which shows up how you can get market imperfections that make laissez faire not work, from mechanisms like the "Prisoners' Dilemma". This also shows how to improve the formula (base rates on POTENTIAL capacity to hold tenants, not actual occupancy, and offset the amount levied according to numbers of actual tenants who do not hit the poor relief rolls) - and Nassau Senior's work shows that that only helps with keeping everything working efficiently, and that it does NOT guarantee that doing one's best is good enough. "Fixing" the system would have staved off collapse but made it more widespread when it hit, which it probably still would have. (That was what creating these "Unions" ended up doing, though not on such a huge scale.) That actually means that "Only central funding of Poor Law Unions from the exchequer could solve this conundrum..." is dead wrong. It would NOT have solved it, just ensured everything sank on an even keel with one of two possible outcomes: things get better before disaster hits and people wrongly tell themselves they found the solution; or, everything collapses and the whole state is full of roaming, starving hordes. Emigration was the only known, available, reliable and short term solution, if only by buying time and resources for other measures - and this, too, was brought out by Nassau Senior.
In the matter of tithes, these too were not a tax in the precise sense. Rather, tithes were a proportion of produce (and also, were not precisely paid to the state - though an established church may be regarded as part of the state, and tithes were bound up with this). This again looks like a quibble, and turns out to have profound effects. In particular, whenever and wherever tithes were abolished this was done not straightforwardly but by commutation for cash; when there were continuing cash payments, these were creating a tax where there had been none, with all its economic, administrative and political differences. The main one was an increase in the "transaction demand for cash"; it is one reason why an influx of Zionist funds into Palestine did not coincide with measured inflation - the economy needed more cash in it, since tithes had been commuted. An increase in the "transaction demand for cash", needless to say, makes it harder for independent subsistence lifestyles to continue and often forces smallholders to sell up (as in Palestine).
"Some landlords evicted... to 'clear' their lands to allow cattle grazing." This was not a new effect, but a chronic and endemic one that Nassau Senior had already looked at - and was noted by later observers such as Marx and Henry George (who however had axes to grind).
"From 1846 a disastrous application of the laissez faire economic theory and ignorance in London of the scale of the problem, coupled with the lack of the 'Three Fs' to protect tenants, turned a crisis into a catastrophe." Yes to the first, emphatically no to the second. All the second would have done was shift food from mouth to mouth (in the short term). In the long term, of course, it was a desirable measure in that it would have increased both capacity and access to that capacity - but in the teeth of the storm it was worthless. Possibly this just means "the lack of the 'Three Fs'... before the famine", which would be accurate.
"Native Americans" in these days is a euphemism for what used to be called Indians; though in those days, of course, "natives" didn't mean that.
The argument that grain exports should have been kept up can only be at best a sound long term argument. It conspicuously fails in the short term. This begs the question of whether barring exports of staples would have led to a non-survivable long term, and the question of whether relief arrangements could have diverted staples to those who would have been displaced by the flow on effects in the short term. Nevertheless, a sound system of rates and relief (which they didn't have), and the chance of a lower and manageable pattern of emigration to cope with long term flow on problems, would have made barring the export of staples work. See also Solon's reforms in Athens.
"The growth in the numbers of railways made the importation of foodstuffs easier..." - irrelevant, in Irish circumstances. Communications were quite good enough to bring people and supplies together, by sea and by land. The difficulty only relates to costs of resources - and there were workers to be had, while there were no fundamental geographical problems (which is why geography had always favoured invaders strategically and logistically).
"The 1870s agricultural economy [had] access to new farm machinery..." - this is irrelevant to the food problem; it only affects financial issues and productivity issues in terms of proportions of product to input, not issues of total capacity to produce. Productivity measures like improving land, those mattered - not ways of getting the same amount of food produced for less money (unless, of course, the displaced workers were separately given places to go - which should be accounted to those changes, not to the machinery).
"...state intervention was quicker, more effective, and more directed than had been the case in the 1840s." True and irrelevant. This only relates to moving food from mouth to mouth; had there been no improvements in access to total supplies, this would not have helped. This reasoning is the same sinking-on-an-even-keel-is-safe fallacy mentioned before. The actual improvements are ably described in the introductory part of Keynes' "The Economic Consequences of the Peace".
For "Emcumbered" read "Encumbered".
Population drops for Ireland are very similar to ones recorded for the Scottish Highlands after their changes of economics and lifestyle. They should probably not be ascribed simply to post famine changes; after all, for these things that was more a precipitating event than a cause proper.
I hope these comments can be incorporated usefully. PML.
ok. Thanks PML... SLRUb, Two16, Mav, 172, et al.. Im not going to respond here, as im refraining from it, except to say: the discussion has no doubt taken a turn for the better, not in terms of POV, but for NPOV. PML has no doubt included insights that go far beyond the level were were stuck at, and I appreciate his observance that its important not to lose the thrust of the article. Be well, all. -Stevert
Stevertigo:
Are you satisfied with my section on the origins as a replacement to your contentious section on the genocide claim? It mentions the claim, but doesn’t take negate or accept the genocide position.
Besides, it addresses significant factors pertaining to British rule not considered in the current version.
no im not - it seems to be repetitive - but perhaps it would serve better as a first part of the whole article, since it better summarises a lot of things, which later Jay goes into depth on. you seem to have a much better overall balance , though not for limited use in the 'contentious section'. Lets do as mav suggests and find consensus on the use of genocide/democide, then return here...-Stevert
--- Stevertigo:
I’m suggesting that this section on the origins could go at the beginning, rendering the contentious genocide section toward the end unnecessary. The genocide perspective deserves BRIEF mentioning, but the article should not take a stance either way.
I uberunderstand.-Stevert
Would anyone mind if I posted the section on the origins at the beginning of the actual article? I’m not inclined to do so yet, but fear that this compromise section could go unedited while lingering on the talk page.
- Let's see what Jt thinks first. I read your version seems to be well-balanced and could perhaps serve as summary for the detail in the rest of the article. BTW, thank you 172 for doing this. :) --mav
______________________
I am going to move all the comment to the archive if nobody objects. Continuing with the same process of fillinng talk pages will get us nowhere. The Wikipedian Ethos has found that npov can come through a process of refactoring the arguements presented. By learning to present a fair, best statement of the current debate without regard to ones own opinion the capacity to think in npov. Encyclopedia are a genre of English literature: in order to speak in that voice practice is required. If one has strong opinions or a rigid world veiw there can be a temption not to do the work nessessary to properly refactor the text.
As a participant of the talk page ,but not an edit warrior, I have a very different perspective on what went on here. I am a Canadain ; I Stood on Guard. Knowing that I could not reason with anyone I made posts for the future. When nobody responded, it didn't matter. I didn't have to get angry at the abuse that was thrown at me. I knew that eventually there would have to be a refactoring Then my words would live. :-) It is very like Susan Blackmore's meme.(see talk: susan blackmore).
If the full archive list was ported to each archive top and bottom functionality would be improved. I won't be around to refactor it. I'm not really interested or vested in IPF. I stood on guard for the Ethos. Lockdown Sv Rule. I am interested in helping with the whole discussion about genocide generally.I have added quotes and links from the wikipedia that are in the archive (?).
Find somebody trustworthy to help you find your way.
- learn NPOV cold
- learn logical fallacies so you won't make them
- pay attention to the posts you'll be amazed by all the logical fallacy.
Peace out User:Two16
- We are currently looking over 172's section so it and the discussion about it, needs to stay. --mav
Good work, 172. It is nice to see constructive work here. There are a couple of names, etc that need changing; eg anglican for episcopalian, Irish-American for American Irish. The mention of Irish representation in the UK parliament is slighty uneven. Ireland was in terms of population over-represented. The trouble was not Irish representation in the UK parliament but that the UK parliament, by definition was less in tune with the needs of Ireland, given that the 95% of non Irish MPs and probably 70% of ministers had never set foot in Ireland and so had no sensitivity to what was happening in Ireland, which is why we had demands for Repeal and Home Rule, ie to give a governmental structure that was in tune with Irish needs. An Irish parliament full of Irish MPs would have known of the impact of the famine from their constituencies, whereas British MPs relied for info on the likes of the (London) Times and the Telegraph that had little knowledge of the reality of Ireland, and all too often a bitter anti-Irish agenda.
Also the beginning religion mention makes it sound that the establishment of the Church of Ireland was part of the Union, whereas it predated it by centuries. We can all work on a wording that solves these issues. But I'd be happy to work with you on this. And I'm sure Sv has ideas too. Thanks for the contribution. JTD 02:47 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC
It seems to go well, but 172, I hesitated to answer you, because you seem to be overlooking Mav's crucial point: the consensus on the genocide article: is genocide ok to use as a colloquial referent (as it usually is) for is democide. This should come before getting too ahead of ourselves. Good work all. ---Stevert
After correcting the above errors and flaws noticed by JTD, I added the origins section to the beginning of the article.
That section should bypass the debate by only referring to charges of genocide.
At a glance- it looks much better structured - dont forget the thrust. Im not sure if haste is a factor here, though. Were not trying to just sidestep the issue, as a fix, but rather to give it proper context. Good work.--Stevert
Unless someone beats me to it or gives sound reasons otherwise, tomorrow morning (Australian time - just under 18 hours from now) I'm going to adjust some of the comments about absenteeism to take out the "poorly run" as the main harmful side (though still mentioning it), and put in some economic stuff about the general harmfulness of absenteeism in cases like the Irish one where it flows through to exporting staples. These problems were already known at the time (Nassau Senior again), and there are later counterarguments that don't apply in this case (foreign ownership comes in with compensating boosts to local production so there is a net gain - true even in Ireland, actually, but it had washed out by the time of the famine). PML.
- I tried to correct a mis-spelling (Daniel O'Connel to Daniel O'Connell) but my browser lopped off the end of the article when I saved. When I go to the previous version to do a revert, it does the same. Could someone else whose browser does not do this revert to the previous version and change the spelling of O'Connell and make sure the link works. (It should. there is a page on O'Connell there.) Thanks. JTD 05:11 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)
Mainly to JTD (i think) - I've just scanned through this discussion stuff having read the article. My initial impression was that this was going very kindly on the British indeed. It is admitted at some point in the discussion that there is a move among Irish historians away from previous over-simplifications of the matter - but isn't this move itself perhpas reactionary? I mean, Irish historians of this or any generation speak for their times, and, for lay readers like myself, the CONTEXT of this estimation of the role of the British imperial adventure in the famine is lost to those who have not studied so carefully the history of the history of the famine. This is, afterall, a general encyclopedia. So please twist the screws a bit. I won't go editing the article, but some feedback would be appreciated in this regard, Basically, you're all better historians than myself, but maybe some of your nuances are therefore misplaced here, (a bit less d'Alembert and more Diderot as it were) Cheers, Simon
As a further thought, maybe precisley a short history of the history would make a suitable introduction, to allow for the controversiality of the issue to be made fully apparent from the outset? Simon