The Irish Potato Famine 

Genuinely one of the finest videos on this channel. Please do the Highland clearances next 🙏

@@fncfantv2006 drink the things under the sink.

If you ask,"did England help the Irish during the potato famine", you never get a straight "NO"!.

Simon, you handle Irish history so respectfully!!! Go raibh maith agat!!!

14:28 As an Irish person, that's exactly how I feel about the Famine. Excellent analogy, Simon. Thank you.

The Irish remembered this act of kindness and helped out the Choctaw many years later when they were in dire straits.

I never knew about this, thank you for sharing it.

@@AndrewSmith-gn1nq and everyone lived happily ever after

Potatoes are an indigenous food developed in Mesoamerica over thousands of years. There is a common link because potatoes were taken back across the Atlantic and cultivated.

@@paulwoida8249 Many years later being 2020 when they sent food and money to help during the lockdowns.

I feel terrible that my ancestors had to go through that experience, especailly because it wan't just a natural event, but worsened by poor English actions. However, some fortunately managed to escape America and start new lives here. Many of my Irish ancestors fled Ireland before or during the famine and have made great lives for themselves as farmers in America.

Must be a weak nation then!

This and other atrocities committed by the British government was never taught in school, at least in England it wasn't. I feel ashamed of what my countrymen did to your ancestors and I've nothing but admiration and respect for the people of Ireland. I've lived and worked with people from all over the place and I've never had anything short of good relationships with you guys even after all the awful shit in the past.

@@Autisticwanderer may i add we still brought the British empire to it's knees... Tiocfaidh Ar La

@@Autisticwanderer quality come back ya spunk rag

There is so much more between us. We are the Choctaw, and we are now Kindred Spirits until the next changing of worlds. That's how it is taught to us, to you its more like, my ancestors are your ancestors. Any Irish born is also considered Choctaw for how much Ireland has helped us over the years. How all of us can afford college, preserve our Native tongue. Ireland helped us during Covid. We continue to take in any Irish as our own.

@haleyguthrie3113 what you wrote was lovely! As an Irish person it makes me very proud of my country. 🇮🇪

@ruralliving3024 from us to yours. No difference. Our council sent that very little bit of money as a token of goodwill after the US forced us on the "trail of tears" in the middle of winter. You can look that up to understand more if you would like. But just after this trail, on unfamiliar land with no money or supplies, no livestock, no nothing....there was a family of Irish trappers who had immigrated to the US years before. He saved what few of us were left, his wife taught our leaders to read and write, his family helped feed us, taught us to build bigger homes. The story is still told us that his people, like our people were persecuted by invaders. When the famine hit Ireland, our council opened our borders for all Irish, a "safe place". Then sent what little money we could. Oh and potato seeds. LOL 😆 Kindred Spirits we will always be. There is a monument in Ireland dedicated to it. Many of us go to visit.

I doubt the Choctaws were hurting for money a few years ago. Do you know how many casinos they own? Just in Oklahoma?

@maggiemae7539 of course now we are better. But right after the trail of tears...when we donated money to Ireland, we most certainly had no money. Besides...gambling became our only way to support ourselves after we weren't allowed to work the land or keep livestock for any kind of trade. No one ever likes to mention that bit of history....

Makes sense

Questionable. The single use of one type of potato made the spread of blight even worse, and the reliance on too little type of vegetables . Westminster taking the corn just made everything even worse.

The true casualties were those whose crops were shipped off to England whilst the Irish starved. They did so directly under the bootheel of English lords. So yes the British caused the famine

Did you not watch the video? It was rich people not caring about poor people, seeing as even Irish Catholics did the dirty. Also, Peel clearly was trying to help at the start. So instead of the usual anti British sentiment to deny that people tried to help, responsibility lies with a select few.

@@ghollidge I love it how videos like this bring out the racists/revisonists such as yourself. No doubt you'll play the usual RU-vid card and suddenly claim to be a historian working in Trinity whose sole expertise is the Potato Famine and how the Brits didn't do anything wrong.

But the ottoman empire did send aid in secret. Boats landed in Drogheda. Their football club s badge has the crescent moon and star as tribute to the generous act.

Dang. Victoria was nothing like Queen Elizabeth. What a bitch.

@@malachymccloskey7839 wow…I was never taught a word of this in school. Things like this restore my faith in humanity

Funner fact. A Native American tribe sent all the money they could to Ireland so they could import food. There's a monument to it and everything

The British government took all the grain out of Ireland that was the Real cause of Famine Victoria was Scum Heartless Bitch

that is insane!

Why didn't they eat animals? If you have grass and a steady supply of manure, you have meat.

@@cornstar1253 They probably did

​@@cornstar1253Livestock is expensive, even more so back then. Also, you need land to raise livestock, which they had been evicted from, as stated in the video.

God wish we had people like that today.

couldn't they just hunt some deers instead or something?

@@zaubermaus8190 No, most woodlands were off limits to peasants.

@@zaubermaus8190 Not many survive via hunting alone, notice hunter gather's still existing have very low population densities, it was agriculture that allowed millions off ppl in a modest size land.

The biggest take away here IMO is *be diversified* even if just multiple types of tuber, likely sweet potatoes (much healthier anyway) for example, would not be so susceptible to same disease, multiple types of potato, etc. The best eating shippable banana's went extinct half a century ago, what we typically have today is not as good and also threatened bc bananas are *all clones* , near zero biodiversity. Naturally there are 'hundreds' (at least dozens) of other types consumed in the tropics but not so suitable to transport.

@@Mrbfgray Ireland was exporting food at the time. The Irish were only allowed to keep the potatoes

West is trying to do the same thing in Ukraine now while waiving their morally bankrupt finger at Russia

And then blaming the free market for the result of those government exports.

THESE PEOPLE DONT KNOW HISTORY THEY THINK IRISH WERE JUST DUMB THIS WAS GENOCIDE

Just like Stalin did to Ukraine in the Holodomor.

@@nerysghemor5781 So are you suggesting that the Irish famine was a politically manufactured ethnic cleansing similar to the Holodomor in Ukraine?

True

I thought it recently had. Like, just in the last couple of years.

Sure, I'd say FF/FG have sent nearly as many abroad, myself including myself!

@@aaronring4704 From what wiki has to say, it reached 8 million before the famine, and they just crossed 5 million recently.

If you add in the almost 2 million people in Northern Ireland, the total population of the entire island is just shy of 7 million. And I think they should be included in the total as until 1921 and the Government of Ireland Act, which separated Ireland and Northern Ireland, the island of was one cohesive population.

I dunno, kinda sounds like genocide to me. Weird distinction this dude makes without an effective difference.

Lots of whitewashing in this video

@@surpriseandterror9698 genocide is maliciously intentional, most of these atrocities came simply out of ignorance and sudden necessity . . . don't get me wrong, what the English did was an unforgivable mass violation of human rights . . . however, they weren't gassing people for being irish not a genocide

@@NymbusCumulo928 The English hated the Irish, wanted to remove their culture, saw them as subhuman workers at best and a pest at worse. They were *very* clear about this, and their half-hearted attempts at alleviating suffering that were mixed with Means Testing of all things are pretty clear examples. Even when they were starving to death or dying of disease the English saw them as moochers and parasites. If the Irish Famine wasn't an active act of genocide, then neither was the Holodomor, or the Bengal Famine of 1943 (the latter also commited by Great Britain). You don't need a gun or a gas chamber to commit genocide, all you need is to control the food supply. It's demographically-biased mass murder which, I'm sure we can find a shorter name for.

Sadly, this is occurring in Eastern Ukraine as we speak, the 'ability' of humans to wish to eradicate a different thought process, is as old as the dawn of civilisation itself, we all have evil within us, yet we claim to be 'civilised', even worse, America claims to be the leaders of the 'Free World', yet their Foreign Policy is often anything but 'civilised'. China is doing exactly this to the Uighurs right now, and has being doing so for many years. When will we humans actually learn?

Spoiler, it's not haunted.

Might as well build over it. 100 years later. The families of those very people were fighting to stay with the British empire, the empire who tried to starve their ancestors out of existence.

The town had a population of over 60k, Lowtherstown ( Irvinestown ) over 20,000, if we are talking about the same place there's a much more positive future being crafted on that site now.

@@billabong9215 It's almost like times and politics shift over time and you should eventually let the past go, or something...

​@@billabong9215Descendants of Scots and English you mean. The native Irish Catholics tend to lean Republican.

And now so many of the richest nations are against immigration. It is so sad that one group of people have the power to arbitrarily deny the same opportunities and freedoms to others that they value so highly themselves. :(

Now they couldn't do that even now WITHOUT FUNDS N FOOD

Part of my ancestral line is similar as they landed in New Finland and over the years and decades worked their way across Canada and into the U.S. where they ultimately settled in California.

A woman I knew from County Galway called it "taking the porridge".

Also if you took the soup they dropped the o from your name Example o Sullivan/Sullivan

As adult and talking with my relatives about my ancestry this part of Irish history does hit hard as both of the main branches at least on my moms side can be traced to this time. However while one ancestor does very much remember the famine as he watched people leaving the Irish shores while sitting on his father's shoulders. The other major one was forced to leave during the protestant migration into Ireland as he was burned out of his home and force to flee to America. Nearest I can figure as to maybe why some don't call the famine a genocide is the death in some regards was an unintended consequences of the loss of potatoes. Vs the force migration of Irish familes from their homes because of how they chose to identify. Not saying either interpretation is wrong but from my own experience it seems to boil down how you view the event as a whole.

I can’t say much as an American (we mostly learned about the effects the exodus had on American culture and populations in school) but the more I learn about the British rule of Ireland, the more I’d consider the Great Hunger a form of genocide, mostly because the decades before seemingly follow the steps of genocide, although with the killings done by cruel negligence (although there probably were some sort of purposeful killings done by British forces during that time, because...yknow, the British did that a lot to people they didn’t like even if the reason was a stupid one) especially in the way the Hunger ultimately ended up devastating the population and the oppression lived under British rule - it almost reminds me of the forced colonization & genocide of the Native American populations here in the US.

England not teach about the failings of the British Empire!? You don't say!?

@@ApocTank66 nor the successes either

@@bushmanPMRR What "...successes..." would those be? Concentration camps? Two Bengal famines?

One of my favourite songs! It’s eerily beautiful.

I think most Irish people are happy to let bygone be bygones, so long as the legacies left are wholly acknowledged. They doesn't mean that ordinary English people need to apologise or otherwise make amends on a daily basis but a frank acceptance of what happened. The truth is that many ordinary working English people were brutalised by their own government and that's a point that isn't lost on most Irish people. As you said, you weren't told about any of this in school and I'd wager that was a deliberate oversight in order to preserve a carefully curated version of the legacy of the British empire.

Use your words...starvation means you died from lack of food Starving means you are dying from lack of food... Hopefully you are now eating a bit more...

@@codymoe4986 I looked it up, starvation is defined as suffering from malnutrition that can lead to permanent organ damage or death. While by definition I used the word correctly, I could have used a better word like malnutrition. It's a good reminder that the English language is far more complicated than it appears on the surface

I hope you are doing well now Steve. Take care bro 🍻

​@@codymoe4986when a person is recounting a hard time in their life, that is hardly the time to be so pedantic.

@@codymoe4986 Step #1 of correcting someone is making sure they're wrong. Step #2 is making sure you're right.

Genocide usually is, considering it's done with 120% malice and intention.

,

Seems like it was intended, so much could have been done rice , bead , beans.

I thought the same lol

So did I.

Stop calling it a famine, it was a genocide it was the culmination of 700 years of oppression

Also they didn’t “sell” it. They were tenant farmers that were paid farm for the English. The only profit they saw was from their labor not the actual value of what they grew.

@@tripplefives1402 " the others being dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, popcorn, and flour corn" Adding that to help support what you're saying, although it should be noted that sweet corn is one of the six categories of maize.

Nearly as egregious a tragedy as the maize itself...

Also, the photo they had was not of maize / "Indian corn".

Corn is used to refer to crops such as wheat and barley. It can also be used to refer to the seeds from these plants. [British]

In fact, the soup kitchens themselves were a form of genocide. The vast, vast majority of those suffering in the famine were Catholic, and the soup kitchens required any who availed of them to convert to Protestantism, which is actually a form of cultural genocide as defined by the UN.

just isn't tho, pal

If it was genocide, the British would not have paid for 800,000 Irish people to emigrate to America and 300,000 to Great Britain.

English were so despicable might as well be

​@@tobyjohnson1239whatever you say brit

Tim Pat Coogan is a charlatan and that book was complete and utter shite. It got torn to shreds by just about every prominent Irish historian. Something which Coogan isn't.

Can't imagine why Ireland wanted independence..

Tim Pat Coogan, right?

Bastards

Easy now, it’s a fact channel. No politics please. Makes it degenerate into a slagging (slanging) match where everyone is right.

i think something incredibly disgusting he did was continually try to make the irish look dumber than they were, like saying we lived in mudhuts and that the starvation dysentery was the irish eating blight potatoes, when it was actually improperly prepared corn, as the english didnt show us to actually make the corn edible

Simon didn't write it. He has writers who send him the script and he reads and records it. He also has editors who get it ready to post. As he has writers from many countries, the script could be from anywhere.

@@maryhildreth754 literally no excuse, what he reads is on him, you wouldnt say biden or trump or exempt from judgement because all of their public addresses go through team. stop making excuses were there doesn't need to be any

I'm an Englishman who married an Irish woman and when she first told me about the famine I couldn't believe it. We were never taught about it at school, it was the sort of thing that happened in Africa or Asia but not on our own doorstep! Thankfully we were very fortunate to have moved from London to Kilkenny a couple of years ago and I love it here and cannot ever see myself moving back to London or even England, and no, I'm not a hand-wringing apologist, just pragmatic and logical.

@@yaboi925 How does that read as calling them dumb? He described how they were actively and deliberately kept locked up in biting poverty with only the most barebones of options. And then how even meager soup and literally their own clothes on their backs were taken away. He was very clear so much was deliberately caused and maintained first and foremost by the bigoted English-dominated upper rungs of society and government. A lot of detail about what the starving people tried to eat to survive was left out, I agree, but the details included are still clear evidence of last-resort desperation, not stupidity.

A third of the population here in Connemara died or emigrated and the cholera epidemic hit right after. We didn’t stop dying off until around the end of the Victorian era.

What's a famine wall?

@@joesmalley397 Connemara is next to the Atlantic Ocean. The peasants kicked off their land went as far West as possible. They literally stacked walls in little squares and filled the inside with sand and seaweed to try and grow food. These plots are often shown in Irish Calendars, people don't know their bleak origins. Now they are full of grass.

@@michaelhogan9053 I’m so fascinated yet saddened to hear this (especially as an English guy), this isn’t something I’ve ever heard of despite being very interested in history and appreciate the comment man. Best Wishes.

Two hundred shades of green my mam told me . That island is so lush there is no way you could have a famine. I spent three weeks there in 94 . As soon as I got off the boat at Dun Laoghaire it struck me . I was born in Yorkshire but have lived in Canada since 69 and I was treated with respect the whole time . It's a Magic island .

Do when most of the food is taken away from you

Now that is heart breaking. Imagine leaving your home, broken and bent by the British gentry, people dieing on the streets while the lord's in their mansions threw parties. The only solace that your going somewhere you can make a fresh start away from all that awful just to end up in pretty much the same situation =[

'No matter where you go, you can never escape the British quo'

I went onto Wikipedia to see just how bad it was. Not only did the famine decimate the population, but it still continued to drop for the next 100 years. As late as 1960, the population was still only a bit over 4 million. Even with a large influx of immigrants, many from Poland or other Eastern European countries, the country's population is still only around 6.5 million as of 2016, or still 20% below what pre-famine Ireland was.

Especially as half of the states thinks they are proud Irishman. But no one has wanted to move back.

Russia hasn’t recovered from ww1 ww2 and communism

@@tomhenry897 *Surely* you're including the horrible, devastating effects of Putin, right? ... right?

That is because there was still continual net emigration occurring all the way into the 1960s. Ireland has been a place of emigration for many centuries. 10 million Irish in total have emigrated in its history, a figure higher than the current population of the island of Ireland

One of my friends family name was changed from O'gannon to Gannon because of this. Then when the soup kitchens disappeared they had to keep the name. They emigrated to America in 1850.

Much as to why there is still a divided Ireland, and probably always will be

Most Irish names don’t have an ‘O’ before they. We’re hardly all covert Protestants!

not all of the soup kitchens

@@ArchangelAva That's because you've only ever seen the English translation of most Irish names, some kept the 'O' in the translation, others haven't - in Irish the 'O' means "son of" (a daughter would have 'Ní' and a wife would have "Uí") take my surname "Buckley" for example; In Irish it's O'Buachalla to mean "son of the cowboys" - my sister would be Ní Bhuachalla and my mam would be Uí Bhuachalla - therefore converting to Protestantism and removing the 'O' would be renouncing your family line (the "h" in Ní Bhuachalla is a gramatical rule called the séimhiú that is really complicated and I won't go into)

We have some ancestry unknowns as well. It can be difficult

I understand exactly what you’re saying. My family emigrated quickly from Germany when “he” became chancellor but not all who were regular Germans left. They were not Jews and were never heard from again.

I have Irish blood. Both were convicts after doing their 7 years they married & had 9 children.

I'm Scot-Irish, and my Irish ancestors would come to America and become cotton and tobacco farmers. Many others weren't fortunate enough to be able to emigrate.

Not like he can sit there and give you some 12 hour sob story about Irelands greatest disaster. All these videos are this length, as sad as this was, much worse things have happened, he isn't going to sit there and talk about those things for hours either. Stop sniffing your own farts.

@@RowanWarren78 and how many of them kept slaves... lol

@@rezarfar None, not because we were kinder or more compassionate, as I'm sure my ancestors were products of their time like everyone else. We simply weren't here until the late 19th century. The other half that came in the 18th century didn't own slaves either. They had small family farms and very little money (but lots of kids😆). Most of the people who owned slaves were people with some wealth, and lots of land. We've been able to access land records to find out exactly where we settled and what our holdings were. Through these records you can find out whether your ancestors had servants or slaves as they were accounted for. Oh dear, did you think everyone owned slaves?😳

Gods Church will never fail my friend, Ave Maria.

What's their religion got to do with it?

So it was punishment for being Catholic??

Cos ur on the south

@Kerrie Wilson Aye. Magic eh?

He usually doesn't say it on the darkest videos.

Could you imagine? He's British

He generally doesn't say anything like that in videos like this.

@@nerysghemor5781 it always kinda unnerves me when people say “I hope you enjoyed the video, please like subscribe and ring the bell for more!” Or “I hope you found this video entertaining!” after just talking about the most horrible and sad stuff out there. That’s one thing I like about Simon (and his writers) is he’s actually pretty sensitive, and in case of his true crime shows really doesn’t try and glorify the perpetrators

Hmmm.. If there was no Famine, you would never be interested if it was called the great Potato crop Failure with little death. As for the Famine yes there were some folks that bad very poor decision causing millions deaths. You go back further in history was it part of the cause is the dependence of the Potato. The Potato prior 1500 did not exist in Ireland, so Famine was in the making long before those who made poor decisions were even born.

Hate them, but also LEARN from them so as to not make their mistakes/decisions again. Our present is built on the shoulders of those in the past and so it's our responsibility to continue building a better future.

There's a reason, why Simon always says "The past was the worst."

@@sicily7220 And who exactly are you?

IKR???

To be honest, the English ruling classes had nothing but contempt towards the English lower classes.

@@nlwilson4892 The difference being they didn't let about a quarter of the English lower classes starve to death in about six years. That's actually a significant difference.

@@johnmckiernan2176 In my town about a quarter of the poorer areas were wiped out each year with cholera, typhoid etc. for much of the 1800's. The fundamental problem in Ireland was the blight coupled with the over-reliance on one single crop. The English handled it badly, not disputing that at all but the reluctance to help was very similar to the reluctance to help the poor in England, there was some added reluctance with it being not on their doorstep, Irish and Catholic, but there was a general attitude that the poor of any society were not "proper people" they were looked down on as a subclass that served a purpose of providing labour but weren't seen as having right to life or decent living conditions.

@@nlwilson4892 you say the “fundamental” issue was an over-reliance on one crop and I would encourage you to ask why there was a reliance on one crop. Then we may get closer to fundamental issues. I understand if you’re British that you may be reviled by your colonial past and may want to deflect the egregious behaviour deploying a “not all” argument but it would behoove you not to infer the Irish had chosen to rely on one crop.

@@PeterCarroll83 It explains in the video, the potato was very much suited to the ground and climate in most areas. It perhaps doesn't explicitly say that better farming land was used for other crops that were farmed commercially (ie. sold) and much of that was exported to England. It wasn't that the poor farmers had much choice. You can look back to further if you want to analyse into British colonisation with the British and sympathisers taking land into their ownership and pushing others from the land and right back to Cromwell with him persecuting Catholics and driving them west and south. But equally you could go back to Normal invasion of Britain and the Normans that became the aristocracy taking the land into their ownership and making the natives landless serfs, and also the Highland clearances, pushing Scottish crofters off the land and forcing them into Ulster. Or you could summarize and say that those with power have generally abused that power to abuse those with less power and used it to gain more power. It is a repeating pattern and unless we accept that and that divide and conquer is part of that strategy then it will keep happening.

It was a steady and durable crop that could grow in varied terrain. The British barred the Irish from farming or owning land so it became overly relied on by poor tennants.

Hilariously, they wouldn't even have the potato to eat if it wasn't for England.

They (Irish) actually produces other crops. But they export most of it to the Brits except potatoes since the Brits didn't want it.

@@tripplefives1402 Have you ever grow potatoes? "You dont even have to replant them because the tubers can resprout in the spring" If you don't "replant" the tubers (potatoes), does that means that you leave them underground instead of harvesting them? What's the point of growing potatoes if you don't harvest them? And how do you fertilize the land without ruining them? I'm not throwing hate here, it may well be that in different countries there are different processes to grow potatoes and yours could be more efficient. Just curious as the method I know and have used has been a constant for centuries.

@@All_Hail_Chael they also wouldnt have had a giant famine, the likes of which the nation still hasnt recovered in terms of population, and had their whole culture lost and or stolen, haha so hilarious.

what was his crime

@@aWILDsomethingCAME being Irish and Catholic, i reckon.

@@aWILDsomethingCAME Often there was none. About 70,000 such indentured servants were sent to Barbados and other parts of the Caribbean in the 1650s. Their crime? Defeat in battle. Or having land the Cromwellian troops desired.

My dad loved that song.

Not a chance. Donegal is mountainous and poor soil. The famine killed many. Every town or village in the county has a famine graveyard and a soup pot

Do Irish people know what caused the famine, or will they continue to blame the British people and the fungus or will they understand that it was British politicians and the restrictive laws they made which are very anti capitalist and restricted trade so much the people could not innovate or work their way out of the famine. America had several crop plagues in its history and even during the Great Depression, starvation was hardly an issue. Not to mention the Great Depression was caused by government doing dumb things but the desire to work and innovate is what kept mass starvation from happening.

In Canada 🇨🇦 we have a national holiday to Queen Victoria: Victoria Day. I wonder how many more years before we repurpose the day...

@@funveeable It wasn't the Chinese people.

Are you the chapter guy then

If genocide had been the intention then there would have been nobody left. Wilful neglect was the privilege of the elite in those days.

Is that why the UK (eventually) sent them food? Pretty shitty genocide, your hysterics do not help, this was bad enough with making it into something it wasn't. If the Brits/Normans wanted to genocide Ireland they had hundereds of years to do it. Yet here I am, having an Irish mother (properly Irish, not the yankee version of Irish)

Hes a englishman

Escape the Famine! Join the Army!

@@All_Hail_Chael You're wasting your time with Ireland's self pity junkies. This crap is taught in their schools despite it being debunked by top Irish historians.

Unless they're Muslim, or brown, or black, or poor, or won't kiss Trump's ass.

Help the refugees on your border.

Aren't you the guys who do the children in cages thing?

@@johnmckiernan2176 Do you think it's just because border patrol really enjoys doing that or do you think there is a serious problem with child trafficking, either to be sold into sex slavery or used as leverage by coyotes to get across the border because they have a child they claim is theirs with them?

Being on a big ass island surrounded by an ocean; next to the very entity sought to kill you off -- even if indirectly -- and no money, is quite possibly the biggest middle finger to an ethnicity as I have ever seen one

@@MarloSoBalJr Well not that their coming to USA is safe. Few make it and found job other force to become soilder for a civil war on both side if they want citizenship. I really wonder why what was other country think of this or they busying with their own object.

Don't get me started about shops closing on Bloody Sunday!

I'm Irish and I don't drink ... Don't mind a smoke though .. lol

I can also confirm as an Irish person that I have never, in fact, murdered anyone. Strange, I know...

Yeah, I don't drink.

Alot of them did murder because they got forced to fight for the American army stealing land from the Indians. But read up on St Patrick's battalion the only reason that Mexicans celebrate saint Patrick's day.

Agreed. The town I grew up in had a massive Catholic Irish American population- and I don’t just mean their great, great, great, great grandparents came over. They still had very close ties to the country like cousins they talked to and such. I struggle to think of a single one who drank or acted without morals. They were strict Catholics or at least held to the values. Stealing or gambling was treated like a capital offense. They were generally better behaved than the rest of us lmao. I was shocked when I heard that this stereotype existed. I’m sure there’s bad Irish out there just like with every group but I’ve yet to come across one.

Maybe it was better left unsaid. I'm pretty sure every famine end this way, maybe it was a way of showing respect for the people who suffered

@@norbitcleaverhook5040 leaving out important details to not “offend” doesn’t help anyone. We need to know the full extent of the pain and suffering to even begin to understand.

I do not understand your point, I have an Irish Mother and an English/Jewish father, how would this be 'difficult', even today, we see that Ukrainians are being displaced by Putin as he claims the Russian Speaking Ukrainians as requiring preferential treatment. The sad truth is, that all countries have their disgusting pasts, Ireland included. Ireland's loss was 'New America's' gain, which in turn was a loss for the indigenous population of America, who I feel are the most forgotten people of the world, lest we forget that the European Settlors wiped out around 90% of them, mainly with their diseases. When the chips are down, humans can become pure evil, and the way that the Westminster hierarchy behaved towards the Irish was mind-blowingly inhumane.

Didnt realise he was american as that is where the blight came from.

It's not like we did it. I don't like the shit th uk does today let alone in its terrible past

@@kieronparr3403 I agree, why should we feel guilty about this, back in those days, the vast majority of the adult English Population were not eligible to vote, (men as well as women), as that was the domain of the elite, hence why the Irish were treated so badly, it was not like the working class in England were having a great time of it.

@@aste4949 I think that 'some people' are naive, and ill-informed, as you seem to imply that their 'ancestors' were a part of this, i.e. at the time of the Great Potato Famine, only a very small number of people were allowed to vote in British Elections. (far less than 10% from memory). So in the UK, up till the late 1870s, most people could not vote, so how could they possibly feel guilt when their ancestors had no power over the decision at the time? I am still trying to understand this 'some people' collective, it makes no sense to me.

What Russian or Indian history book did you read that in?😂

It was an Ottoman Sultan (Turkish). I don't know the full details

Sultan Abdülmecid I of the Ottoman Empire originally offered to send £10,000 but was asked either by British diplomats or his own ministers to reduce it to £1,000 to avoid donating more than the Queen. From wikipedia. There is no detailed explanation in English but you can find in Turkish Wikipedia. In a nutshell, if i translate it ; To workaround the issue and actually he wanted to help starving people Sultan sent 4000 sterlins worth wheat loaded ships to Dublin port but Queen didnt allow them to unload their cargo. After that Sultan gave order to ships anchor at Drogheda port and unload there.

@@ebu3455 the same Turks who deny the Armenian genocide?

@@tomjones7184 Im not going to argue with you nor play your hand. The topic is Irish famine. Please respect to topic and not drag it somewhere else.

Paul Cook Its about 6.9 million ,5million in the republic and 1.9 million in northern ireland

To use an English phrase, you've hit the nail on the head! It was your social class that determined your place in the world, not nationality. Those on here who seem to think it was just the Irish peasants who were victims of the landowning classes couldn't be more wrong. Child mortality due to malnutrition was rife in all British cities during the 1840s. Basic foodstuffs were prohibitively expensive for the poor who often used to resort to eating dogs and cats for sources of protein. Stealing food often resulted in the culprit being deported under penal servitude to Australia. The wealthy could do as they wished to the impoverished masses in those days and that didn't change until the 20th century.

@@justonecornetto80 Sweden did learn lessons from it long term, but only after experiencing significant population loss due to emigration. Many of the current social programs in Sweden date to just after the turn of the century. It only took four decades of emigration to wake up the nobility. There were entire villages that left Sweden for America. My own ancestors scraped enough to send one person over who then sent money home for the rest. I did spend quite a bit of time reading about the after effects of the 1867 Swedish famine because I wanted to understand how my ancestors stories intersected with it. In particular, I didn’t understand the part of the story my grandpa always told about the children being hungry and not having enough food. Eight year old me had nearly zero knowledge of Swedish history because it isn’t taught in American schools. I had to learn it on my own.