English Deutsch Français Italiano Español Português 繁體中文 Bahasa Indonesia Tiếng Việt ภาษาไทย
All categories

During the Potato Famine, why EXACTLY didn't the English parliament help the Irish sooner. The potato famine was in 1845, and the parliament didn't act until 1847. Did they just not care? What prevented them to act sooner.

2007-12-29 00:15:27 · 15 answers · asked by latiti 2 in Arts & Humanities History

15 answers

Well the BRITISH parliament (remember, Scots, Welsh and IRISH were represented at Westminster), was composed or a largely upper class wealthy group concerned with lining their own pockets whilst expanding the business potential of a growing British Empire. A great deal of agricultural reforms had occurred throughout Britain and Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s, with common land being claimed by the wealthy and the peasantry being forced in urban industry in England and almost slave-like penury to the land owners in Scotland and Ireland.
The land owners were not all English, most were from the countries which land they owned; although rarely living there they became known as 'absentee landlords'. The population farmed the fields and had to hand over the produce to be sold in return for being allowed to farm their own food on a small area of the landlords property. In Ireland, although the main crops were generally corn, wheat and the usual grains, the peasantry relied on the potato.

When the potato famine struck, the subsistence farming workers began to starve. The Absentee landlords, living in large houses in Dublin or London still wanted their profit and continued to sell the grain, exporting it to Britain, America and Europe.The parliamentarians were concerned with money and didnt react to what was rapidly becoming a humanitarian disaster until there were very few people willing or able to continue working the fields. In fact, the mass exodus of starving Irish (60% of which went to mainland Britain) allowed the industrialists there to reduce wages and throw the overworked urban poor into further poverty.

So basically, the Irish Potato Famine was a terrible waste of human life much more could have been done earlier to stop this, there was enough food but the people were not allowed access to it. Those responsible were not all English, as common propaganda would like to suggest, but Scots and Irish landowning gentry, who through interests in money saw themselves as separate from the rest of their countrymen.

2007-12-29 00:55:02 · answer #1 · answered by jademonkey 5 · 7 2

Lass, that is a hard question that begins and ends with two statements: The Irish aren't English, and the Irish are Catholic
.
Those two differences bred an enmity and resistance in Ireland that the English took as proof of their superiority, reason to crush Irish resistance, and need to continue the a holy crusade begun by Cromwell.

There is an earlier wave of Irish immigration also tied to English oppression-- that of the "Scot-Irish" during the century before the American Revolution. Especially in the Southern colonies, the Americans who fought the British were picking up the campaign of their fathers and grandfathers.

The first Irish-American president was Andrew Jackson.

2007-12-29 01:51:48 · answer #2 · answered by fallenaway 6 · 3 0

You have to remember that at that time socialism was a bad word, you could get sent to prison for incitement to revolt for spewing such disgusting doctrine. Poor people were things, if you didn't have money for food why should the rich people pay for you or help you, you only had to work harder.
As well, Catholic Irish were regarded as a lower breed, inferior to the British, lazy, shifty eyed, lying, more cunning than intelligent, crooks.

So the general mood in the parliament (made of rich people) was:
The victims were Irish
The victims were poor
Noone else but Irish peasants ate potatoes
None of the other crops were hit so if the lazy so and so worked harder they could get enough money to buy the more expensive wheat or barley
Things were not as bad as that
Who cared as long as noone else lost people or money. Things would get better on their own.

2007-12-29 06:25:15 · answer #3 · answered by Cabal 7 · 3 0

1) Crop failures in the past had been regional and short lived.

2) Parliament had a Laissez-faire attitude towards the potato famine; in other words, parliamentarians believed that such catastrophes should be solved by "natural" means and private charity rather than government intervention. Accordingly, absentee landowners "solved" the problem by evicting their starving tenants whereupon they booked passage to Canada. [My Great-great grandfather, Bernard Dougherty, immigrated to Ontario, Canada, with his entire extended family from Donegal during this time period.]

3) Indeed, "progressive" social reformers advocated the removal of an underfed, uneducated peasantry, and they looked upon the potato famine as an ideal opportunity for social engineering.

2007-12-29 01:03:54 · answer #4 · answered by Ellie Evans-Thyme 7 · 4 0

I am Irish and I have heard many different opinions of what the English did and didn't do during the famine. It is still a subject of great sensitivity. Reading some of the answers you have already received nothing much has changed.

Have a read here. Once you have the basic historical details down pat then you can explore further. Much of what you will read will be based on political ideology. It will be difficult to make your own mind up.

xxFJ

2007-12-29 00:24:50 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 2 1

The English considered the Irish about one step above a cockroach.
The English wanted ALL of Ireland without a lot of lousy Irishmen around.
This was accomplished quite easily (and without any DIRECT action) by total inaction - resulting in death and the diaspora of the Irish.
They didn't care.
Had they acted sooner there would have remained more Irishmen in Ireland for them to contend with when more of them came over to take the land.

FIFTH generation Irish - still hear about it.

THANKS FOR THOSE LYRICS - THAT'S the truth of it...

2007-12-29 07:06:05 · answer #6 · answered by 34th B.G. - USAAF 7 · 2 0

Sinéad O'Connor had a great song explaining what caused the "Famine" and its consequences.

You can see a performance at:

http://www.last.fm/music/Sin%C3%A9ad+O%27Connor/+videos/+1--ZCe8Fw8vyM

The lyrics are:

OK, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the "famine"
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no "famine"
See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved
And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
See we're like a child that's been battered
Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self-destruction
alcoholism, drug adiction
All desperate attempts at running
And in it's worst form
Becomes actual killing
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
where do they all come from
An American army regulation Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation
'Cos to do so causes permanent "psychological damage"
It's not permanent but they didn't know that
Anyway during the supposed "famine"
We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
but it's use in the controlling of our education
Schools go on about "Black 47"
On and on about "The terrible famine"
But what they don't say is in truth
There really never was one
(Excuse me)
All the lonely people
(I'm sorry, excuse me)
Where do they all come from
(that I can tell you in one word)
All the lonely people
where do they all belong
So let's take a look shall we
The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC
And we say we're a Christian country
But we've lost contact with our history
See we used to worship God as a mother
We're sufferin from post traumatic stress disorder
Look at all our old men in the pubs
Look at all our young people on drugs
We used to worship God as a mother
Now look at what we're doing to each other
We've even made killers of ourselves
The most child-like trusting people in the Universe
And this is what's wrong with us
Our history books the parent figures lied to us
I see the Irish
As a race like a child
That got itself basned in the face
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from

2007-12-29 03:24:31 · answer #7 · answered by Donncha Rua 4 · 5 1

I'm not a historian, but I always thought that the British created and allowed the starvation in order to quell the Irish Rebellions! They were always fighting for their freedom and this was a way to sap their strength and to control them.

2007-12-29 06:52:21 · answer #8 · answered by Martell 7 · 2 0

No one cared about the Irish in England.

2007-12-29 05:14:58 · answer #9 · answered by jiahua448 4 · 3 0

Firstl it wasn't a famine- It was a great hunger.This country had lots of food but the brit landlords exported it to britain and let the natives starve.They even had a law that we could'nt fish or hunt.Believe it or not the great british nation just let us starve

2007-12-29 00:22:25 · answer #10 · answered by nethertry 3 · 6 1

fedest.com, questions and answers