specific region, it is hard to feel the same empathy when we
are not impacted in the same way.
To understand the causes of the high death toll and why
many historians incline to replace the word “famine” with
“great hunger” and “genocide”, a little background is in
order. Ireland was a member of the Union that constituted
the Great Britain (the other three were Wales, Scotland, and
England), but the reins of power that controlled the economy
and politics of the country upon ‘which the sun never
set’ was in the hands of the players in London. Bad blood
between the English and the Irish was ancestral and hard
feelings ran deep since the English once occupied and colonized
Ireland over a century back. In 1800, when the Irish
parliament was dissolved into the Parliament at Westminster,
it left the fate of Ireland in the hands of their colonists.
As one Irishman said, ‘The motive of the government was
‘an intolerance of Irish prosperity.’ They hated Ireland with
intense fierceness, from ancient national prejudice…and the
growth of Ireland in happiness, in greatness, in prosperity,
in domestic harmony, and consequent strength, was altogether
insupportable to our jealous English foes…”1
Indeed, the definition of famine did not apply to Ireland.
A famine happens when the food supply is not sufficient
to provide for the population. This was not the case for
Ireland. There was enough barley, wheat, vegetables and
livestock to provide relief against the shortage caused by
the blight. But most of the land was appropriated by the
English after they overran Ireland centuries ago and was
now owned and selfishly guarded for English interests by
wealthy Anglo-Irish families and landowners. Some of
them were even major figures in London like Lord Lansdowne
(1780-1863) and Viscount Lord Palmerston (1784-
1865) who was a member of the then Prime Minister’s
cabinet, Lord John Russell (1792-1878).
The Irish were effectively doomed to be tenants on their
own lands.
So, when the famine first hit, Quakers (The Irish Society of
Friends) were the first to arrive to the rescue. They quickly
set up soup kitchens in the hardest-hit areas of the island.
Their humanitarian efforts are to be lauded but they exhausted
themselves and were eventually forced to cease all
operations in June of 1849. They wrote a letter to Sir John
Russell stating the reason for the cessation of their philanthropic
work. They stated that despite all efforts matters
had not improved and that “only government aid and a
reform of the Irish land system can cope with the Irish
problem” (Coogan Tim, The Famine Plot, p. 12). Russell was
not ignorant of any of this, but he had no will nor desire
to end the suffering of the Irish. As one eyewitness to the
misery in Ireland said, “The streets are daily thronged with
moving skeletons. The fields are strewn with dead…the
curse of Russell, more terrible than the curse of Cromwell,
is upon us.” (Eyewitness in Ballinrobe, Co. Mayo, 1849).2
By land reform, the Quakers were referring to the misappropriation
of the most fertile lands of Ireland and its
monopolization by the English families, known as absentee
landlords, because they mostly resided in England. The
absentee landlords only concerned themselves with Ireland
to the extent that their sprawling estates generated the
revenue they needed to support their opulent lifestyles. As
historian Tim Coogan put it, “The landowning political and
economic elite, known as the Ascendancy, who controlled
Ireland enjoyed lives of luxurious (albeit often debt-ridden)
splendor” (Ibid, p. 41).
The harvest from these estates were being exported to
mostly England during the famine as the prices for all
foods made them well beyond the reach of the Irish
people. Christine Kinealy, a University of Liverpool fellow
wrote in her book Irish Famine: This Great Calamity and A
Death-Dealing Famine, “Irish exports of calves, livestock
(except pigs), bacon and ham actually increased during the
famine. The food was shipped under guard from the most
famine-stricken parts of Ireland. However, the poor had no
money to buy food and the government then did not ban
exports.”
Michael Commins elaborated, “Almost 4,000 vessels
carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow,
Liverpool, and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish
men, women, and children died of starvation and related
diseases. Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs),
bacon, and ham actually increased during the Famine. This
food was shipped from the most famine-stricken parts of
Ireland: Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush,
Limerick, Sligo, Tralee, and Westport. A wide variety
of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas,
beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey,
tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue, and seed.
The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter
was shipped in firkins, each one holding 9 imperial gallons;
41 litres. In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins
(509,010 imperial gallons; 2,314,000 litres) were exported
from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins (313,670 imperial
gallons; 1,426,000 litres) were shipped to Liverpool,
1 Catechism of the history of Ireland: ancient and Modern, Dublin
1844, p.133; quoted in James Kelly, ‘The Act of Union: its origin
and background’, in Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and
Consequences of the Act of Union
2 Ireland Program, 2006-2007. (n.d.). http://archives.evergreen.edu/
webpages/curricular/2006-2007/ireland0607/ireland/eyewitnessaccounts
of-the-famine/index.html
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