Not coincidentally, the Queen knighted Trevelyan that
same year, implying endorsement of his racist policy.
Trevelyan, it should be noted, was a student of the English
economist, Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who had echoed
the same doctrine years earlier when he said, “The land
in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and
to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a
great part of the population should be swept from the soil”
(Edited by Alderson, David. Ireland in Proximity; History,
Gender, and Space). The famine revealed the inhumanity
of English Parliamentarians toward the Irish, who were
people of the same faith and same country. They stood
behind Trevelyan and refused to do anything for Ireland.
But this was a remarkably classic case of British-style colonization
and was nothing new. Ireland was being subjected
to the same iniquities as other colonies of the British. First,
they occupied a land, then wrecked its economy and thereafter
made the population weak and dependent. When a
natural disaster struck, they watched as nature depopulated
the land and then they moved in to steal all the resources.
As one historian said about the famines in the Subcontinent
during British rule, “Famine, while no stranger to the
subcontinent, increased in frequency and deadliness with
the advent of British colonial rule.”5
Regarding the Great famine of Orissa in 1866, she goes on,
“The East India Company helped kill off India’s once-robust
textile industries, pushing more and more people into
agriculture. This, in turn, made the Indian economy much
more dependent on the whims of seasonal monsoons… The
Indian and British press carried reports of rising prices,
dwindling grain reserves, and the desperation of peasants
no longer able to afford rice.” The way the British responded
to the crisis was predictable considering what we already
know about how they dealt with the Irish famine years
earlier.
The historian goes on, “On a flying visit to Orissa in February
1866, Cecil Beadon, the colonial governor of Bengal
(which then included Orissa), staked out a similar position.
‘Such visitations of providence as these no government
can do much either to prevent or alleviate,’ he pronounced.
Regulating the skyrocketing grain prices would risk tampering
with the natural laws of economics. ‘If I were to attempt
to do this,’ the governor said, ‘I should consider myself
no better than a dacoit or thief.’ With that, Mr. Beadon
deserted his emaciated subjects in Orissa and returned to
Kolkata and busied himself with quashing privately funded
relief efforts” (ibid). What was done in Ireland was replayed
in the Subcontinent years later.
Here in Ireland, the House of Commons, the royal family,
and the Prime Minister and his cabinet became complicit
in the deaths of over a million Irish people. In 1848, Denis
Shine Lawlor unable to cope with such heartlessness from
his own countrymen and people of the same faith, ratiocontinued
on page 29
Photo by Derick Hudson
5 Patel, D. (2016, June 10). Viewpoint: How British let one million
Indians die in famine. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asiaindia
36339524
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