h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To those who are unaware of the truth.

There was no potato famine in Ireland. Well there was a potato "blight", in other words, some of the crop did fail. But not all.

The crop that didn't fail was taken from the all ready poor farmers, and sent to England to feed the kings people.

Those Catholics who wanted to live/eat, were forced to denounce their Catholic religion and become Protestants.

And that's the truth. The English King starved the people of Ireland, and forced them to leave their country.

This idea of a huge famine forcing Irish people away is a complete lie, yes some may have gone, but not to the extent that did.

And 1 million people wouldn't have died of starvation because of it.

Someone mentioned in another post that they live in England and they don't teach Irish history.

Well the truth is, its better the people don't know the truth.

So in future, when someone says "the great famine", please please please correct them, it is called the "Great Starvation" ......... after all, that's what it was.

You know what? Thank you so much for posting this. As someone with a lot of Irish heritage and loyalty, I feel sick every time I hear people talk about the 'famine' as if it was some natural disaster and not an example of imperialism gone mad.

Good on you, mate.

Well to be fair to the author, every famine has (almost) invariably been caused by human factors. i.e. not caused by lack of food, just caused by lack of food for YOU. Ireland for instance produced more than enough food to feed itself during the famine. This food was exported for money which was obviously more important than the lives of the people. The Ethiopian and Ukrainian famines were likewise caused by human factors (civil war and good guy Joe Stalin respectively). Where there exists a government that cares, there only comes into being food shortages, not famines. Ancient Chinese texts speak of the Emperor sending food supplies to distant provinces to stave off famine.

Thanks MM. I don't think I said that it was all down to natural disaster. The British government at the time did nothing, or very little, to alleviate it, laissez faire and the rest. And yes, it is true that Ireland exported more food than it imported during this time.

When you've nothing better to do, look at the Zimbabwe situation at the moment - the Mugabe regime will tell you the food shortages are caused by drought, not by removing the productive farmers off the land.

Rhodesia was established by giving foreign land to settle poor English people in exchange for their loyal military service against the original inhabitants. The same methodology established northern Ireland...why then the difference in outcomes - independence vs dependency?