Did the Irish “Potato Famine” Constitute a Genocide?

By Christopher J. Murphy

NYS AOH History District 4 Councilor

 The Great Hunger of Ireland, An Gorta Mor in the Irish language, commonly known as the “Irish Potato Famine”, remains a highly significant historical event of 19th century Ireland whose cause and consequence are a part of the modern Irish and American-Irish consciousness. It changed Ireland forever having led to the death of 1.5 million Irish, and the diaspora of another 2 million. The original cause of the blight itself was a fast-moving, air-born fungus which rotted the potato crop each year from 1845-52. It had devastating effects on Ireland’s poor, especially in the west, who were forced to over rely on the crop for their daily caloric needs. The worst year of the famine was 1847, known as “Black ’47”, when 300,000 died. Famine, pestilence, evictions, starvation, emigration, and death consumed Ireland during these years.  Forced to eat nettles and grass, sleep rough in the elements, dying alone and unattended in ditches, and buried in mass graves without customary rites, the suffering was very intense. Why was this famine so severe and deadly for the Irish?

The consequences of the potato blight moved rapidly through an impoverished and highly populated Ireland over which the native people had little economic or political control. Great Britain had colonized Ireland, by force, wholly or in part for 800 years. The British, quelling significant resistance whenever it arose, parceled out the land to their nobility in great estates and brought in Scots settlers to colonize Ulster. King Henry VIII’s schism with Rome added the bitter Protestant-Catholic dichotomy to the already existing deep Irish-English divide. The 17th century Battle of Boyne and the Penal Laws firmly established British domination and subjugation of the Irish.  The Irish became second-class citizens in their own country without fundamental rights to own land, practice religion, own weapons, join the army or civil service, be educated, speak their language, vote, or hold political office. After the 1798 Rebellion led by the United Irishmen, the Act of Union of 1803 was imposed on the land and Ireland was made an official part of the “Great Britain” by act of their parliament.  The parliament of Ireland was dissolved, and Irish Catholic rights were not granted. In those days, Irish Catholics were too often small plot tenant farmers and laborers growing grains and raising livestock to sell, with potatoes to eat, on tiny patches. Ireland had few industries, but it was rich in fertile soil and abundant rain. On the eve of the famine, the Irish-Catholic working poor were economically vulnerable and politically impotent.

After the fungus struck in 1845, British past and extant colonial policies, woefully indifferent efforts, and active ill-will resulted in a genocide. In the beginning, Tory Prime Minister John Peel purchased Native-American corn for famine relief but following the fall of his government and Whig John Russell’s ascension to power, the British refused all but the most meager assistance. The reason given was that relief would upset business and encourage dependency.  Further, it was asserted that the “wild Irish” needed a correction to their profligate and feckless ways. Instead of assistance, the British set the Irish to hard labor for below sustenance wages in work houses, further working and starving them to death.  Giving lip service to a dysfunctional adherence to laissez-faire economics blinded the British to the need for realistic relief efforts.  Adding further energy to the British position was the pervasive ethno-religious anti-Irish prejudice prevalent in England which led to the belief that the Irish, as “papists”, lacked a work ethic and that the famine itself was God’s judgement.  Charles Edward Trevelyan, the British Treasury Secretary labeled the Irish as “morally evil” and refused them relief unless coupled with hard labor. The Irish starved to death while the British government sat on their hands while espousing an inhumane ideology.  Furthermore, the British justified the suffering they imposed to “improve and reform” the Irish by depopulating the countryside and driving small tenant farmers off the land.  It is certain, enough foodstuffs (wheat, beef, pork, barley, and oats) were exported from Ireland to alleviate the famine entirely. Yet the British government allowed no interference in the export of food and provided military escorts to ensure it. The work projects, the “roads to nowhere”, were largely make-work boondoggles which fatigued famine victims and led to further mortalities. Later, the British shifted responsibility for relief to Irish landowners who evicted famine victims and packed them off to workhouses where they were overworked, abused, and starved. The British punitive policy of demanding work for food caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Irish.  

 What is the conventional, “colonial cringe” interpretation of the famine? In short, it denies that An Ghorta Mor was an act of genocide by the British because intent cannot be proven. The “Irish Potato Famine” was not a deliberate attempt to exterminate the Irish, so say the apologists, because the British provided relief and helped the Irish to emigrate. The British provided work programs, food, soup kitchens, poorhouses are not genocide acts according to some historians like Liam Kennedy and John Kelly. Many historians write that the British were simply neglectful and irresponsible. The logistics, ideology, communications, and government structure of the time did not allow for complete famine relief, the argument goes.  Yet, the British relief efforts amounted to less than 10,000 pounds sterling over seven years, and the diabolical tools of relief –  scant soup kitchens and workhouses – made the situation even worse. The British incompetence, indifference, scorn, and bigotry led to the mass starvation and emigration from which the Irish population has never recovered. The British deliberately allowed the Irish to starve to chastise the Irish, and remake Ireland while using imperialist laissez-faireism to profit from the tragedy. 

What also came as a result was a renewed and bitter Irish hatred of the British with a corresponding rise in Irish nationalism with the rise of Fenianism and formation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.  The Irish people certainly recognized that the British government did not provide adequate relief, and the subsequent starvation poisoned British-Irish relations, in some quarters, to this day.  The famine greatly increased emigration to Canada, America, England, and Australia. Thriving Irish communities were created abroad. Irish women emigrated in numbers equal to Irish men and both found myriad opportunities in new lands. Though transported in “coffin ships”, horrible vessels full of filth and disease, Irish emigration persisted till 1910 in very large numbers, to America, in particular. Also, the Irish found friends abroad in those who sent relief – the Choctaw nation and the Quaker sect in America provided money and food during the worst years. Due to enduring poverty and lack of land, the Irish began to marry later and have few children in the wake of the catastrophe.  The Irish population dwindled to 4.5 million post-famine from 8 million pre-famine. The famine increased incidences of mental illness and alcoholism, especially the latter, giving rise to the oldest of Irish stereotypes.  The British crimes against the Irish have long been minimized and excused by mainstream conventional historians. The colonial system which subjugated the Irish, creating the detrimental conditions which allowed the fungus to have such a disastrous effect, making them all but slaves in a verdant land, and the cruel and callous indifference to their plight, caused the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Irish, and undoubtedly amounts to a genocide