P&Ns middle name is and

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grandmasterfluffles

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Amused

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I didn't know the potato famine was "manufactured"

Potato Blight was a problem all over Europe at the time. It was the cause of many revolutions and uprisings in Europe and killed 100,000 plus on the continent in the mid 1800s. But in Ireland it was made much worse because of British policy and land ownership.

Manufactured? No. Exacerbated? Yes. Greatly so. How much so? The estimated death toll is minimum 1 million, maximum 1.5 million. This is exponentially worse than the blight and starvation in Europe. And this doesn't even account for the 1 million plus who fled to the US, Europe and England.


 
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pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
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Potato Blight was a problem all over Europe at the time. It was the cause of many revolutions and uprisings in Europe and killed 100,000 plus on the continent in the mid 1800s. But in Ireland it was made much worse because of British policy and land ownership.

Manufactured? No. Exacerbated? Yes. Greatly so. How much so? The estimated death toll is minimum 1 million, maximum 1.5 million. This is exponentially worse than the blight and starvation in Europe. And this doesn't even account for the 1 million plus who fled to the US, Europe and England.




Was going to post that same link. "Manufactured" is pushing it slightly, but British policies absolutely contributed to making the event more likely, and in worsening its effects.

My forebears on one side of my family lived through that (being Irish).
As it happens on the other side of my family my ancestors lived through very similar events, in South Asia, also exacerbated by the same colonial overlords determination to abide by the principles of 'the free market' and 'capitalism'. In both cases famine-relief was out-of-the-question, because it would have been a violation of free-market principles.
 
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[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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I didn't know the potato famine was "manufactured"
It may be surprising to hear, but most collapses of complex structured civilizations (incans, mayans, native north americans, inuit, irish, and myriad others) are almost universally 'manufactured' as the civilization wouldn't exist to begin with if it wasn't inherently stable (outside of once a ~millennia event).
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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I didn't know the potato famine was "manufactured"

Only in the sense that we set the stage so it was likely to be a total shitshow then poured fuel on the fire.

The potato famine was Europe-wide but because the English were plundering Ireland's resources and basically importing everything from Ireland that wasn't the absolute basics (e.g. potatoes), potatoes became a staple to get by on, then the blight came along. The English response was largely "meh".

England vs. Ireland back then would probably looked a lot like Israel vs. Palestine now if the English had the same tech as Israel does. The aggressor in both cases looked on their opponent as subhuman, the only real difference is that to the English, it was all business, a masterclass in how capitalism sucks.
 
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