American reacts to The Irish Potato Famine
Vložit
- čas přidán 9. 05. 2024
- Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to The Irish Potato Famine
Original video : • The Irish Potato Famin...
Got a video request? Fill out this form!
forms.gle/NeQp2oN5gzxpxXLx8
Thanks for subscribing for more European reactions!
Let's clarify one thing. It was not a catastrophic event or a disaster, it was a genocide.
yes it was
An Gorta Mór - The Great Hunger - was not a famine.
Famine implies the extreme scarcity of food.
“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. The food was shipped under military guard 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."
Fun fact about the famine, it was caused by the British stealing all our food and leaving us with only potatoes, which as we know, died from blight. The Ottoman Sultan wanted to send £10000 to Ireland, but Queen Victoria said £1000 would be enough (it most definitely wasn’t) and so the ottomans sent us £1000 and secretly 5 ships of food
Ryan. Some of your comments were a little off. Irish people stole food because they were starving. They didn't do it to get sent to Australia. They were just starving. Being sent to Australia meant more starvation, 10 years of hard labour and beatings.
Ryan is an American, remember. They're not known for their empathy. Look how they look after their own poor!
the prog that he was reviewing said the same thing first, so what is your complaint, exactly?
@@gamingtonight1526 the prog that he was reviewing said the same thing first, so what is your complaint, exactly?
True, the Irish in Australia were treated particularly badly, especially if they were Catholics! A great many of the convict escapees and the Bushrangers were of Irish descent, as were the Eureka Stockade protesters! Up the Irish, and great grandma! 🇮🇪👍🇦🇺
@@stirlingmoss4621 MM, do you happen to know about the potato famine? Ryan laughed a lot-except it wasn't funny. And no one stole food to get sent out to Australia.
@7:20. Ryan.'people back then were really mean'. The Conservative Party in the UK and the Republican Party in the US still hold those principles where they take your taxes but call you lazy if you're in need of government aid.
Isn´t that principle happening elswere, or am I misinformed? (from somewhere in Europe)
Ryan, if you got caught stealing bread you were held in the Gaols in Ireland before the trip to Tasmania or Sydney. Spike Island in Cork Harbour, wasn't a great place to be held "Irelands Alcatraz" Many of Irish American/ Australian ancestors went through this Torture before finally reaching not so great situations in the US and Australia, used often as slave labour at the destination.
Ryan..you should look at how the Choctaw Indians from USA helped the Irish during the famine/ potato blight.
wot?!! They held a rock concert for them..?
Yes, they still have a close relationship today! 👍🫂
@@stirlingmoss4621 You really can be a **** sometimes, Stirling! I don't know whether to laugh or be p*ssed off! LOL.
@@sharonmartin4036 I, too, used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure...
@@stirlingmoss4621 I know! I know! Erm . . . what were we talking about? LMFAO
There were 8,1 million people in Ireland in 1841. 1904 there were only 4,4 million. At this point - including Northern Ireland - you arrive at about 7 million.
That is largely emigration, of course.
Thankfully the population is growing rapidly these days with all the immigration from around the world, it’s hard to find an Irish person here at the moment
Ireland was part of the British Empire and was used by the British as their garden. The rural poor didn't choose to live off potatoes. That was the easiest crop to grow on the tiny piece of land rented from the British and Anglo Irish landlords. Other crops, animals and fish were forbidden to them and they could have been shot or deported if they tried to steal food.
One thing to add is this. The Whigs, the liberal government who took control during the potato famine at the time ideologically believed in Malthusianism.
Malthusianism describes how, when a population grows it consumes more resources. At a basic level, Malthus says that growth of a population is exponential, but the growth in resources linear. So when resources become readily available, a population quickly grows to use these resources, and in return, if resources become scarce, populations fall due to poverty, starvation, and war over the remaining resources.
The Whigs took this description as a liberal ideology.
This meant they believed, just how the free hand of the market would sort economic problems, the natural order would decide when populations grow and famine would occur. As such, many of the ideological Whigs believed the famine to be a natural occurrence as the Irish had "bred too much beyond their resources" and thought the famine should not be stopped, so that nature can "correct" this issue.
But, it'd be rude to just put words into a dead persons mouth to make them seem bad. Here is a quote by Travelyan, a colonial administrator and civil servant who oversaw a lot of the relief efforts during the famine, which he declared was;
"the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected... God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part and we may not relax our efforts until Ireland fully participates in the social health and physical prosperity of Great Britain."
Besides how utterly disgusting that thought is, I wanted to give a little view on the more extreme ideological thoughts at the time involved in the Great Hunger in Ireland.
The British needed somewhere to grow potatoes, they chose Ireland and potatoes were forced on the tenant farmers by the landowners instead of the variety of other crops they previously cultivated. Potatoes became became the main food source for the poor as a result. When the blight hit approximately 1 million starved to death, we're talking genocide levels and a further 2 million emigrated to the US, Canada and Australia leaving a wound on the national psyche that is still healing to this day. During this period landowners were also evicting their tenant farmers and their families who were unable to pay their rents; families were homeless during an Irish winter further adding to the death toll. The seeds of discontent had always been there but this event more than any other galvanised Irish nationalists to a point where it would eventually lead to the Easter uprising in 1916.
7:10 some people said that about covid. People haven't change.
And AIDS
'Low lie the fields, of Athenry...'
.... and they stole Trevelyan's corn so the young might see the morn.......
5:49 And any other food they had was being sent to feed English soldiers.
sounds like concentration camps and the people working simply considered slaves
Not wrong about choosing potatoes as your crop. It also grows in most places, as long as it isn't freezing all the time. They also have a decent shelf life.
I have seen potato blight one time in my life. The thing is that now we know how to stop it so it doesn't spread like back then.
We dug up all the potatoes, got rid of plants in the vicinity and burned them, sprayed with fungicide and let the ground be over winter. Then we cultivated it properly early spring. This was in a yard though, dunno how you handle it in a field. The potatos we'd dug up were cleaned and laid out on the floor. The ones who showed no symptoms were bagged in smaller than normal bags so they could be thrown out if they started to show symptoms.
Thank You very much for showing us that video, Thank You VERY MUCH for commenting it so emotionally!
You should look into Workhouses it’s where the poor went before we had social security. My grandmother was in one in the UK around 1900 and her mother was unfortunately born in one.
Yes, NO SOCIAL SECURITY! Work all day at something, like picking up horse manure, or no bed for the night, horrible places! Come in if you must, but leave your personal dignity at the door! 😢
The problem was relying on a single variety of potato, when some types might have been more resistant to the disease. There was a world wide appeal from Ireland for help to relieve the distress, including many contributions from people across Britain, including from Queen Victoria, so it is not true that the Famine was deliberately engendered by Britain, but distribution systems etc were not developed enough to be of much help at that time.
A particularly harsh Government did little, because of it's attitude towards the Irish, but this didn't amount to a policy of letting them all die, & soup kitchens were set up. Workhouses were a sort of 'prison', where destitute people went, or were sent, to live, like large communal houses, where they were set to work, sometimes at pointless tasks. Families were split up because men, women, & children had to live in separate accommodation in these places. They were common across the UK, & were known as Houses of Correction, meant to enforce a habit of work on the indigenous poor. This was to replace the ancient system of Parish Relief, whereby the inhabitants of each village or town had to pay for people in their area who were out of work. This worked while it went to the old, or sick, or widows & orphans that belonged to the place, but people resented wandering beggars or out of work vagrants, so didn't want to keep them. The geography of Ireland did not help in efforts to relieve the Famine, with hills around the coast limiting access to much of the interior. Australia was chosen as a Penal colony after the Revolutionary War in America stopped that area being where British criminals were sent. Australia was not seen as a desirable place to go, until gold was found there much later on, soon after which transportation there for criminals was stopped. Just why the Irish couldn't have turned to other foods, vegetables etc, & kept enough back for themselves I don't understand.
Most of the "other food" was transported to England and the cattle in Ireland were owned by English landlords who paid other Irish and English farmers to produce for export and not for the local market.
„People might have known the risk, but won‘t act on it before it‘s too late“ Heard about climate change, or the monocultures in US farming?
That was not just in Ireland but in other European countries, Belgium and Sweden I know, people were also starving.
Holodomor was a famine in the Soviet Union, considered a genocide by several countries. Would be interesting to speak about this as well. 😢😢
Holodomor (death by hunger) would probably be a more accurate description than "famine" for what happened in Ireland, where it's known as "An gortha mor" - the great hunger.
There was more than enough food being produced in the country to feed the native population but instead was exported to Britain (sometimes at gunpoint)
“So it was my fault.”
Nope - it was aaallllllllllll down to the Brits.
We had a pretty much as bad famine in Finland in the 1860's but hardly anyone has even heard about that 😢
Just this morning my Irish mate, called Paddy, showed his new potato crop. Gosh, Irishman grows Potato. He happens to live on the Spanish island of Majorca. Good effort, eh?
We still love our spuds.
This should be interesting! How does one submit videos to Ryan ?
Where it shows number of views above, click on "more..." You will see a link in blue writing - that will take you to a form to fill in.
8:53 It's where you're sent if you're poor. You work all day and get some form of food three times a day - but hardly enough.
I very much doubt that anyone was stealing food for any reason other than desperation. I think that you (and the maker of the video) are forgetting that Transportation (being sent to a penal colony) would result in not only the treacherous journey you described but many years of hard Labour on starvation rations once there and that you would be mixing with many who were actual hardened criminals. They’d have little to no contact with their family back home as both ends of the communication would likely be reliant on someone else to read and write the letters for them due to high levels of illiteracy at the time. Then of course if they managed to survive their sentence, they were just released and if they wanted to risk the journey home, they’d have to find a way to pay for it themselves, which of course resulted in many starting new lives in the likes of Australia and what is now the US before that (I think it’s often overlooked that what is now the US was at one time used as a penal colony).
So most people were not going to be going out of their way to be ripped from everyone and everything that they knew. I mean, even when I was a teenager in the 80’s and my eldest sibling moved to London from our small Scottish town, it meant letters and a phone call every Sunday evening (but only that once a week unless there was an emergency) because phone calls were expensive and would most likely be coming from a pay phone (either out on the street or a coin operated phone in the house) and to be honest, it was still quite like that when I moved away in the mid 90’s. It was only when mobile phones became cheaper to use around 20 years ago that an ability for near constant communication became available, then when a short time later internet calls became a possibility then that allowed families spread all over the world to stay in constant/regular contact for no exorbitant fees. It is in actual fact quite rare for anyone to want to cut off all ties with their entire family. Which is exactly what happened to many of the poorest who were Transported.
Crazier than fiction. Yes, that's the sad truth about history. 😢😢
This is a tame recondition ❤
Please please please react to 'how britain starved ireland'. it will give you a better insight into it.
A lot of People Died and then moved to America !
Explains a lot ^^
The most 'G' rated version of the the potato famine i have ever seen
4:53 By that same logic it's kinda your ancestor's fault that we have the potato in the rest of the world at all. The potato comes from middle/south America.
Just imagine being deported to Aussie land in those days for Sterling a loaf of bread.
You want max nutrition from your potato? Eat with the skin on.
Yes, my Irish descent grandmother ate everything with the skin on and drank the boiling water too! She lived to 97! Good tip! 👍
But only the ones from eco farming. The poison on most potatoes can be really harmful. 😢
@@Alltagundso Especially in America, I'm surprised they aren't all glowing! 😱 Tasmania banned all chemicals in the 1970s! 😋
@@jenniferharrison8915 Oh, thanks for sharing, that sounds great. 👍🏽
I've only seen potatoes turn black and rot in my fridge.
"EVERIBE WA
"learned of in school"!? What does that even mean ?
Where would very poor Irish farmers get glass from to make a " greenhouse " !?
A "work house " is where the poorest of the poor went to live in overcrowded, slum like buildings , just to have somewhere to live, and maybe get fed if they were lucky.
The "trip" to Australia wasn't a holiday !! You were a criminal and put in Australian jails and made to do " hard labour" ! They weren't sunning themselves on the beaches and living as free men !!
The Whigs were our equivalent of the Democrats.
If they didn't have the famine, you wouldn't have the city of Boston! :) And the famine happened because they had a monoculture, and guess what? That's exactly how we grow food today!
The famine happened because of policies enacted by the british in the previous 150 years. The penal laws reduced the Irish to a state of penury. Catholics weren't allowed to own land or amass wealth. They had their land taken from them, and in turn, they had to rent it from British landowners . This reduced them to a subsistence level of existence. The rest, as they say is history .
We don't have one big monoculture today. If we run out of potatoes, we still have bread, vegetables, meat, rice and other stuff.
But we could have too little food in total when something happens, because we don't store anything.
Being sent to Australia back in the day was no joke. Making light of it is in poor taste.
If it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day, you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater. Alan Partridge.
It’s ok it was a joke! Fortunately Ireland has the best comedians and sense of humour so please don’t come for me, I of course know it was an absolute terrible period in Irelands history.
React to some balkan countries nezt
Ireland is prosperous because of self governance and membership of the largest single market, the EU, imperfect not without peril but successful in many respects.
Due to huge EU grants? And false business taxes?
No. Ireland is prosperous because of British money received as "EU payments", but the money was British money (Britain was a net contributor and Ireland a net recipient).
Britain's assistance if any to Ireland is essentially self-serving due to its trade surplus with the country. The UK registered a trade surplus of £25.4 billion with Ireland, in 2023.
@@disappointedenglishman98quite possibly the most clueless statement I’ve ever read on the matter
The extremely low defence budget also helps. 0.2% of GDP.
People stole food because they were starving.
So are we going to ignore that the UK took the rest of their meat, animals and stuff, before the famine .
Yes please, because it was the Irish tenant farmers who benefited, even through the famine.
This is USA today. Poor ppl and starving children
Not just the English but the Scottish too. They had already taken at least a fith of ireland
They were depending on potatoes because the variety wasn't big those days ..... no pizza, no kebab, pretzels 🙂 etc.
One thing it doesn't really emphasise enough at the end is that the Famine was only the begining of an exodus of Irish people to the various British colonies, fleeing either persecution or seeking better opportunities. But many of which also were sent as a part of Indentured servitude.
Which isn't slavery like many will claim, but it was used to supply population and cheap labour to build and work in many of the early settlements. Basically, you'd be arrested for some offence and if you couldn't pay the fine, your were sentenced to labour without the prison but sending you so unimaginably far (in those days) from home and everyone and everything you've ever known or loved that it would be near impossible to get back once you had earned your freedom. This is why people refere to Aussies as a bunch of convicts.. Also, it wasn't just Irish, as so often is the case, the haves don't really discriminate in their mistreatment of the have nots.
Even in recent years where Ireland has had good living standards and opportunities, there is a constant flow of people to the UK or US, CA, Aus. I'm sure everyone knows at least a few people they went to school with that emmigrated.. Heck I did for near 6 years at one point. (Though not to an english speaking country)
The irish population today is 5.1m - the highest since the genocide. Your comnents show ignorance.
Sure Ireland prospers today. It's no British colony anymore and they are member of the EU🙂
Ireland's prosperity is down to Britain. We gave Ireland the English language, and in the EU we were always net contributors, and Ireland has been for nearly the whole period a large net recipient (it's now a net contributor, I believe). If Britain hadn't had to make the net contributions it made to the EU and had received the net payments the Irish received (British money), we could have abolished our capital gains tax. The Irish are churlish ingrates - their prosperity is TOTALLY down to Britain.
@@disappointedenglishman98 Wow, the Poms are so generous.
Is your diet reliant today on burgers and pizza and processed food full of additives and preservatives Ryan. This is also really bad for you and most Americans are not proactive to prevent t problems in years to come. This will contribute to the worst health outcomes in years to come and then be too scared to go to hospital because of the cost. This is just a vicious circle of bad food and bad health care outcomes for profit and then healthcare for profit .
The British did not steal animals or meat from the Irish…they were SOLD to them. The Irish blamed Britain for not helping more and that is true. The government grossly underestimated the extend of the crisis. The famine literally happened overnight. Sources from the time said they saw a fog coming towards them, followed by a putrid smell. In those moments when they checked on their potato crops they were foul, black and smelly. Absentee British landlords also contributed. BUT there was a huge lobby of people in Britain who were relentless in their activism. The corn laws were repealed. When all is said and done the reason for the famine was failed harvest. Animals would have died fore the year was out.
It was the British potato famine. And after 3 years of starving themselves to feed Irish who wouldn't stop having children and growing potatoes, the English had had enough.
Wonder why we Irish had to survive on the "lumper"(?,?) and die or emigrated to other countries? Could it have been the British? Yes and 800+ years of exploitation and slavery...
The British did NOT look down on the Irish as less than human. That is a ludicrous statement. But they did see them as feckless, having invested nothing for decades. They sat in their villages multiplying. 1m population became 2m, then 4m then 8m, with no investment whatsoever in agricultural productivity, and surprise, surprise, when the potato blight came, they didn't have enough to feed 8m. This video also overemphasises statements by one or two idiots that the famine was divine judgement. The Church of Ireland (=Episcopalian; the Established Church in Ireland) did not believe that. Trevelyan was NOT a big supporter of the idea that the famine was divine retribution! That is simply a lie. He wrote to British officials in Ireland that at all costs the Irish people must not be allowed to die of famine. Ireland exported food throughout - but would have done so too even if Ireland had been independent at the time. There was no "socialism" or "welfare state" in any country at the time, and so the tone of this video is ridiculous. The last European famine was in Finland in 1866-68 (see Wikipedia): one in 12 of the Finnish population died, and the Finnish government didn't spend a penny to help as they worried that borrowing money for Famine relief would raise Finnish interest rates. So it completely misunderstands history to argue that Britain should have done more at the time in response to a natural disaster. The Irish were working for English or Anglo-Irish landowners, but that was itself a response to constant uprisings in Ireland. England in the 17th century didn't intend that result, but Ireland's own turbulence resulted in that. Ireland is prosperous today BECAUSE OF England. And, Ireland, you're welcome!
Wtf are you talking about. Are you from the 1800s whig party? What a freak you are.
@disappointedenglishman98 what a clueless, and cherry picked version of history. I guess thats how the english have always done history though
If your ancestors had their land stolen, then had to rent it back at inflated prices or work on the very land taken from them, it's time to drop the high horse act. It's not taught in British Schools either, conveniently!
@@musiceol7 It was taught, back in the seventies at least.
@@musiceol7 Their land was not stolen. It was expropriated after the Williamite uprisings. If they hadn't risen up, they would have kept their land. The Irish overplayed their hand throughout history, and rightfully bore the consequences. They have always been their own worst enemies.
Everything is fine - until it isn't. That's life.
Even today, a lot of religious zealots (of all types) still think that bad events are caused by a non-existent god...
M 🦘🏏😎