No other event looms over modern Irish history like the Great Potato Famine, a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Its impact is still felt today in a country where 1.5 million people died from starvation and disease and millions more were forced to emigrate to all corners of the globe in a desperate bid to survive. The cause of the disaster, the infestation that destroyed Ireland’s staple food crop, is well known. But debate over the availability of calorific alternatives and the culpability of the British government and landed aristocracy has produced disagreement ever since over what might have been done to mitigate the loss of life. It is also well known that many thousands of tons of grain were present in the country, and that a bounty of other agricultural products was shipped overseas during the famine years. The most difficult fact to accept is that, despite the continued importation of grain into Ireland during the late 1840s, people continued to starve at astronomic rates. If the potato blight set the Irish peasantry up for disaster, Ireland’s tenant system and indifference to the need for distribution of available foodstuffs finished them off.
Background-
Historians often disagree over how effective grain supplies might have been in filling the void left by the ruined potato crop. In Black’47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in
History, Economy, and Memory, O’Grada calculates that the potato blight rendered it a moot
point. “On the eve of the famine the potato harvest yielded about twelve to fifteen million tons
annually, half of which went to human consumption. Thus the 430,000 tons
of grain exported in 1846 and 1847 must be set against a shortfall of about twenty million tons of potatoes in those same years” (O’Grada, 124). O’Grada estimates a caloric value setting the grain at four times that of potatoes, meaning that the amount of exported grain would have replaced only about a seventh of the gap left by the potato blight, “a classic case of food shortage” (124).
In Three Famines: Starvation and Politics, Thomas Keneally goes a step further in pointing out that there was a “massive export of other foodstuffs from Ireland” in addition to grain. “A table for one day, 20 December 1846, shows seven ships arriving in Liverpool containing 800 pigs and 139 sheep, along with hundreds of bags of wheat and oatmeal, eggs, lard and other foodstuffs” (Keneally, 207). Keneally points to the tragic irony of ships overcrowded with Irish famine refugees tied up alongside ships full of Irish agricultural products, bound for other shores (207). This was a manifestation of the British ascendancy, the landlords for whom Irish peasant farmers were forced to grow crops. This form of near serfdom rendered the Irish a dispossessed underclass in their own country, a reviled population dismissed as shifty and lazy, even sub-human, by the ruling class. When the famine hit Ireland, this mindset made it easy for the landlords to justify the neglect that contributed to widespread starvation.
Business as usual -
Deprivation is a familiar theme in Irish history, but the picture that emerges from the
famine years speaks to something much deeper, a concerted campaign by the British to
exploit the Irish, who were little more than a slave labor force for the great estate holders. In Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850, Susan Bartoletti describes a situation in which the Irish, in order to hang on to their homes, were compelled to perpetuate their own poverty. There was, Bartoletti points out, agricultural abundance in Ireland but the generations-old system of exploitation ensured that the famine would kill millions. As the Irish ate grass, roots and rats, “a bountiful grain harvest was ripening. But the laborers could not eat the grain, for it belonged to the farmers and landlords. The hungry laborers watched as the grain was reaped, thrashed, and milled, then loaded onto wagons and driven to market,” ready for shipping to England other countries (Bartoletti, 55).
The grain, pigs and other potential sources of food that were produced in Ireland were part and parcel of a well-oiled system of oppression. This was the “currency” that made the Anglo-Irish power structure so wealthy, and the fact that it required the blood and sweat of the Irish peasant laborer only serves to underscore the bitter irony of the situation. As the gentry’s life blood, there was no question of the country’s agricultural produce being split up and shared with the peasantry. One of the most remarkably cold-blooded aspects of the famine is the extent to which the government and ruling class emphasized “business as usual” despite the abject misery throughout Ireland.
The exportation of needed food sources is only one part of the picture. It is estimated that approximately three times as much grain and meal was imported into the country as was exported, enough to prevent much starvation (Waldman and Mason, 432). And yet little thought was given, or effort devoted, to physically distributing food materials to the people in Ireland’s
southern and western counties, the areas hardest hit by famine. It is difficult to gauge precisely how much was available for distribution, but it is evident that far too little was done to get available food to people who needed it most. There is a surprising element of self-destructiveness to the behavior of the British in Ireland. By turning its back on the native population, the Anglo-Irish ascendancy contributed to the loss of a significant part of its labor force and to the decay of its overall status in Ireland. Little more than half a century later, the Irish would intensify the violent process that ended in the termination of British rule in Ireland (with the exception of Ulster).
The British government’s Irish policy was formulated and supported by Sir Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to the Treasury. It was Trevelyan and his supporters who saw Ireland as a kind of laboratory for social engineering and the application of free market principles. Unfortunately, the British government was more concerned with using the Irish as subjects than with the preservation of human life, at least until it was too late. Victorian-era beliefs, and the advancement of Social Darwinism, held that if the Irish and other lesser peoples suffered, it was because they were burdened by innate character flaws that pre-determined their fate. It was believed that it was necessary to re-shape Irish civilization along the lines of modern socio-economic concepts, few of which were applicable in pastoral, agricultural Ireland.
The assumption in all this was that the Irish were a sub-human race, possessed of characteristics not shared by the English or other modern “civilized” peoples of Europe. The classic cartoon image of the typical Irish peasant showed a slouching, ape-like figure capable of the basest behavior. This was institutionalized dehumanization, which Trevelyan and his colleagues used to justify government policy in Ireland, as if the
Irish simply were getting what they deserved. Consequently, it became a simple matter to ship badly needed food supplies overseas, or to overlook the need to equitably distribute imported grain and meal to Ireland’s beleaguered populace. The millions who starved during the famine were victims of human negligence as well as natural circumstance.
One can find echoes of this ethos in the “trickle down” theories of the Reagan presidency in the United States, and of conservative social dogma in general, which argues that public charity is a cause, not the solution, to social problems. This underpinned the British government’s stance on the issue, which permitted widespread starvation as long as the government remained true to its economic convictions. The British were all too willing to sacrifice common humanity for a theoretical policy that was tragically divorced from the brutal reality of famine-era Ireland. The human cost of the tenant system in Ireland was commented on during the famine years by Father Mathias McMahon, who witnessed firsthand the eviction of families from the estates of landlords in County Kerry in April 1848.
Reacting to the protestations of a middleman who insisted he had not evicted anyone, McMahon acidly commented “Not he, good man! He only applied to them the gentle pressure of rackrent (and) starvation” (Poirteir, 167). To those who ran the great estates of Ireland, which served as a lifeline for multitudes in mid-19th-century Ireland, turning away helpless tenants was nothing more than business as usual. McMahon commented on the illogic of the situation, which made no more sense for the landlords than it did for their peasant laborers. “From the ruthless extermination now going on, it is clear that they (i.e. the landlords) are determined upon utterly exterminating the peasantry who constitute (Ireland’s) main strength” (Poirteir, 167). Not all of
the landlords were so shortsighted, but the majority exhibited a fairly consistent pattern of behavior toward their tenants under these circumstances.
An encumbered system -
In many cases, the landlords found themselves in desperate economic pressures, which can account for their uncompromising actions toward tenants. By the 1840s, many of the large estates were financially troubled, some badly in arrears, with landlords grasping for any relief they could find. Unfortunately for the tenant farmers, they were sacrificed to the financial needs of their landlords and many were evicted. O’Grada points out that Parliament sought to relieve the situation, one solution being the Incumbered Estates Court, which was set up in 1849. The court, a product of the Parliament-appointed Devon Commission for Ireland, was part of an initiative aimed at recommending improvements to the Irish land distribution and management system, a process that began in the early 1840s (O’Grada, 127).
One of the recommendations that emerged from the Incumbered Estates Court was that “every facility consistent with safety should be given for bringing (encumbered) estates to an early sale rather than allowing them to remain for years the subject of expensive litigation” (O’Grada, 127). In other words, the government sought a convenient and effective means for expediting the sale of heavily encumbered Irish estates. According to records kept by the Court of Chancery, approximately one in 12 landowners “and one acre in twenty had become chronically insolvent before 1845” (O’Grada, 129). Questions have been raised as to just how many estates were forced into financial ruin by the famine, but this measure was too late to provide relief or to help the peasants who were caught in the middle of a financial squeeze play
that was slowly transforming a centuries-old system that established a form of feudalism in
Ireland.
In the years immediately following the famine, records revealed that many of the Irish estates were in a serious state of dilapidation. The seat of the Earl of Portarlington, for example, “resembled what might be expected in the neighborhood of some volcano” (O’Grada, 129). Sir George Goold’s Shanacourt, near Cork City, was badly in need of the most basic repairs and upkeep. Many others were in a similar condition. O’Grada contends that there is no clear answer to the question of why so many once-great estates became financially compromised prior to the famine, but he points out that it is clear that “the owners of such embarrassed estates were poorly placed to help their tenants when disaster struck in 1846” (O’Grada, 129). Chancery records indicate that what happened to landowners was not necessarily confined to Ireland, and that estate holders throughout the British Isles were suffering from income shortfalls and consequent financial pressures. When the blight ruined Ireland’s potato crop, the country was infinitely more prone to catastrophe than England.
It is clear that landlords operating under such financial constraints were in no position to see to the needs of their tenants, and that there was very little chance that grain could have been distributed to tenants on these estates under such circumstances. This is only one explanation for what happened to the Irish peasantry in the late 1840s, but it does provide a logical, cause-and-effect view of what happened. The land system in Ireland had operated for hundreds of years based on the landlord – tenant relationship. If, as O’Grada and others have contended, that many of the landlords were unable to help themselves, it makes sense that they could do little to save
their tenants. Yet there were profitable estates in Ireland during this period. Ultimately, it was
the intrinsic shortcomings of the tenant system, and the mutual vulnerability of landlord and tenant, that made the famine years so devastating.
A dubious Providence -
As previously discussed, the British government considered the native Irish to be intrinsically flawed, a race apart that required the firm, guiding hand of a superior civilizing influence. Lost in a state of indolence, the Irish were seen as ultimately deserving of their fate. Many in the British government took this bias a step further, asserting that God had passed his judgment on the Irish and that the famine was proof of God’s vengeance. Charles Trevelyan, the social architect whose theories exacerbated the suffering in Ireland, was of the opinion that because Providence had so clearly acted against the Irish, there was little that the British could (or should) do to alleviate the situation. Trevelyan embraced the tenets of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith, who held that government intervention is futile in combating famine; Trevelyan also believed in the inevitability of God’s will. Trevelyan “was an evangelical Christian, and when he became convinced that certain events were in accord with the workings of Providence, he could not be moved from accepting those events” (Keneally, 62).
Resignation and benign acceptance were hallmarks of Trevelyan’s credo. The son of an Anglican archdeacon, Trevelyan was also a devotee of the Reverend Thomas Malthus, whose theories on population and economics were typical of Victorian-era thinking. Concerning Ireland, Malthus famously wrote in 1817 that “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” (Keneally, 64). This was the kind of resigned justification for government inaction that Trevelyan fervently espoused concerning Ireland. The fact that it came from a man of God gave it even greater moral force in Trevelyan’s eyes.
Religion took an even more sinister form during the famine years. The British ascendancy in Ireland, convinced of its absolute moral superiority, led to what Catholics came to know as “souperism,” a form of religious coercion designed to convert the Irish to the Protestant faith. In return for soup, in many cases the only available nutrition, Catholics had to agree to attend Protestant services. These evangelical Protestant activists went to extremes in using starvation as leverage. “Overenthusiastic soupers went from cabin to cabin, urging the hungry Catholics to attend Protestant church services or Bible study classes in return for food. They printed religious tracts that criticized the Catholic faith and gave the tracts to children to take home to their families” (Bartoletti, 78). Souperism was reviled throughout the native Catholic population, though the threat of starvation forced many to accept. Resistance took many forms. In County Cork, a Catholic woman made available what provisions she had to help her co-religionists avoid the expediency of forced conversion.
The legacy of souperism embittered relations between Catholic and Protestant throughout Ireland. In the end, it was yet another case of the British ruling class undermining its own claims of moral authority, and contributing to the rising tide of anti-British feeling throughout the country. In some cases, it did drive a wedge between Catholics who did and did not accept Protestant soup (many of those who accepted were considered bad luck and became outcasts) (Bartoletti, 80). It must also be remembered that loyalty did not always follow along purely
religious lines. “Most Catholic and Protestant merchants, shopkeepers, and moneylenders were found to charge equally exhorbitant prices and interest rates” (Bartoletti, 80). Thus, greed and human nature overruled denominational purity where there was a profit to be made.
Conclusion –
As a socio-economic phenomenon, the Great Famine was more complex than it is often portrayed. The British government’s response to the tragedy was “sporadic and incomplete” because key figures in London treated the situation as an opportunity to test economic theories that emerged from Victorian thought (Waldman and Mason, 432). Cynical exploitation was clearly a factor, but there were other elements at work. Many landlords found themselves in dire financial straits during the 1840s, motivating some to act harshly toward their tenants and making it difficult to provide aid. Grain was being imported as well as exported during the late 1840s, but logistical problems of distribution were to blame for privation as well as the uncompromising laissez faire philosophy of British government officials like Charles Trevelyan. Many Catholics supported each other in the face of cynical religious manipulation like souperism, but Catholic shopkeepers used the opportunity to profit from the shortage of food, clothing and other basic needs. Ultimately, it was the inequity, inefficiency, unsustainability and exploitative nature of Ireland’s land system that must bear the majority of the blame for one of the worst human tragedies in the annals of Western civilization.
Bibliography
Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Keneally, Thomas. Three Famines: Starvation and Politics. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011.
O’Grada, Cormac. Black ’47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and
Memory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Poirteir, Cathal. The Great Irish Famine. Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 1995.
Waldman, Carl and Mason, Catherine. Encyclopedia of European Peoples. New York: Facts on
File, 2006.
