[pjriot]

No, it seems like the action of a government attempting to appear concerned when quite clearly humanitarian issues were a tertiary concern.

If a genocide occurs as a result of a commitment to a political or economic ideology, does intention really matter?

[JetSetWilly]

I think it matters, because the very definition of genocide involves deliberate intent and policy to achieve the goal of wiping out a people.

[pjriot]

Fair point. We need a better word to describe mass murder by coincidence.

I would note however, that the goal of wiping out a people (in this case it could be argued that "a people" could just as easily refer to "poor people" as "Irish people") was at least a bonus as far as Westminster was concerned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...

"The Irish viceroy actually proposed in this fashion to sweep the western province of Connacht clean of as many as 400,000 pauper smallholders too poor to emigrate on their own. But the majority of Whig cabinet ministers saw little need to spend public money accelerating a process that was already going on 'privately' at a great rate."

[Spooky23]

Trevelyan in a letter to the poor law commissioner of Ireland:

"We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country".

[dragonwriter]

Murder is still murder if it's done with depraved indifference rather than deliberate intent. Don't see why the same shouldn't be true of genocide.