[xinuc]

After some discussion with some friends from the former "colonizer", it just occurred to me that apparently it's very hard for people from those countries to appreciate their countries' role for a lot of massacre, genocide or any man made disaster like this kind of famine. They always find ways to deflect their countries responsibilities with some "reasons", although they generally agree that any kind of genocide is wrong.

I think this is what we witness today too, with some massacres and genocides going on. People from those colonizer countries just can't relate to the victims. Maybe deep down they acknowledge that those genocides are good, or at least necessary, because those things are what brings them prosperity they enjoy today.

[JetSetWilly]

“The British” did not genetically engineer the potato blight.

Further, in the 19th century state capacity was small and massive modern style relief programmes were not possible. Despite this, Britain managed to spend a large degree of GDP on relief. Proportionately more than it did on covid response recently, for example.

The reason people deny british culpability for “genocide” is that there was no “genocide” and britain did what it was able to do, to an unprecedented degree in fact. If anything, we should be proud of britain’s response, especially knowing that it would never get aby kind of gratitude for it.

[Peroni]

>If anything, we should be proud of britain’s response, especially knowing that it would never get aby kind of gratitude for it.

Some examples of Britain's response:

* Establishing soup kitchens for the starving, where, to acquire food one must renounce your religion, anglicise your name, and abandon your native tongue.

* Provide maize for the starving and destitute but not for free for fear it would generate a sense of self-importance amongst the millions who are dying of hunger

* Maintaining the exportation vast amounts of food to Britain throughout the Great Hunger

* Requiring the starving who couldn't afford to buy food from the British to build pointless walls in order to earn that food

* Forcibly evicting the starving and dying from their homes because they couldn't pay their rent for some reason

* Denying aid to anyone who owned more than a quarter-acre of land, forcing starving farmers to give up their land and become destitute in order to qualify for relief

So, on behalf of all those before me in Ireland; go raibh maith agat.

[vkou]

No, but they did engineer an economic system where all the food that the Irish grow gets sent overseas while the latter starve.

The Soviets built a similar system a century later in Ukraine, it's product was called the Holodomor.

[alexb_]

The entire reason there was a famine was due to absentee landlords who demanded absolutely everything but the bare minimum from farmers for the "right" to work on "their" land.

[jmull]

Yes, the real victims of the Irish famine were the unappreciated, overly criticized British. Will the horror ever fade?

[sunami-ai]

Ouch. Yes. I agree.