The Great Hunger of Ireland: Natural Disaster or Man-Made Genocide?
39:18 Share

In early 1847, Irish illustrator James Mahoney is at work on a grim assignment. His country is in the throes of a devastating potato famine, and Mahoney is traveling through desperation and death to report on it for a London newspaper. Mahoney draws and writes about many ghastly scenes, but it's one of the less showy incidents that speaks the loudest about the British role in the catastrophe.

In Skull, a village on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, Mahoney and his team come upon a huge crowd of women in the street, at least 300. They're all there for the same reason: to buy cornmeal for their starving families. One woman tells Mahoney that she's been there since dawn. The cornmeal everyone is waiting for arrives in the local port with a military escort.

Without the protection, desperate locals might have tried to steal the food. Now, a government official is meting out small portions at exorbitant prices. But even with these tiny rations, some of these women will return to their hungry families empty-handed. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast.

I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. You can listen to the audio everywhere and watch the video only on Spotify. And be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. We'd like to give a special thanks to listener Cameron McDonald for suggesting today's story. Stay with us.

From 1845 to 1852, potatoes in Ireland suffered a series of blights or diseases that the country has yet to fully recover from to this day. Three million people either died or fled Ireland. And even more than 150 years later, historians are asking, how could this have happened? In order to really understand the potato famine, we have to understand the context in which it occurred.

In 1801, Great Britain and Ireland merge under an agreement called the Act of Union. Don't let the paperwork fool you into thinking this is a partnership. At this time, Ireland is a British colony, exploited for its farmland. By the 1840s, exported Irish grain feeds about 2 million Brits a year, a crop output Britain could never hope to produce itself.

British landlords own virtually all of the productive Irish farmland. Many of them manage it remotely from England, leaving desperately poor native Irish laborers to work the land. In addition to working on their landlord's parcel, most of these Irish farmers also rent small plots, feeding their families with the crops they grow. With very few exceptions, they all grow one thing. The Irish lumper potato.

The Irish lumper has a lot to offer the peasant farmer. One, it provides a high yield, even on a small square footage. See, the land available to farmers is limited to begin with. And as Irish families grow and pass down land to younger generations, those rental plots get divided up and become smaller and smaller.

But luckily, even though the average Irish male eats about 12 pounds of potatoes a day, just one acre of potatoes can feed his family of six for a year. The other benefit of potatoes is their nutrition. In a book about the famine entitled Their Graves Are Walking, author John Kelly explains that potatoes provide two to four times more calories per acre than grain, and

That's why Irish farmers rely on it so heavily. They can feed their loved ones well. Potatoes are credited with allowing Irish families to grow and stay healthy. Irish folks aren't the only ones benefiting from the potato. Historians say the crop contributed to the population boom across all of Europe between 1750 and 1950. All that manpower allows many countries, including Great Britain, to industrialize.

That means a more modern and international economy that trades in manufactured goods as well as raw materials and crops. But remember, Ireland is basically Great Britain's pantry. The folks who work in British factories making the goods that made England competitive on the international market, many of them eat imported Irish crops.

Britain's industrialized economy is fueled by Irish food. But the British aren't exactly grateful. Instead, officials grumble about how Irish laziness results in a sluggish and primitive Irish economy. From their perspective, the average farmer isn't helping his country move into the modern age. Most don't engage with currency. They eat what they grow and barter with whatever is left.

British landlords want their Irish farmland to be more efficient and profitable. From their perspective, Irish farmers are holding them back as laborers and tenants. Their manual farming could be performed faster and cheaper by machines. The land the farmers rent would be more lucrative growing food for trade.

So landlords with an eye for profit want to evict their tenant farmers. In a situation with a British occupation dressed up as a mutually beneficial union, a declining quality of life for an average Irishman, and now a threat of eviction from arguably stolen Irish land, you can imagine it creates some tension. Then things get worse.

In the summer of 1845, all of Western Europe sustains heavy rains. Irish farmers are worried. Wet summers are never good for their crops. Their fears are confirmed when they wake up in the morning to a heavy rotten stink. Out in the field, their nearly mature potato plants have white spots on their leaves.

Within a day, the spots are brown and rotten looking. By the third day, the entire stalks are black and drooping. By then, the precious edible root of the plant is dead. Sometimes the potato's growth would be stunted and it comes out of the ground the size of a walnut. Full-sized potatoes have a slimy film and patches of rotten flesh. Inside, it's full of rancid muck.

Once just one plant shows sign of the deadly mold, Phytophthora infestans, there's no chance of saving any of the others. Families work into the night until they can't see the plants in front of them, trimming off the diseased parts of the plants. Even potatoes that come out healthy can go bad in storage. Entire fields for miles are blackened. The rotten stench is inescapable.

Some farmers cry as they pull diseased potatoes from the ground. Others sprinkle holy water over their crops or bury them with religious talismans, hoping for divine protection. By late February 1846, areas most affected by the blight enter a state of chaos driven by desperate, hungry farmers and their families. Thieves forage in strangers' fields.

People drink blood from live farm animals. They put seaweed and grass into their kettles. Parents worry if their sleeping children will ever wake. Peasants sell absolutely everything, the clothes off their back, in order to buy just a little food. But not all hope is lost. Not yet. No more than one third of Ireland's potato crop is affected.

There had been crop failures of similar scale in the past, and farmers had always been able to scrape by until the following year's harvest came through. The British government ministry responsible for overseeing affairs in Ireland, the Home Office, also puts a few relief measures in place. They purchase American corn to help stabilize food prices and as a backup food source for Irish families facing a ruined potato crop.

Remember the women who James Mahoney saw waiting to buy corn? Those small portions were probably government subsidized. The Home Office also implements a few direct relief services. They call for the formation of local committees to facilitate the delivery of supplemental food. They also organize public works projects that create opportunities for farmers to work for cash and therefore buy food to offset their crop losses.

But the British government fails to take a common step to prevent famine. They decide that Ireland should continue exporting food. During previous crop failures, Irish ports had been closed in order to make sure the island had enough food to keep everyone fed. When it comes to trade, British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel takes on a free market approach.

Meaning he wants commerce to proceed without any government intervention, even at the expense of humanitarian aid. So Ireland continues exporting food, even as some Irish farmers face entire fields of ruined crops, potentially a year's worth of sustenance. Now, this middle-of-the-road approach appears to work. There are no excess deaths in 1846, and things seem to be turning around.

That summer's potato crop appears healthy. In June, Prime Minister Peel seems to think the worst is over, shifting focus from iris suffering to, quote, the real question at issue is the improvement of the social and moral condition of the masses of the population. But then...

Harvest time comes. Phytophthora infestans returns. This time, its rotten stench infiltrates all 32 Irish counties. There's nowhere. In the fall of 1846, everyone in Ireland comes to grips with a horrifying reality. They are not recovering from last year's crop failure. Instead, they're facing an even worse one.

The winter weather shapes up to be brutal, one of the worst anyone can remember. Daily life for the average Irishman becomes about survival. Diversions like poetry, dancing and music, staples of Irish culture become a distant memory. As the number of people in need increases, gaps in Prime Minister Peel's relief efforts become obvious.

Public works projects are supposed to allow starving peasants to earn enough money to buy food. In reality, families, even children already weak from starvation, struggle to complete heavy labor that's often pointless. They might spend the day splitting rocks to build roads that don't lead anywhere. The hard-earned wage for this futile work isn't enough to sustain an entire family.

And that's only when they do get paid. Many of these projects are riddled with corruption. The more direct support, like soup kitchens and government-subsidized food distribution, also have major flaws. Prime Minister Robert Peel might have purchased some supplemental corn, but he intended for local authorities to handle the processing and distribution of that corn. Often, this means landlords.

Peel assumes that wealthy landlords will use their own money to support the working class because they depend on working class labor to maintain their own solvency. But landlords are in no financial position to help. A significant portion of their income relies on rent, and countless tenants are in arrears. Then it gets worse again.

A British election results in a power changeover. The new prime minister puts Charles Edward Trevelyan in charge of relief efforts in Ireland. Unfortunately for the starving Irish, Trevelyan leans even more heavily towards a free market approach than Peel's administration did. Like Peel, Trevelyan figures that pausing Irish food exports could make the Irish economy even less competitive on the international market.

He's in favor of continuing the export of Irish crops unaffected by the blight, like grain, to whichever country can pay the highest price. That certainly isn't Ireland. So, merchants and landlords continue to make money on the exported crops that survive the blight, but the Irish laborers working their land are facing a worsening food shortage. Even though the situation is increasingly dire...

Trevelyan also chooses to cut down on more direct relief efforts like supplemental food and soup kitchens. He worries such quote-unquote handouts could make Irish people dependent on government support. No one is coming to save Ireland. Famine and its consequences run rampant. The suffering over the next several years is tremendous.

Lack of food probably seems like the biggest danger during a famine, but for Irish people hoping to survive, starvation is only one of the threats. Peasants also face eviction, rising crime and violence, and deadly disease. Let's start with evictions. We've already talked about the main incentive for landlords to force out tenant farmers,

the ability to consolidate their land into a more modern and therefore profitable agricultural operation. Tavellion's relief policies reinforce those efforts. A landlord's legal obligation to support relief services is directly tied to how many tenants live on their land. If a landlord evicts those tenants, then they don't have to chip in to support them.

On the flip side, farmers can only access the majority of relief resources if they rent less than a quarter acre of land. Anyone with a larger property has to abandon it if they want government support. When tenants are evicted, it's often sudden and violent. Enforcers hired by landlords don't just ask tenants to leave. They destroy their home and belongings and seize everything of value.

Destitute and often starving families are left with no possessions and nowhere to go. Sometimes this results in counter-violence. Farmer mobs armed with pitchforks face off against police and military forces. Disgruntled peasants brutally kill people who collect rent, lend money at obscene interest rates, or enforce evictions.

Some landlords use another tactic to get rid of their tenants, encouraging them to emigrate to the United States. A number even offer to pay for their passage. This is more civilized than simply demolishing unwanted tenants' homes, but it's still self-serving. When tenants move to the States, their land reverts back to their landlord. Plus, Atlantic Passage is no cakewalk.

Passengers spend the weeks-long journey crowded below decks on vessels designed to transport goods like wood or grain, not people. Anyone lucky enough to land on a ship retrofitted for human transport gets to share a bunk with three other people, at least. Captains often oversell tickets, pocketing the extra cash.

If those conditions don't sound horrendous enough, the ship crews often neglect to bring adequate food and water for everyone on board. On top of that, all those people packed into such a small space is a perfect breeding ground for disease. Infections like typhus, typhoid, and cholera kill thousands of Irish people during the famine at home and on ships bound for the U.S.,

Record keeping is inconsistent, so it's impossible to know for sure, but research suggests that far more Irish people died from illnesses than directly from starvation. Some of the most haunting reports from James Mahoney, the illustrator and reporter who relayed famine scenes back to England, are of the devastating effects of disease. Mahoney describes entire families dead in their homes, their bodies left to rot.

A single survivor, so weak he's had to live among the corpses of his family, begs passers-by for water or for fuel to start a fire. But concerned neighbors are forced to keep walking. They've already seen how anyone who tries to help ends up infected themselves. In 1844, Ireland had a population of just over 8 million.

By 1855, roughly a third of the population died or fled. According to British leaders like Charles Trevelyan, the famine was the result of God's will, a natural disaster that couldn't be avoided. But Irish nationalist John Mitchell writes that the Almighty had brought the blight, but the English created the famine.

Over a hundred years later, author Tim Pat Coogan takes Mitchell's accusation a step further, arguing in his book, The Famine Plot, that British actions during the famine weren't just about economics. They served a more sinister purpose, the systematic destruction of Irish people and culture. If that's the case, then perhaps the Irish potato famine isn't a famine at all. Maybe.

It's a genocide. Everyone can agree that the Irish potato famine was a tragedy. It's also not controversial to say that the British government could have done more to mitigate its effects. But do British actions, or lack thereof, during the crisis qualify as a genocide? First, let's define our terms. The word genocide didn't exist until nearly a century after the Blight destroyed every potato in Ireland.

The term was coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. In 1948, the United Nations codified the crime that 153 countries now recognize as international law. The convention defined genocide as any action committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,

Those actions include things like injuring, traumatizing, or killing members of the group, or creating a situation that forces the group to live in unhealthy and dangerous conditions. Let's break it down. It's fair to say that Ireland was not a safe place to live during the famine, but to what extent did the British government cause that situation?

The British did not create Phytophthora infestans, the mold that turned potatoes across Europe to mush. The acute cause of the food shortage was natural and can't be blamed on the Brits. But that doesn't mean they aren't responsible for the suffering that resulted from it. Indian economist and scholar Amartya Sen studied the interventions and outcomes of a variety of more modern famines.

He found that famines were almost never the result of natural conditions, but the human response, or lack thereof, to them. In fact, some famines occurred even when there wasn't a decline in food availability. According to Sen's research, precise corrective intervention can mitigate the worst effects of famines. Some modern governments have pulled this off.

In the 1970s, a drought in Maharashtra, a state in India, reduced crop output and put about 20 million people at risk of starvation. The Indian government delivered food and created employment relief programs. As a result, there were no recorded deaths from starvation.

Now, Sen's research is centered mainly on modern famines. Perhaps the mid-19th century British government didn't have access to the same knowledge or resources as the Indian government did over a century later. But consider this. Other nations avoided famine caused by the same 1845 potato blight.

Nova Scotia, another British colony much further from the motherland, was almost as dependent on the potato as Ireland.

But their local government acted quickly to support the cultivation of different crops in the late 1840s, creating new food sources. If they could avoid famine on the frontier, it seems like Ireland could have at least fared better, considering the support they had from their economically advanced colonizer. So let's look at what the British could have done differently and what the outcome might have been.

It's difficult to play the what-if game with accuracy. In terms of British strategies during the famine, let's consider the one that has the most data and relevant comparisons. The choice to keep Irish ports open for business. Closing ports and therefore keeping food grown locally within the country was a tried and true strategy for overcoming crop failures in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Ireland, Britain, and many other European countries had been using it for years. Because it worked. We don't necessarily have data to dig into exactly how effective it was, but it certainly helped. When the potato blight hit Europe in 1845 and 1846, many nations in the region stopped exporting food.

But Britain chose to continue exporting food from Ireland, arguing that closing the ports would hurt the Irish economy. This decision was the main thrust behind John Mitchell's argument that the British caused the famine in Ireland. They not only took minimal steps to offset the loss of the potato harvest, they also removed other food from the island. But there is more nuance to consider.

Some modern scholars have pointed out that simply holding on to other crops grown locally might not have prevented the famine. See, Ireland suffered from a major lack of infrastructure. According to Celtic historian Mark McGowan, even if the ports closed...

The food they held onto might not have been able to reach the people who needed it most. There's also the issue of cost. The potato blight would have driven up the price of grain and other unaffected crops. It would be hard for peasants, who normally barter or eat what they grow, to afford the expensive food.

Even though closing the ports might not have entirely prevented the disaster, some critics say that the British argument that maintaining trade was in Ireland's best economic interest is still pretty flimsy. Remember, the landlords making money from the exported food were mostly British, not Irish. Except it wasn't only the British making this argument.

Young Ireland, a movement of Irish nationalists who supported independence from Britain, also wanted to see Ireland open to free trade, just like the British government did. The group believed access to the free market was the best way to stabilize the Irish economy, which would allow for the repeal of the union with Britain.

Incredibly, John Mitchell, who wrote that Britain caused the famine by exporting food, was also a young Irelander and supported keeping Irish ports open. So the choice to keep Irish goods active on the international market is more complicated than it seems. But despite the obstacles, it appears closing the ports would have at least helped alleviate the effects of the famine.

Plus, the ports are just one of several ways the British failed to support Ireland.

They could have done more to keep soup kitchens open, prevent evictions, support hospitals to care for sick people, and a myriad of other things. While historian Peter Gray questions framing the famine as a genocide, he does maintain that if the famine had been as severe in England as it was in Ireland, that the Home Office would have shelled out a lot more money on relief.

If the choices of the British government contributed to famine conditions in Ireland that resulted in death and immigration, it could be argued that half the criteria for genocide is met. Let's consider the other half. Intent. Did the British government act with the intention of harming the people of Ireland? Intent.

British prejudice against Irish people in this period is well documented. For the first 29 years of the union between the countries, Irish people weren't allowed to hold government positions or pursue occupations in fields that required certification, like medicine or the law. Though those limitations were abolished a few decades prior to the famine, their effects persisted.

Popular British newspapers created tropes out of perceived Irish flaws, including, but not limited to, laziness, brutality, stupidity, and filth. Some Victorian thinkers considered the potato an unseemly food that degraded the character of anyone who consumed it. Perhaps that's why so many British folks were content to believe that the blight was a righteous punishment from God.

Separating the Irish from their potatoes would only do them good. Even more disturbing, these opinions were shared by Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was responsible for administering aid in Ireland starting in 1846.

At various points, he described Irish people as defective, selfish, perverse, and turbulent. From his writings, it sounds like he felt Ireland deserved whatever the famine delivered. In his words, the judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson. But Trevelyan didn't just want to sit back and watch Ireland suffer. He had a goal in mind.

In a letter to another bureaucrat, he said he was glad that smaller farmers were abandoning their land. Hopefully, the land would finally end up in the hands of someone with the money to modernize. For all of Britain's generalized antipathy toward Ireland, it doesn't add up to a grand plan to annihilate it. Intent is consistently the hardest part of proving genocide.

Based on what we know, Britain doesn't clear the bar. Sir Charles Trevelyan doesn't speak for the whole of the British government, but his brutally stated goal of modernized, consolidated farms does line up with his party's preference for a free market. As villainous as Trevelyan sounds, his glee over evicted farmers actually suggests that the famine wasn't genocide.

The British goal wasn't killing Irish people. It was modernizing their agriculture and economy. If some Irish people died along the way, then oh well, as far as they were concerned. The British may not have had an intention to destroy Irish people, but Trevelyan certainly lacked any intention to prevent their destruction. After the famine, Ireland was never the same. Even after the crisis abated,

The population continued to decrease for the next hundred years. Today, the population of the island is still far lower than it was before the blight struck. In 1997, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered a formal apology to the people of Ireland.

He admitted that the British government failed in their duty by allowing a crop failure to cause unthinkable suffering that they could have prevented. The British did not commit genocide, but all that really means is their actions don't meet the modern legal definition. Morality, though, doesn't have a label.

Thank you for tuning in to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at TheConspiracyPod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts or email us at conspiracystories at spotify.com.

Amongst the many sources we used, we found The Graves Are Walking by John Kelly and The Famine Plot Revisited, a reassessment of the Great Irish Famine as genocide by Mark G. McGowan, extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth. Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast.

This episode was written and researched by Hannah McIntosh, edited by Chelsea Wood, fact-checked by Laurie Siegel, and video editing and sound design by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.