I’ve started exploring famine folklore and it’s brought back the childhood memory of being told about “famine grass”: A patch of dead grass indicating where someone supposedly died without being buried during the famine and that stepping on the patch will bring a wave of hunger over you.

a close up of a man 's face with his mouth open . ALT: a close up of a man 's face with his mouth open .

Farrell: *names a squad consisting of just Tadgh Beirne covering all positions*

Munster fans:

7/7 None of this excuses the government of the time, I am often scathing of how millions were sacrificed on the altar of economic theory and had earlier attitudes of compassion persisted, instead of giving way to prejudice and laissez-fairs dogma, the outcome may have been very different.

6/7 The history of the famine is often viewed through the lens of nationalism and religion. But revealing my inner socialist, I would argue this obscures a deeper truth; the fate of the millions of poor was determined by the wealthy elite who were indifferent to their suffering.

5/7 They only had to look to the Dutch government for how inaction could result in more deaths. To me, the continued existence and prosperity of Irish Catholics, particularly the middle classes and large acre farmers, raises the question: “What were they trying to accomplish if it were a genocide?”

4/7 The flaw I see with the genocide argument is that if the British wanted to exterminate the Irish, wholly or in part, they did a poor job of it. If they wished for mass death then they didn’t need to respond at all to the blight or to spend what little they did of the treasury.

3/7 While the use of armed guard was to prevent theft, it wasn’t an intent to guarantee starvation, as the government believed their public work programmes could supply the wages necessary to purchase food.

2/7 The distinction however is that they didn’t force exports in order to deliberately starve the poor, rather they didn’t interfere with where farmers and merchants, both Irish and British, wished to sell food in order to obtain the best price.

1/7 The main claim I see arguing the Great Famine was a deliberate genocide by the British is that, while the country starved, food continued to be exported under armed guard… 🧵

“For those who lived through the creation of ‘Why Ireland Starved’ Joel Mokyr’s passage was like a huge articulated lorry speeding through the small and somewhat sleep village that was Irish economic history”

What a phenomenal start to an article.

Something between OG Oblivion and Skyrim apparently

New quests or same as the original?

In general reading about the Dutch government’s response to the crisis I’m shocked how much worse it was than the British. The worst example is that by refusing to alter excise duties, notably on rye exclusively eaten by the poor, the government had a budget surplus in 1846 and grew income by 2%

Interesting facet of the blight in the Netherlands is that the upper classes blamed the crisis on the poor, accusing them of being alcoholics and wasteful, similar to the preconceptions held by parliamentarians in London, who believed the blight was a crisis of the Irish poor’s own making.

“When did Disney create a supranational political and economic union?… oh, wrong EU”

OF when?

Should it come to pass I will have to convert our household to a potato monodiet

Partner insists nothing will grow in our garden so I’m considering an experiment to see if potatoes will grow using a simple lazy bed.

Last night I had a dream I grew them in a wheelie bin and got a crop of massive 1kg potatoes.

A sign if ever there was one.

Reading about how the blight affected the Netherlands, where it’s noted that potato cultivation shifted from clay to peat regions. This has lead to me poring over a soil map of Ireland to see if there’s a correlation, but I am instead questioning if I’m looking at a test for colourblindness

Early 20th I believe, main appeal of it to me is that I used to love the story of Ernest Shackleton’s voyage

Me two years ago: “Hey, I can answer questions!”

Me now:

The Endurance 10335 | LEGO® Icons | Buy online at the Official LEGO® Shop IE Collectible model building project for fans of famous ships

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Me previously: “Why does everyone rave about the Cork Butter Museum?”
Me now: “How is it that someone can make the history of butter production so interesting?”

This prompted me to look back in my notes and I found 5 unfinished answers, I am horrified at my neglectfulness

or how I overestimated my understanding of a topic; while not necessarily wrong, some parts are woefully oversimplified. Suppose it’s just the Dunning–Kruger effect and the struggle of self learning?

34 days into writing a response (due to life commitments 🤷🏻‍♂️) on why Europe wasn’t as devastated by the potato blight, which rolls nicely into why Ireland had an over dependence on the potato. Taking bits from previous answers as far back as two years and cringing at how much nuance I may have missed

“Connell’s view seems to indicate that marriage was an inferior good.”

The meaning changes wildly without the context of this being a book on the pre-Famine economy.

7/7 It did help clarify a number of other aspects on the pre-Famine social structure and overall will be a strong reference for future write ups.

6/7 The pre-Famine land situation is still a bit muddled for me so I also picked up Samuel Clark’s “Social Origins of the Irish Land War”, reading that landlord-tenancy was so complex that two people could be landlord and tenant made my head spin (see meme attached).

5/7 Learnings so far are that the Penal Laws were more to ensure the dominance of the Protestant upper class in fear of another Jacobite landing in Ireland and weren’t intended to convert Ireland as they were rarely enforced after implementation (research continues).