Assess the strengths and weaknesses of the view that the Great Famine was an act of genocide.
The great famine was several years of partial or near-complete harvest failure in which
no province or county was left unaffected by what can only be described as a monumental disaster. The famine was caused by a potato blight known as Phytopthera Infestans[1] and therefore the primary cause of the famine can only be put down to sheer bad luck, seemingly leaving the argument that it was an act of genocide in tatters; however where this argument gains validity is through the British reaction to the crisis. Relief was given by the British, yet it was nowhere near enough, it is estimated that around 1 million people died during the famine, considering the population at this point was scarcely above 8 million, this death toll is absolutely staggering. The numbers speak volumes in this debate, from this lack of relief comes the view that the disaster was utilised by the British in order to wipe out the Irish and to keep the population down, this is the more traditionalist view, a view that in the eyes of the most extreme nationalist would mean the great famine can be compared to the holocaust.[2] Although the death toll was completely unacceptable I do not believe the great famine can be described as a genocide. Simply put, this view is too extreme and in my eyes nothing more than a conspiracy theory, not helping enough does not make it genocide, especially during these times where helping the poor was not exactly a top priority.
The view that this was genocide does have some strength behind it. the way in which the famine was handled was far from acceptable, more people died than could have been expected whilst the British seemed to barely care, perhaps the best quote to sum up the lack of humanity shown to the Irish is through Nassau Senior’s quote that a million deaths ‘would scarcely be enough to do much good’.[3] This indeed shows just how little regard the wellbeing of the Irish people meant to some of the British. With quotes like this the genocide view starts too seem less farfetched, especially if you consider the short and long term affects of the famine, mass immigration as well as death meant that the progress of Ireland would be halted for years, ‘between 1850- 1911 more than 4.5 million men and woman left Ireland for a new life oversees’[4] The Irish population today stands at little more than 6 million, around 2 million less than before the famine, the idea therefore that the famine was used by the British in order to control the population begins to look less like a nationalist conspiracy theory and more like a successful policy used by the British, after all the overpopulation problem seems to have never returned.
Furthermore if you consider the change of British relief policy in Ireland just when the people of Ireland needed it most, during black ’47, there is definitely reasoning behind why ‘many Irish nationalists argue that this change in policy amounted to purposeful cruelty’ [5] especially when you consider the fact that there seemed to be no real need to change policy. Of course, there are many factors that may suggest there would have been this change of policy, such as the commitments to laissez faire and Christian providentialism, however these are reasons why the British may not have helped from the start rather than reasons why they actively changed the policy in 1847; ‘historians have been unable to find a convincing explanation as to why such a change in policy was undertaken.[6] Lord George Bentinck, accused the government of purchasing ‘free trade with the lives of the Irish people, leaving the people to take care of themselves when Providence has swept the food from the face of the earth’. There is a clear and common theme of a lack of humanity throughout and nothing sums this up more than the evictions during the famine. Landlords were usually English protestants and most seemed to sympathise with the peasant farmers very little at all, the crop was pretty much all most of these people had and therefore with every year that failed they fell further and further behind paying rent, eviction rates during the famine were through the roof. In many cases the tenants would be deliberately priced out by the landlords as they felt they would be able to gain more money by knocking the houses down to be used for other purposes, this in turn led to whole families being left either on the street or in the workhouses. Workhouses led to many deaths, overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions led to them becoming a playground of disease. Cholera was a big killer during the famine, something that cannot wholly be put on the British in terms of causing death, but one of the ways in which we do once again see the cruelness shown was through putting the starving, weak and ill people to work building roads and walls that lead to nowhere; it is little wonder there is resentment when you consider these such things. The idea that “God sent the blight, but the English sent the Famine,”[7] is an idea that does certainly make you think and sympathise more with the more traditional and nationalist view of a British led genocide. Having said that, although there is definitely a harshness and lack of humanity shown to the crisis, this does not mean that it was genocide. There is quite frankly no sufficient evidence to show that it was and therefore to most historians thinking rationally and not taking into account their emotional feelings of the matter, it was a disaster in which the death toll could have been eased; yet to call it genocide or a cleansing would be a bridge too far.