🇬🇧 The British government let a million people starve to death.
— Proudofus.uk (@ProudofusUK) February 26, 2026
Called it God's judgement.
A fungus destroyed the potato crop across Ireland. For most of the country, potatoes were all they had. Within a year, entire villages were dying.
The man in charge was Charles… pic.twitter.com/DzK2hERDdT
Ireland Potato Famine
4 thoughts on “Ireland Potato Famine”
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NEVER HEARD THAT PART OF THE FAMINE STORY, BEFORE.
I had not, either, Fred. But it seems pretty credible. Britain, after all, was Christian back then.
The Sultan of Turkey gave about 20 times more than Queen Victoria, which embarrassed her but didn’t make her cough up more. I’m told that to this day the Irish disdain her.
An additional element that probably worsened the famine was the large degree to which absentee landlords owned so much of the farmland, similar to the sharecropper dynamic that deepened poverty and poverty-producing behavior in the South. Perhaps why the PM seems to have blamed the Irish.
Thanks for the context, J. Sobran. Similar to what happened in Italy 50 years later, there were apparently some basic structural issues that led to people leaving.