The Atlas of the Great Ireland Famine - William J. Smyth ed.

[C. Flower]

William J Smyth is joint editor of The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine with John Crowley (Cork University Press, 2012).

The Atlas brings together pictorial material, maps, contemporary documents and research work on the famine. The famine is a shaded part of Irish history, less easy to talk about than the history of resistance against colonialism. Feelings of (unwarranted) shame and embarrassment still attach to it. The 150th anniversary passed with relatively quiet commemoration, much of it at the level of parish.

Looking back, it is still simply astonishing that the amine period, which witnessed over 1m deaths, when 2.5m people deserted Ireland within 10 years, and emigration became deeply institutionalised in Irish culture, which saw the elimination of 300,000 family farms, the virtual disappearance of the cottier class with less than one acre, not to speak of the economic desolation and pauperisation of so many towns — was not seen as a major watershed.

In truth, the Great Famine is a great abyss, a great chasm, between pre-Famine and post-Famine Ireland. This was a profoundly revolutionary period, accompanied by immense levels of violence — ecological, physical, psychological and social — only matched in its intensities and long-term implications by the Cromwellian conquest and settlement in the mid-17th century.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifesty...es-206848.html

[toxic avenger]

Thanks for that link - I'll get that book when I can.

There's almost too much to grasp and to say. I have heard people in England joke about the famine, and still my blood boils when I do. To think that there were survivors alive when my parents were small children brings a realisation of the difference in the way in which Irish people view history than others do - it strangely feels as if it is extremely recent to us. We think of family ancestors who were there as if they were immediate family. We tend to think in terms of centuries where others, like the English, see events from 30 years ago as if they are ancient history - it's a difference of perception which is hard to get across.

Then I think of Irish America (having an Irish American wife opens up a different way of seeing their perceptions) - how many people in Ireland mock them as not being really Irish in the way we are. But they are entitled to claim the memory of the famine as much, if indeed not more, as we are. Their forefathers were at the epicentre of it - they left probably having seen family and friends, indeed entire communities they had grown up with, wiped out. They have an Irish story just as valid as ours - we are an emigrant people, and the physical location of one group of Irish people on the island of Ireland does not make the other groups' stories any the less valid or more worthy of condescension and mockery because they are on another piece of rock. Their story, their very existence where they now are, is a direct result of this disaster. Yet too often they are patronized and seen as fit only to be ripped off for being over-sentimental and having a less jaundiced view of Ireland than we often do. Their ancestors suffered and survived, but the ancestors of many in Ireland, in some places more than others, didn't suffer - indeed many profited and lived quite well indeed. So why is our 'ownership' of the famine more 'authentic' than theirs? And why do we mock the real sense of anger that they have and had towards those they deem responsible, as if they're not entitled to feel that way?

I think of the people who were running half the world from London. The neo-liberal bullsh1t that led them to believe it was providential, even a welcome thing, that a million people were starving to death and an entire nation was being put through a slow physical and psychological torture on the way to agonising death. I can not comprehend the mentality, the sheer evil callousness, of such mindsets. When one considers, leaving aside the fact that food was being shipped out of the country all the time, that they were content to leave Ireland to starve to death, or at least couldn't be bothered to help after 1847, is it really that extreme and naive to say that their was a genocide by neglect, even if the idea of deliberate genocide is dismissed (which, in my view, it can't easily be)? This was supposed to be an integral part of a Kingdom which was at the very heart of the biggest empire the world had ever seen - part of the same State as that which was blazing the trail for capitalist industry and commerce - and it was living in a hell that wouldn't have been out of place in the Old Testament. This was just 120-odd years before I was born!! And only 80-odd years before my dad was born!!!!

I think then of the people themselves. The slow, agonising death that many suffered. The psychological torture of having to make life and death decisions about which kid got food and which didn't, whether the old people should be let die in order to save the young, whether a piece of food could be shared with a desperate and dying sibling or cousin or friend or neighbour. The guilt must have been enormous, particularly the survivor guilt. No wonder the repression of the decades afterwards, the fact that no-one spoke about it, the sense that it shouldn't be spoken of because of the shame of ever having been so low. There must have been an entire generation of people living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And I never even stopped to consider the effect of the hunger on women in terms of their menstrual cycles, along with the subsequent drop in births. Then the sheer emptiness of entire regions which had only recently been teeming with people - watching your whole townland or village or region deserted. Did they feel it was an opportunity to be exploited, or did they merely feel bereft, no longer seeing kids playing and seeing their churches empty and their markets deserted? I try not to think of the experience of the desperate man, completely emasculated, unable to feed his wife and children and desperately struggling, despite weakness and hunger, to find food or medical help. Or the men and women who died crawling along roadsides or by hedges and ditches, their mouths coloured green by the grass and nettles they tried to eat. Or the mother watching helplessly as her children die of fever. Or the people driven insane by hunger and led to cannibalism of their dead family members? The daily terror is too much to think of.

And then I think of the Irish people I see today who spend half their time on internet sites or elsewhere arguing why we should cut governmental aid to the starving and most poverty-stricken people on Earth today, suffering similarly in several parts of the world. How they make the argument that we 'can't afford it', that 'charity begins at home', that there is some level of equivalence between our current economic mess and the experiences of people actually starving to death or watching their families wiped out by disease. The meanness of mind of such people beggars belief, to the point where I actually consider it evil.


Sorry for the rambling post, but the article just got my mind racing and I thought I might get some of it down because it it is almost too much to think about at once. I often wonder whether there is scope for a film, mostly in Irish, that could do justice to all these questions as well as adequately portray the many different experiences that there must have been - the quiet dignity of many of the sufferers, the terror also, the hysteria and insanity of the most desperate, the shame, the bigger political and economic and imperial aspects, the opportunism, greed, and complicity of many, the moral dilemmas that every day presented, the physical and emotional toll taken on the people, the selflessness and heroism that must have happened too, everything. It's not possible is it?

[C. Flower]

Thanks for the long and thoughtful post.

The years were hungry ones right across Europe, but Ireland, from what I read, was caught severely in part because there was no real market for buying and selling food supplies - people lived off their own land mainly, year to year. And there was an economic, and agricultural, bubble. The ones who got the boat were not the worst off, as they had clothing and the fare.

I'm not comparing it with mass starvation of whole communities in other countries, but there are people, including children, in Ireland who are hungry, and malnourished.

[Jolly Red Giant]

William J Smyth is joint editor of The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine with John Crowley (Cork University Press, 2012).

The figure for the number of family farms quoted in the extract is open to interpretation.

While farmer numbers increased by approximately 5 per cent between 1831 and 1841, to 685,309 in the 1841 census, there was almost a 50 per cent increase in the numbers of labourers and servants totalling 1,194,014 in 1841.

By 1851 the number of farmers dropped by almost 300,000 to 403,638 reflecting almost exclusively the wiping out of the cottier and the farmer with less than five acres during the famine.

The number of labourers and servants dropped by almost 350,000 to 849,798.

Irish tenant farmers with more than 15 acres survived the famine relatively unscathed and farmers with 30 acres did well financially during the period of the famine. Regularly landlords complained that reductions in rent given to tenant farmers were not passed on to cottiers and landless labourers with farmers charging the poorest sections of the rural community between three and four times the rent for potato ground and conacre compared to what they paid the landlord. Furthermore, these 'family farmers' manipulated supplies and prices during the famine to make a financial killing at the expense of their poorer neighbourers. CF there was an extensive market system that was manipulated by the Irish tenant farmer, the Irish forestallers and the Irish merchant classes. Widespread attacks by labourers on tenant farmers occurred right throughout the period of the famine - particularly during the first two years - and the Irish tenant farmers were constantly demanding that the police and the British military take action to protect them from attacks.

Now here is the interesting number -

By the 1861 census the numbers of farmers began to increase again, up to 440,697 but the number of labourers continued their dramatic downward spiral, halving in 10 years to 426,125.

So while the number of cottiers and farmers dropped dramatically between 1841 and 1861 - the number of 'family farms' - i.e. those with more than 5 acres were actually increasing by the time of the 1861 census and while the number of labourers and farm servants continued a dramatic decline (in the 1926 census the number of labourers had continued to decline to 128,409), the trend for family farms established in 1861 continued for the next 40 years.

[C. Flower]

The figure for the number of family farms quoted in the extract is open to interpretation.

While farmer numbers increased by approximately 5 per cent between 1831 and 1841, to 685,309 in the 1841 census, there was almost a 50 per cent increase in the numbers of labourers and servants totalling 1,194,014 in 1841.

By 1851 the number of farmers dropped by almost 300,000 to 403,638 reflecting almost exclusively the wiping out of the cottier and the farmer with less than five acres during the famine.

The number of labourers and servants dropped by almost 350,000 to 849,798.

Irish tenant farmers with more than 15 acres survived the famine relatively unscathed and farmers with 30 acres did well financially during the period of the famine. Regularly landlords complained that reductions in rent given to tenant farmers were not passed on to cottiers and landless labourers with farmers charging the poorest sections of the rural community between three and four times the rent for potato ground and conacre compared to what they paid the landlord. Furthermore, these 'family farmers' manipulated supplies and prices during the famine to make a financial killing at the expense of their poorer neighbourers. CF there was an extensive market system that was manipulated by the Irish tenant farmer, the Irish forestallers and the Irish merchant classes. Widespread attacks by labourers on tenant farmers occurred right throughout the period of the famine - particularly during the first two years - and the Irish tenant farmers were constantly demanding that the police and the British military take action to protect them from attacks.

Now here is the interesting number -

By the 1861 census the numbers of farmers began to increase again, up to 440,697 but the number of labourers continued their dramatic downward spiral, halving in 10 years to 426,125.

So while the number of cottiers and farmers dropped dramatically between 1841 and 1861 - the number of 'family farms' - i.e. those with more than 5 acres were actually increasing by the time of the 1861 census and while the number of labourers and farm servants continued a dramatic decline (in the 1926 census the number of labourers had continued to decline to 128,409), the trend for family farms established in 1861 continued for the next 40 years.

Apologies - I was thinking of more remote areas worst hit by the famine.
Land ownership patterns - and productivity of land - notwithstanding the trends you refer to, were not at all uniform across the country.

What do you put the decline of labourer numbers down to ? Emigration, and movement to urban areas, would presumably account for some of it.

What impact do you think the middleman system had ?

[Jolly Red Giant]

Land ownership patterns - and productivity of land - notwithstanding the trends you refer to, were not at all uniform across the country.

Of course productivity of land varied - however the trends outlined with the collapse in population of the labourers, cottiers and farmers with under five acres (in effect a government policy to clear the smallest farmers off the land) and the stablilsed nature in the number of the Irish Catholic tenant farmers was pretty uniform across the entire country.

[Jolly Red Giant]

What impact do you think the middleman system had ?

The middlemen were pretty much non-existant by 1830 - the tenant farmer had taken over the role of renting conacre, quarter ground and potato ground to the labourers and cottiers at increasingly exhorbitant prices.

There are numerous police reports (on an almost daily basis from all over the country) from the 1830s of labourers attacking and threatening tenant farmers four increasing the rents previously paid to the middlemen by anything between 50%-100% when the tenant farmer took over the role of renting land to the rural poor. Similarly attacks took place against farmers for overcharging for potaotes and oterh food supplies, for selling to forestallers and for hiring migrant labourers at significantly lower wage rates than were the norm for the time.

[C. Flower]

The middlemen were pretty much non-existant by 1830 - the tenant farmer had taken over the role of renting conacre, quarter ground and potato ground to the labourers and cottiers at increasingly exhorbitant prices.

There are numerous police reports (on an almost daily basis from all over the country) from the 1830s of labourers attacking and threatening tenant farmers four increasing the rents previously paid to the middlemen by anything between 50%-100% when the tenant farmer took over the role of renting land to the rural poor. Similarly attacks took place against farmers for overcharging for potaotes and oterh food supplies, for selling to forestallers and for hiring migrant labourers at significantly lower wage rates than were the norm for the time.

Interesting. What are the main sources for this ? Newspapers of the day?
Attacks on small farmers in the first years of the famine were perhaps incidents of "theft" of food, by people who didn't have any?

Interesting report on recent excavations in Kilkenny. A large workhouse graveyard, not known of, was uncovered. Unconsecrated and unmarked. The people in it appear to have died of scurvy / malnutrition, within the workhouse. Given the durability of local memory in small settlements, it is remarkable that people weren't aware of it. Perhaps, as the article suggests, because of the social stigma and shame that people attach to extreme destitution.

http://www.kilkennypeople.ie/news/lo...ouse-1-4255391

[C. Flower]

John Bowman's programme this morning had some stunning interviews with people who had talked to people who had lived through the famine.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/bowmansundaymorning/

Attacks on small farmers in the first years of the famine were perhaps incidents of "theft" of food, by people who didn't have any?

One man said most who died were the people who had lived in shanties (agricultural labourers ? old people ? tradesmen ? the poorest of the poor) who had done their best to survive raiding sheep and taking anything they could lay their hands on.

What is your source, Jolly, for what you have said about the period?

There are numerous police reports (on an almost daily basis from all over the country) from the 1830s of labourers attacking and threatening tenant farmers four increasing the rents previously paid to the middlemen by anything between 50%-100% when the tenant farmer took over the role of renting land to the rural poor. Similarly attacks took place against farmers for overcharging for potaotes and oterh food supplies, for selling to forestallers and for hiring migrant labourers at significantly lower wage rates than were the norm for the time.

Some of the interview material is very immediate. I've met people in remote rural areas who talk in detail about what happened in their areas going back two hundred years, information handed on from one generation to the next without ever being written down.

[Apjp]

NUI Galway has a good masters in Irish studies which(along with Irish translation classes and culture classes) focuses on the shaping of modern Ireland looking at modern Irish history from 1800-right upto the present day.

I'm wondering if it might be a worthwhile project to try and move to Galway next year and research this period through that course. Giving it serious consideration, even if I could get a job and study part time over 2 years. Definitely getting my hands on this book.

[Apjp]

The legacy of the famine/hunger on the Irish psyche would definitely make a good research topic anyways.

[Apjp]

That last line in the article is striking in the examiner there 'we give commemoration to the known and UNKNOWN dead'. As we discussed on this site before, population numbers dropped by around 4-5 million after the famine. That leaves around half of that number unaccounted for. I wonder whether all those paupers graves my da and uncles and work colleagues often pointed out on sunday drives/weekend drives to work are in fact famine graves.