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| #Post#: 1956-------------------------------------------------- | |
| The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: Val Date: March 5, 2023, 12:09 pm | |
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| I wonder if many of you here know anything about the history of; | |
| and the relationship between Ireland and Great Britain over the | |
| last 400 years. | |
| Did you learn about the Irish famine that occurred between the | |
| years 1845 and 1852 or that 1.5 million Irish men women and | |
| children died of hunger and disease during those 6 years and | |
| about 1.7 million of the lucky ones emigrated on the famine | |
| ships otherwise known as the coffin ships, the death rate on | |
| these ships was over 30%. | |
| British landlords sometimes paid for the fare to the US and | |
| Canada by taking their small holdings that is their houses | |
| animals and lands and anything of value, many landlords just | |
| took the lands anyway and left them to die on the side of the | |
| road. | |
| The famine was caused by the potatoes blight of 1844-46 that | |
| swept across North American and Europe but Ireland was worst hit | |
| because the potato was the poor farmers main food source, it was | |
| easy to grow and as they only had small areas to grow food for | |
| their own use it was all that they could afford, other crops | |
| like corn, wheat or oats was used for export this made bread far | |
| too expensive for the poor, during the famine Ireland under | |
| British rule was exporting grain by the boatload; these exports | |
| included poultry, pigs, cattle, honey, cheese and vegetables, | |
| all far too expensive for the starving, In fact these exports | |
| increased during the famine years. | |
| For anyone interested there is book called The Truth behind the | |
| Irish Famine, I think it is worth a read. | |
| https://www.irishecho.com/2020/12/the-truth-behind-the-irish-famine | |
| https://www.ighm.org/learn.html | |
| #Post#: 1993-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: guest8 Date: March 6, 2023, 6:38 am | |
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| Britain has a lot to answer for having treated the island of | |
| Ireland so badly over the centuries, which led to the rise of | |
| the IRA and the troubles! >:( If I had my way Northern Ireland | |
| would no longer be a British domain. | |
| I am proud of my Irish citizenship, which I acquired in 2008 | |
| having had an Irish grandparent. | |
| #Post#: 2028-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: Val Date: March 6, 2023, 4:52 pm | |
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| Evening Roses, thank you for the reply, yes great Britain has a | |
| lot to answer for but there is no point in raking up the past or | |
| asking awkward questions. | |
| The reason I brought this up is that my daughter-in-law was born | |
| in England in the mid 80's and we were talking recently about | |
| the present situation in Northern Ireland and whether the DUP | |
| will accept the Windsor framework the latest edition for | |
| Northern Ireland and its relationship in trade between the UK | |
| Ireland and the EU. | |
| She said as we had a similar conversation over 10 years ago that | |
| she was never taught anything about the history between Ireland | |
| and the UK and the six counties of Ulster that is Northern | |
| Ireland which is legally in the UK. | |
| She was well informed about the recent troubles that is from | |
| 1969 and the rise of terrorism in NI and and mostly about the | |
| IRA.. | |
| So I just wondered if any of you Thaddeans who had been schooled | |
| before | |
| or during 1969 had. | |
| #Post#: 2057-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: Lyn Date: March 7, 2023, 10:16 am | |
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| We didn't learn about it at school, I read and learned a lot | |
| later on and was horrified. It was very, very upsetting indeed. | |
| I too am partly Irish (Northern Irish). | |
| #Post#: 2090-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: Gregory Date: March 7, 2023, 3:13 pm | |
| --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| As someone who has always had an interest in current events (and | |
| having studied History and Politics at university), I've | |
| followed events in Northern Ireland as they've happened since | |
| the start of the post-1969 Troubles, reading up on the | |
| background in newspapers and watching television reportage, | |
| although not in any great depth in terms of research. I found | |
| the violence committed by both communities appalling and somehow | |
| alien (we've had nothing like it in the rest of the UK for many, | |
| many years and our own civil war took place four hundred years | |
| ago.) Apart from political considerations, it demonstrated the | |
| pernicious use to which religion can be put with Catholics and | |
| Protestants happily slaughtering each other under the sign of | |
| the cross. The same can be said, of course, for the religious | |
| wars which racked Europe for centuries. At least, a whole | |
| generation has grown up in Northern Ireland in relative peace. | |
| #Post#: 2094-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: guest6 Date: March 8, 2023, 3:47 am | |
| --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| I did not learn anything about this at school in the 70's. This | |
| is, in retrospect, shocking. | |
| However, our neighbours when I was growing up were Irish and | |
| through some kind of weird cultural osmosis, I found out about | |
| this and read about it in my teens. I don't remember how the | |
| information made its way into my brain I only know it was | |
| somehow due to these neighbours. | |
| I would wager that a good proportion of the English population | |
| is still ignorant of this appalling part of our history, but | |
| that is what happens when history is not taught in a | |
| well-rounded manner and also made optional in some cases. | |
| Indeed when you look at the guidelines for History on Gov.uk it | |
| makes for dispiriting reading: | |
| [quote]Schools are not required by law to teach the example | |
| content in [square brackets] or the content indicated as being | |
| �non-statutory�.[/quote] | |
| Under "ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, | |
| 1745-1901" | |
| It is worth noting that "Ireland and Home Rule" come under the | |
| "non-statutory" category. | |
| Pathetic. | |
| #Post#: 2097-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: Leslie Date: March 8, 2023, 4:40 am | |
| --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| I have written about it in the old St Thads . I have known about | |
| it for ages, I can't remember when I first read about it.. The | |
| ships to Canada, full of poor , under nourished Irish and | |
| sometimes pregnant Irish women were called "coffin ships". | |
| #Post#: 2100-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: Beverly Date: March 8, 2023, 11:03 am | |
| --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| We weren't taught this in America, but after I first heard the | |
| song Zombie by the Cranberries, I researched Northern Ireland | |
| and was appalled. Sans the biblical justification, it reminded | |
| me of what happened to the Palestinians in modern-day Israel | |
| with regards to the brutal takeover of homes and properties of a | |
| people who'd lived there for centuries. | |
| According to Ancestry.com, I have 7% Irish DNA, This likely is | |
| from my 5x great grandparents (John Dugan, wife, four children) | |
| who came to Philadelphia from Balfast, Ireland in 1816--too | |
| early to have been because of the Great Famine. The time of | |
| their immigration could indicate they left because of the losing | |
| battle for Irish independence. Based on the land values of their | |
| oldest son by 1850 and one grandson, my guess is they came with | |
| some means, though. A $10,000 land value by that time was a lot | |
| and uncommon even among their neighbors. | |
| #Post#: 9632-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Re: The Truth behind the Irish Famine | |
| By: gwinnie Date: October 11, 2023, 3:01 pm | |
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| I learnt little of Irish and British history at school. This was | |
| in the Netherlands and our focus was on Dutch history. Except of | |
| course for a rather in/famous intersection between the | |
| Dutch/Irish/British histories, that we did learn about. What | |
| little I knew of the overall history, was from news programmes. | |
| As a young adult in London I started putting together the pieces | |
| of my fragmented knowledge, through music, film, documentaries, | |
| art and also through Irish contemporaries in London. I think the | |
| Good Friday Agreement is a phenomenal piece of peacemaking that | |
| I would dearly love to see emulated in troubled parts of the | |
| world. | |
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