The Great Famine

In the late 19th century, Ireland suffered a potato blight that became a mass catastrophe. Today, we explore the conditions that left millions vulnerable, and assess the role of the British government in shaping the crisis. For this, we're joined by Professor Christine Kinealy, founding Director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:09Dan Snow?

  They called it the Great Hunger. Perhaps a million people died. Despite it all taking place more than 150 years ago, the country's population has never recovered.

• 1:23Dan Snow?

  It was a terrible famine.

• 1:29Dan Snow?

  And yet, bizarrely, it took place at the centre of the largest empire the world had ever seen, the United Kingdom, the world's largest economy. You're listening to Dan Snow's History and in this episode, I'm going to ask how the Great Irish Famine could possibly have happened. How did the United Kingdom, with all its boasts of modernity and its technology and its ability to project power across the other side of the world, how did it allow perhaps a million of its own people to die during repeated crop failures?

• 2:13Dan Snow?

  Well, that's what we're going to answer in this podcast. And the answer obviously begins with the observation that all parts of that United Kingdom were not entirely considered equal. Ireland was a largely unwilling participant in that United Kingdom project. It was a colonial possession, more than an equal partner. The Irish had their own laggards, their own religious, social, cultural identities. And so crop failure there wasn't quite the same as if there had been a catastrophic crop failure in Worcestershire or Midlothian. And even the politicians at the time acknowledged it and knew about it. It was this strange dislocation at the heart of the British Imperial Project. His Benjamin Disraeli, soon to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and he was writing in 1844,

• 2:54Dan Snow?

  just before the famine hit, that Ireland was suffering, in his words, "from a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien established Protestant church, and in addition, the weakest executive in the world." And that, as I say, was before the potato harvest failed. Because fail it would the following year, in 1845, people said in certain parts, there was a sort of dense blue fog that settled over puddled potato fields. It rained even more than usual for Ireland. It rained a lot in that autumn, that fall. And there was a smell of an odor of sort of rot, of decay. It was everywhere. And it soon became clear that the potato crop was failing.

• 3:40Dan Snow?

  It had been infected by, I'll forgive my pronunciation, by the fungus, the Pythothora infestans. And this would eradicate great swathes of potato plantations. And as you'll hear, the people of Ireland were unduly reliant on potatoes for their diet. Countless numbers of people died. Vast numbers of people emigrated.

• 4:04Dan Snow?

  And millions of people never, ever forgot. The potato famine shredded whatever legitimacy the British government had in Ireland. And it contributed the eventual separation where we'll ended up at the Republic of Ireland broke away from the United Kingdom. We've got Christine Caneely, she is a professor of history at Quinnipiac University. She is the founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute. So she is definitely the person to talk to, very brilliant, and it's great to have her on the podcast. Here it is. The Great Famine.

• 4:53Dan Snow?

  Christine, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  I'm delighted to be here.

• 4:57Dan Snow?

  I guess let's start with, can you tell me about why Ireland was so vulnerable to this in terms of its politics and its society and indeed its diet? What does Ireland 19th century look like and why is it dependent on this crop?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  So really, in order to understand Ireland at any period, but particularly the 19th century, you have to place it in the context of a country that's been colonized and been colonized for centuries. So Ireland's relationship with England really begins in the 12th century, the coming of the Anglo Normans. It goes through various phases of conquest. Famine, food shortages are not new. In fact, pretty well every generation underwent food shortages. And one of the methods of war, food was always weaponized. So in any conflict, food was often burned, whatever. So Irish people were very used to food shortages by the time we get to the 19th century. But again, the political context is important because it's generally accepted by historians

• 5:57Speaker 02

  that the complete conquest of Ireland didn't take place till the Tudor period, till the period of Elizabeth I, who died 1603. And again, there were various wars, various conflicts, there was a rebellion, which unfortunately from my perspective failed. And by 1603, all of Ireland is subjugated to English control.

• 6:18Dan Snow?

  And as you mentioned, but just famine, a huge part of that terrible conflict as well. That's a generational struggle, and particularly at the end of the 16th, early 17th century.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And one of Elizabeth's advisers, Spencer, who is a poet, who wrote about the fairy queen, he actually advised Elizabeth, don't send soldiers, they're just going to die. Just destroy the crops, starve the Irish into submission. So that was sort of there in the background. The relationship changes after 1798. In 1798, very much inspired by events in America, in France, there was a revolution, a republican uprising in Ireland. And of course, it failed, as all the risings do. Wolfe Tone famously associated with it. But in the wake of this rising, the British decided they had to change the relationship with Ireland. And up to that point, Ireland had its own parliament in Dublin.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Now, it was subject to the London Parliament, but it was a parliament with some independence. In 1800, the relationship changed and the Acts of Union were introduced. And by the Acts of Union, Ireland became part of the United Kingdom and lost its parliament in Dublin. So by the time we come to the 19th century, Ireland is governed directly from London. And at the time of famine, all major political decisions come from a government that is hundreds of miles away from what is happening.

• 7:45Dan Snow?

  Okay, and that feels very important. We're going to come back to that a few times, I think. What about the people? What about the majority of the population working on the land and not undergoing the same kind of industrializing process that you're seeing in England and Wales and Scotland at the same time?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely not, although the worst centres of industrialisation, the north of Ireland is very famous for linen production, the north east of Ireland, and also is an emerging shipbuilding industry, which becomes massive as the century goes on. And then in Dublin, there were various industries, and probably porter or Guinness is the most famous and most successful, and the Irish whisky. So Ireland was a country that was actually exporting very successfully, linen, alcohol, and also massive amounts of food.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  So when we think of Ireland again in eighteen forty five, this is a country that is not a subsistence country. It's a country that is exporting enough grain, wheat, barley, oats to Britain to feed two million people. So Ireland is actually feeding the industrial classes of Britain in eighteen forty five. So importantly, Ireland is producing an agricultural surplus. But to come back to your question, there was a vulnerability because, as we know, almost fifty percent of the population depended on one crop. Um, not because they were stupid or lazy, as there was the British perception, but because after centuries of their land being taken,

• 9:08Speaker 02

  then being dispossessed, marginalized and moved, the potato was a super crop, which for poor people, it made sense to rely on. So eighteen forty five, we have the situation of Ireland is exporting massive amounts of food. Ninety million eggs a year to Britain, massive amounts of alcohol to Britain. But within Ireland, there are many, many people who are dependent on one crop, the potato.

• 9:32Dan Snow?

  So it's almost like this sort of industrial farming. You'd almost call the modern agro businesses, that's all being sent abroad. And then in the sort of rougher, more marginal land where lots of people live and have been pushed to the fringes. Potatoes grow in that kind of, you can coax potatoes to life in that kind of soil and they're a staple, right?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Potatoes, they're not indigenous to Ireland. It's generally assumed they came late sixteenth century. Maybe Sir Walter Raleigh, who had states in west of Ireland, but they came as food to the middle classes. But very quickly, it became obvious it was a super crop. If you've ever grown potatoes, they can grow in sand. They're very prolific, so from one potato, you might get as many as sixty, seventy potatoes. And they're, as you know, pretty delicious. And the other important thing about potatoes is they're highly, highly nutritious. If you eat them with their jackets on, which Irish people did, and the basic diet was potatoes and buttermilk. And that provides every vitamin and nutrient you need for a healthy diet.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  So again, one of the ironies of Ireland eighteen forty five, this is not a people who are emaciated. This is a people who actually thought to be. The tallest people in Europe.

• 10:40Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 10:41Dan Snow?

  So actually, the diet is working out well for them.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  It is, but what comes with that is the vulnerability. But the potato would fail intermittently, but what makes what happens after eighteen forty five unusual, unique, is that it fails for seven consecutive years. That's why we call it great famine, as opposed to the many famines Irish people have experienced.

• 11:02Dan Snow?

  So eighteen forty five, there is a, well, the beginnings of this potato failure, crop failure. Tell us why. What's the science there?

• 11:09Speaker 02

  So there were reports of a disease, a new type of disease on the crops in America. It's deemed to spread to Europe eighteen forty five, then down into south of England and then over to Ireland. So it came to Ireland late in the season in eighteen forty five, which was a good thing. But no other country had the high dependence on potatoes that Ireland had, so that was a bad thing. And at the time, nobody knew what this mysterious disease was. They knew that it blackened the crop. And they rotted and they smelt. The smell was a real giveaway sign and the potatoes essentially were inedible. And eighteen forty five, the British government under Sir Robert Peel appointed a scientific commission

• 11:52Speaker 02

  to try and understand what was going on and to try and find an antidote. And they came up with various weird solutions, none of which worked. And so essentially, when this disease came coming back in successive years, people were vulnerable. The crop was just destroyed.

• 12:06Dan Snow?

  So eighteen forty five, this partial crop failure, the British government are doing something. I mean, they're announcing an investigation. Eighteen forty six, catastrophic failure. First of all, tell me about the hardship that causes. I mean, what are we talking about here?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so again, Irish people were pretty resilient. They'd been used to food shortages. So eighteen forty five, they defaulted to what they normally did, which was if they had a pig in common or a cow in common, they might slaughter it, they might sell it. If they had a wedding ring, they might pawn it and they might pawn their cloaks, their blankets, their shoes, et cetera, their fishing tackle. In that expectation, which was a reasonable expectation, that the disease, the blight would only last. For one year, that the following year would be fine. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. And the other thing that really made a difference was eighteen forty five, the prime minister was Sir Robert Peel. A man who'd actually lived in Ireland in Dublin Castle for a number of years. So he sort of knew Ireland.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Not that he was sympathetic, but he put in place a series of measures that were pretty successful. And nobody died eighteen forty five to forty six. So in some ways, the famine, as we call it, doesn't commence till eighteen forty six.

• 13:19Dan Snow?

  And one of those measures are essentially welfare. Is it imported food? Is it cash payments to try and support communities?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if relief committees were set up in a community, they would be given a hundred percent matching funds. Some public works were set up and a very limited amount of food was imported into Ireland. But not to be available till spring. And the idea was to stabilise food prices. And the food that was chosen to be imported was called Indian corn. And it was what we would call plegra today, so maize, which is not very nutritious.

• 13:55Dan Snow?

  So there are some efforts going on to protect the Irish from the severe consequences of this blight. There is some blight as well around the rest of the UK, isn't there? So this is something that politicians would have been dealing with. It wasn't seen as exclusive, an Irish problem at this stage?

• 14:11Speaker 02

  No, but again, the high dependence on potatoes is only in Ireland. But the Highlands of Scotland, which had some resemblance to Ireland, and they'd undergone mass evictions in the eighteenth century. But they also depended on potatoes. So the Highlands of Scotland and Ireland were the areas that were suffering. What complicates the issue and doesn't really help, it's like a perfect storm of things going wrong. Is that after eighteen forty six, there's a credit crisis in Britain, there's a trade slump. So things go wrong, which actually compound the problem of the potato blight.

• 14:46Dan Snow?

  Yes, and this is the bit that is so fascinating historians to disagree about. Is is this a malicious act on behalf of the the British occupiers of Ireland? Or is there just an omni crisis that smashes into Britain at this stage and just completely overwhelms the? The fiscal and administrative capabilities of this state. Tell me a bit more about that crisis that hits the financial world and government finances in eighteen forty six.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yep, and goes on eighteen forty eight, there's a credit crisis, too much spend gone railways. So again, various factors come together, unfortunately, and bad weather as well factors into it. The coldest winter on record, eighteen forty six to forty seven. But yes, there was a short term financial crisis, but I think it has to be seen in the context of an empire. That is the richest empire in the world, that is resource rich and that could call on resources from other parts of the empire. Where there is no crisis. So just looking narrowly at Britain, I think it needs to be seen in a wide context of a British empire. And a British empire that at the end of the day only spent just over eight million pounds in famine relief.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  And if you think just a few years later, it spent sixty three million pounds in Crimean War. And a decade earlier, it spent twenty million pounds giving to former slave owners. So in terms of how much it spent, it was over a six year period, it was minskul. Most of that money was a loan. It wasn't even given by the British government. Most of the money spent in Ireland after eighteen forty five, forty six was a loan that was then put on Irish taxpayers.

• 16:22Dan Snow?

  Comparing it with those other bills that were paid by the British government at the time is remarkable. So the response though by that British government, the prime minister has to resign, the Whigs takeover. Was there an embrace of laissez faire economics? Let's see how the market forces sort of handle this catastrophe.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Sir Robert Peel, he repealed the Corn Laws, a protective measure eighteen forty six, much to the anger of his party. And so he had to resign. And that brought in the Whig Party, but they didn't come in on an election. They came in as a minority government that would have to face an election in eighteen forty seven. So I think that gives them a vulnerability. And as you, most governments love to do, they promised cheap taxation, whatever, whatever. So Russell comes in as a fairly weak prime minister. I think he's, as a person, he's pretty weak anyway, but his situation. Makes him more vulnerable.

• 17:13Dan Snow?

  And A, he's weak, he's vulnerable, he doesn't want to raise taxes, he doesn't want to spend money. But is he also by inclination opposed to big state interventions?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  He is, and this is often called the age of laissez faire. I think when we use laissez faire and the idea that the market will intervene, we don't need to. People in Ireland asked that the ports be closed to keep whatever food there was within Ireland. And the argument was no laissez faire. If we allowed food to go out, the invisible hand will bring it back in, so we don't need to intervene. So it was an excuse for, again, when I think of laissez faire, I have to see it in a wider context. The British government in the eighteen forties was the most interventionist government in the world at that stage. And they intervened selectively. So laissez faire, they intervened a lot of the banks.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  The Opium Wars, the eighteen forty, eighteen forty one, they intervened to force China to take opium that China did not want. The navigation laws said that food could only come into the United Kingdom if it was carried on an English registered ship. So there was interventions, but again, it was selectively. But as you say, the wider picture was, let's not interfere in the marketplace. Ireland doesn't need our intervention because the food will pour in. It didn't pour in, and what food did come back into Ireland was really expensive.

• 18:34Dan Snow?

  Right, so the market is failing to solve this catastrophe. The government doesn't feel it can spend money because the government's creditworthiness is being questioned on international markets. And so what's that like on the ground? What happens on the ground in Ireland?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  People die. So, as I said, there were no deaths for eighteen forty six under the Whig government. Relief measures were made more stringent, even though the need was more desperate because famine is cumulative. You can maybe survive a few months, you can maybe survive a year, you cannot survive indefinitely. So by the second year, where the potato failure was even more extensive. People really need external intervention, whether it's from landlords, local merchants, or the government in London. So public works were made the main form of relief after eighteen forty six. And public works, if you think about it, are the cruelest form of making people who are hungry and exhausted do hard physical labour,

• 19:29Speaker 02

  twelve hours a day, six days a week, for minimal wage. Again, this is where the government does intervene. They intervene to say wages cannot go above a level. So they're very willing to intervene at times. So wages were low at a time that food prices were rising and people simply couldn't afford them. And then the amount of calories people used on public works, and as I said, unfortunately, the winter of eighteen forty six, forty seven, was the coldest for a hundred years. So people were working outdoors, doing hard physical labour that had no purpose, except to act as a test of destitution. And they were dying, literally dying, and people were queuing up to take their place as they died.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  And initially it was to be men on the public works, but wages were so low, conditions were so desperate, women and children also worked on them.

• 20:20Dan Snow?

  And it's a slightly old fashioned expression, public works, but what we mean by digging embankments and just sort of slightly pointless moving mud around at the behest of the government.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  In Ireland, we say roads that lead nowhere and walls that surround nothing. So they served no purpose at a time when they could have been done to help build railways or an infrastructure. The government believed they should serve no purpose. So again, just useless roads. If you go to Crokepatrick, you'll see a little road halfway up, a wall, and it's no purpose. It was a public one.

• 20:52Dan Snow?

  Listen to Dan Snow's history, talking about the Irish potato famine, more coming up.

• 21:01Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If you've ever been trapped in phone tree hell, pushing zero fifty times while a voice robot pretends not to hear you, you know true psychological warfare. It's brutal, folks. Thankfully, that kind of horror is now confined to the history books. Customer service has evolved. Decagon helps companies create personalised concierge style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice and SMS. They're available twenty four seven. Feel natural to talk to and can resolve customer requests on their own so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Plus, because workflows can be updated using natural language, teams can make changes themselves.

• 21:44Dan Snow?

  Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation, helping to power millions of conversations every day. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai/dansnow to see what Decagon can do for your team. That's decagon.ai/dansnow. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai/dansnow. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it.

• 22:26Dan Snow?

  I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what will baffle historians about us? Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 24:09Dan Snow?

  Okay, this is the bit where we sort of have to ask about both the kind of national differences between those on the ground and those making decisions back in London, and also just the geographical remoteness. Would this have been different if it had been in Norfolk, if it had been in Suffolk?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. So we know from even Scotland that the people who were directing governance relief mainly, Charles Travellion at the Treasury, he was the main person in charge of the distribution of relief. He felt Scottish people were more worthy of relief and being assisted than Irish people. He was providentialist, evangelical Protestant, as were a number of powerful people in the government, and they believed that this was a punishment of God. They actually sent this. So they saw what was happening in Ireland through a religious and a racial prism, that Irish people were lazy, undeserving, and they had brought this misery on themselves.

• 25:00Dan Snow?

  Wow, okay. So there's an active desire to accept this providential gift that means there'll be less Irish people. And what about that just geographical remoteness? Is there a case that the people just weren't aware this was happening in Westminster?

• 25:13Speaker 02

  No, they were totally aware. So if you look at the newspapers, The Times, which is unsympathetic, they absolutely knew what was going on in Ireland. The regional newspapers, what was happening in Ireland was carried throughout the world. But the other thing is postage service at the time, to get a letter from Dublin to London, it took one day. So people were very well informed, and Charles Travellion, who was in charge of the Treasury... And he was the man, unfortunately, a civil servant who was put in charge of relief from eighteen forty five onwards. I've read his extensive, extensive correspondence. He was very well aware of what was going on in the ground. So ignorance is absolutely no excuse. And if you look at the debates in Parliament, not many people were sympathetic,

• 25:58Speaker 02

  but the sympathetic voices again were very well aware of the consequences of what was happening in Ireland. And there were some Irish representatives in the British Parliament.

• 26:08Dan Snow?

  Of course, yeah. How does anyone survive at this point? I mean, is there a big philanthropic effort? I've been in Ireland, I've seen inscriptions on church walls where they're actually end up thanking grand families for sending soup kitchens and things. I mean, is it to come down to charity largely at this point?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Charity plays a massive role, especially in eighteen forty seven. So charity begins to get underway at the end of eighteen forty six. Some of the first people involved are the Quakers, the Society of Friends, who in Ireland, they number about three thousand, but they had a very strong business network and a very strong philanthropic philosophy. And also, they didn't proselytise. There were some Protestant groups who went to Ireland at this time, really to convert people. In Ireland, we call it superism. They came with the Bible in one hand and soup in the other hand. But most of the philanthropy was not to convert people. And so eighteen forty seven, really a massive international relief network gets underway. And it's the first one on such an international scale to come

• 27:06Speaker 02

  to the age of a national tragedy. And it's just incredible and remarkable in its scope. Some of the big names who give, Queen Victoria is persuaded by her minister, she should give, she gives two thousand pounds, which is not that much given her income, her massive income. This is the same year, eighteen forty seven, where she built a balcony on Buckingham Palace, because she considers the palace isn't big enough for her family. And the famous balcony we see, that was built in eighteen forty seven, the same time the public works are taking place. But a few weeks later, the Sultan of Turkey, he offers to give ten thousand pounds to famine relief. And he is told by diplomats in Constantinople, it would offend.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  And royal protocol to give more than the Queen. So he is forced to reduce his donation to one thousand pounds. The Pope actually says mass for the Irish people. He feels very sympathetic because they're Catholic. And he donates his autograph and rosary beads to be auctioned off to raise money for Ireland. And he sends his own donation. So a variety of the the great and the good give money. But this relief effort just goes beyond that. The famous one is the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. And the Choctaw people and four other tribes, as they were called, had been removed from their land in the eighteen thirties. And removed from their rich land in the Mississippi, taken to the poor land in what was called Indian Territory, Oklahoma.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  And a quarter of their people had died on this horrendous journey. But the Choctaws and the Cherokees were told of what was happening by their Indian agent, as he was called. And they both sent money to Ireland. And the Choctaw donation particularly has been commemorated and remembered in Ireland. Cherokee donation less so. And then we're still discovering things about the famine. About three years ago, an archive was discovered in Canada that had been lost. And it was of the indigenous peoples in Canada. Many tribes in Canada sent money to Ireland in eighteen forty seven. Even though they themselves were subject to broken treaties, they'd been moved from their ancestral homes, et cetera. So they're pretty remarkable stories.

• 29:16Dan Snow?

  So it's extraordinary international crisis at the time. Is that connected with the changing media, the changing technology of journalism?

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is an age of great newspapers. You every small body go backwards had a newspaper. And they would carry news from everywhere. They would no such things, plagers, and they just lift stories from wherever. And then, you know, this is the age of steamships, of railways, of telegraphs. So there is a level of communication that has never been present before. And again, this is all available to the British government who know very well what's going on in every part of their empire.

• 29:52Dan Snow?

  Was it not very embarrassing for the Brits to have this going on in what was supposed to be part of their home? You know, this is after all part of the Imperial Centre, the United Kingdom, and there's Turks trying to give more money than Queen Victoria. Was there? Were the Brits not shamed into taking further action?

• 30:06Speaker 02

  No, and I think the other thing they could hide behind as well as laissez faire was that they said this is going to lead to the economic regeneration of Ireland. There's an argument, the Malthusian argument, that Ireland was overpopulated, there were too many people, et cetera, and there'd been various investigations in the decades before saying, you Ireland, we need to, more people emigrate, but we don't want to pay for them to emigrate. So this was seen as a way of actually solving the Irish problem because it would get rid of the population. Now, cynically, we know that also meant people dying, not just emigrating, but that was the argument. Travellian says it very bluntly, we must not criticise what we really want to achieve in the end, which is this regeneration

• 30:49Speaker 02

  of Ireland. And the argument was, Ireland as it is, as this potato-grown country, is an embarrassment to the United Kingdom.

• 30:57Dan Snow?

  Okay, so this was seen as a, as you say, a providential opportunity to just reshape Ireland entirely. And on top of that, deal once and for all with separatism in Ireland, was this seen as a political opportunity?

• 31:07Speaker 02

  No. Well, it was seen in terms of religious opportunity, an opportunity for conversion, because, as I said, the providentialist attitude of a number of government ministers, civil servants, and they really believed that God had sent this judgement on the Irish people. Just in eighteen forty five, Mayneouth, now Mayneouth University, it was a seminary, had been given a grant by the British government, and again, this was used as an excuse, were being punished for actually allowing Catholic priests to be trained. So all sorts of arguments were marshalled to justify what was happening.

• 31:40Dan Snow?

  So we've gone through eighteen forty seven, just things are appalling. Eighteen forty eight and nine, the blight still gripping the country?

• 31:47Speaker 02

  So eighteen forty seven is really interesting because the public works failed. It's very clear, thousands of people are dead by the end of eighteen forty six, more as the winter progresses into eighteen forty seven. So at the beginning of eighteen forty seven, the government made a decision, they would close the public works, they were actually pretty inefficient, they were so heavily bureaucratic, et cetera. And at the middle of eighteen forty seven, the summer of eighteen forty seven, for the first and only time, Irish people were given free food. The beginning of summer eighteen forty seven, a massive undertaking was underway to open soup kitchens throughout Ireland. And soup kitchens had first been used by the Quakers, and now they were used by the British government to give people free food as a temporary measure.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  And by July, over three million people every day in Ireland. So over forty percent of the population were getting free rations of soup and bread. And what this shows to me is that logistically, administratively, the British government had the ability to feed the people of Ireland. They chose not to because the soup kitchens were closed August eighteen forty seven. And after that, the Poor Law, based on the workhouse system, was made responsible for all relief in Ireland. And at that point, the British government said the famine is over, which, as we know, as you've said, it wasn't. The blight came back forty eight, forty nine, fifty, et cetera. Immigration increased, evictions increased, et cetera. But for the British government, the advantage of the Poor Law was that Ireland had been

• 33:17Speaker 02

  divided into Poor Law Unions, each with a workhouse. And those Poor Law Unions were self-financing. So it meant that after the autumn of eighteen forty seven, Ireland was responsible to pay its taxation to finance all poverty. So that was for the British government, it was a way of shifting responsibility totally back onto Ireland. Now, it didn't work because mortality was so high, there had to be a few more interventions. But the interventions after eighteen forty seven were minimal. And as I said, they were loans.

• 33:53Dan Snow?

  There's more great famine coming up after this.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our

• 34:09Speaker 04

  Shared Google Doc, the headline hammer.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 35:17Dan Snow?

  It's an interesting example of that scary human propensity to say, well, we won't interfere, this is just the natural world taking effect, and we don't want to interfere too much, and it's the market. Whereas the entire plantation economy, as you say, the whole becoming an exporter of agricultural products to neighboring Britain, that's all totally artificial. We're constructing these systems and then blaming their failure on, oh, well, that's just nature, let's let it take its course. So remarkable.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And again, the wider debate, we see it today, is that in England, Wales and Scotland, they had poor laws that dated back mostly to time Elizabeth I. Ireland didn't have a system of poor relief. So one was introduced in Ireland, 1838, so just on the eve of the Great Famine. But the debates that led up to the introduction of this system of poor relief in Ireland was poverty is the fault of the individual. It's not because of anything in the system, it's because they're lazy, feckless, Catholic, whatever. So again, the whole mental attitude surrounding poverty was to be unsympathetic. And we saw that in England as well. I mean, Charles Dickens captured it in Oliver Twist, which he wrote as an objection to the English poor law.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  So that prevailing idea that poverty was the fault of the individual, not the responsibility of the government.

• 36:32Dan Snow?

  How many people died over those terrible years?

• 36:35Speaker 02

  We don't know precisely. And again, there were a few sympathetic voices in the British Parliament. And George Bentink, who died eighteen forty eight, he was a member of the Conservative Party. But he believed that investment was the way to help Ireland by investing in railways, giving people real jobs, helping the infrastructure. Of course, the government didn't accept that. But he allied with Disraeli and the two of them consistently asked Lord John Russell, why are you not telling us how many people are dying? And Russell would say, it's too difficult, we can't. And they would say, this is the empire that knows every pig who's exported. You can't count the deaths. So they didn't. And we really don't know how many people died. But based on the census information, which is an underestimate, up to eighteen fifty one,

• 37:19Speaker 02

  the census year, about two million people had been lost from Ireland. So about a quarter of the population, the population had been eight and a half million. And then what compounds the tragedy is Ireland doesn't recover. The number keeps on dropping. And by nineteen oh one, there's only four and a half million people in Ireland. So the devastation of the famine continues. And then very famously, as people point out, the population of the whole of Ireland today is still smaller than it was in eighteen forty one, eighteen forty five, which is unique.

• 37:53Dan Snow?

  Astonishing. And what is your sense about the proportion of those people that would have emigrated compared to perished?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's difficult again, because when we think of immigration, it's never the very poorest who emigrate. It's people who have the resilience, the resources, the energy to emigrate, because emigration was not a simple process.

• 38:12Dan Snow?

  Yeah, you don't just run out of food and stagger onto a boat. I mean, that's just, yeah, there's no way.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  No, you know, people would often walk to the port of Dublin. From Dublin, they do that horror journey on the Irish Sea, because it's quite rough, get to Liverpool. And then in Liverpool, they might have to wait forty eight hours or two weeks if they were going to America or Canada. Eighteen forty seven, more people went to Canada than America, because America was imposing all sorts of tariffs or restrictions to stop people coming in. But then people Get on what were called coffin ships essentially and go to Canada. And that journey could be very rough and could take four weeks, it could take eight weeks. And people died, they were thrown overboard. And again, we don't count them.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  But we know in Liverpool, there are at least seven thousand Irish people buried there from eighteen forty seven, eighteen forty eight period. And the same in Groseal and the same in Montreal. So there were massive Irish graveyards outside of Ireland as well as inside Ireland.

• 39:12Dan Snow?

  So astonishing demographic impact. What about on the politics of Ireland? Was this a blow from which the union with Britain could never recover?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Yes, I think it was. Unfortunately, at the time of the famine, Irish politics was slightly fractured. Daniel O'Connell, the great nationalist leader, was getting up in age and was actually quite ill. But he fell out with a group of people called Younger Ireland. So at this time, there were two nationalist groups in Ireland, Younger Ireland, and then O'Connell represented Old Ireland. And he died eighteen forty seven, a broken man. And his very final speech was made in the House of Commons, the eighth of February, eighteen forty seven. And in it, and apparently his voice was raspy, and he looked physically very weak. But he appealed for intervention from the British government. And he said, if you do not help my people, twenty five percent of them will perish. And he was right.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  And he wanted to see the Pope before he died, and he didn't make it to Rome, but he died in Genoa in May eighteen forty seven. So that left a massive vacuum in Irish politics. And then British politics, we talked about when Peel was forced to resign, the Conservative Party split. So there were two Conservative Parties. So again, British politics was fractured at a time when really strong leadership was needed. But in Ireland, the famine sort of became the mantra of subsequent generations of nationalists about how badly Ireland was governed. And Ireland needed to be completely independent.

• 40:42Dan Snow?

  And how is it still marked today?

• 40:45Speaker 02

  It's gone through various phases. So during the period of the troubles, people actually do a lot of silences. And in fact, the historiography of the famine is very interesting because there were one or two accounts of it in the 19th century. Mostly a very Catholic perspective, but not much was written about it. And it almost seems people were traumatised and just surviving in the late 19th century. And then the 20th century's Ireland gained semi-independence again. How this new nation that's coming into existence, how does the famine fit into your historical past? And it's not something that's easy to deal with, especially when Ireland in the early 20th century was still very impoverished. I mean, both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the Free States as it was then called.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  And it's really not until quite recently that Ireland has confronted its past in terms of a terrific past. Because when I was a student, the 1980s, there were only two major books on the famine, which is incredible. One had been commissioned by the Taoiseach, Emender Valera. He had paid two academics in Dublin to write the history of the famine for its 100th anniversary. And clearly they didn't want to do, they paid people to ghostwrite it. They decided in the introduction not to talk about unpalatable things like mortality and the role of the British government. So it's a very partial sanitised view of the famine. It took 11 years to come out, it came out in 1956. And then just a few years later, a woman who is not an academic but a very great research and scholar,

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Cecil Woodham Smith, wrote a book called The Great Hunger. It came out in 1962 and became a bestseller and her research was incredible. But it was a very emotional, engaged account of the suffering of the Irish people. So a lot of scholarly, dry academics didn't like it, they felt it was too emotional. So we had these two extremes and really very, very little came out then until the mid 1990s, which was the sesquicentenary, the 150th anniversary of the famine. And I think the context is important because at that point we were moving towards peace in Northern Ireland. Massive cultural revival, if you think Rivendell, Seamus Heaney, et cetera. And then Ireland, for the first time for centuries, was doing well.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Ireland was about to go into the period known as the Celtic Tiger period. So Ireland, I think at that stage, was willing to confront a very unpalatable, sad part of her history.

• 43:14Dan Snow?

  Interesting. Well, I like this last because because the word is so powerful nowadays and people like to apply it and ask about it and investigate historical examples of it. Do you think it constitutes a genocide?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  I don't. So when we talk about genocide, genocide is a term that really dates from the Second World War. It was codified in the Geneva Convention of nineteen forty eight. But it was not to be used retrospectively because if you look at the definition of genocide, a very close reading of it, it is a legal definition and in it you have to prove intent. And as irresponsible as the British government may have been, it's very hard to prove intent. I think it's fine to have a debate, but I personally would not use the word genocide. I think it's a term that needs to be very carefully applied and needs to be applied in its full legal context. So I wouldn't apply that term loosely at all.

• 44:07Dan Snow?

  Well, okay. Well, thank you so much, Christine Calley, for coming on the podcast.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  You're very welcome. It's great to talk to you.

• 44:16Dan Snow?

  Thanks so much for listening, folks. We really hope that this has helped you better understand what's going on, given you a bit of context. And if you think your friends, family, colleagues would enjoy that, then please, please do share with them. Whatever your podcast player, whatever you're listening on, it will let you share this as a link or even a WhatsApp message. That sharing is the lifeline of this podcast and what keeps us going. So thank you for listening and thanks for sharing. Join us next time for another episode of Dan Snow's History Head.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  That's go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 45:28Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week. And as always, something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.