Talk:Great Famine (Ireland)/Archive 2

Well, after a few days cooling off, we can look at the above (nearly 40) entries we vented on this topic, and all of it seemingly to much good... What I can see, is the value of SIrub's objective point of view cutting right through much of the venting, and finding the necessary balance between what are different points of view (not stating anything as to their veracity).

Id like to sum up a few points, based on the above.

1. Clearly JDT wants to do a noble thing - that is, write an article free of bias. But he is only human, and has inadvertently put bias into the article by removing any rubish theories which 'dont belong' in a 'scientific' article. This is the achilles heel of scientists, by the way, as many tend to consider a lack of proof as proof of the inverse. This isn't really logical, but we see it everywhere - most notably in discussions surrounding artificial causes of disease or environmental problems. This does not mean we should include every crackpot theory that comes up.

2.Mav clearly tends to lean to the above method, but with the good sense to correct himself should he become too exclusive. People do think differently after all. And Slrub's commentary is once again, keen to pick up on meanings often hidden in attack jargon.

3.And I am a bit pissed, though nothing that cant be handled. Im pleased with the way we were able to come to consensus without compromise. My stated cause remains valid, and is perhaps better stated simply: the article (as it is) is poorly written, and for these reasons: Structure: It tends to interrupt the flow of information to include varied somewhat scientific details, which were far too highly placed in the article, and in far too much depth to justify the exclusion of the varied well-rounded apects of this material.

4.JDT's claim that (paraphrasing)'no- historian thinks that way' seems to be self-contradictory, where JDT says earlier, 'these notions are still popular in america.'' they also seem to contradict various web texts, which i pick for their ready availiability.

http://www.seark.net/~sabra/potato.html, contains several links, among them is the one i cited in my version: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/iphunger.html

It is by: Seamus Metress of University of Toledo faculty -- Ph.D., Indiana University; Professor of Anthropology Areas of Interest: Race and Ethnicity, Medical Anthropology, Conflict in Northern Ireland, Current Research: Biocultural Anthropology, Irish Studies and Ethnic Conflict - field research projects in Northeast Ireland and the Great Lakes Region. Phone: 419-530-4652

thats one, im sure there are more.

etc.... In closing, it appears the 'debate' is similar the one claimed by holocaust revisionists, only the evidence here is older, and not as concrete. In any regard, proving motive is difficult in all murder cases, let alone ones long since done with. Equally, it does no good to make the accusation of murder, without evidence. Nevertheless, like in debates on the Israeli-arab conflict, there are things of passion here. We deal now, with the reality of sentiments as socio-political facts, regardless of the depth of their basis.

---Sv


 * hope you enjoyed the alcohol, S! (I can't drink because I'm high on antibiotics for a severe cold, so I'm envious!)


 * One point that illustrates the differing perspectives on the famine in the US and Ireland. In a St. Patrick's day parade, some Irish Americans entered a float on the famine under the banner of 'British Genocide'. They were laughed at by Irish people in the crowd (some of whom tried to throw things at them until the police intervened) and ridiculed by historians and the Irish media. I could not produce the nature of the language used here; some of the milder comments made about those responsible for the float was that they were 'assholes' and 'gobshites'. The claim that what happened was genocide is in Ireland treated at best as ill-informed, at worst as, to qoute one historian in a newspaper, reacting to the float controversy, 'mis-informed, twisted, Brit-hating propaganda.' I have had quite a few emails from Irish people who were, unhappy to but politely, at the suggestion that the 'genocide' theory would be given any credence in a page on the Famine on Wiki. The theme from most people was that Ireland has had enough of propagandistic use of the famine. In the commemoration of the famine some years ago, the approach was to leave aside emotional sentiments that were usually based on agendas, and stick rigidly to the facts.

The belief also is that Irish America, though genuine in its interest in Ireland, often has an understanding of Irish affairs that is overly sentimentalised and emotional and lacking in accuracy. One of the aims of the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland is to try to leave sentiment behind and cope with realities, whether modern realities or the factual realities of the past. Point-scoring histories help no-one. But I suppose whereas Ireland, with its 80 years experience of independence, has had to cope with reality, Irish Americans still live on past analyses of Ireland based on '800 years of British misrule', and on images of a gaelic speaking, heavily catholic, cottage-living Ireland that still sings the 'Bold Fenian Men', Percy French songs and hate the Brits. Which is why so many cannot compehend the real Ireland they find when they come 'home'; industrialised, full of motorways, where only a tiny and dwindling minority speak Irish, with the only surviving 'irish cottages' in theme parks, and with gay pubs in many Irish towns and gay pride marches down O'Connell St. passing the local McDonalds and Burger King, where few go to Mass, people get divorced, our prime minister lives with his girlfriend having left his wife, where instead of 'hating Brits' you have members of the British Royal Family popping over and people popular, but strangest of all, Sinn Féin which most Irish Americans seem to think speaks for nationalist Ireland, is in fact in the Republic of Ireland only a tiny political party, with a mere 5 seats out of 166 in the Dáil, compared to 80+ for Fianna Fáil, 30+ for Fine Gael and 20+ for Labour. In other words, the Ireland Irish-America thinks exists doesn't and hasn't, and the interpretation of history Irish-America believes in is one than few Irish historians in Ireland take seriously, they having deliberately de-emotionalised and de-propagandised their analysis of history and returned to analyses based squarely on facts in recent decades.


 * Just a comment: relations between home and diasporic communities are often complex and full of conflict, open or obscure (e.g. between American Jews and Israeli Jews). This itself might be an interesting topic for another article.  My point is only that Irish Americans, many of whose ancestors came to the US because of the famine, have as much an obvious interest in the famine as those who stayed in Ireland.  I object to any suggestion that Irish in Ireland are more of an authority on the meaning of the famine than Irish Americans -- not because I am partisan to Irish Americans, but because I think that how people construct and interpret and use "their" past is never "authoritative," and always an important subject of analysis.  NPOV means not being dismissive of Irish American understandings of the famine (especially just because contemporary Irish think it's silly -- so what?), nor does it mean being scornful of contemporary Irish views.  What NPOV means is an article must acknowledge all views and try to make sense out of them, and their differences. Slrubenstein

I agree relations between people who live in a state and a broader diaspora are often complex. The point I am making (and I am sure it applies in other cases) is that the broader diaspora analysis is often based on the personalised experiences of the emigrant, which are in turn shaped the inherited analyses and often more partial, because they are centralised on an emotional attachment. To give a practical example: one 'big house' near me had a reputation for having mistreated its tenants, according to to the descendants of emigrants from the locality. However those in Ireland know that story to be complete myth. It was actually the residence of the local Anglican bishop and never had tenants. The bishop in fact opened local soup kitchens for the local catholics. No local residents would have told such a story, but somewhere along the generations, the 'myth' of the local cruel landlord was invented abroad, even giving him a non-existent name; no such person existed. Local historians suspect that, someone, perhaps wanting to have their own 'hard done by' story, to match the other genuine stories they heard, created the myth of 'Mr. Jenkins', the thug of a landlord. In fact the local landlord was called Coddington. He lived twenty miles away. His agent was called Thompson and and in that instance, both landlord and agent did not evict tenants but reduced rents almost to nil. Another landlord all but bankrupted his estate by borrowing heavily to set up feeding stations. (Without the income from exporting some grain, he would have gone bankrupt in 1848, leading to the sale of the estate, the mass eviction of all tenants by new owners (ironically, most new owners under the Encumbered Estates Act where Irish, middle class and catholic!), the dismissal of all household staff and the bankrupting of all local businesses, merchants, shops, etc., who relied on the Big House to provide a market for their goods, making the situation in the local community even worse!) When in the early 1920s, during the War of Independence, an outside IRA commander suggested burning down the big house of the landlord's descendants, he was punched in the face and told 'don't touch them. They saved my father/grandfather/grandmother's life during the famine.' (My grand-uncle, who was in the local IRA, witnessed the brawl.)

In other words, while all too many descendants of emigrants how of the famine story in terms of brutal landlords, mass emigration and a 'British Genocide' the story is a far more complex one; of some brutal landlords, others who bankrupted themselves to help starving tenants. Of a policy by Peel's government, with mass importation of indian maize, that was coping with the crisis (see F.S.L. Lyons on Peel's govt for example), replaced ironically thanks to Irish MPs who opposed Peel as 'Orange Peel', by a ministry under Lord John Russell that had a fanatical commitment to laissez faire that scrapped Peel's policies and implemented policies that were absolutely the wrong ones in dealing with such a crisis, turning it into a catastrophe. Local analyses have been produced in Ireland in recent years which highlight the full complexities. Descendants of Irish emigrants visiting Ireland are often shocked by the fact that the famine, contrary to what they had always believed, was not a straight-forward case of goodies and baddies but a complicated mix of structural faults in the Irish rural economy, local issues, good and bad landlords, but most of all exceptional bad luck in terms of how the blight struck, how it spread, how many people because of sub-division were reliant on potatoes, and in the midst of the disaster, the election of a government with a fanatical ideological commitment to an economic policy that was monumentally wrong in the context, which they applied with disastrous consequences in other parts of the UK (but which, luckily being famine free, didn't have the full impact that Ireland experienced!)

Culturally, it impacted on both native and emigrant communities. For much of the last 150 years, both shared a similar analysis, but in Ireland greater historical research based on primary sources has changed our view and showed the full complexity. (Our re-analysis of much of our history has changed our perspective on a whole range of issues; the land wars, the Fenians, the Easter Rising, the Treaty, etc. Whereas most Irish Americans would view the Treaty, for example, as wrong, the VAST majority of Irish people now see it as right, including the likes of de Valera (who said his biggest mistake was not to accept it!) and Fianna Fáil, whose current leader, taoiseach Bertie Ahern, has said that Irish independence really began in 1922, not 1916 or 1919, as used to be his party's view.) Equally, many Irish Americans, based on their view of Ireland, supported the IRA during the Troubles, and were astonished when they'd visit Ireland and find the overwhelming majority of Irish people were totally opposed to the IRA. Irish Americans presume every catholic in Northern Ireland is a nationalist and are flabbergasted to find that according to detailed opinion surveys, 35% of catholics support Northern Ireland remaining in the UK and oppose Irish unity. (That number may have dropped to 20% since the Good Friday Agreement!) So while many Irish Americans presume, on the basis of the decline in protestant numbers and increase in catholics in the most recent Census, that Irish unity is 'around the corner', experts here, analysing the data, concluded that a majority in the North in favour of unity is as things stand a mathematical impossibility and that there is as much chance of Iraq becoming the 51st US state as Irish unity in our lifetimes.

All of which poses the question: if documentary evidence tells one story about the famine, should Wiki take that version, or the Irish-American one, which does not understand the full complexity? On the Treaty, should it be guided by overwhelming Irish view, or the different Irish-American one? And on Irish unity, should it go by the Irish American view that Irish unity is just around the corner, or the Irish view, based on documentary evidence, that there is a snow-balls chance in hell of a majority in our lifetimes? JTD 22:44 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)


 * JTD, I feel a little frustrated right now because the content of your reply suggests you understand me completely, but your closing questions suggests you do not. No, I am not saying that Wikipedia should "take" the Irish American version.  I am saying that Wikipedia should not "take" any version -- but that it should present a variety of views.  And it should present each view in its context, and critically.  The bulk of your above comment has much in it that I like -- instead of casually dismissing the Irish-American view as "wrong" about the famine, you provide some context and analysis of where their interpretation comes from and why it is meaningful to them.  this is precisely what I am calling for in the article.  I really hope I am being clear now, because I think the point I am trying to make is important.  In short, there is much that you have written on the talk pages (at least, in response to my comments and questions) that I think can very usefully be cut and pasted into the article. Slrubenstein

In the first paragraph, I am not sure what "practical" means -- also, practical and long term do not contrast easily; I am sure you don't mean that long term is impractical. How about changing practical to immediate or short term? I won't do it myself because I really am unsure what the word means in context and leave it to you... Slrubenstein

The below was removed by JTD.

What my greater ear is telling me, is that JTD is not keen on letting the article have a British bashing bias. Once again we deal with the fuzzy line between bashing and criticism. One mans hero is another mans terrorist, in other words. But my grokking also tells me that JDT and my point of view are both valid aspects of this topic, and both will be included, though, it must be in the context of the framed points of view, and not simply weaved into what is supposed a neutral article on the par with what Mav and SLrub, would call encyclopedic.

As a question to JDT: You mentioned 'recent evidence' as something we shoud stick to. would it be appropriate to quote this from (once again) the Metress essay I cited;


 * "In 1861 in The Last Conquest of Ireland, John Mitchell wrote: "The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine," Mitchell further observed that "a million and half men, women and children were carefully, prudently and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created."

Im not citing this as inflammatory. Its history, in a sense, as part of the great discussion. Though, admittedly I have no idea who the hell John Mitchell is, yet. ;)---Sv

It wasn't actually removed. An attempt to archive some stuff went wrong when someone else entered the page while I was saving it and as we both tried to save simultaneously, the last entry disappeared from view. I returned to an earlier version and saved it especially to keep Sv happy. But of course, Sv didn't mention that.

You've just proved my point. Most Irish people know who John Mitchell was and so how to rate his expressed opinion. Many Irish Americans don't. Quoting John Mitchell on the famine is like quoting George Bush's, Tony Blair's or Saddam Hussein's public comments on Iraq, and presuming them to be neutral, objective observers. All three are engaged in a war through 'spin' before the real war begins. There is nothing wrong with spinning, but no historian would quote a Bush interview on CNN or ABC and presume it to be a 100% neutral and accurate account of Iraq, let alone Saddam. They might quote archival material written by Bush, the real stuff that wasn't revealed at the time.

John Mitchell was a leader of the (disastrously incompetent) 1848 Irish rebellion. He spent his life as a propagandist for the Irish republican cause in the 19th century. There is nothing wrong with being that. But no-one studying Irish history in Ireland treats Mitchell's writings as 'neutral, objective history.' They are seen as propaganda, and his theme, to borrow a famous phrase from Clinton's election, was simple: 'its the Brits, stupid'. In other words, his job was to paint Britain in the blackest way possible, to rally Irish republics, particularly Irish republicans in Irish-America, to support his cause, which was ending British rule in Ireland. But that is all it is, political propaganda, a superb 'Brits are bastards. Lets kick them out of Ireland' soundbyte. Nothing more.

Mitchell is (or was at least) quoted in some school history books. Not as an objective source, but along the lines of 'this is how the Famine was used in propaganda. Note how Mitchell's description differs from Roy Foster/F.S.L. Lyons/Joe Lee etc. Write an essay on Propaganda and its use in the Nineteenth Century'.

As to your framed point of view thesis, that is valid were there are two points of view. But we won't, for example, treat Holocaust denial in the same way as an entry on the Holocaust, as if they are two equally valid points view. One is based on fact, the latter. It happened. Similarly, the famine revolves around facts. There was no genocide, there was a catastrophe. All landlords were not bastards; some were, some weren't. British policy was largely the product of incompetence, stupidity and a disastrously misplaced enforcement of an economic theory, not a 'lets kill all the paddies' genocide. A key problem was the structure of land-holdings; big estates, many heavily morgaged. Sub-division of land, which left more and more reliant on potatoes. And a damned potato-blight. It was a case of wrong time, in a wrong economy, with wrong government policies, hitting the wrong people. A monumental catastrophe that devastated my country. But not some 'X Files' style plot. Wikipedia is for reality, not propaganda. Sometimes people in Irish-America don't like to know the truth about Ireland, the real history, the real country, the reality not the dream. They prefer legends, myths and 'Brits are bastards. Get them out of Ireland' propaganda. This page is about history, not myth and propaganda, however genuinely believed. JTD 00:48 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

well, my self deprication may not have served my argument, but i allow you some allowances to give you hope, which i dont want you to lose sight of. We are as we speak, in the process of formulating a consensus, among all of us who are motivated to speak on this topic. your 'irishness' may opportune you the luxury of having some more background knowledge than i. big deal. much of this can be read, and perhaps in two days i might read as much on the subject as you have in the course of any normal irish education.

I say all this not to break too much wind here, but to deflate some of the arrogance that people of an 'educated' ilk might hold over the subject matter of their passion. the world is full of little Fidel Castros: each points their finger to the sky, each can be so long winded as to inflate an airship, each is as completely wrong as they are completely right, and continue to think as they do simply because to do otherwise would be to commit the most heartbreaking of all acts: admitting that one is wrong.

So... please... continue to point your Toryist index finger up into the wind, and say things like 'the sun is not yellow, its chicken', and 'the thing is not thus, it is so "because all good men do agree".' Get busy with the rewrite. ---Sv

In other words, Sv, you have no reply so you descend to childish comments. You can always tell a sulky marxist. They throw around insults like 'tory', 'rightwinger', 'British/American/ [fill in blank] apologist!!! By all means do some reading of Irish history (it certainly would help), though you may have to do rather a lot of reading of a topic you have a shaky standard of. So how long to you expect it will take you to get your PhD in Irish history, to write history books, etc? How long will it be before I see you in the Irish National Archives (it is in Bishop St. in Dublin, just so you know where to go!) wading through the files on the famine? A debate on the Irish famine is always welcome, but not propaganda, or trying to twist the famine to fit into some cosy marxist theory. I will add in some more information to the famine page when I am ready. Slán. (That's Irish for goodbye, by the way, Sv!)

Ah, this is too easy. Ill just quote Metress again, Im sure you didnt bother to read it. At least its not dry !]:


 * "In recent years there has been an effort among Tory revisionists to soften the trauma of the period and downplay the role of the British. This is especially evident in the tendency to reduce the estimates of the number of deaths related to the starvation. Most of these apologists have suggested there were much less than a million deaths, while some estimates go as low as 250,000. Even these incorrect estimates are appalling given that they occurred only a short distance from the heart of the most powerful and wealthy empire the world has ever known. We suppose that such an approach is an attempt to lessen the blame that should be placed upon the British or insome sense to veil the magnitude of the tragedy."

-Sv

If such a comment was written by a credible Irish historian writing on the famine, he would be an international laughing stock. We do not know the figure of how many died and we can never know. Estimates range from 500,000 to 1,000,000. I used 700,000 which is the one most recently suggested. Earlier totals from nineteenth and early twentieth century failed to take into account something that only detailed studies in recent African famines brought fully to light, namely the impact of famine on fertility levels. Earlier totals presumed that during the famine fertility rates remained the same as before it. That we now know is not correct. Even if no-one died, there still would have been a massive drop between the expected population arrived at in 1851 and the total produced by lower fertility levels. But there was a massive death rate and an absence of births which together produced a total of 6.6 million, through death, emigration and absence of births, not as was originally throught, through the death and emigration alone.

If 99% of historians, relying or archival material, reach one conclusion on the famine, and one 'historian' (I could use other words) reaches another, then I know which side of the argument I'm on. And if the best you can rely on is a mis-interpreted propagandistic quote from John Mitchell (whom you didn't even know who he was) and the above nonsense, then there is no point wasting time in this worthless debate. The facts, the evidence, the interpretation is all there. If you have a problem with it all, that is your problem, not mine and not Ireland's. If you want to off and bash Britain, do it where you know the facts. (There are plenty of places where they can justifiably be bashed) but don't you dare abuse the memories of up to one million Irish famine victims, including my great-granduncle and his family, to push your own political agenda) Mickey Mouse history has no place in Wikipedia, unless on the Mickey Mouse page. JTD 02:52 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

"Mickey Mouse history has no place in Wikipedia" hoboy, are you in for a shock. the beautiful thing about the open-source WP, my friend - do you know what it is? Ye own not history. :)---Sv

History owns history, Sv, not that on the evidence of the famine you know much about it. And if you think you can vandalise pages because you don't agree with them, or because they don't fit into your clichéd stereotypes, you are living in dreamworld. This is Wikipedia, not Stevepedia! Stop acting like a prat. JTD 03:19 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

Oh, certainly. , JTD :) --Sv