Hello, everybody, welcome to Dance News History. Now, a week ago, we had Charles Reid on talking about the great Irish famine. He is an economic historian at Cambridge University. And we had him on because this month marks the 25th anniversary since the blight, the potato blight was first identified that would do such terrible harm to its population. On this podcast, we've got a counterpoint. We've got someone who disagrees. We've got Christine Keneally on the podcast.

She's a wonderful historian, author, and she's the founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. She painted a different picture of the famine itself and Britain's response.

I think it's fascinating to have both points of view from two very, very distinguished historians on this anniversary of an event that would shape British and Irish history for generations, arguably still shapes its politics to the present day. If you listen to these podcasts without adverts, you can become a subscriber history at TV shows like the Netflix History, you can watch documentaries. Just head over there. I used to go pod one pod one year a month for free in the second month, just one pound euro or dollar.

And you can watch all these amazing documentaries coming out as well. It's a sweet deal, but in the meantime, everyone enjoy Kristina Keneally.

Christine, thank you very much for coming on this podcast. I'm delighted to be here. I'm a great fan. Well, I'm a great fan of yours. Now, we just we've heard from an economic historian about the British government's attempts and then failure, of course, to provide humanitarian relief over the course of the Great Famine. I'd like to talk to you just a bit more about that famine itself and the experience, given its 135 years since the light was first identified with the harvests, failed immediately, or was it a slower process?

It's a slow process. And one of the things about the famine, which makes it so complicated, is it lasts for seven years. So each year is different. But this year, as you said, is the hundred seventy fifth anniversary of the blight appearing in Ireland and the blight. It was this new form of disease and it appeared in Europe. It then was spotted in Kent, the Isle of Wight, and then it came to Ireland as it came to Ireland relatively late in the harvest in 1845.

So it destroyed about 40 to 50 percent of the crop. What made it unusual was even though that bean disease on the potato crop before, never for more than one year. So people felt they could survive one year. But unfortunately, in 1846, this mysterious blight reappeared and reappeared much earlier in the season and it destroyed 100 percent of the crop. 1847, it comes back. It destroys a small part of the crop, which gives the British government an opportunity to say, oh, the famine is over.

Of course, it wasn't 1848. The blight comes back and stores almost all of the crops. So each year is different.

Why do we think about Ireland in particular in connection with this catastrophic famine? It was a defining moment in terms of Irish history. The population within the space of six years dropped by 25 percent, which makes it one of the most lethal famines on record in modern history because of emigration. It changed the course of world history in many ways. About 80 percent of people who left Ireland and two million left in the space of 10 years. Most of them went to North America 1847.

A higher number went to Canada than to America. So it really changed North American history. A number went to especially orphans, went to Australia. So, you know, most parts of the world were impacted by the level of emigration. And also another thing that made us a global crisis. But one of the most uplifting things about it was that people from all over the world contributed to famine relief, particularly in 1847. The first place to give this is actually 1845 was Calcutta in India.

But all parts of the world gave to Ireland, which is a remarkable story.

Why did Ireland suffer? You mentioned it was in Kent. It was in the Isle of Wight. Why did Ireland suffer so dreadfully?

So no other country in the world had such high dependence on potatoes. So when the disease was wiped out, about 50 percent of the population depended exclusively on potatoes for subsistence living. But even in places like Belfast, which is regarded as more affluent, which was overwhelmingly Protestant, which is more industrialized, what did the factory workers eat? They ate potatoes. So no part of Ireland escaped from the impact of this potato shortage. But again, I think, yes, the blight came.

But Irish Ireland has to be seen in terms of its longer history, its history as a colony of Britain, and over the centuries, the gradual impoverishment of the people, the treatment of the native Irish, the second class citizens, which effectively forced them to depend on this one crop and the other factor, which is not exclusive to Ireland, but as part of the United Kingdom. That timing was really unfortunate in that 1830. There have been many debates about poverty, what causes poverty, and the conclusion was poverty is the fault of the individual.

And in the 1930s in Britain, there was an amended poor law. In Ireland, it was a new poor law. And it was very much introduced with the idea of punishing people who were poor and also trying to bring about change within Ireland. So the famine comes on the back of all of these debates, which have concluded that Irish people are poor because they're lazy. And then for some in Britain, there was the extra layer of not only are they lazy, they're Catholic and this is bad.

Let's talk about the poor first. This was a primitive form of welfare. Ireland was covered by the poor, nor was it to some extent it was punitive, but it was also flexible.

So England and Wales were governed by one poor law. Scotland was slightly different, but people could get relief either in their own houses or they could go into a workhouse. Of course, people chose to stay in their own homes if they could. In the 1930s, the British government was very exercised by the whole idea of poverty, the growth of population, urbanisation, some social disorder, etc.. So there were all these debates about the nature of poverty and the whole Malthusian concept of poor people breeding too much and again, concept of their lazy.

So there are all these debates going on. And in 1834 that led to a change in the poor law, which made it slightly harsher. Then the British government turned its attention to Ireland, which had no system of poor relief. And so they put an Englishman in. The charge, of course, George Nichols, who was very much devotee of the new, more stringent approach to relieving poverty, so he came to Ireland, he sort of did this tour very quickly around Ireland, and he said, yes, the English polo is suited to Ireland, which nobody in Ireland believed it was, but a form of the English polo was imported into Ireland, except it was more draconian.

So from the very start, Irish people had no right to relief. They had to get all relief within a workhouse. There was no relief given at home. And the law of settlement was established in the English, Welsh and Scottish Paulose. But no similar residency requirement was in the Irish polow. But when this really becomes significant, is that the height of the famine when some Irish people who couldn't afford to go to North America sought relief in Britain, but because of the British laws of residency, they were not eligible to receive relief despite the so-called Act of Union, despite the being a United Kingdom.

And so thousands of Irish people were literally deported back to Ireland during the famine years.

Now you have read the sources and read all the accounts of what those famine years were like. How bad did it get in the parts of Ireland where the entire harvest failed?

Of course, again, you come back to the British press. They insisted things were exaggerated. But people who went and who are eyewitnesses and we have many eyewitnesses who were disinterested eyewitnesses. So some English Quakers went to the most remote parts of Ireland Arace in County Mayo, and they all agreed that words were not adequate to describe the suffering. We know from some eyewitness accounts of some of the awful things that people were so weakened by famine, they were literally eaten alive by pigs, by run by dogs.

The whole process of dying was people died from disease before they actually die of starvation. But it's an extremely painful and can be slow process. And various functions of the body just died. People become blind, their body becomes distended, they grow hair on their body. There's a lethargy which again, some observers said, oh, this is because Irish people are lazy, but this is part of the process of starvation. So it's a painful, painful process.

And for those who survived and had witnessed that, they must have been changed. And we know in recent studies and epigenetics which talk about if you suffer malnutrition or trauma, sustained malnutrition or trauma, it actually becomes transgenerational and it probably stays within your DNA for five generations. So people my age, we are still children of the famine in many, many ways. And we know one of the impacts of this trauma is that it can result in high levels of mental illness.

And we know Ireland at the end of the 19th century had the highest incidence of committals of anywhere in the world. So, again, you would just the famine. Sometimes people say, oh, it ended in 1852. In many ways it still hasn't ended epigenetics mental disease. And today the population of Ireland is still smaller than it was in 1845, which for a modern democracy, is pretty shocking.

The British government initially launched a sort of rescue package, a welfare package that people claimed was among the most generous ever. Is that is that the impression you get from looking at the sources at the time?

I am not sure it was generous, but it was certainly effective. And at that stage, Sir Robert Peel was the prime minister. He had a smaller problem to deal with. And subsequent governments in 1846 was a change of government. And Lord John Russell, head of the big government, he was in power then from 1846 to 1852, which were the more devastating years of the famine. So people did introduce a relief package which was effective. He could have done more.

This was not the first famine in Ireland pretty well. Every generation in Ireland had suffered from localised famine and food shortages. So people were pretty resilient themselves, people themselves. They would perform what they had. You slaughter the pig, sell the pig in order to survive. But in previous famines, other measures had been introduced, which the British government from 1845 to 52 refused to do. And one of them was to stop the distillation of alcohol, which sort of seems obvious.

And in previous food crises that had been done by the government and that meant there was more grain available for people, for animals, etc.. In previous periods of shortages, the government had placed an embargo on food being exported. At this time, people said no, the market will rectify itself. And so massive amounts of food left Ireland as people were starving within the country. So in some ways, the British government could have done more. But the problem, the pill was fascinating.

45 to 46 was much easier than what subsequent governments faced. The failure of the potato crop was 40 to 50 percent. People still had resources and resilience and after 1846 changes.

Yes, we've been hearing on this podcast recently that the British government's ability to borrow money and. Pay for famine relief in Ireland was severely compromised and the British government, therefore was just was it unable or was it partly unwilling to do what was required during the catastrophic years of the famine?

I would argue it was unwilling. The famine was seen by some people in power as an opportunity to bring about change in Ireland. And as we know from the debates about the poor law, this change was much desired to stop people being so dependent on potatoes, et cetera, et cetera. So in one way, it was seen as maybe a good thing. In fact, the census report of 1851 said to you, even though the population has dropped so dramatically, we feel some good will come of this calamity.

So people in high places were saying that. But to me, what really is very telling about the government's willingness to save lives is in 1846, the government introduced public works, which meant the people who were starving had to work six days a week, 10 hours a day on hard physical labor, which serves no purpose except to act as a test of destitution. And 1846, 1847 was the coldest winter on record for 100 years. It snowed as late as April 1847.

So people who'd put on their shoes, their clothes, et cetera, were working in these terrible conditions and mortality increased immediately. So because of the failure of the public works, they were bureaucratic, they were expensive, and they failed anyway to save lives. In the summer of 1847, the British government, for the first time and the only time actually gave people free food. They introduced soup kitchens throughout Ireland greatly helped. It has to be said by the society friends, the Quakers who provided the soup caldrons in the summer of 1847 as a result of new legislation for the first time during the whole of the famine and the only time during the famine the British government gave the people what they needed, which was Free Food Network of soup kitchens throughout Ireland, fed over three million people for three months.

And to me, what the this shows is that the British government had the administrative the logistical ability to feed everybody who needed food. They chose not to do so after that period. But the British government certainly could have done that. And it was a pretty cheap way of getting food to the people. And mortality did decrease during those months.

Does the catastrophe deepen when the British government tries to switch the taxation burden onto the Irish taxpayers themselves?

The temporary relief at the soup kitchen that does it's called operated in the summer of 1847. It was to be a temporary measure and it was so the British government could make changes to the poor law because essentially after the end of summer, they wanted all relief to be come from Irish resources, from Irish tax. And so the polo was the perfect mechanism because countries divided into polo unions and each polo union was self-financing. So this is a way of throwing the whole tax burden for famine relief on Irish taxpayers.

Again, to me, this brings into question what was the meaning of the United Kingdom. If you know, at the time of this great distress, Ireland was to be separated.

But this really did put a great burden on landlords, even benign landlords. And there were some who for two years had given rent abatement and helped their tenants. Now it was of them, said the market. Sligo said, you know, I have no choice now but to evict because now it is a question of my survival. So the change to poor low relief in the autumn of 1847 really was a mistake. And people died, people emigrated. But this was combined with the British government really washing its hands by saying, well, the farmers over the harvest, you the blight wasn't that bad this year.

So Irish people should and can depend upon themselves. And one of the arguments that we use these words, we hear these words this day, if we keep on helping Ireland, this will just happen again and we'll create this culture of dependency. We have to use this as a lesson. And some people who are very high in government, very influential civil servants, use the Providenciales argument. They said, oh, God has sent this blight and said we shouldn't interfere too much by giving too much relief.

So all these arguments were marshaled against the Irish in their hour of need.

So the impression the British government was, although one of the most advanced in the world, was just unable to borrow enough money to execute the massive relief required by this gigantic natural disaster. You think it was more there were political considerations there as well. This is not a matter of practicality and logistics.

I think the British government had the resources. This was the wealthiest government which had untold resources throughout the British Empire. We know there was a bumper harvest in India. Australia was offering to send goods across and the British government wasn't acting in a disinterested, benevolent way. The money it was given to Ireland was alone. So all this money was sending to Ireland, 80 percent of it was given as a loan, which, even as the famine was unfolding, had to be repaid.

So people were under tremendous stress within Ireland. And again, this is the British government. It had umpteen resources, as we know. And there are parallels today of. Two years later, the British government fought the Crimean War. It found 64 million pounds to fight the Crimean War. It found 10 million pounds to finance the famine. Eight million pounds of which was alone. A few years earlier, they'd found 20 million pounds to pay the slave owners for the ending of slavery.

So those resources were available. The British government chose not to avail of them.

There is, in fact, a magic monitary. What did the famine mean in terms of Ireland and in terms of Irish politics and nationalism in the century that followed?

It changes Irish nationalism. Irish nationalism was actually at a peak in the 1848 Daniel O'Connell's Rapaille movement, 1846, at the height of the famine that split into old Ireland and young Ireland, which meant Irish nationalism then was weakened at the height of the famine. The export of so many people, if I can put it that way, or the exile of so many people, took Irish nationalism overseas, especially to North America. And it became North America, became a center of the next wave of Irish nationalism, which was much more militant, which is associated with feminism.

But Irish nationalism really isolated in the post famine years between constitutional nationalism as advocated by Daniel O'Connell and more militant nationalism as you advocated by supporters of feminism. So Irish nationalism became international as a result of that. At home, the population just kept declining. So people looked overseas for financial support and other support. But what it did for Irish nationalists, it was the ultimate proof of British dislike and misrule of Ireland. And so in many ways, it did become a watershed in the nationalist movement.

Thank you very much indeed. What is your latest book? Let's tell everybody what it is.

Well, I have to ask this year and one is edited collection, but it's on Irish funds before and after the great hunger. So I think that's something that we need to see the famine in context of other famines in Ireland. And again, why are there so many famines in Ireland, in India, which are part of this great British Empire? So that came out and there's 20 chapters in that by different famine experts. And then my other my latest research, the abolition movement, I've moved away a bit from the famine.

And I've just brought out a book on 10 black abolitionists who visited Ireland between 1790 and 1860, including Frederick Douglass, and who give a really warm welcome. So that's my latest project. It's absolutely fascinating.

Thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast, my honor.

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