1. Mike Dash (MD):
The most striking thing about the ghastly blight that ruined Ireland’s potato crop in 1845 was that the harvest had seemed healthy, even robust, when it was lifted from the ground.
Within a day or two, however, rot set in. Potatoes that had looked firm and edible turned black and then disintegrated into a stinking, liquid mess. No one knew why. John Lindley, the editor of the Gardeners’ Chronicle, guessed that this “wet putrefaction” was a disease borne in from the Atlantic by torrential gales. Others thought that the blight had somehow risen up from underground, so that the soil itself was now infected.
The one certainty was that every measure tried to save the harvest failed. “All specifics, all nostrums were useless,” the historian Cecil Woodham-Smith observed. “Whether ventilated, desiccated, salted, or gassed, the potatoes melted… and pits, on being opened, were found to be filled with diseased potatoes–‘six months’ provisions a mass of rottenness.’”
SeN:
The Irish potato crop in 1845 had seemed healthy enough, even robust, when it was first taken from the ground. Within a day or two of the harvest, however, rot set in. Potatoes that looked firm and edible turned black and then disintegrated into a stinking, liquid mess. And nobody knew why, nor how to remedy the situation.
2. MD:
The underlying reason why the famine’s impact was profound was that the Irish population had ballooned at the same time as the amount of land available for Irish tenants to farm had been falling sharply. Ireland’s population rose from 3.2 million in 1750 to 8.2 million a century later: an enormous total, nearly a third higher than it is today. As it did so, the enclosure and seizure of what had once been common land by wealthy Protestant landowners was significantly reducing the acreage available to Catholic peasant farmers. The result was a severe shortage of land. By 1845, at least a quarter of Irish families scratched a living from tiny plots of five acres or less, and this in turn meant that, in order to survive, families had to turn over all their land to the cultivation of the highest-yielding, most nutritious crop. By 1845, the potato was not only the staple, but in many cases the only, food sustaining a huge number of men, women and children.
SeN:
Ireland’s population had surged from 3.2 million in 1750 to eight million or so within the space of about ninety years — at precisely the same time that the amount of land available for Irish tenants to farm had been falling sharply. Wealthy Protestant landowners were seizing and enclosing what had once been common land, thus reducing the acreage that was available to Catholic peasant farmers. (Have you ever wondered where the historically strong antipathy between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics came from?) By 1845, at least a quarter of Irish families eked out their sustenance from tiny plots of five acres or less, which in turn obliged them to devote all of their land to the cultivation of the highest-yielding, most nutritious crop — which was the potato. By 1845, potatoes were not only the staple Irish foodstuff but, in many cases, the only food sustaining the Irish population.
3. MD:
But while Victoria’s actions were found wanting, the story of Abdülmecid’s munificence was held to shame the Queen, and it became such an article of faith that it was immortalised in Ulysses. “Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres,” one of Joyce’s characters explodes in the midst of a harangue against the British. “But the Sassenach [Englishman] tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of crops that the hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janiero.”…
Ireland’s hatred of Victoria is rooted in the firm belief that the British queen contributed a paltry £5 to the cause of famine relief – that at a time when desperately poor Irish emigrants, struggling to survive in the slums of New York, contrived to send home more than $326,000 [about £9 million today] in just two months, and even the Choctaw tribe, ravaged by disease and confined to a reservation in far-off Oklahoma, donated $710. Victoria’s contemptuous act of indifference appears in a variety of guises; the Irish nationalist leader Charles Parnell once delivered a speech asserting that she gave absolutely nothing. The most damaging version of the tale, however, adds that, on the same day that the queen made her pathetic donation, she gave a considerably larger sum to an English dogs’ home. That incendiary suggestion certainly helps to explain how Victoria acquired the nickname of “the famine queen,” by which she is still commonly known in Ireland – not to mention why (as one historian notes), when a crowd gathered to watch her statue being removed from its plinth some years after the country attained independence, somebody “stepped forward and waved a five pound note in the face of the bronze monument…. [and] everyone realised the significance of the gesture.”
SeN:
To this day, evidently, many Irish loathe the very name of Queen Victoria. (She is apparently still sometimes called “the Famine Queen.”) Why? Because, while the British government was doing essentially nothing to help, they believe that the immeasurably wealthy British monarch, in her capacity as a private citizen, contributed a mere £5 to Irish famine relief — at a time when, in the space of just two months, Irish emigrants in the slums of New York collected more than $326,000 (about £9 million today) to send home. Even the Choctaw tribe of Native Americans, ravaged by disease and restricted to a reservation in Oklahoma, donated $710. In one version of the tale, on the same day that the Queen made her miserly donation, she gave a substantially larger amount to an English home for dogs.
4. MD:
It is generally accepted that the sultan sent a personal donation of £1,000 to London – an act of considerable generosity, particularly when it is remembered that there were no links of any real significance between Ireland and Turkey. But some accounts suggest that he did much more than that. In one version of the story, the sultan tried to give as much as £10,000 [£1 million now], only to be told that it would be diplomatically embarrassing for him to donate significantly more than had Victoria. In another, he responded by reducing his gift to a more acceptable amount – while simultaneously making sure that further help was sent behind British backs. It is still quite commonly believed in parts of Ireland that this aid took the form of several Turkish ships, which were quietly sent to unload badly needed foodstuffs in a port on the east coast. One telling of the tale even suggests that Abdülmecid’s merchantmen had to run the gauntlet of a Royal Navy blockade in order to bring their life-saving cargoes in Ireland.
SeN:
It’s generally accepted that the sultan sent a personal donation of £1,000 to London — which is pretty generous in itself, considering that there were no real connections between Catholic Ireland and Muslim Turkey. Some accounts, however, suggest that he did — or tried to do — much more than that. In one version of the story, the sultan intended to give as much as £10,000 [£1 million now], but was advised that it would be diplomatically unwise were he to donate significantly more for Irish aid than Ireland’s own monarch, Queen Victoria, had given. In a variation on that account, Abdülmecid responded by lowering his gift to a more diplomatically acceptable sum – while surreptitiously sending additional help via several Turkish grain ships, which were quietly sent to unload badly needed foodstuffs at a port on the eastern Irish coast. Some even say that Abdülmecid’s sailors had to run a Royal Navy blockade in order to reach Irish land. As one of the characters in the Irish novelist James Joyce’s Ulysses puts it,
