Conspiracy Theories
The Great Hunger of Ireland: Natural Disaster or Man-Made Genocide?
Wed, 12 Mar 2025
In the mid-19th century, British-occupied Ireland lost roughly one-third of its population during a years-long catastrophe known as “The Great Hunger” or, “The Irish Potato Famine.” In the years that followed, some have wondered if the tragedy wasn’t the result of a natural disaster, but the intentional efforts of the British government to annihilate Irish people and their culture. The idea that the British pulled off a secret genocide has taken root in the Irish identity– but is it true? Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What was the Great Hunger in Ireland?
In early 1847, Irish illustrator James Mahoney is at work on a grim assignment. His country is in the throes of a devastating potato famine, and Mahoney is traveling through desperation and death to report on it for a London newspaper. Mahoney draws and writes about many ghastly scenes, but it's one of the less showy incidents that speaks the loudest about the British role in the catastrophe.
Chapter 2: Who was James Mahoney and what did he witness?
In Skull, a village on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, Mahoney and his team come upon a huge crowd of women in the street, at least 300. They're all there for the same reason, to buy cornmeal for their starving families. One woman tells Mahoney that she's been there since dawn. The cornmeal everyone is waiting for arrives in the local port with a military escort.
Without the protection, desperate locals might have tried to steal the food. Now, a government official is meeting out small portions at exorbitant prices. But even with these tiny rations, some of these women will return to their hungry families empty-handed.
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Chapter 3: How did British policies affect the Irish potato crop?
From 1845 to 1852, potatoes in Ireland suffered a series of blights or diseases that the country has yet to fully recover from to this day. Three million people either died or fled Ireland. And even more than 150 years later, historians are asking, how could this have happened? In order to really understand the potato famine, we have to understand the context in which it occurred.
In 1801, Great Britain and Ireland merge under an agreement called the Act of Union. Don't let the paperwork fool you into thinking this is a partnership. At this time, Ireland is a British colony exploited for its farmland. By the 1840s, exported Irish grain feeds about 2 million Brits a year, a crop output Britain could never hope to produce itself.
British landlords own virtually all of the productive Irish farmland. Many of them manage it remotely from England, leaving desperately poor native Irish laborers to work the land. In addition to working on their landlord's parcel, most of these Irish farmers also rent small plots, feeding their families with the crops they grow. With very few exceptions, they all grow one thing.
The Irish lumper potato. The Irish lumper has a lot to offer the peasant farmer. One, it provides a high yield, even on a small square footage. See, the land available to farmers is limited to begin with. And as Irish families grow and pass down land to younger generations, those rental plots get divided up and become smaller and smaller.
But luckily, even though the average Irish male eats about 12 pounds of potatoes a day, just one acre of potatoes can feed his family of six for a year. The other benefit of potatoes is their nutrition. In a book about the famine entitled Their Graves Are Walking, author John Kelly explains that potatoes provide two to four times more calories per acre than grain.
That's why Irish farmers rely on it so heavily. They can feed their loved ones well. Potatoes are credited with allowing Irish families to grow and stay healthy. Irish folks aren't the only ones benefiting from the potato. Historians say the crop contributed to the population boom across all of Europe between 1750 and 1950.
All that manpower allows many countries, including Great Britain, to industrialize. That means a more modern and international economy that trades in manufactured goods as well as raw materials and crops. But remember, Ireland is basically Great Britain's pantry.
The folks who work in British factories making the goods that made England competitive on the international market, many of them eat imported Irish crops. Britain's industrialized economy is fueled by Irish food. But the British aren't exactly grateful. Instead, officials grumble about how Irish laziness results in a sluggish and primitive Irish economy.
From their perspective, the average farmer isn't helping his country move into the modern age. Most don't engage with currency. They eat what they grow and barter with whatever is left. British landlords want their Irish farmland to be more efficient and profitable. From their perspective, Irish farmers are holding them back as laborers and tenants.
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Chapter 4: What were the consequences of the potato blight?
In a situation with a British occupation dressed up as a mutually beneficial union, a declining quality of life for an average Irishman, and now a threat of eviction from arguably stolen Irish land, you can imagine it creates some tension. Then things get worse.
in the summer of 1845 all of western europe sustains heavy rains irish farmers are worried wet summers are never good for their crops their fears are confirmed when they wake up in the morning to a heavy rotten stink out in the field their nearly mature potato plants have white spots on their leaves Within a day, the spots are brown and rotten looking.
By the third day, the entire stalks are black and drooping. By then, the precious edible root of the plant is dead. Sometimes the potato's growth would be stunted and it comes out of the ground the size of a walnut. Full-sized potatoes have a slimy film and patches of rotten flesh. Inside, it's full of rancid muck.
Once just one plant shows sign of the deadly mold, Phytophthora infestans, there's no chance of saving any of the others. Families work into the night until they can't see the plants in front of them, trimming off the diseased parts of the plants. Even potatoes that come out healthy can go bad in storage. Entire fields for miles are blackened. The rotten stench is inescapable.
Some farmers cry as they pull diseased potatoes from the ground. Others sprinkle holy water over their crops or bury them with religious talismans, hoping for divine protection. By late February 1846, areas most affected by the blight enter a state of chaos driven by desperate, hungry farmers and their families. Thieves forage in strangers' fields. People drink blood from live farm animals.
They put seaweed and grass into their kettles. Parents worry if their sleeping children will ever wake. Peasants sell absolutely everything, the clothes off their back, in order to buy just a little food. But not all hope is lost. Not yet. No more than one third of Ireland's potato crop is affected.
There had been crop failures of similar scale in the past, and farmers had always been able to scrape by until the following year's harvest came through. The British government ministry responsible for overseeing affairs in Ireland, the Home Office, also puts a few relief measures in place.
They purchase American corn to help stabilize food prices and as a backup food source for Irish families facing a ruined potato crop. Remember the women who James Mahoney saw waiting to buy corn? Those small portions were probably government subsidized. The Home Office also implements a few direct relief services.
They call for the formation of local committees to facilitate the delivery of supplemental food. They also organize public works projects that create opportunities for farmers to work for cash and therefore buy food to offset their crop losses. But the British government fails to take a common step to prevent famine. They decide that Ireland should continue exporting food.
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Chapter 5: How did the British government respond to the crisis?
In reality, families, even children already weak from starvation, struggle to complete heavy labor that's often pointless. They might spend the day splitting rocks to build roads that don't lead anywhere. The hard-earned wage for this futile work isn't enough to sustain an entire family. And that's only when they do get paid. Many of these projects are riddled with corruption.
The more direct support, like soup kitchens and government-subsidized food distribution... also have major flaws. Prime Minister Robert Peel might have purchased some supplemental corn, but he intended for local authorities to handle the processing and distribution of that corn. Often, this means landlords.
Peel assumes that wealthy landlords will use their own money to support the working class because they depend on working class labor to maintain their own solvency. But landlords are in no financial position to help. A significant portion of their income relies on rent and countless tenants are in arrears. Then it gets worse. Again. A British election results in a power changeover.
The new prime minister puts Charles Edward Trevelyan in charge of relief efforts in Ireland. Unfortunately for the starving Irish, Trevelyan leans even more heavily towards a free market approach than Peel's administration did. Like Peel, Trevelyan figures that pausing Irish food exports could make the Irish economy even less competitive on the international market.
He's in favor of continuing the export of Irish crops unaffected by the blight, like grain, to whichever country can pay the highest price. That certainly isn't Ireland. So, merchants and landlords continue to make money on the exported crops that survive the blight... but the Irish laborers working their land are facing a worsening food shortage.
Even though the situation is increasingly dire, Trevelyan also chooses to cut down on more direct relief efforts like supplemental food and soup kitchens. He worries such quote unquote handouts could make Irish people dependent on government support. No one is coming to save Ireland. Famine and its consequences run rampant. The suffering over the next several years is tremendous.
Lack of food probably seems like the biggest danger during a famine, but for Irish people hoping to survive, starvation is only one of the threats. Peasants also face eviction, rising crime and violence, and deadly disease. Let's start with evictions.
We've already talked about the main incentive for landlords to force out tenant farmers, the ability to consolidate their land into a more modern and therefore profitable agricultural operation. Tevelian's relief policies reinforce those efforts. A landlord's legal obligation to support relief services is directly tied to how many tenants live on their land.
If a landlord evicts those tenants, then they don't have to chip in to support them. On the flip side, farmers can only access the majority of relief resources if they rent less than a quarter acre of land. Anyone with a larger property has to abandon it if they want government support. When tenants are evicted, it's often sudden and violent.
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Chapter 6: What role did landlords play during the famine?
Disgruntled peasants brutally kill people who collect rent, lend money at obscene interest rates, or enforce evictions. Some landlords use another tactic to get rid of their tenants, encouraging them to emigrate to the United States. A number even offer to pay for their passage. This is more civilized than simply demolishing unwanted tenants' homes, but it's still self-serving.
When tenants move to the States, their land reverts back to their landlord. Plus, Atlantic Passage is no cakewalk. Passengers spend the weeks-long journey crowded below decks on vessels designed to transport goods like wood or grain, not people. Anyone lucky enough to land on a ship retrofitted for human transport gets to share a bunk with three other people, at least.
Captains often oversell tickets, pocketing the extra cash. If those conditions don't sound horrendous enough, the ship crews often neglect to bring adequate food and water for everyone on board. On top of that, all those people packed into such a small space is a perfect breeding ground for disease.
Infections like typhus, typhoid, and cholera kill thousands of Irish people during the famine at home and on ships bound for the U.S., Recordkeeping is inconsistent, so it's impossible to know for sure, but research suggests that far more Irish people died from illnesses than directly from starvation.
Some of the most haunting reports from James Mahoney, the illustrator and reporter who relayed famine scenes back to England, are of the devastating effects of disease. Mahoney describes entire families dead in their homes, their bodies left to rot. A single survivor, so weak he's had to live among the corpses of his family, begs passersby for water or for fuel to start a fire.
But concerned neighbors are forced to keep walking. They've already seen how anyone who tries to help ends up infected themselves. In 1844, Ireland had a population of just over 8 million. By 1855, roughly a third of the population died or fled. According to British leaders like Charles Trevelyan, the famine was the result of God's will, a natural disaster that couldn't be avoided.
but Irish nationalist John Mitchell writes that the Almighty had brought the blight, but the English created the famine. Over a hundred years later, author Tim Pat Coogan takes Mitchell's accusation a step further, arguing in his book, The Famine Plot, that British actions during the famine weren't just about economics.
They served a more sinister purpose, the systematic destruction of Irish people and culture. If that's the case, then perhaps the Irish potato famine isn't a famine at all. Maybe it's a genocide. Everyone can agree that the Irish potato famine was a tragedy. It's also not controversial to say that the British government could have done more to mitigate its effects.
But do British actions, or lack thereof, during the crisis qualify as a genocide? First, let's define our terms. The word genocide didn't exist until nearly a century after the Blight destroyed every potato in Ireland. The term was coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.
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Chapter 7: What were the implications of evictions during the famine?
Those actions include things like injuring, traumatizing, or killing members of the group, or creating a situation that forces the group to live in unhealthy and dangerous conditions. Let's break it down. It's fair to say that Ireland was not a safe place to live during the famine, but to what extent did the British government cause that situation?
The British did not create Phytophthora infestans, the mold that turned potatoes across Europe to mush. The acute cause of the food shortage was natural and can't be blamed on the Brits. But that doesn't mean they aren't responsible for the suffering that resulted from it. Indian economist and scholar Amartya Sen studied the interventions and outcomes of a variety of more modern famines.
He found that famines were almost never the result of natural conditions, but the human response, or lack thereof, to them. In fact, some famines occurred even when there wasn't a decline in food availability. According to Sen's research, precise corrective intervention can mitigate the worst effects of famines. Some modern governments have pulled this off.
In the 1970s, a drought in Maharashtra, a state in India, reduced crop output and put about 20 million people at risk of starvation. The Indian government delivered food and created employment relief programs. As a result, there were no recorded deaths from starvation. Now, Sen's research is centered mainly on modern famines.
Perhaps the mid-19th century British government didn't have access to the same knowledge or resources as the Indian government did over a century later. But consider this. Other nations avoided famine caused by the same 1845 potato blight. Nova Scotia, another British colony much further from the motherland, was almost as dependent on the potato as Ireland.
But their local government acted quickly to support the cultivation of different crops in the late 1840s, creating new food sources. If they could avoid famine on the frontier, it seems like Ireland could have at least fared better, considering the support they had from their economically advanced colonizer.
So, let's look at what the British could have done differently, and what the outcome might have been. It's difficult to play the what-if game with accuracy. In terms of British strategies during the famine, let's consider the one that has the most data and relevant comparisons. The choice to keep Irish ports open for business.
Closing ports and therefore keeping food grown locally within the country was a tried and true strategy for overcoming crop failures in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ireland, Britain, and many other European countries had been using it for years because it worked. We don't necessarily have data to dig into exactly how effective it was, but it certainly helped.
When the potato blight hit Europe in 1845 and 1846, many nations in the region stopped exporting food. But Britain chose to continue exporting food from Ireland, arguing that closing the ports would hurt the Irish economy. This decision was the main thrust behind John Mitchell's argument that the British caused the famine in Ireland.
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