The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby KeenInsight » Mon Aug 12, 2013 10:14 pm

Most history books are fairly lame, since information about our past is very fragmented or simply misrepresents information like for the Irish. Take for instance what they teach children in the U.S. with the popular notion that a guy named Columbus "discovered" America. My Norwegian ancestors rightly hold that "record" if it is a record of anything, not Columbus. Besides that, discovering "America" certainly didn't do any good for the Native Americans. A lot of history books also fail to acknowledge that human civilization is likely older than what is academically accepted.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 12, 2013 10:20 pm

^^^^ so true
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/posting.php?mode=quote&f=8&p=517521
wintler2 » Mon Aug 12, 2013 7:06 pm wrote:
seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:02 pm wrote:..As no Jewish person would ever refer to the "Jewish Oxygen Famine of 1939 - 1945", so no Irish person ought ever refer to the Irish Holocaust as a famine.

You've got a job ahead of ye then, as that is exactly what every mick i know calls it. I lived in Eire for >3 years, have passport, irish on both sides back at least 6 generations, and I never heard the term 'irish holocaust' until you used it. Sure the Brits were bastards, exported food during famine etc, but thats what empires do. Your holocaust 'thing' is bizarre.

:roll: yeah that passport makes you an authority?....wow....you indeed need to learn a bit of history and then pass it on....you thinking you know it all is bizarre...and you learned it all in 3 years living in Ireland....my family goes way way back also farther than yours...to Vinegar Hill and before so I know what I'm talking about

check out my alma mater....best in the country

Southern Illinois University IRISH LITERATURE AND HISTORY COLLECTIONS


This guide identifies manuscript collections, university records and VFMs (Vertical File Manuscripts) that are related to Irish literature and culture. The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) of Southern Illinois University Carbondale houses a diverse body of Irish primary sources, from the personal papers of several notable Irish authors to an extensive collection of rare books and other printed material produced during the Irish Literary Renaissance. The collections include an extensive collection of correspondence, literary manuscripts, photographs, and ephemeral material as well as rare books, periodicals, pamphlets, and other printed matter. For additional assistance, visit the SCRC website.

This guide is not intended to be a complete finding aid to the collections. It serves as a preliminary research tool, providing a brief description of holdings with basic information on size, inclusive dates, types of records, and broad subject areas. More detailed descriptions of the sources listed below are available in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and through SIUCat, Morris Library's online catalog. I-Share contains bibliographic records for the majority of the manuscript collections held in SCRC as well as books and other printed material available at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Finding aids for these sources are also available through SCRC's Web site in the finding aid database ARCHON.

The SCRC's holdings of Irish Literature collections are listed alongside those of other institutions with strong Irish holdings in the Irish Literary Collections Portal, hosted by Emory University.

Please note that not all manuscript collections are housed in SCRC. Some collections are located at an off-site storage facility and must be requested in advance. In addition, some collections have access restrictions. Researchers are encouraged to contact SCRC to insure that materials will be available. We are also happy to pull materials in advance of a research visit.



http://cola.siu.edu/english/literary-st ... lleher.php
Professor John V. Kelleher, emeritus holder of the endowed Chair in Irish Studies at Harvard University, donated the heart of his working library in Irish history, literature, and the social sciences to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The volumes in this collection, many of them heavily annotated by Professor Kelleher, constitute a uniquely valuable resource for students and scholars.

Professor Kelleher held Harvard's Chair in Irish Studies until his retirement in 1986. He was a renowned teacher for forty years at Harvard, and his lectures, seminars, and conference papers encouraged hundreds of students toward the study of Irish history and literature. As a publishing scholar, Professor Kelleher's great achievement has been his extraordinary essays, which have always a gem-like precision of thought and an exceptional conciseness of expression, leavened with wit, humor, and colloquial directness. Over the years, these essays have been the catalyst and inspiration for the work in Irish Studies of numerous younger scholars. Moreover, the most remarkable feature of his scholarship has been Professor Kelleher's magisterial command of the entire range of Irish cultural studies in both Irish and English. He has written seminal essays on the earliest corpus of annals, genealogies, and heroic tales, on ideas of "Celticism" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, on the Irish Renaissance accomplishments of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, and on the stories of his friends O'Connor and O'Faolain. Moreover, he wrote early, crucial essays that defined terms and set boundaries for the study of the immigrant and ethnic cultures of Irish America. A collection of Professor Kelleher's original poems and translations from the Irish, Too Small for Stovewood, Too Big for Kindling, was published by Ireland's Dolmen Press.

The Kelleher Library will allow new generations of scholars to follow to the roots, and then to build upon, the work of this founding father of Irish Studies in America.



The Famine Plot*

Posted by Tim Pat at 7:51 pm on November 27th, 2012. No comments... »

The last number of weeks have been more than a little creepy. I found myself watching Homeland with an increasingly ominous fascination.

Somebody somewhere it appears did not want me to visit the United States to publicise my book on the Famine. It was suggested to me that some securicrats in the U.S. embassy had decided to do a good turn for their buddies in the British ‘Spookdom’ by blocking my attempts to enter the United States on a Book Tour. I had been applying fruitlessly since September but inexplicably had two separate ESTA Visa waivers turned down and finally after much unhelpful gobbledegook from the U.S. Embassy, had to apply for a Non- Immigrant Visa.

Days and weeks passed and eventually my book tour in the United States, which was scheduled to begin yesterday, was cancelled.

Led by the Irish- American leader, Niall O’Dowd, publisher of The Irish Voice and creator of The Irish Central website, the most important Irish website outside the country, a huge protest movement built up. There had already been a great deal of complaint s from the Irish- American community about the increasingly rough handed approach in the Dublin Embassy towards Visa seekers and my case proved to be the last straw.

Amongst those who were approached on my behalf were Hillary Clinton, Senator Schumer, reckoned to be the second most powerful member of the U.S. Senate and the chairman of the Congressional Committee on Homeland Security, Congressman Peter King. As a result word was conveyed to me from Senator Schumer’s office that I would be getting my Visa.

Today, November 27th, the day after the date on which it was originally proposed that I begin a book tour in the U.S., I received a call from a gentleman in the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, he told me that he could not give me his name ‘for security reasons’ but confirmed for me that I was to be granted a Ten Year Visa, with multiple applications but with a sinister sounding addendum that this would involve stamping my passport with an annotation to the effect that the visa had been granted following scrutiny by security agencies. This sounded a bit Scarlet Letter- esque to me.

However the other part of my anonymous caller’s message I found even more sinister he told me that my two earlier Visa waiver applications had been blocked by Homeland Security. Had it not been for a short but vigorous and extremely well focused campaign mounted on my behalf by Niall O’Dowd with the support of the Irish- American community I would not have received either my phone call or the Visa.

The embassy phone call marks a great advance on the attitude over my ESTA applications and I would once again like to thank very sincerely all those who supported me. The episode again underlines the great strength of the Irish American community when they decide to combine on a particular issue. Daniel O’Connell’s famous message to the Irish was, ‘Organise, Organise.’ That message is as relevant today as ever and Irish-Americans should be vigilant to ensure that the hard won concessions they secured on Visa dispersement are not eroded by the action of any segment of the bureaucracy. Remember Lincoln’s warning about the price of liberty being eternal vigilance.

In today’s recessionary world Lincoln may be taken as speaking not merely to Irish-Americans, but to the Irish Diaspora worldwide.



Proving the Irish Famine was genocide by the British -- Tim Pat Coogan moves Famine history on to a new plane
Posted on Tuesday, December 04, 2012 at 07:11 AM


The most significant section of Tim Pat Coogan’s new book on the Irish Famine is not his own writing, but his printing of the United Nations definition of genocide.

“The Famine Plot”, published by Palgrave MacMillan, was released in America last week and Coogan should have been here to launch it but in a separate but equally confounding plot he was denied a visa to come here by the American Embassy in Dublin.

The conclusion from his book is unmistakable. Ireland’s most prominent historian, who has previously created definitive portraits of both Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera, has now pointed the finger squarely at the British during the Famine and stated it was genocide.

It is a big charge, but Coogan is a big man, physically, intellectually, and in every sense and makes a very effective accusation. Coogan has painted a portrait of devastating neglect, abuse, and mismanagement that certainly fits the genocide concept.

I mean if we go back to that time, Ireland was the equivalent of Puerto Rico or Samoa, massive dependencies on the United States today.

If there were a massive food shortage in either of those two countries, we know the US would step up to the plate, literally.

Back in Famine time, the same potato crop disease occurred most heavily in Scotland, outside Ireland, yet there were relatively few casualties as the landowners and government ensured, for their own sakes as much as anything, that there was no mass death.

That was not the case in Ireland, where a very different mentality prevailed. The damned Irish were going to get what they deserved because of their attachment to Catholicism and Irish ways when they were refusing to toe the British line.

Read more: Tim Pat Coogan slams American Embassy as ‘Kafkaesque’ after visa refusal

As Coogan painstakingly recounts, every possible effort by local organizations to feed the starving were thwarted and frustrated by a British government intent on teaching the Irish a lesson and forcing market forces on them.

Charles Trevelyan, the key figure in the British government, had foreshadowed the deadly policy in a letter to the “Morning Post”, after a trip to Ireland, where he heartily agreed with the sentiment that there were at least a million or two people too many in the benighted land and that the eight million could not possibly survive there.

“Protestant and Catholic will freely fall and the land will be for the survivors.”

Shortly after, he was in charge of a policy that brought that situation about.

One Trevelyan story and one quote suffice.

“British Coastguard Inspector-General, Sir James Dombrain, when he saw starving paupers, ordered his subordinates to give free food handouts. For his attempts to feed the starving, Dombrain was publicly rebuked by Trevelyan…”

The Trevelyan quote is “The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

Tim Pat Coogan has done an enormous service with this book.

Read it and weep.



Opening old wounds
Dec 12th 2012, 15:38 by Y.F.


The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People. By John Kelly. Henry Holt; 416 pages; $32. Faber and Faber; £16.99

The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy. By Tim Pat Coogan. Palgrave Macmillan; 288 pages; $28 and £17.99

IN 1997 Tony Blair, the British prime minister, made the first formal apology for Britain’s role in the Irish famine. Between 1845 and 1855 Ireland lost a third of its population—1 million people died from starvation and disease and 2 million emigrated. Mr Blair regretted a time when those who governed in London had failed their people. Two new books explore Britain’s role in the famine and rekindle the debate about whether its misdeeds can be considered genocide.

“The Graves are Walking” by John Kelly, a historian and popular science writer, is an engrossing narrative of the famine, vividly detailing Victorian society and the historical phenomena (natural and man-made) that converged to form the disaster. The decimation of the potato crop in the 1840s brought on the danger of mass starvation, but it was the British response that perpetuated the tragedy. The hand of nature, as illustrated in both books, caused only part of the problem.

Both authors describe the folly and cruelty of Victorian British policy towards its near-forsaken neighbour in detail. The British government, led by Sir Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to the Treasury (dubbed the “Victorian Cromwell”), appeared far more concerned with modernising Ireland’s economy and reforming its people’s “aboriginal” nature than with saving lives. Ireland became the unfortunate test case for a new Victorian zeal for free market principles, self-help, and ideas about nation-building.

Ireland still functioned as a basic barter economy—few hands exchanged money and the peasant population relied on their potato crops, which had failed. But rather than provide aid and establish long-term goals for recovery, Trevelyan and his cohorts saw a chance to introduce radical free-market reforms. As Mr Kelly notes, Trevelyan sent his subordinates to Ireland equipped with Adam Smith’s writings, like missionaries sent to barbarian lands armed with bibles. One absurd project to introduce a money economy was part of the public works scheme. Peasants were hired to build unnecessary roads in order to earn money to buy food. But wages were often not enough to match the high food prices enforced by Trevelyan as a measure to attract imports to Ireland, especially from America.

The belief that the famine was God’s intention also guided much of Britain’s policy. They viewed the crop failures as “a Visitation of Providence, an expression of divine displeasure” with Ireland and its mostly Catholic peasant population, writes Mr Kelly. Poverty was considered a moral failure. Within a few years Irish immigrants flooded the port cities of Liverpool in England, Montreal and Quebec in Canada and New York. The emigrant was considered an object of horror and contempt, as Mr Kelly writes: “pedestrians turned and walked the other way; storekeepers bolted the door or picked up a broom; street urchins mocked his shoeless feet, filthy clothing and Gaelic-accented English.” Throughout the book, Mr Kelly bemoans the tragic effects of human folly, neglect and Victorian ideology in causing the famine and its aftermath. He rejects the charge of genocide. Tim Pat Coogan, however, takes a more radical view in “The Famine Plot”.

Mr Coogan, an Irish historian and journalist, is, to many, the unofficial voice of modern Irish history. In the introduction to his polemical history of the disaster, he labels the famine genocide and criticises other Irish historians as revisionists who are sanitising the famine’s story. His previous books about the IRA and the reputation of Eamon de Valera, Ireland’s president in the 1960s, caused controversy, but his view of the Irish famine is more widely accepted. Like Mr Kelly, Mr Coogan blames the free market economics that Britain tried, and failed, to apply to Ireland’s problem, but believes that their negligent actions were deliberate. He also describes, in painful detail, the indignity and hardship suffered by the peasant population who were stigmatised by anti-Catholic prejudice and the belief that poverty was self-inflicted.

His most compelling argument for British negligence is in the final chapter, in which he recalls the xenophobic images and words commonly used to caricature the Irish in Victorian England. Trevelyan and other architects of the famine response had a direct hand in filling the newspapers with the “oft-repeated theme that the famine was the result of a flaw in the Irish character.” And Punch, a satirical magazine, regularly portrayed “‘Paddy’ as a simian in a tailcoat and a derby, engaged in plotting murder, battening on the labour of the English workingman, and generally living a life of indolent treason,” explains Mr Coogan. The result of such dehumanising propaganda was to make unreasonable policy seem more reasonable and just.

The question remains as to whether misguided ideology of a previous era can be found culpable of a greater evil. Mr Kelly’s engrossing book lays out the evidence but stops short of calling it genocide. Mr Coogan’s opinion that the famine was genocide is clear. But both books make a compelling case for why we should revisit our current understanding of it.


bogtrotter5Dec 13th 2012, 05:24
I have read neither of the reviewed books but have read many others on the subject and lived and worked in Ireland for an American company. I would incline to support the genocide arguments, and not because of any efforts to introduce free market economy on the country. The aruguments I find more persuasive are those that point out that food and livestock were continually shipped to England throughout the famine years. The Irish people had already been taken off their lands and had to work for often absentee landlords in England. The Irish then worked the landlord's holdings and were allowed to "rent" a cottage and a very small plot of land for themselves. Thus, they were largely forced to rely on the potato crop since much could be grown in their small allotment. As the crop failed, and the Irish were unable to pay the rent, they were thrown off the property and became homeless. By the time the government set up the build roads projects or die, the people were in very poor physical condition. At the same time, by the way they were prohibited from speaking their own language and frequently could not afford school for the children. The people sold everything they had, even including their clothes to buy meager amounts of food. Work houses for the poor were set up which largely became death traps as disease spread quickly. Soup kitchen were set up by the Salvation Army but they couldn't feed everyone. Protestants offered free education and food if they would convert from Catholic. Ships were chartered to send the poor to the US and Canada, many ships were in such poor shape that they sank within a day or two. Most victims who died were buried in mass unmarked graves. Many in Ireland still feel the effects, it was not that long ago. Recently a new mass grave was found while preparing to pave a new highway over the top of it. Relatives of those people were alive and objected. Visit a real grave yard in Ireland and you will find many famine victims buried in unmarked graves, since the families were either dead or could not afford a marker. A friend of mine financed a marker a couple years ago in memory of their local famine victims...one hundred years and no one had thought to do this. If you ask the Irish, particularly those most vulnerable in the West, who helped the Irish during the famine they will say the Salvation Army and an American Indian tribe from Oklahoma. The US sent corn which made the people sick. You may not understand that the landowners controlled the fishing rights...violating those right resulted in hanging as did the attempts to storm ships sending food from Ireland to England. In my view this amounted to genocide which has never been acknowleged by England. I'm not sure the Irish care, but they haven't forgotten.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 13, 2013 10:40 am

why is Anti-Celtism allowed on RI?

Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Irish Holocaust is a form of anticeltism. Holocaust deniers ignore the overwhelming evidence of this event and insist that the Irish Holocaust is a myth, invented by the Irish for their own ends. Holocaust deniers assert that if they can discredit one fact about the Irish Holocaust, the whole history of the British in Ireland can be discredited as well. They ignore the evidence of the historical events right up to the present day and continue with lies to deny the reality of the Irish Holocaust in its entirety.

IRISH HOLOCAUST DENIAL QUEEN'S INSULTING VISIT
Drogheda : Ireland | Apr 16, 2011 at 11:30 PM PDT
By BrianClarkenu
Irish Holocaust Queen
An Image depicting the irish Holocaust Queen.
The Irish Holocaust ( An Gorta Mór )

At the start of the Irish Holocaust, which had already resulted in over a million deaths.Sultan Khaleefah Abdul-Majid I of the Ottoman Empire wanted to send millions of pounds sterling in todays terms, to save the starving Irish but the Queen of England demanded the Sultan send only a tenth of what he wanted to send, because of the paultry amount she herself was forced to send, for appearances sake. The Sultan to avoid war with England agreed but tried to send food in ships instead with the rest of the money. The English Queen tried to block the ships but the food found its way to the port in Drogheda where it was all left to rot because of the Queen of England demands.

Queen Victoria on 2-12 August 1849 went to visit Ireland to see for herself the results of her ethnic cleansing and Holocaust in Ireland. Her government had declared that the Holocaust was over and had ended emergency relief works. It was evident to her that it was still happening. The workhouses were full and deaths from starvation stalked all of the Ireland. Cholera in March of that year 1849 had wiped out a further large part of the Irish population already weakened by prolonged food shortage while 60 - 70 ships of prime Irish food left Ireland under armed escort every day, to feed England.

The Queen's Holocaust or the Famine Queen as she was called then, who aside from being head of state in Britain, is still today the Commander in Chief of all Britains armed armed forces and is still directly responsible for all of Britain's war crimes in occupied Ireland, which have claimed over 6 million Irish lives, even more than the Jewish genocide in the Holocaust of Hitler.

The British planters in Ireland celebrated the arrival of Queen Victoria, because they were given the free land of the dead Irish, as a result of her government's ethnic cleansing policies. Her heir to her throne Queen Elisabeth visits Ireland in May. She does so in the capacity of Commander in Chief of all Britains armed armed forces in occupied Ireland today and an international war criminal, as thinking traditional Irish republicans have clearly demonstrated time after time. Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Irish Holocaust is a form of anticeltism. Holocaust deniers ignore the overwhelming evidence of this event and insist that the Irish Holocaust is a myth, invented by the Irish for their own ends. Holocaust deniers assert that if they can discredit one fact about the Irish Holocaust, the whole history of the British in Ireland can be discredited as well. They ignore the evidence of the historical events right up to the present day and continue with lies to deny the reality of the Irish Holocaust in its entirety.



"They are going. They are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the streets of Manhattan...Law has ridden through, it has been taught with bayonets, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled to the ground, straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the Legislature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant there the institutions of this more civilized land."



Let's all stop denying the holocaust

The Irish holocaust of the 1840s, that is.

Our gombeen government has decided, a mere 160 or so years on, to finally commemorate the fact that half of the country died of hunger or were forced to leave their homeland due to a deliberate policy of forced starvation.

They've decided to call this commemoration of the dead a 'Famine' memorial day. The commemoration is long overdue.

But it's not a famine we should be commemorating. Because there was no famine. A famine is when there is not sufficient food to feed the population. What happened in Ireland in the 1840s was attempted genocide.

Let's look at the evidence, and I don't mean the mounds of dead, some containing the remains of over 10,000 people, that dot our landscape. Nor do I mean the ghost towns of the West of Ireland. I mean the documentary evidence of genocide.

What is a genocide? In common terms, it is the attempt to murder an entire race of people. But the United Nations has a legal definition. In fact, it has an entire convention on genocide. The relevant part is section 2, which defines acts of genocide.

As a single reading of 2c reveals, what happened in Ireland in the 1840s was a genocide. This has been confirmed by international legal expert F.A. Boyle, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who wrote:

"Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnic and racial group commonly known as the Irish People.... Therefore, during the years 1845 to 1850 the British government knowingly pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland that constituted acts of genocide against the Irish people within the meaning of Article II (c) of the 1948 [Hague] Genocide Convention."

But some people object to the suggestion that there was intent on the part of the British government of the time. They suggest that the famine was an act of God, of nature, a tragic accident caused by a fungus on a tuber which had nothing to do with any human action or intent. To demonstrate the intent of the British colonial administration of the time, it is important to look at their own stated documents on the matter.

Firstly, let's consider what Robert Murray, writing in his 1847 book "Ireland, Its Present Condition and Future Prospects" had to say about the alleged famine:

"The surplus population of Ireland have been trained precisely for those pursuits (unskilled labor or agricultural) which the unoccupied regions of North American require for their colonization. That surplus is an overwhelming incubus (demon) at home, whether to themselves or others. Remove them and you benefit them in a degree that cannot be estimated. Precisely as you do so, you raise the social condition of those who remain."

In other words, a policy of clearing Ireland of its 'surplus' of people and driving many of them to America would be of benefit to the American economy and to the easier administration of Ireland by Britain! Bear in mind this was written at the height of the horror - Black 47. This isn't some sort of 'Modest Proposal' type of joke. This is a genuine policy proposal.

But perhaps Murray did not represent mainstream British opinion? Let's consider instead the London Times, which crowed:

"They are going. They are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the streets of Manhattan...Law has ridden through, it has been taught with bayonets, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled to the ground, straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the Legislature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant there the institutions of this more civilized land."

In other words, the newspaper of record in England records with glee the imminent demise of the Irish as a nation in the hope that its land can be cleared for plantation by Britons. But again, perhaps it is unfair to attribute these mainstream British opinions to the government itself? Let's look at what they had to say.

On April 26th, 1849, one hundred years before the Genocide Convention was signed, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon, wrote to the then British Prime Minister, John Russell, expressing his feelings about the lack of aid from Parliament:

"I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination."

Bear in mind, this is the voice of Britain in Ireland speaking. And he is speaking of a policy of extermination of the Irish people. I call that genocide. But perhaps I'm wrong. So let's look around for other views. According to holocaust historian and expert Richard L. Rubenstein in his book "Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World":

"A government is as responsible for a genocidal policy when its officials accept mass death as a necessary cost of implementing their policies, as when they pursue genocide as an end in itself."

Rubenstein is the man who invented the term 'genocide', so I think we can defer to his definition of the word. So it seems absolutely indisputable: under the terms of the UN convention on genocide, Britain was guilty of conducting genocide on the Irish people during the period variously and incorrectly referred to today as the great famine or An Gorta Mor.

Now, I'm not interested in a Brit-bashing exercise. I can't imagine that the British of today would in anyway feel guilty (nor should they) for something committed by an elite that ran their country and ours a century and a half ago. Britain is historically responsible for a number of attempted genocides, at least one committed on their own soil (the Highland clearances.)

Indeed, the 'great hunger' was not the only attempt at genocide on the Irish people. Cromwell's exploits two centuries earlier spring to mind. I can't imagine that it would ruin relations with Britain or indeed the British people if we were simply to pay proper tribute to our own dead.

In fact, I think many British people might find it illuminating to know what really happened. Certainly, given how the 'famine' is taught in our schools, I believe it would be illuminating for a lot of Irish people too. I accept the British apology for what Tony Blair's word is worth. Which is little, in fairness, but I accept it anyway. But that's not the point.

The point is that our own government fails to acknowledge that it was a holocaust, not a famine caused by a lack of available food. The Irish holocaust had little in common with famine or hunger. Should the focus of Jewish holocaust commemorations be on preventing gas poisoning?

What would any self-respecting Jewish person say if people expected them to euphemise away the horror their people suffered, or suggested that they get over it and grow up as a people? The Rwandans and Armenians would not accept anyone else trying to diminish the attempted genocides that happened to their peoples. So why do we accept it?

Sure, some Shinners might want to use the designation of any commemoration for some Brit-bashing. But that in no way invalidates the core point, which is nothing to do with the Brits of today. It's to do with our own acknowledgment of our own history in accurate terminology.

When we can do that, then we can really move on as a nation.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:48 am

Food Exports from Ireland 1846-47

Published in 18th–19th - Century History, Features, Issue 1 (Spring 1997), The Famine, Volume 5

The issue of food exports during the Famine has fuelled an on-going debate in the historiography of the crisis. The traditional, popular view has considered the export of food to be a major contributory factor to excess mortality, symbolising a triumph of doctrine over humanitarian considerations. The opposing interpretation has argued that even if all the food had been kept in Ireland, it was not sufficient to compensate for the shortfall resulting from the blight. Furthermore, it is argued, by 1847 grain imports to Ireland exceeded exports.
The debate has tended to juxtapose John Mitchel’s emotive assertion regarding ships laden with food leaving Ireland against Austin-Bourke’s pioneering and frequently cited tabulation of the Irish grain trade in the 1840s. Whilst the former is impressionistic and anecdotal, Bourke’s statistics are based on contemporary government returns. The latter is used as evidence of the net inflow of grain in 1847 and thereby dismisses Mitchell’s claims. More recently, Jim Donnelly amongst others has refined this argument, suggesting that grain imports only really became significant after the spring of 1847 (HI 1.3, Autumn 1993). In the months prior to this there had been a shortfall in food imports which contributed to a ‘starvation gap’ in Ireland.
Thus far, however, the debate has been conducted within narrow parameters. For example, it has focused almost exclusively on national estimates with little attempt to disaggregate the data by region or by product. The debate has confined itself to grain and thus the wider issue of food exports has been ignored. Also, the net inflow of grain into Ireland in 1847 has to be viewed against the poor grain harvest, especially oats, in 1846. This meant that the volume of grain available for both home consumption and exports was reduced. Moreover, in looking at the issue of food exports, the role of ideology has been emphasised whilst the financial motivations which underpinned the desire for non-intervention in the food trade have been underestimated. Consequently, the role of Irish farmers and merchants, both individually and collectively, has been neglected.

Inadequate official data

The official returns compiled by the British government of grain imports and exports are flawed. This was acknowledged by the Inspector of Imports and Exports at the time. Apart from mistakes in computation and weight conversion, they are an under-representation of food exports from Ireland. Consequently, Bourke’s estimates are based upon inadequate official data which underestimated the volume of grain leaving Ireland during the Famine. Therefore, they cannot provide an accurate gauge of food (or calorific) losses. Furthermore, the importance of import/export data can only be totally assessed in relation to home demand and total agricultural production (which only become available from 1847).
The unreliability of the official data was a consequence of the Act of Union: Ireland was increasingly absorbed into a free-trade zone and there was little financial or fiscal necessity to keep accurate data of food imports from Ireland to Britain. Although overall estimates were made of grain imports from Ireland—upon which the British working-classes relied so heavily—the returns were not comprehensive. Since 1825 the recording of all other foodstuffs by the central government had been discontinued, although records of live animal imports were kept intermittently. This lack of central attention makes research into the local records even more important.
Significant amounts of food were leaving Ireland during the Famine years. In 1847 alone, the worst year of the Famine, almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the major ports of Britain, that is, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London. Over half of these ships went to Liverpool, the main port both for emigration and for cargo. Shipping returns for all of these vessels and full details of their cargoes have survived, although they have been little used (similar records for Ireland have not survived). Food was also exported to smaller ports such as Preston and Runcorn, although their records were not kept systematically. A search amongst the surviving port records throws new light on the question of food exports during the Famine. It also provides an insight into the nature of the Irish economy in the 1840s.
It is generally accepted that by the 1840s, Ireland had become the granary of Britain, supplying the grain-hungry British market sufficient to feed two million people annually. Grain was not the only major food export to Britain: the data suggests that at the time of the Famine the population of Britain depended heavily on Ireland for a wide range of foodstuffs, and not just grain. At the same time, large quantities of other merchandise were exported from Ireland. In the twelve month period following the second failure of the potato crop, exports from Ireland included horses and ponies (over 4,000), bones, lard, animal skins, honey, tongues, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed. This vast export trade suggests the diversity of the Irish economy during these years and how disease and starvation existed side-by-side with a substantial commercial sector.
The port of departure of the vessels transporting food from Ireland is in the surviving records. Their pattern of origin demonstrates that the food cargoes were coming from ports throughout Ireland, not just on the east coast. Ports situated in some of the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland were sending cargoes of foodstuffs to Britain: Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport. In the first nine months of 1847, for example, seventy-five ships sailed from Tralee to Liverpool, most of which were carrying grain. In the same period, six vessels sailed from Kilrush in County Clare (which suffered acutely during the Famine) to Glasgow carrying a total of 6,624 barrels of oats. Throughout 1847 also, both Indian corn and potatoes were exported from Ireland.
The question of free trade during a subsistence crisis lay at the heart of an on-going ideological battle within British politics. This was most evident in the decision not to close the ports, a change of policy in response to food scarcity. It also demonstrated the political muscle of interest groups, but especially merchants, within both Britain and Ireland. Closure of ports was a traditional, short-term response to food shortages. In had been used to great effect during the subsistence crisis of 1782-4 when, despite the opposition of the grain merchants, ports had been closed and bounties offered to merchants who imported food to the country. During the subsistence crisis of 1799-1800, the government had placed a temporary embargo on the export of potatoes from Ireland. In 1816 and 1821, the British government had organised the shipment of grain into areas in the west of Ireland where there were food shortages. The grain was then sold on at low prices. Similar intervention and market regulation occurred in Britain. For example, following the poor grain harvest in 1773, the bounty on wheat exports was removed in an attempt to keep grain in the country.
By the 1840s, this level of intervention was viewed by the government as being ideologically inappropriate as they preferred to leave food exports unhampered. In 1845 and 1846 there were calls from the corporations of Belfast, Cork, Derry, Dublin and Limerick for the ports to be closed in an effort to keep food in the country. At the same time, local and central governments throughout Europe were responding to food shortages in their own countries by closing their ports as a short-term expedient. The Dutch government also repealed their Corn Laws in 1846 in an attempt to facilitate the import of cheap grain. http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th ... d-1846-47/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Mar 17, 2014 9:17 am

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Mar 17, 2014 9:31 am

LilyPatToo » Sun Mar 18, 2012 5:11 pm wrote:I'm Protestant "lace curtain Irish" on one side and Catholic "shanty Irish" on the other and recall the old folks talk about remembering when newer Irish immigrants were referred to as "breeders" and *insert "N" word* by just about everyone :( That was in Western PA from the late 1800's to about the 1930's. Even in the 40's, my parents had to run away to marry. I guess that's why I wasn't as shocked as most people by Scorcese's Gangs of New York, set during the Civil War and showing how dense, desperate and violent the Irish slums were in that city. Newcomers were recruited right off the ships to serve as cannon fodder for the Union Army. Each wave of immigration looked down on subsequent waves, but all assimilated pretty quickly. We never learned any of this in school though--I got most of it from listening to the elderly folks talk after I was supposed to be in bed.

LilyPat



Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby FourthBase » Mon Mar 17, 2014 9:57 am

The Consul » 19 Mar 2012 16:55 wrote:There's an old gaelic saying "love hides disgust." I grew up understanding the big parade day was more an American than an Irish invention in that, as a certain Harrington explained it to me, "on this day, all people get to be Irish, it isn't just what's in your blood, but what's in your eye." Everyone has to have some form of distinction. Shane McGowan, after all, is not exactly unheard of wherever the reels may echo; Indeed, I've known some that stayed afloat well into their '80's. False pride is a cheap trinket sold outside the baptistrey when the bells can't stop ringing in all those swollen, whiskey soaked brains. But there are these moments, you know, when all the barriers seem to break down. Yes, it is an illusion, and yes, I remember children dancing on the plank. But for an instant here and there it seems like everyone is reflecting everyone, and the old ladies who only go out once a year say stoof like "donna get me wrong sonny, I love the old country, but I wouldn't trade a yard a where I stand now for an acre of that misery over there." Things change. They claimed it as their own that which mystifies and curses since the times of the Nile. The Hibernians will sing of Ragland Road, and toss one back for Bobby Sands. Me, I celebrated reading Heaney to my son whom I named after him...then drank a pint of Guiness. For the road is long and wet and hard to see and it is important to reflect on how one may fall.


Here's to that! Wow.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby FourthBase » Mon Mar 17, 2014 10:08 am

Great thread. Given the history of my Irish side and my Sicilian side, not sure how I should ever be expected to feel guilt about what "white people" have done, lol. No white people I was ever related to!* As for the parade, hey, every Irish Catholic I've known has been a drinker. Well, almost every one of them. Some of them used to drink, lol. I didn't develop that tendency, I drink like my Sicilian side, where almost no one is a drinker. But yeah, if this were a parade for Indians or Jews or blacks, it would have long ago undergone a politically-correct makeover. Thank god it hasn't. I love the Southie parade, with few exceptions. And when else do people put on Irish music? St. Patrick's Day is fun. Slavery was surely not fun. Awareness of the latter does not require diminishing the former.

* Well, correction, there was one uncle who attained a low-level position of power and didn't always use that meager power in a non-racist way. But perhaps that tiny stain on the family tree is canceled out by my being blood-related to several black people? I don't know antiracist calculus. (Or any calculus, lol.)
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby brekin » Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:38 pm

Not sure if this was already posted. Been meaning to read this for awhile but haven't got around to it yet.

Image

The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country – a land of opportunity – they found a very different form of social hierarchy, one that was based on the color of a person’s skin. Noel Ignatiev’s 1995 book – the first published work of one of America’s leading and most controversial historians – tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how the new Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists. This is the story of How the Irish Became White.

http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-Whit ... 0415963095
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby mulebone » Mon Mar 17, 2014 7:05 pm

In the 1800s, the Irish (whether in Ireland, Britain, or the U.S.) were often very negatively stereotyped. In many cases the same negative characteristics attributed to Africans and African Americans (sloth, immorality, destructiveness) were often also associated with the Irish. In fact, some scientists believed the Irish were, like Africans, more closely related to apes than to other Europeans, and in some cases in the U.S., Irish immigrants were classified as Blacks, not Whites.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... the-irish/


There are great 1800's era political cartoons at the above site. No idea how to post photos.

The Irish were stereotyped as uncivilized, unskilled and impoverished and were forced to work at the least desired occupations and live in crowded ethnic ghettoes. Irish immigrants often found that they were not welcome in America; many ads for employment were accompanied by the order "NO IRISH NEED APPLY." Throughout the 1800s, as hordes of technologically and agriculturally unskilled Irish immigrants settled in the major cities of the east, several anti-immigrant groups began to develop. Nativists reacted to increased Irish immigration with violent riots and increased demands for limits on immigrants' rights. These nativist groups considered the immigrants as a threat and regarded the Catholicism of the Irish as an alien and rebellious religion and culture. During the mid-nineteenth century anti-Catholic riots struck the major eastern cities and vandalism against Catholic institutions became such a common practice that many insurance companies refused to cover Catholic schools and churches.

Many nativists urged policies that would limit Irish political power and immigrants' rights to vote and to hold public office, to be passed. In 1849 The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, a clandestine society of nativists, emerged; its members pledged to only support native-born Protestants for public office, to fight the Roman Catholic Church and to support an obligatory 21-year waiting period for naturalization. This society, later reformed into the American party, when asked about their anti-immigrant activities would simply reply "I know nothing," earning them the name the Know-Nothings. This party with its motto "Americans Shall Rule America" won many city and state elections throughout the 1850s and produced a multitude of political cartoons depicting the Irish as a barbaric civilization.

http://www.victoriana.com/history/irish ... toons.html


Even more anti-Irish political cartoons above.

Actually the Irish arrived at a time of need for America. The country was growing and it needed men to do the heavy work of building bridges, canals, and railroads. It was hard, dangerous work, a common expression heard among the railroad workers was "an Irishman was buried under every tie." Desperation drove them to these jobs.

Not only the men worked, but the women too. They became chamber maids, cooks, and the caretakers of children. Early Americans disdained this type of work, fit only for servants, the common sentiment being, "Let Negroes be servants, and if not Negroes, let Irishmen fill their place..." The Blacks hated the Irish and it appeared to be a mutual feeling. They were the first to call the Irish "white nigger."
Well Robert Moore went down heavy
With a crash upon the floor
And over to his thrashin' body
Betty Coltrane she did crawl.
She put the gun to the back of his head
And pulled the trigger once more
And blew his brains out
All over the table.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby brekin » Tue Mar 18, 2014 12:51 pm

mulebone wrote:
No idea how to post photos.


1. Click on the Img button in the editor.
2. It makes the following: (img)(\img) but with brackets.
3. Post the url of the image, not just the page, but the url of the actual image, like this one in between the two brackets: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/120 ... arpers.jpg

Image
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby mulebone » Wed Mar 19, 2014 8:51 am

Thank you. I'm techno-challenged. I blame it on my Polish side, since my Irish side is usually drunk & sleeping it off somewhere.
Well Robert Moore went down heavy
With a crash upon the floor
And over to his thrashin' body
Betty Coltrane she did crawl.
She put the gun to the back of his head
And pulled the trigger once more
And blew his brains out
All over the table.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby FourthBase » Wed Mar 19, 2014 12:21 pm

brekin » 17 Mar 2014 11:38 wrote:Not sure if this was already posted. Been meaning to read this for awhile but haven't got around to it yet.

Image

The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country – a land of opportunity – they found a very different form of social hierarchy, one that was based on the color of a person’s skin. Noel Ignatiev’s 1995 book – the first published work of one of America’s leading and most controversial historians – tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how the new Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists. This is the story of How the Irish Became White.

http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-Whit ... 0415963095


"They"? "Their"? Who, exactly? Why are the powerless Irish -- most -- credited by proxy with sharing the power of the very few powerful Irish? Why do we categorize like that, period? Isn't that, like, the root of what all racism is about? Essentializing? Collective blame?

Personally, I'll be fucking damned if I ever let anyone ever categorize me as anything but a disempowered outsider, on the whole. Or, "white", lol. What the fuck is "white"? How I am I actually this "white" in any way besides the remnants of old prejudices, the occasional instances where unwritten racist guidelines come into play, or...the absence of being what is purported to be "black", i.e., I'm white if I'm driving and pulled over in the sense that I have, on average, less to worry about because I'm not-black. There is no such thing as "white" to be, culturally, socially. I am definitely a byproduct of some Irish and Sicilian cultural tendencies, but they are faint, too. And no one ever knows I'm one part-ethnicity or another unless it's specifically brought up. Otherwise, I am a representative of my family (the blackest of sheep, which ought to be its own category, because it's a real one, in real life, unlike race most of the time); I am a Southie dude; I am a smug semi-Asperger-ish nerd, which is a far more consistent grouping of like and like people than race, too. I am a bunch of things. White is among the least meaningful ways to describe me, or anyone. I mean, what in the fuck would a homeschooled middle-class suburban Jehovah's Witness black kid have in common with a black kid struggling in the hood? Almost nothing, culturally, situationally. I had and still have way, way more in common with that hood kid than the technically-black but culturally-alien suburban kid would. Not just in terms of taste, but in terms of power, income, wealth, connections, daily experiences, family structure, recreational habits, professional trajectory, credit score, and on and on.

Anyway, the Irish didn't actually become white. No one did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Histor ... ite_People

Certain people became powerful, thanks to their ethnicity no longer being a bar.
But those certain people were still a tiny minority of all [insert false grouping].
Yes, they could then gain a foothold for "their own", but it was still: Not most.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby brekin » Wed Mar 19, 2014 12:55 pm

Fourthbase, I feel you, as a sweet Irish boy formerly of a little ways outside of Boston. But go talk to some people in Roxbury. Here's a crib sheet for the big city that has been around for a long time, but hasn't been really needed to be updated much: The WASP's own it, the Jews rent it, the Irish run it, and the Blacks live in it.
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby norton ash » Wed Mar 19, 2014 1:25 pm

How the Irish become pink: drink, sunburn, anger, crying. In my experience.
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