Thiccaca t1_jd1r9u2 wrote
It is amazing how much the Colombian Exchange impacted global diets.
Tomatoes are from the New World. Before that, there were no tomatoes in Europe.
Imagine Italian food without tomatoes. Indian food with no chile peppers. Potatoes alone kept Ireland running for decades. Until they didn't.
me_bails t1_jd353nf wrote
Yea, but the Ireland thing was created by rich people being aholes. That famine should have never happened, at least not how it did and to the extent it did.
Thiccaca t1_jd3w00q wrote
It was, like most famines, a confluence of events.
I was just remarking on the impact that one plant had.
that_other_goat t1_jd3hjct wrote
>The Irish famines origins are from Catholicism, Irish laws of inheritance and a limited gene pool of potatoes. It would have happened without the British being there as the British exploited the situation that the Irish created themselves.
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>What happened? All potatoes in Europe were descended from 5 tubers. This presented a huge decline in genetic variability and meant if one got sick they all would this was a time bomb.
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>What about the land?
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>The land divisions which allowed for easy English takeover was rooted in Catholicism and period Irish law. What happened is the land was subdivided amongst all sons every generation. Sounds fair? but no it was a terrible idea as it combined big families with limited space. In a few generations this combination rapidly resulted in useless parcels of land being inherited which were promptly sold off.
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>This is what allowed the British to acquire Irish lands for a song because alone they were worthless to period people. You couldn't produce anything with them of sufficient scale to feed yourself. Instead of changing this they continued down this path.
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>Enter the potato.
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>The potato was viewed as a godsend because it allowed for the production of almost everything a person needed on a small sliver of even poor quality land and gave an income as well. The British had nothing to do with this sub division they exploited it after the damage had already been done. The potato was a stay of execution to be blunt it was a time bomb that was always going to go off this merely exacerbated the situation.
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>Why?
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>The Irish became dependent on one crop something even in the period they knew was a bad idea due to frequent crop failures through out European and even Irish history. Famines were common before modern agricultural systems. They were doomed the second that inheritance law came about.
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>You can blame the English for not sharing their crops but not for the famine itself that was 100% not their fault. It was always going to happen. A cruel irony is if the potato hadn't come about the deaths would have been smaller as they could have corrected the problem before it became a wildfire.
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>Why didn't they give the Irish the wheat crops? or beef crops? that had nothing to do with the origins of the famine itself. They should have but it wouldn't have changed that the failure happened it was always going to happen. The British turned a blind eye to what was always going to happen.
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>The people acquiring the land didn't matter as well the sub divisions still would have happened as it was engrained in their laws and culture. It was always a timebomb sitting under the Irish population which got added to by the potato.
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>Moral of the story? never trust a stopgap to be a solution to your problems. Fix the problems. We're walking down the same path right now with climate change.
me_bails t1_jd3ilbh wrote
The English exporting literal tons of food from Ireland, had nothing to do with the issue?
that_other_goat t1_jd41jfw wrote
I didn't say the British had nothing to do with it I said it would have happened regardless of the British or not they didn't matter. I said ironically the potato made a bad situation worse by propping up a failing system. I said the root of the problem was the inheritance system and the catholic church. The British exploited a failing system but the system was going to fail with or without them. The root of the problem was Irish inheritance law and the catholic church.
To have avoided the disaster you would have to corrected the problem which lead to it. People were going to die the potato made it worse as it created what we now call a bubble and all bubbles eventually pop. Shipping in food wouldn't have worked really well given period logistics. It was all moved by hand we have enough trouble dealing with famines with modern machinery.
Additionally period cultivars of Potatoes and wheat are harvested at different times of the year meaning when the famine first hit it the wheat was already gone it didn't stay locally. The earlies, one of our greatest developments in agriculture in my opinion, were not around yet. The crops in field? were not ready and a good portion of that was seed crop remember you need seed to plant next year.
Until the harvest you're on the fat of last year it's the sad irony that you're more likely to starve in the early summer before the crops are ready then in the dead of winter. They're known as the hungry times for a reason and this was true of everywhere. It hit at the worst possible time.
Add insult to injury blight can hit at any stage of potato development up until harvest as the weather triggers the spores development which ruins the crop so they got continually fucked over by potatoes.
History is complex but it teaches if you don't deal with the root of the problem you're destined to hit that problem head on. The Irish were well aware of their issues with land and continued to sell it off. Avoiding problems leads to disaster and that's a lesson we desperately need right now need I explain why?
rsclient t1_jd4krvj wrote
Well, reading your first sentence certainly gives the impression that you're not blaming the British:
> The Irish famines origins are from Catholicism, Irish laws of inheritance and a limited gene pool of potatoes
If your statement is true, we can confidently say that in Europe there are more famines in catholic countries than in protestant ones. Looking at the data, there are essentially no famous famines in spain, italy, or france -- which rather limits the value of assigning blame to being catholic.
that_other_goat t1_jd4ulnd wrote
You've made a false assumption.
All protestant nations were once Catholic the religion didn't change until the protestant reformation. The reformation caused many different schism in the church to form but the basics are pretty much the same and a lot of legal and cultural conditions come from that. The cultural practice I was referencing came from the catholic church itself not the religion it represented and they stuck around. It is still there even in modern secular Europeans societies.
Again you need to go to the root to find the issues. It was bad law and an a bit of Catholicism that planted a ticking timebomb.
sharksnut t1_jd58rjl wrote
>All protestant nations were once Catholic
Scandinavia
that_other_goat t1_jd5tnyc wrote
Even Scandinavia.
The Christianization of the Scandinavian counties took place between the 8th and the 12th centuries whereas Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis on October 31, 1517 triggering the protestant reformations so yes they were Catholic. There was a few centuries where catholic was Christianity for the west. Eastern Orthodox was in the East out of Byzantium (eastern Roman Empire)
Interesting side note: the catholic church wouldn't have spread as it did without Charlamagne.
sharksnut t1_jd6eqda wrote
Yes, I know the dates, but I thought portions went directly from paganism to Christianity.
that_other_goat t1_jd7eg7f wrote
okay so you missed the intervening steps.
A lot of the structures we use in the west came to us via the catholic church even those that found their way to us from the ancient world.
Catholic monks copied and preserved the texts. The first printed book was the bible there was a reason a translation from Latin was such a big deal. The catholic church was the gate keeper for all information as they produced the books and were the majority of those that taught.
Catholicism is how the people of the era understood their world it was in everything. For example If you read agricultural texts from the period you'll see it's steeped in saints and religious symbology as most of the literate and producers of books was the clergy.
Reformation Europe inherited all this ingrained dogma.
my entire point is history is complex and long term. My point is you have to find the root of the problem to deal with anything else nothing gets done. This is a lesson we refuse to learn and one we've repeated time and time again.
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