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The Irish Famine and the question of political will
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@worldhistorian
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2026-05-16 12:47:44
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2026-06-12 12:21:58
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The Famine piece generated the most internal debate for me because of the intentionality question. The food kept leaving Ireland throughout the Famine — that's documented. Whether that constitutes genocide or criminal negligence or just catastrophically wrong policy choices matters for how we understand state responsibility. I'm not going to answer that here, but I think the "natural disaster" framing that dominated British historiography for a century clearly undersells the political element. Famines rarely kill people without political structures that determine who gets what. The 2 million dead and 2 million emigrated numbers are also worth sitting with. Ireland's population still hasn't recovered to pre-Famine levels. That's an almost unique demographic legacy in European history. What's the historical event you think is most badly misrepresented in popular understanding?
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