American Reacts to Why Ireland Has Fewer People Than 200 Years Ago (Irish Potato Famine)
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- Опубліковано 27 жов 2022
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In this video I react to why Ireland has fewer people now than 200 years ago. A time period in the 1800s called the Irish potato famine starved and forced millions of Irish citizens to leave their homes for other places. Unfortunately, the famine along with certain other issues such as war and economic conditions hurt the Irish population for well other a century.
However, the good news in this story is that the population of Ireland has been on the upswing for decades. It also turns out that the Ireland economy is actually very impressive for a country its size.
This was an excellent video and helped me understand more about the low population and the history of Ireland, especially the great famine that took place there. I still feel I may be missing some context about the potato famine itself so I may check out an in depth video about it soon.
Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this reaction please give this video a thumbs up, share your thoughts in the comments and click the subscribe button to follow my journey to learn about my British and Irish ancestry.
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As an English person we were taught about the Irish potato famine at school - and it wasn't sugar coated either. The British government behaved atrociously towards the Irish. Not our finest moment by any means.
The worst thing is that there are those in British establishment that still believe that the Irish overreacted, by becoming independent, and will eventually "see the light", and rejoin the United Kingdom.
@@jackdubz4247 Those guys are like Putin who thinks Ukraineans are still Russian at heart despite the Holodomor.
We weren't your people when we grew wheat and you took it elsewhere to those who were? Then we aren't your people now.
Same thing for both manmade famines, the Capitalist and the Communist ones.
It was genocide
@@jackdubz4247 Really? Who thinks that? I cant see that being a popular idea across Britain at all, certainly not in England.
@Shelley Philcox the 'unionist and Conservative party'?
10:02 Remember the people evicted and denied government relief were people who had grown enough wheat to live on, but the wheat was sold in England, Scotland and Wales. Because the landlords preferred keeping their business average over keeping their tenants alive.
The truly appalling part of the famine story is that that famine is not even the worst one in Irish history. 33% of Irelands population was dead 3 years after Oliver Cromwell decided to visit us. While there may be debate about the categorisation of the 1845 famine as a Genocide there is no debate about Cromwells famine. He deliberately burned every crop in Ireland.
Hey steve, I would say the one major thing about the famine which wasn't addressed in this video (which i cant blame it for, it was more of a population analysis), was that a large number of deaths and emigrations was due to the very poor management by the British government, who were still in control of Ireland. To the very point where it is often widely considered a genocide. And to be honest, even as an Englishman myself, looking at the facts of it all, it's hard to disagree with that sentiment.
It seems like a large amount of people feel that same sentiment. Someone recommended a short video series about the potato famine that goes into greater detail. Hopefully I can check it out soon.
The choktoe nation donated to the Irish famine, and is still remembered today
I live in the rural West of Ireland. So many fields still have the ruins of tiny stone cottages. There are whole abandoned villages on some of the islands. The old potato fields are still domed meaning that the crop had just rotted in the earth and never harvested.
It was a genocide not a famine.
The perfect holocaust by Chris Fogarty is a book worth reading.
True, As the English guy that was put in charge of fixing the problem said that the famine is just punishment from god which shows he was not interested in helping the Irish at all.
Ireland was exporting enough food to feed 3.5 times the population at the height of the famine. The guy in the video you played hinted at what was really going on, but in a nutshell, Irish people were being forced to produce food for their British Overlords to export for profit. The potato was the only food the Irish were allowed to have for themselves, the rest was taken (rent). At least this was true where I come from (Co. Mayo). Checkout 'The Deserted Village Achill Island'.
I've seen that village on Achill.
My blood still runs cold when I think about it.
Extra Credits did a 5 part series on the famine. It’s very detailed. Worth watching for a better understanding of it. It explains why people were so dependent on the potato and how bad the British response was.
Yes the British had potato, grain, butter (etc) mountains in vast warehouses, they could have put them on artic lorries, then onto ferries for Ireland.
@@davesimms5397 *sigh* that's an impressive level of ignorance wrapped in sarcasm you've got going.
@@davesimms5397 Ireland was an exporter of food during the famine.
The British army protected these food exports.
@@davesimms5397 the uk had wars every were and we needed to feed the armies.
@@davesimms5397 Or just not taken if from Ireland for a bit.
My Mum was Irish she came over as a young woman, to the England in the late 50s and she never returned. When I was at school in the 80s nearly all of my friends had Irish relatives if not an Irish parent. There were O'Brians, O'Dwyers, Cunninghams, O'Neals - I'd guess that maybe in my primary school, in SE London we had 40% Irish or half Irish nippers.
My father came over in the fifties from Ireland along with 3 of his brothers, he stayed and married my mum but his brothers eventually returned home to Ireland.
Yes and the Highland clearances. America would have been totally different as well if it hadn't happened
Very true - that would be a good review
Yeah it would still belong to the Native Americans :) - although to be fair, the largest percentage of Americans (iirc around 48%) are of German descent, so who knows
Its history and a very sad part of history, we learn from history, however we have to look to the future and not be bitter.
Yes , you have a great attitude . My mother who lived in Liverpool and had Irish ancestry lost most of her family during the Second World War but at no time was she bitter toward the Germans .
Steve check out the connection between Native Americans with Ireland, there is a beautiful connection & generosity between both cultures. Truly amazing
There is so much more to the famine.
that video did seem to HEAVILY gloss over why the Irish population was so reliant on the potato crop. It seems to imply that we Irish were the driving force behind selecting that crop to survive upon...rather that our (at the time) neighbours from hell.
You go Ireland!! keep growing you got this 🍀😜
I'm 2nd eldest of 11 children, six girls & 5 boys. 3 of my brothers emigrated to Australia, and 2 of my sons are living there also. I've been to Australia a few times (4), but it's a long journey and I'm not able for the journey (19 hrs) from Dublin to WA anymore. I never stop missing them, but as long as they're thriving and happy, that's all that matters. 🇮🇪☘✝️👨👩👧👦
Not Britain's finest moment.
Good Morning Steve, here in Manchester it's thought that about 35% of nearly 3 million people have some form of Irish ancestry, that's why most Irish people in Manchester were disgusted when the IRA tried to blow the City centre up in 1996
My dad’s parents fled from Ireland to Manchester I think in the late 1920’s
They had to do because my dad’s dad was an Irish Catholic and my dad’s mum was an Irish Protestant.
@@timglennon6814 Bloody hell that reminds me of the song the Orange and the Green, if there's one thing the Irish didn't lose it was their sense of humour
Most of us were glad they destroyed the Arndale Centre, it was an eyesore. Rumours at the time were that the Council asked the IRA to do it. 🙃
Alot of Irish people and Scots came for work over a long period of time.
@@helenbailey8419 do you know that there are more than 200 languages spoken in Manchester, or different dialects, there are students from all over the world and a large immigrant population as well, it's a very cosmopolitan City
I am of Irish heritage and always have at least one potato in the kitchen. I used to keep a 5-lb bag for security.
A 5lb bag makes a nice close-quarters weapon 😁Your victims will never speak of their defeat fo fear of the stigma of being spudded. Greetings from Dublin.
My mum and dad immigrated to London from Dublin in the 70's as did most of my mum's and some of my dad's families. My dad was generally just looking for a better life and work and my mum and her sisters ran away from their dad eventually some of their brothers followed and the older ones had already left for England before they ran away and then my nan (grandmother) followed them after.
This was informative,you hear so many versions of any countries history.
The problem with videos on the YT covering the great famine is that virtually none of them are made by irish people.Rule of thumb if its called the Irish Potato famine avoid it go for ones that are irish made and says great famine rather than potato famine,because the famine was caused by the export of other crops not the potato crop failing.
Well said.
The video did not cover why the Irish were so reliant on the potato crop. Ireland had good arable land that grew plenty of various crops. However the good land was mostly owned by Protestant ascendency and absentee British landlords. This meant the majority of Irish were only left small patches of less arable land to live on and the only crop they could grow was the potato.
The reaction of the British government was pathetic and shameful. A large racist anti Irish sentiment existed at the time in Britain. Magazines like Punch portrayed Irish people as unintelligent apes. The British government continued to export other food crops out of Ireland and it was only due to international pressure that they eventually offered some aid but not enough. Many view the British reaction as deliberate genocide. Ireland was not treated as an equal member of what was then the UK and many hungry and impoverished Irish who fled to Britain were deported back to Ireland to die.
As the video shows the famine has had a massive impact on Ireland and its people and their psyche. So much so when the Live Aid concert was held to support Ethiopian famine victims in 1985 that Irish people donated the largest amount per capita in the world despite the Irish economy being in difficulty at the time.
Good afternoon from the ROI Steve, really enjoying your vidoes. you should look into the Irish potato famine by extra history, very detailed and has really good animation. keep up the good work!
Thank you. I appreciate that. I've just bookmarked it and hope to check it out soon.
Very good vid 👍 the only details missing would be how badly managed it was by Britain, the famine happened all over Europe and came from America but didn't have the impact. Soup kitchens were set by protestants and Irish Catholics could only be feed if they renounced their religion this was known as "taking the soup"
Souperism was a phenomenon of the Irish Great famine. Protestant bible societies set up, schools in which starving children were fed, on condition of receiving protestant religious instruction at the same time. Its practitioners were reviled by the catholic families who had to choose between Protestantism and starvation people who converted for food were known as soupers, jumpers and cat breacs. in the words of their peers, they took the soup. although souperism did not occur frequently, the perception of it had a lasting effect on the popular memory of the Famine. it blemished the relief work by protestants who gave aid without proselytising, and the rumour of souperism may have discouraged starving Catholics from attending soup Kitchens for fear of betraying their faith.
It was genocide
Being of Irish general t and proud of my Irish roots I am happy to sè Irelad doing so well recently.
Yes - do a video on the tayto famine - and see how ATROCIOUSLY the Brits treated the Irish during that time (assumingly you get a well balanced video).
As a Brit I lived in Cork on the south coast of Ireland for 5 years - you're left in no doubt that, while most there don't hold out resentment to Brits these days, most also believe what Britain did was tantamount to an act of genocide. They could have helped but the rich British land owners decided to make money out of the famine (something that started as nobody's fault) rather than help fellow British people (because Ireland was part of the United Kingdom at the time). And I think they're mostly right too based on the research I did while I was out there. It's SHAMEFUL what many British did to the Irish in the 19th century.
A real eye opener is going to a local "famine" grave - many towns have them - where people were buried en mass without gravestones or name lists.
Less of "the British"! More exactly, a tiny minority of wealthy British (and some Irish) landowners and politicians or do you accuse the greater majority of British, the hundreds of thousands of homeless destitute paupers living and dying on the streets and in the workhouses of England plus the children working in the mines and mills of the Industrial Revolution, as equally guilty of complicity in this British SHAMEFUL event? A country is an abstract noun without the capacity for ethical and rational thought. Individual and groups of people are different and are not a collective abstract noun to be applied irrationally to some ideological stance.
The Penal Laws and attitudes of Protestant Britain also festered the situation. An Gorta Mor wasn’t tantamount to genocide….just a slower more insidious means of actual genocide…removal of a population by forced emigration, death, forbidding of language and culture….ALL of these were present for decades before, during and AFTER GB ruled Ireland. I’m American and I respect Great Britain as allies. But my grandparents were from Ireland, in the Deep South, during the time of Ireland’s civil war. Because of this, I know the brutal conditions of Ireland up through the 1920s when they left. Members of my family were survivors of Churchill’s Black and Tans…which Hitler used as the model for his SA (Brownshirt) thugs…the forerunner of the SS in the Third Reich.
May Ireland continue to grow. May GB learn not to hide from ugly truths…nor repeat them.
🇺🇸🦅🇮🇪🇬🇧
Lots more to learn. People then and today starved because of economics politics and war not from lack of food.
23:14 Exactly.
The potato crops improved when other variants were imported which were less likely to succumb to mildew.
And again, it was not the farmers who decided all on their own "we want Irish Lump" it was their landlords who imagined to be providing for them in a rational way by chosing Irish Lump for them.
Not sure I heard "Irish Lump" right, I'm not going back right now, but that's what I think I heard the one variety of potatoes that dominated so much was in fact called.
Great video! More would be great also
FYI also look in to the early Irish Immigrants and how they were more widely used in American slave trade before any Africans were
This is a very detailed video but i suggest watching How The British Starved Ireland, it's a detailed explanation of how we were treated back then.
Is he including Northern Ireland in his population numbers? Republic of Ireland had just over 5m (in 2022)
That's covered the basics but plenty more to delve into.
If it wasn't for Irish emigration I wouldn't be here. Both my paternal grandparents were from Donegal and met in Glasgow, where I still live today.
Only recently came across your channel and have found it extremely entertaining so far. Keep up the good work.
Great video again 😁
Thanks Katy. :)
Itelands food exports to England actually increased during the famine. Shocking they had to sell instead of eating
My take on why Ireland's economy is boosted is because it offered low corporation tax rates which enticed foreign multi-nationals to base their european operations there. I think Dell and Microsoft and possibly Google, routed their UK sales through Dublin to reduce their tax liability.
Exactly, and large pharma corporations also have bases in Ireland. Most of Ireland's GDP is very much boosted by these multinationals.
Genius move at the time. They also hugely decreased the cost of education so Ireland became a hugely attractive place. English speaking, youngest workforce in europe, highly educated, close to europe, pro business government, ability to complete US pre clearance in Dublin, high number of grads in STEM and Business plus the low tax rate. It meant lower corp tax but more importantly a huge amount of high skilled jobs.
So? The Irish government's obligation is to its citizens in the first place. In current times I'm not sure if one can say that about the British government towards ALL of its own people.
Oligarchs seem to be ruling the British roost.
Also the film industry
What is wrong with this? Much more than the companies mentioned are located in Ireland and they route much more than UK she’s through Ireland. Pharma is also huge bd massive amounts of the world’s medicines are manufactured in Ireland. These companies pay massive corporation tax in Ireland. €24bn in 2022 compared to €4bn in 2010. Ireland’s success is due its attractiveness of be8ng an English speaking country in the EU. A budget surplus this year is helping the government support Irish people through cost of living crisis unlike Britain whose economy and standing is in decline all thanks to Brexit.
The lyrics of 'Fields of Athenry' may tell a story about that era
Being English, I don't automatically criticise my country's history. We fought the Irish in the seventeenth century, and I have sympathies with both sides; unpleasant European tyrannies like Spain and France were trying to conquer us, and the Irish allied with them.
But I am totally critical of the attitude of the UK Government in the nineteenth century. The Potato Famine was made far worse by the UK authorities. We could have alleviated the starvation, and we didn't.
The Government of the time was very similar in attitude to the right wing of today. (I'm tempted to say the Republicans, or a lot of the Conservative Party here.) It is people's fault that they are poor, and one mustn't give handouts. ('We will create a nation of mendicants' (if we do).) 1n 1834 the Reform Act had transferred power rather away from the aristocracy to business; this was the era of mill-owners treating their workers appallingly. As the century progressed, the franchise was widened, further, and attitudes softened, but not before great damage had been done. It was bad enough in Great Britain; those bastards stopped earlier, gentler forms of poor relief, and forced the destitute into grim places called 'workhouses'. But the treatment of the Irish was cruel beyond measure.
And it has embittered the relations between Ireland and Great Britain, and you must remember that when you see videos on the Troubles, which you must see. This is why hunger strikes have been such a very potent political weapon.
Presumably your Irish roots may come from the potato famine? Also the Irish culture has remained very strong abroad, as people continued to hold fast on to there traditions.
My ancestry is West Coast of Ireland which was disproportionately impacted by the famine & English rule. However due to fantastic church records in Ireland I have been able to trace my ancestors back 5 generations. My father was pure bred Irish, my mother’s ancestors are part Spanish- they are often called Black Irish due to their dark hair & skin tone.
1st... Hi Steve, you may want to watch next (on YT) 'How Ireland Became 2020's Fastest Growing Economy - Economics Explained' ? Best wishes from London
Awesome suggestion. Thanks
Something the video didn't mention, and it seems it is never mentioned in schools and very few books, although the potato was the main staple, Ireland had an abundance of wildlife, such as fowl and fish, as well as livestock. But if an Irish person tried to fish or hunt to feed the family, it was classed as theft from the British Lords and landlords that had taken the land and waterways and claimed it theirs. The greatest sin of all is that Irish people did not have to starve to death because of the potato blight at all. It was genocide plain and simple.
the Greatest export from Ireland to England is my Mother (Who has Terminal cancer)> She has lived in England for 75 years but she loves Ireland and I will always be grateful to Ireland for such a gift. If there is a match between England and Ireland there is only one country my Mother supports yes Ireland!!
A great movie about the famine is “ The Field” with Richard Harris
Knowledgia have put out out a very good video in the last two as it lays out the true reason why people died
React to the troubles by feature history if you want to learn more about why ireland is not unified
No mention of where the potato blight came from. The U.S.A - for profit. The producers knew they contained blight.
The potato blight was Europe wide but the sole reliance on the potato as a staple wasn’t as widespread throughout most countries. Sweden was particularly hit with famines as well. One third of Finland’s population which was a part of Sweden during the 1695-97 Great Famine died because of their reliance on bark bread. In the 1860s Sweden suffered poor harvests over several years because of the change in the weather patterns and the effect it had on their crops. They also suffered from the potato and other root vegetable famine with crops rotting in the fields. The mass Swedish emigration to the USA started following these famines. It is interesting that relief to poorer families followed a similar pattern to Ireland and that Sweden was exporting grain to Britain and elsewhere.
I highly recommend watching Extra Credits 5-part Extra History video on the Irish Potato Famine
ua-cam.com/video/gAnT21xGdSk/v-deo.html
Awesome suggestion. Thank you.
Hiya Steve, I've left you a link to our Accent in your accent vlog from the other day, you can react to it if you like, this is Choppy in Whitehaven, Cumbria, England
An American Indian tribe donated money to the Irish at this time. During covid the Irish donated money to that sane tribe as thanks
1:33 I see Sophie S has noted that you have been enlightened by the video you are watching.
The Irish tenants had a contract with Anglo-Irish landlords, they were to grow potatoes for themselves and wheat for the landlords, and when a few years through the potatoes were suffering from mildew and couldn't feed the tenants, the landlords still wanted to sell the wheat in London rather than get some of it for feeding the tenants that had grown it.
The Capitalist version of Holodomor, but the late Queen had the great advantage over Putin not to imagine that the smaller and formerly starved to death country identified as part of the larger one.
What we allowed to happen in Ireland was horrific and as an English person I can only apologize and promise to ensure that we do better. We are all taught about it in school so we never forget. If you go back in history Ireland's a very sad one, I have always thought that loosing their great leaders back in the middle ages and not being a monarchy left them vulnerable to both Scotland and England. It would be a very interesting study to look at Ireland and it's economy as in the future we will all need to have smaller/negative or at the most static populations.... I love history and what we can learn from it. The film Gangs of New York with Daniel Day Lewis captures this moment of mass Irish population surge in New York and how immigrants were treated. Even in the 1970's as a child I remember the No Irish signs for rentals..... very sad, we live in a better but not perfect world.
Millions of people left Ireland after the famine like members of my family because of gold rushes, railway/canal building and it was the industrial revolution, they were emigrating looking for work because Ireland did not have an industrial revolution due to having a lack of coal and iron. Everything began to change when industry changed with introduction of plastic and pharma as well transportation, communications and later big tech.
24:09 As said, wheat was grown, and Irish wheat was sold in London, giving profits to the landlords.
24:39 West and South - landlords less likely to sympathise, since the tenants were Catholic and spoke Gaelic. You know, the language where Poblacht na h-Eireann = people of Ireland.
Guns were outlawed/restricted in ROI in 1925, we've lived normal lives for almost a century without guns. I'm 47 and never seen a real gun and heard gunshots about 4 times in my life, i grew up in a bad area in Dublin.
For anyone wondering: Mentioning Potatoes and the stereotypes of Drinking, Fighting, Leprechauns (they're not real) etc in jest or complete ignorance won't offend 90% of us.
Things we will find offensive - Saying St PATTY"s Day (Patty is a womans name or a burger, Paddy is short for Patrick) and calling us British/English
It used to be 8 million and is now hovering around 5 million.
Also the gentry were given or purchased large estates and kicked out alot of farmers so they could breed sheep on the land to export
My grandmother left in the 1930s and her sister a little while later, although they arranged to meet my grandmother wasn't given time off she was a scullery maid in london. She never saw her sister again as communication was lost, so sad
My great great grandfather note on u mums side came over to here,Wigan in the North West of Enland being a survivor of tge famine which killed her family in anthem 1859s and my dad and at least 2 of his uncle were born in Ireland but left to find work here and my dad sent money back every week to help his elderly parent as tgere was a lack of work Itela d ar rge time I tge 1969s.
My Ancestors and A ghost story, my Ancestors came over to England in 1800 hundreds they were Farmers they moved to Lincolnshire and carried on their farming tradition, my late Fathers grew up on the farm. My Brother was tracing our Ancestral tree and found out that our Great Great Great Grandfather was a Ghost in Bracebridge Heath in a Restaurant called the Homestead , it was a lunatic Asylum back then called St Johns , he hung himself off the bannister in the hall , people have seen him to this day . Clarke from Irish in Gaelic Sept was O'Cl'eirgh meaning " Clerk" .
The reason that the Irish are spread so far across the world is because of the potato famine, its the reason i was born in England with all my family coming from Ireland
One thing that's really downplayed here is the English response to the the potato blight, and how that had such an impact which compounded the problem.
Only about 80% of the potato crop failed, but there was still plenty of other crops of corn and wheat etc. to feed the people of Ireland... But English landlords, the tax issues on crops, the relief efforts (or lack of), the workhouses, the forcing of the Irish people to give up their home and land just to go to a workhouse and be fed.... these were all caused by the British Parliment and English Landlords...
The video series by Extra Credit (5 videos, each about 10 mins long) covers the whole of the famine REALLY well, and is definitely worth a watch (you'll learn of some of the British political tug-o-war around that time from them too)
ua-cam.com/video/gAnT21xGdSk/v-deo.html
Terrible though it was, apparently there were no starving people living in Scotlland, Wales and England either? Bit bias I would say and no surprise, could it have easily been made by a Bostonian? Contradicts some of the documentary on the languages of the British Isles that you watched a couple of days ago. When it comes to the language, my mate went to school in Dublin and learning Gaelic was compulsory for him. At least it was in the sixties. No mention of the emigration to England and Scotland either.
Ihe Video on the languages of british isles,gives a false picture of the language ,you won't hear the language on the streets except for some remote communities .Its largely confined to education as its still compulsory ,TV and Radio he was incorrect to say its not spoken at all ,in remote areas you can still find people who speak nothing but irish however History with hilberts video painted a far rosier picture than the reality.
You don't get it, do you? Ireland lost at least 2 million to the potato famine due to death and migration. Irish is taught in Irish schools but the language is rarely used in daily life except in the Gaeltacht.
@@geoffpoole483 Oooooh! Observations and opinions. Sorry if they differ from your entrenched archaic views?
At that time Britain was in a position to draw upon its empire for resources, if required and any issue with food shortages was relatively easy to deal with as a logistical exercise. This is borne out by the ability of Britain to absorb the large numbers of Irish migrants that arrived during the great famine. The proximity of Ireland to Britain made it possible for food supplies to travel into Ireland but instead food (notably grain) continued to be exported from Ireland to Britain throughout the famine. Look up Charles Trevelyan, an influential member of the ruling Liberal-Whig coalition in the 1850s any you will see proof of this. Huge numbers of Irish people ended up in Britain but the video is from an American point of view so it's not surprising that it doesn't talk about Irish migration to Britain or other places very much. PS There are core compulsory subjects in Irish primary and secondary education (mainly the three R's) and Irish language is still one of them, unless there's a good reason why it shouldn't be.
@Ethan Trevelyan had a lot of autonomy and the rest of the government was happy to leave it that way: they wanted the problem to go away. At the time Dublin was considered to be the second city of the British Empire and there was a hugely active shipping route between Ireland and Britain. Logistics should not have been a major issue since exports from Ireland to Britain continued almost unabated throughout the famine. Likewise, communication was not an issue. The famine went on for a very long time and raoid communication (although no doubt it would have been helpful) wasn't necessary. Many thousands of migrants pushed out by the famine passed through Britain, to such an extent they had a permanent effect on the populations of cities like Liverpool and Glasgow. It would have been, and was impossible to ignore this, to the extent that Liverpool sent famine relief and took in orphans but their efforts were limited and unsupported by central government.
Your comment reads as rather defensive and is at odds with records that are available from the time.
The ROI has a good GDP and economy because it receives huge "bungs" from the Eu, entices corporations by breaking international law by charging almost )% corporation tax, it is not because they are industrious. The ROI has zero indigenous industry apart from farming so they do not have the industry to support a large popultion. Irish young people migrate out in their teens which keeps the population low. The potato was introduced to Europe by Sir Walter Raleigh so this video is airbrushing fact. Sorry, I like your videos but, I find this offensive
The usual drivel from the swivel eyed gammons bitter that Brexit has become a flaming dumpster fire 🙄
Ireland has been a net contributor to the EU since 2014.
Ireland has not broken any law in relation to corporation tax rates, if it has please point out the legal case ruling.
There are several EU countries that charge lower effective rates.
Zero indigenous industries, really? CRH, Medtronic, Kerry Group, Smurfit Kappa, Ryanair, Accenture, Kingspan, Musgrave Group, Primark, DCC, Jhonson Controls, AerCap to name a few.
That's not including the Multinationals that employ 275,000 in the country either, or the 100s of companies that support them.
You obviously didn't see the chart showing Ireland's population growing steadily since the 1960s originating with the economic reforms and liberalization under the Lemass government and formation of the IDA.
Don't worry about little old Ireland we're doing just fine. Do us a favor and go back to crowing about fish and blue passports. (And don't mention the food & heat banks or austerity 🤫)
Ireland is a net contributor to the EU. Well educated workforce. Ireland is the only English speaking nation in the EU. We have natural Gas off our coast. Your comments are incorrect
Loving the videos! You should try reacting to Winston Churchill's funeral "I vow to thee my country" without teering up. It's so heart breaking
Now you know why your ancestor's left
14:17 These areas hit the hardest - like landlords least likely to save their tenants by sharing wheat. Landlords obviously all having English as mother tongue or very nearly.
Not just potatoes, grain the English took from us to feed themselves. Those who didn't die were forced to leave to survive. The Choctaw Nation send us $700 as they had been starved by invaders, too. No one could send more money than Queen Victoria, £2,000 and the cost her visit some years later wiped that out. Many European countries had much lower Jewish populations after the Holocaust, too
It wasn't a the potato blight that killed people. It is more accurately referred to now as the great famine as there was enough food being produced on Ireland other than potatoes to feed the entire population but the people were not giving it. Ireland fed the british empire back then all the livestock was taking to feed the british soldiers in india and africa. And it was also during the industrial revolution when the british landowners were setting up factories and work houses where the starving people would beg to be aloud to to work in for a bed and food with some mothers handing their children over to the work houses. Then their were the people who were sold to land owners in america and other parts of the british empire like canada and australia and others who were sold as criminals for stealing grains and wheat out off the british land owner estates. There was no profit for england to help the irish but there was a massive profit in allowing them to starve. They got land handed over to them, they got free labour, they made a fortune outta selling them off as slaves. And they destroyed the native culture in the west that they had been trying to do for a few hundred years. It wasn't really about a potato famine it was a genocide and an act of war. The potato blight struck all of europe britain france germany and other european nations were hit hard and had less to eat but did'nt starve to death
About a third of the population of the Republic today live in Dublin or directly surrounding counties.
Actually closer to half maybe mid 40%
If you own that much land you can't claim benefits. It's the same today. I checked when I was between jobs and I was entitled to nothing because I was a homeowner. (and that was far less than 0.25 acres of land!)
.25 acre is tiny. A football pitch is 8 times bigger. Your home is worth far more than a .25 plot of land. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have got anything. You should. But .25 of an acre is not a farm. It’s a garden.
That's messed up. Your "homestead" shouldn't be a factor in getting short term assistance to get you through a hard time.
The British government designed the system to clear the land of Irish people.If they don’t die just send the Irish to the work house or put them on a coffin ship and take the land for themselves.They even paid for the passage on the ships rather than feed them.
Yes please, do another video on the potato famine. You so diligently picked up there must have been more to it ! And yes there was. You do very interesting videos. Thank You Very much. I particulary like the one with your ( American ) people doing a silence for our late Queen, how wonderful of them and the British anthem. We are very grateful. Oh, and please keep Harry over there. We don't want him back - He's lucky he didn't live not that long ago. Otherwise it would have been Off with his head !!! lol
Back then there was enough grain to feed the whole country but we were not british enough to get it. They did the sam in Bengal
I can only say that I'm very happy there aren't 27-36 million people on our island.
The population increase is not due to a higher birth rate. Look in to it.
@Ethan5,000? try 54,000 Ukranians and 10,000 other asylum seekers (so far)
My Grandad moved to England in 1946; he wasn't the first in the family to do so, two of his uncles already lived here and several cousins followed. He came because there was no work in Ireland. Until '46 he'd been in the Irish Army, as despite being neutral Ireland was concerned about the war spilling over (and it often did with Allied and Axis planes frequently fighting overhead). After the war though he was demobbed along with many others and had to look abroad for options. In the end he had two opportunities. The first was working as a Navy in England, the second was as a Police officer in the Palestinian Mandate (soon to become Israel). Thankfully the English offer came through first or I would not exist today and he would likely have got caught up in the violence of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
@9:30 Belgium France and other countries suffered from blight and crop failure but 1 they were not almost totally dependent on potatoes 2 they had governments who cared about them and was prepared to help rather than let God or the market decide and 3 they had infrastructure ie roads to deliver food and 4 pesants educated enough to learn to cook different foods.
The Fields of Athenry
Dont believe everything you hear in life, take everything with a pinch of salt. Many of England .Scotland and Wales has a huge population of Irish origins.
Though this video was mostly factually accurate, it lied by omission. Most of the videos on youtube are massively biased. The only people in the entire world who gave aid to Ireland was the native Americans, who had been oppressed and part exterminated by the immigrants from europe, and had the least available resources to give. Most of the Irish who fled to America were seriously discriminated against in America, and could not get housing, and were only allowed to do the most dangerous and unpleasant jobs. There were many massacres of Irish immigrants in America, that were covered up as being the result of disease etc. All efforts in America today to investigate the truth about the deaths of Irish immigrants in the past have been systematically buried and denied. The "troubles" are a massively complex subject in themselves. Many Americans are descendants of the Scots Irish who were then, and now, seen as being oppressors to the Irish, as they had to flee Ireland as well, not just the poor peasant farmers, but many of the previously wealthy land owners starved and had to flee as well.
That's not true. Quakers gave aid to the Irish. So did the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan made a financial donation which exceeded the donation from Queen Victoria and pissed her off. The Ottomans sent ships carrying aid but the Royal Navy attempted to prevent the ships getting through. Fortunately aid did get through and was landed at Drogheda.
for years their biggest export was people.... to put it down to the potato famine is silly.. Poverty was rife at the best of times. So people moved for a better life.
Definitely react to extra credits irish potato famine to understand
there was plenty off food but the english army took it and shipped it to england the potato was the main diet
The video does not explain that British potato production was also affected by the potato blight also, and this fact is often not stated.Also the emigrates came to Britain as well as US!
Also the landlords / owners cleared the Crofts families were left no where to go, no food and no work to put SHEEP on the land as they could get a good price for them and the wool , plus what we all heard on the video so very sad it wouldn’t be allowed now but they were the times they lived in full off SELFISH , Rich Politicians and rich Aristocrats outdated laws welfare of its peoples , life was cheap indeed 🤷♀️
Ireland was forced to rely on the potatoe as it was illegal to keep livestock.
Extortionate rent charged to farmer by absentee landlords was paid if not financially by all other food grown and therefore exported.
It is misleading to state that the Irish chose to rely on the potatoes in actual fact ireland was compelled to rely on the potatoe because of Britain's policy.
Lad as a paddy / Irishman , there was no famine it was because the English bigger stronger human being , good natured rich folk not the poor English they were treated the same as us the mainly English landlords raped the land there was loads of animals pigs , sheep , cows and deer plus variety of other crops but it was out of reach for us poor Irish we just tilled the land for them we relied on a South American vegetable called spud or potato it failed the English riich wanted to eliminate us but we moved everywhere hence you . But we were smart , look at us now . ♥️
This video was 2019. We have had hoards of migrants coming into the UK and Ireland since then, so the population is way higher now !
The Irish were one of the first to drink cows milk. The further you get away geographically today from Ireland today, the more milk intolerant people are.
I do very well with cows milk which I suspect is related to my Irish roots.
Final comment -= sorry - fab video BTW, I believe Ireland has taken in a lot of refuges and immigrants over the last 30 years. As a member of the EU it has encouraged people from Europe and also benefited from grants given by the EU to help develop it's country which they have obviously invested wisely. Does your Federal Government invest in poorer states to help lift them out of poverty?
React to top 10 British bands
And they sure don't teach any of this in British schools.
See Lsp Irish copies and the Titanic for further stories
Sorry for typos
I nearly blind due to cataracts and cannot seeuch at a
The British treated us like shit for 700+ years, this is why some Irish still hate the British. Most of those watch British TV and follow British football teams, it's ridiculous. I hate what they did to us but it was over 100 years ago, we've done well since then, get over it.
On a plus note, How many great Irish bands/songs have come from that? The Dubliners, Wolfe Tones, The Chieftans, etc
Imagine what you do with several million dead? People are starving so who buries them?many able bodied people are leav8ng.
A lot of the local graveyards became overwhelmed so mass grave sites were allocated where thousands were buried without coffins. There are numerous of these mass graves locally in Cork where I live
12:16 And they didn't exactly get a warm welcome in America, either from Americans or from the earlier immigrants from Ireland, most of whom were Protestant Irish or Anglo-Irish who were much better off money wise than their newly arrived poorer Catholic countrymen. We have the character Rory from 'Glee' and the number of times they make fun of him in that show for being Irish (both the jocks and the glee kids) to show how little has changed since then (don't remember if I thought those jokes were funny when I first watch it but since learning more about Irish history I can't really forgive the writers for writing stuff like "no offence Irish, but no one can understand a word you say").
The Irish were treated very poorly. They were used to build railways and canals, they called them navvies
check out a video called How england starved Ireland
A bit off topic but Poland's territory prior to WW2 was not the same as post-WW2. For example parts of what is now western Ukraine was in Poland. After WW2 Poland's border shifted westward, taking up territory that had previously been German.
Poland has shrunk and grown and moved around a ridiculous amount through history!
Steve, I am not knowledgeable on the potato famine, but you should look into it more on the political side of things. There was a British MP Who championed the Irish in Parliament. He went to Ireland to see for himself how bad things were. Then reported back to Parliament. He was responsible for getting help to relieve the plight of the Irish. He is now held in high regard for his efforts.
ah yes, bless Trevelyan's tiny cotton socks....its like it totally cropped up on all of them, out of the blue as it were, and wasn't the inevitable conclusion of 100's of years of near (or in some cases actual) genocidal policies by our considerate masters.
We honour him to this day as a champion of Irish history, in some of our most famous songs....about starving to death, being "transported" as slave prisoners to Australian, and murdering English people. but you know, its all part of the rich tapestry of history.
I have to agree with you. The golden thread running through the rich tapestry of life was extremely tarnished at that time. My only exposure to the famine was some years ago in a documentary. I was disgusted with what I heard about the British government's treatment of the Irish. So impressed with Trevelyan's actions. I am English so was heartened that despite the hideous treatment meted out by the British Parliament, good still eventually shone through.
@@philipc2025 its difficult (or rather inappropriate) to apply the moral standards of today to these long passed historical events, but vanishingly little of what was done by the British during the famine (or the very many actions that directly led to the famine itself) were anything other than either expressly or surreptitiously evil, since what little was done usually came with either; forced eviction, forced separation of families in forced labour camps knows as "work houses" (because charity didnt 'correct' the moral problem with the Irish that led to there starvation in that they were "lazy"...or so the logic of the time went), forced hard labour for starving people on pointless civic works known as "famine projects", forced religious conversions for the price of one meal (know in Ireland as "taking the soup", referring to Irish catholics who had converted just so as not to starve to death, which was until VERY recently a terrible insult in Ireland) or mass deportation to the other side of the planet to served as slave labour in pinal colonies.
Trevelyan was NO exception since he was the primary agent for the continuation of food exports from Ireland to England during the heights of the famine...hence why it became known as "Trevelyan's corn". He is often quoted as having said that the famine was God's judgement on the Irish and excellent population control. His most famous quote being "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 [Irish] people".
To my knowledge, the only group who emerged with absolute moral integrity intact during the whole horrible event were the 'Religious society of friends', otherwise know as rhe Quakers.
They did everything imaginable to help and feed the starving Irish, without fear or favour. To such and extent that the Quaker soup kitchen's in my home town (and many others) is still honoured with a civic plaque in their memory. If youre looking for a shining light in the darkness, I would start (and possibly end) there instead.
22:20 Remember that part in the video where it says potato farmers were "evicted"? - that means they were tenants.
Remember where it says that "food exports to Britain" were not banned? - that means their landlords weren't ruined by the potato famine.
The actual rationale is, the same people who failed to grow potatoes for themselves and died or got homeless, also succeeded in growing wheat for their landlords, same years.
Some of these landlords were despising (as did Karl Marx) the Gaelic, Catholic population.