History hasn’t been much in my focus over the last few months due to life reasons, but there’s still been some interesting items I’ve come across:

I’ve started exploring famine folklore and it’s brought back the childhood memory of being told about “famine grass”: A patch of dead grass indicating where someone supposedly died without being buried during the famine and that stepping on the patch will bring a wave of hunger over you.

1/7 The main claim I see arguing the Great Famine was a deliberate genocide by the British is that, while the country starved, food continued to be exported under armed guard… 🧵

“For those who lived through the creation of ‘Why Ireland Starved’ Joel Mokyr’s passage was like a huge articulated lorry speeding through the small and somewhat sleep village that was Irish economic history”

What a phenomenal start to an article.

Interesting facet of the blight in the Netherlands is that the upper classes blamed the crisis on the poor, accusing them of being alcoholics and wasteful, similar to the preconceptions held by parliamentarians in London, who believed the blight was a crisis of the Irish poor’s own making.

Partner insists nothing will grow in our garden so I’m considering an experiment to see if potatoes will grow using a simple lazy bed.

Last night I had a dream I grew them in a wheelie bin and got a crop of massive 1kg potatoes.

A sign if ever there was one.

Reading about how the blight affected the Netherlands, where it’s noted that potato cultivation shifted from clay to peat regions. This has lead to me poring over a soil map of Ireland to see if there’s a correlation, but I am instead questioning if I’m looking at a test for colourblindness

Me previously: “Why does everyone rave about the Cork Butter Museum?”
Me now: “How is it that someone can make the history of butter production so interesting?”

34 days into writing a response (due to life commitments 🤷🏻‍♂️) on why Europe wasn’t as devastated by the potato blight, which rolls nicely into why Ireland had an over dependence on the potato. Taking bits from previous answers as far back as two years and cringing at how much nuance I may have missed

“Connell’s view seems to indicate that marriage was an inferior good.”

The meaning changes wildly without the context of this being a book on the pre-Famine economy.

1/7 A bit of reading recently, firstly with Christine Kinealy’s “The Great Irish Famine” which has given me some different perspectives, one interesting learning was that as well as outrage over food exports there were also calls to stop grain being used in the distillation of spirits.

I’ve seen the Great Famine episode of the ‘Behind the Bastards’ podcast recommended a few times so started listening intending to give a review. One hour in, the sources have been poor, and the historical background mostly incorrect, but does have its funny moments.

1/6 There’s an oft repeated claim that the Irish became dependant on the potato as they were forced to either convert to Protestantism or divide their land among their sons, refusing to abandon their faith it lead to minuscule land plots where only the potato could provide for a family.

Reading an account of wages for seasonal labour in pre-Famine Ireland, markedly while wages fluctuated “a glass of whiskey” remained frequent. Which makes me question if a Glass of Whiskey standard, á la the Gold standard, existed or if I’m overthinking it.

When the Potato Famine hit Ireland, what kind of local efforts were there to try and stop it? Plough up some good posts with /u/NewtonianAssPounder, and get an answer to this #history question.

The duality of Reddit:

On one hand, this is one of the most consistently nice, polite and constructive members of our community, whose username we always enjoy popping up on our radar.

On the other hand... it had to be THAT username?

1/8 I recently picked up “Ireland Before The Famine 1798-1848” by Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh hoping to piece together some of the conditions in pre-Famine Ireland that I’ve picked up from other books. My main focus was to answer the question of what happened to the Industrial Revolution in Ireland.

I believe introductions are a thing here? From Ireland, I’m one of AskHistorians amateur flairs with a distinct interest in the Great Famine and a side of the Irish Revolutionary Period, my intention here is to post some interesting info I come across. Hobbies also include gaming and rugby.