The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy

The Final SolutionBy Bob Gelms Tim Pat Coogan is one of Ireland’s greatest historians. His book, The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy, steps a long way toward healing the horrendous British Government attempt to deliberately kill as many Irish peasants as possible using a conjured-up potato famine as the cause of so many Irish deaths from starvation. This book was very hard to read. It stirred up a myriad of emotions and memories of talks I had with my grandmother. I wanted to write about this book in context of my family’s connection to the Great Hunger. I didn’t think anyone would be interested, but my editor, Katrina Wilberding, said it would be OK because most people know I’m Irish, and, as everyone knows, I always do what Trina tells me to do. The Irish potato crop did fail a number of times from 1845 to 1852. The hardest hit county in the country was County Mayo in the west of Ireland. Nearly 60% of Mayo’s population died of starvation and another 20% to 30% of the population left Mayo for other destinations in Ireland, America, Canada, and Australia. The remaining 10% survived a living hell on Earth. Among the survivors were my great- and great-great-grandparents. My grandfather was born and raised near a Mayo town call Castlebar and my grandmother in the ancient village of Mayo Abby. They both heard stories of the Great Hunger from the people who lived through it. Nanny passed those stories on to me and they frightened me. As I grew older the fear mixed with anger and outrage . When my Grandmother described her feelings for the British Government, she used very strong words. She didn’t say them in English, she said them in Irish. She thought I didn’t know what she said. My Grandfather and his buddies taught me those words. They were, let’s say, colorful. Mr. Coogan writes about the one man in the British Government who, more than anybody, was responsible for the attempted genocide, Sir Charles Trevelyan. He was the Assistant Secretary to HM Treasury and was put in charge of administering relief to the Irish people. Here is an example of how Sir Charles thought about the Irish and how he intended to organized his job. He said, “The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. 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.” Under Trevelyan, Irish peasants had to suffer the mortification of seeing British ships laden with food sailing from Irish ports during the Famine. There was plenty of food in Ireland. Trevelyan made sure it was all sent to England. He, in fact, sent back a whole cargo ship full of grain donated by the King of Turkey. There was no official explanation why that happened. Mr. Coogan reports that the Irish economy supplied British cities with 83% of their beef, 79% of their butter, and 86% of their pork. It’s not likely that the Irish peasants had enough money to afford this food at market prices but with assistance in fixing lower prices or with relief assistance from Trevelyan, that food could have saved an enormous number of lives. Let’s say you were a tenant on a British estate in Ireland. As was exceedingly common, your family and extended family live in a one room house. Everybody works in the fields. Half of them die of starvation. You don’t have enough people working in the fields to make the rent. The British overlord evicts you and burns your house to the ground. Now you have no job, nowhere to live, no money, no food, and all of your meager possessions burned up. Mr. Coogan points out that this was dreadfully frequent and widespread. There is one account of an enormous British estate, the owner of which decided he needed the land on which stood the tenant houses. He evicted 400 families, burned all the houses, turned the land into pasture for his booming cattle business - in the middle of a famine - and sent all the beef to London. By setting up the system so that the Irish would either die by the hundred-fold or just leave the country, Trevelyan had his eye on the future. There was a hidden benefit. In the almost certain circumstance where the Irish would revolt, all the able-bodied men who would have joined the IRA were dead or emigrated…. all except my Grandfather. The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy by Tim Pat Coogan is the horrifying untold story of the so-called Irish Potato Famine. It’s a very old story happing over and over again. It happened to Native Americans, it happened to Jews, and this time it happened to the Irish.“Dia bean na Gaeilge” God bless the Irish.

Tim Pat Coogan's interpretation of the famine, and the reasons for its occurrence, is a thought-provoking and provocative one. Irish revolutionary John Mitchell famously said "God sent the blight, but the English sent the Famine". Coogan agrees with this opinion of the famine. To be more specific, it is Coogan's contention that with the onset of blight, the famine and its effects were greatly worsened by the Whig party policies of laissez faire capitalism under Lord John Russell. Charles Trevelyan is given particularly harsh treatment by the author. Given the persuasiveness of the arguments put forward, it is difficult to disagree with the negative assessment which many are already familiar with from St. John's famous ballad The Fields of Athenry. Trevelyan's official position was Assistant Secretary to the Treasury. However, as explained by Coogan, his influence and power went beyond what such a humble title entailed: he was effectively in control of famine expenditure - and more often, lack of it.Through several engrossing chapters filled with quotes from personages and documents of the time, both sympathetic and unsympathetic to the Irish situation, Coogan paints a bleak picture of the situation in Ireland during the 1840's. The prevailing thinking of the time was that Ireland was a backward, over-populated cesspool of ignorance. The prevailing thinking among 'progressive' minded people of the time was that there was a great need for a reduction in the numbers of people in Ireland living off the land in small, inefficiently cultivated plots of potatoes. These progressives wanted the small tenants off the land for it to be sown with more productive plants better suited to export and economic opportunities: plants such as wheat and barley. One way to achieve this end was through emigration; another was through starvation. Coogan does agree that Ireland of the time was overpopulated considering the availability of resources. The humane solution to this predicament would have been a system of supported, humane emigration alongside a genuine effort to develop the infrastructure of the country for the benefit of all. These efforts would have included the development of fisheries and road and canal networks. Unfortunately, in a time before Darwin, it was much easier to let the weak perish and the strong survive.Coogan acknowledges that some efforts were made by the British Government to address the situation caused by the potato blight. These included the Work Schemes and the Workhouses. These however were wholly inadequate and unsuitable to the task at hand. Often the aid did not reach the places worst affected, including Connacht, where roads were of a very poor standard. Also, men were expected to work for food when they were scarcely in a position to walk. This was not an era of hand-outs for nothing.The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2 is cited and used by Coogan to justify his contention that the policies of the British Government towards Ireland during the time were indeed tantamount to genocide. These policies ruled out the controlling of prices to enable the starving to gain access to foods such as grains and livestock which were being exported during the famine years. The reader may be reluctant to impose more modern values on a time over one hundred and fifty years ago. There is little doubt however that the actions of the British Government of the time would today be regarded as callous and would most certainly be condemned by every civilised country and unconscionable genocide.Also deserving of condemnation was the widespread anti-Irish propaganda reminiscent of Nazi Germany. In the popular and influential media of the time such as The Times and Punch, the Irish were portrayed as being apelike, inferior, and lazy. There was very little acknowledgement of the cultural achievements of the Irish people, the back-breaking work required for potato and peat cultivation or of any reasons for their depressed state such as the rapine of predators like Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell or the landlord system.All in all, Coogan argues his points very well and provides excellent background information on Ireland of the time and an insight into the thinking and policies of key players. It could be read by anyone with an interest in the period without a lot of prior knowledge. The fact that he takes a definite position from the outset makes for an interesting read. Yes, it is biased, but as Howard Zinn did in his People's History of the United States, Coogan has deliberately taken a position, the position of the oppressed, often voiceless multitude. In this excellent book, their voices are heard from the grave.

I read this book on holiday and it is an eye-opener. It gives an in depth view of the politics 'at play' during the potato famine. Well worth reading for anyone wishing to have an overview of the acidic relationship between Parliament and the Irish politicians and population at that time. The author pitches the narrative at a level where the 'ordinary reader' can make up their own mind on the political machinations at work. While I appreciate that those political students who wish to intimately and forensically examine this period in British/Irish relations will find the contents somewhat superficial to their needs I am of the opinion that the many sources and references would be invaluable to both the general reader and student alike. I intend reading it again and as a result will probably seek out further sources in order to expand my knowledge further.

The blurb on this book rather overplayed the contents. As an ancestor of someone who fled the famine, I was looking for a well researched and inciteful view of what happened. The book has factual history but it is often difficult to follow and poorly referenced. I became annoyed by the journalize (by the end of the introduction!) and frustration grew as I read further. I would not recommend this book for someone wanting to know the facts, though perhaps once these are familiar, this book gives an interesting viewpoint.

This book gives an insight into the disgusting way the British Government treated the Irish and deliberately allowed a large proportion of the Irish population perish whilst exporting crops to England . The Government of the day practised ethnic cleansing .

Starts off ok promising a good dive into the history of the famine, and specifically how the British affected the outcome. However, the points made seem to go around in circles with no real progression and the analysis of the points being made becomes laboured and difficulty to read.

Beginning with a chronology of the famine from 1690 to 1852, when a quarter of a million people emigrated, the book provides a controversial insight into Irish Famine and is expressed with a referential transparency. The plot is conceptually expressed with rage, which is deeply saddening, while the structure demonstrates a hard-nose for detail, which illustrates a sociological perspective rather than a technical one. I would agree with the sentiment of one reviewer here and agree that secondary students should definitely study this book in their research of how we learn about genocide.