Comments on: Famine in Ireland

By: Gri mReaoer

Gri mReaoer — Sat, 20 Dec 2003 15:27:04 +0000

I have just read the “awful” John Derbyshire’s article. It sems eminently fair to me. People have forgotten that, before contraception, married women typically produced a baby every two years. Famine and disease were the standard methods of population control. Throughout Europe, it was not unusual for large numbers to starve whenever the harvest was poor.

By: Roger

Roger — Sat, 20 Dec 2003 02:17:44 +0000

The Malthusian explanation is not very plausible. The population of England experienced the same kind of exponential growth, especially in the eighteenth century, without famine. But during that same century, and on into the nineteenth, the English had done their best to decimate Irish industries (as they were also doing to the Indian textile industry), and drew away the capital that could be invested into agricultural improvement into English ventures. Angus Calder’s book, Revolutionary Empire, cites a whole literature of English military and government men mulling “removing” the Catholic Irish—in fact, the war against the North American Indians came out of the same mindset, and was often strategized by the same thinkers (Walter Raleigh, for instance), who floated schemes to make Ireland Irisch-rein. This is the long, tedious and disgusting background to the Victorian Irish policy. Does this mean that famine in the 1840s was intended? No, but it does mean that there was a whole cultural bias against helping the Irish, and there were goals that could be met by weakening the Irish. That Irish protestants were caught in the net, too, isn’t really relevant. The great Anglo-Irish landholders of the Pale weren’t, and they certainly saw a point in evicting tenants and destroying the intricate net of customary tenants’ rights that bound them in their dealings with the peasantry.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sat, 20 Dec 2003 00:43:18 +0000

Derbyshire on Chelsea, if you want to check first-hand. The part at the end about punishment to the ninth degree tends to attract the most flak. Ted B. discusses it here.

By: Vinteuil

Vinteuil — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 21:15:41 +0000

Chris Bertram: fair enough. I agree that dietary factors are probably relatively unimportant. And it is much more plausible to present black homicide rates as a form of victimization. (Not necessarily right—just plausible.) Differential HIV infection rates are iffier—choice? victimization? I dunno. And I’ve been there. Lots of personal experience with that one—more’s the pity. Anyway, thanks for your interesting and patient responses. P.S.: few neo-cons harbor much affection for John Derbyshire. I don’t know whether or not Thorley Winston is an exception to that rule, but I suppose he knows, and can speak for himself. You’re right, of course, about the “inventiveness of Straussians when it comes to reading texts.” Another thing I’ve experienced at first hand. Feh. I just don’t think it’s relevant here. Matt Weiner: I haven’t seen the “anti-Chelsea Clinton screed”; it’s hard to imagine how anything that could reasonably be so described could fail to be awful. Same goes for hit-pieces on Dubbyah’s unfortunate offspring.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:10:31 +0000

do you take the position that the famine was a deliberate act of British policy? No, but it looks as though the failure to provide relief may have been a deliberate act of policy, based in part on anti-Irish animus. Derbyshire certainly seems to be playing both down, implying that the failure was an accidental byproduct of laissez-faire and that the anti-Irish animus was born of despair or some such. I really don’t see Derbyshire acknowledging cultural alienation at all. I’m not sure whether I would tag Derbyshire “awful” on the basis of this article alone—ill-informed, apparently. My judgment has to do with other writings—the anti-Chelsea Clinton screed for one.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:44:41 +0000

I didn’t say that I don’t accept those explanations (the ones you just listed) “even in part.” I said that for what you stated of me to be true I’d have to endorse “in large part” the explanations I was referring to—by which I meant in context the “bad diet” explanations. (I can see how you might have misread me as referring to the wider list of explanations.) I can certainly accept that all of those factors figure somewhere in the story which tells us why African Americans have such low life expectancy. I rather doubt that the dietary aspect accounts for much of the difference between African Americans and the wider US population.

By: Vinteuil

Vinteuil — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:33:48 +0000

Matt Weiner: do you take the position that the famine was a deliberate act of British policy? Judging by the passage that Chris Bertram quotes, Sen seems to attribute it more to callous indifference arising from cultural alienation, which seems consistent with Derbyshire’s view. By the way, I once exchanged a few e-mails with Derbyshire, and found him rather gratuitously nasty, so I am perfectly prepared to believe that he’s awful. I just don’t think I’d base that judgment on this particular piece.

By: Vinteuil

Vinteuil — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:10:12 +0000

Chris Bertram: actually, I think that poor diet came in third behind high rates of homicide and HIV infection in those conservative explanations for excess African American mortality. I am a little surprised to learn that you do not accept those explanations even in part. I had assumed your position was that, while these white/black differences are real, they should be seen not as a product of “choice,” but of past and present victimization—slavery, Jim Crow, ongoing discrimination, etc. Which would bring us back to the idea that when American blacks die at disproportionate rates from, among other things, heart disease and stroke brought on in part by poor diet, they, like the Irish in the potato famine, should be seen as victims. If you do not think that African Americans suffer from higher rates of homicide, HIV infection, heart disease, stroke, etc., and that thiese factors do not largely account for their higher mortality rate, than I guess I just don’t know what to say. As for “the Reaganite indifference toward AIDS victims in the early 1980s”…well, I have probably already annoyed you quite enough for one day.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:07:18 +0000

Vinteuil—Hm, this is subtler than I thought. The passage strikes me as saying “Anglo-Saxon societies did not prevent the export of foodstuff while the natives were starving, nor organize adequate relief,” but now I think that this turns on the reference of “such things.” I think Bertram and Davies are still dead right in the context of Derbyshire’s essay. Derbyshire says, “Britain was a minimum-government state, ill-equipped for the sort of speedy, wide-scale relief the situation called for,” which doesn’t account for the Poor Laws. And since Derbyshire claims, seemingly on the basis of Malthus, that “For years before the famine it was perfectly obvious that Ireland was heading for a demographic catastrophe,” it won’t do to say that Britain wasn’t in a position to do a lot of famine relief at once—by Derbyshire’s lights, they didn’t need to. I mean, yoicks, he fulminates about the idea that the Irish famine was deliberate (on the part of the UK), and then quotes Lord Cardigan saying that the million who died were “not enough to do any good.” Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

By: Vinteuil

Vinteuil — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:16:46 +0000

Matt Weiner: you cannot possibly believe that the phrase “organize adequate relief” is not intended to refer to Ireland during the famine.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:12:34 +0000

There is indeed a parallel between Trevelyan’s attitude and that of those modern conservatives to whom you refer in that they both attribute the excess mortality of the populations concerned to the bad dietary choices of those very populations. But it doesn’t follow from the fact that I see a parallel between their attitudes that I also see a parallel your suggest I see between the two populations. For that to be the case I would have to endorse, at least in large part, the explanations proferred by Trevelyan and the conservatives to whom you refer for that excess mortality. And plainly I do neither of those things. Not that there aren’t parallel’s to be drawn. In particular, wherever policy-makers feel a sense of cultural alienation from and perhaps hostility towards the most vulnerable and incline to blame them for their misfortune, less will be done to address the real (rather than made up by people like those conservatives) causes of that misfortune. (A case in point being the Reaganite indifference towards AIDS victims in the early 1980s).

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:01:25 +0000

Textual note: Derbyshire wrote, “In part, for the same reason that the British government did not organize adequate relief, or prevent the export of foodstuffs from Ireland while Irish people were starving.” If this sentence is grammatical, “while Irish people were starving” modifies “prevent the export of foodstuffs…” and not “organize adequate relief.” In order to make it modify “organize adequate relief” Derbyshire would have to eliminate the comma before “or” (or perhaps insert a comma after “Ireland”). So Chris Bertram and Daniel Davies appear to be right that Derbyshire seems to spread misinformation about the British government’s ability to do poor relief at the time. As for the question of whether Derbyshire is vile, I think that can be settled without reference to this article.

By: Vinteuil

Vinteuil — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 17:55:49 +0000

Chris Bertram again: re “Derb” and “Straussian”…are you under the impression that John Derbyshire is a “neo-conservative?” Or just people who call him by his nickname? Either way—bizarre. [CB: no. The nickname suggested to me a certain affection, but the real point I was somewhat sarcastically making concerned the notoriously inventiveness of Straussians when it comes to reading texts. I’m sorry you didn’t get it.]

By: Vinteuil

Vinteuil — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 17:49:23 +0000

Chris Bertram: you ended your original post with these words: “Blaming the victim, bad choices, poor diet — I’ve heard those explanations before somewhere.” And then Ted Barlow tittered in sympathy. I was assuming that you were drawing a parallel between Edward Trevelyan’s rhetoric and that of the conservatives who commented on your first post on Sen’s book a few days ago. But when those conservatives talk about bad choices with respect to poor diet, they are thinking precisely of the epidemic of obesity, with all it’s attendant health problems, that notoriously afflicts America’s lower classes. In that context, your parallel makes no sense unless you see junk-food addicts as victims. But perhaps you didn’t realize what the conservatives on that thread were talking about—which might actually make the indignation with which you greeted their remarks more comprehensible to me. Incidentally, I have had several discussions lately with people on the left who do see Big Macs, potato chips, and Coca Cola as forms of victimization. If you and Ted Barlow do not think that way, then I am relieved to hear it, and sorry that I mistook your meaning.

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 17:32:26 +0000

Bert wrote:

I’m wondering which school of textual interpretation you belong to.

The one where you actually read what a person writes rather than trying to set up a strawman argument so you can claim that based on your interpretation of what he might have meant, that he is just “making it up as he goes along.” It was also incidentally the same school that taught me that when you wish to compare different groups to test a hypothesis such as why one group’s life expectancy is shorter than the other, you try to find two groups as similar to each other in other respects as possible and hold all other variables constant.