Irish Famine Revisionism

July 30, 2003

I have been rereading the pastoral letter published by Bishop Thomas Nulty in the 1860's. I do not know the original date of publication. The letter was reprinted by members of the communist party in 1913. They were interested in his calls for a return of people to the land. The letter is still espoused by modern Irish radicals interested in land reform.

Library of Congress Control Number: 43043216 Type of Material: Book
Brief Description: Nulty, Thomas, 1818-1898.
Back to the land, by Most Rev. Dr. Thomas Nulty, Bishop of Meath.
Cincinnati, O., Joseph Fels Fund of America [1913?] 62 p. port. 17 cm.

I am most fascinated by this document because it can be considered a source document on the Irish Famine, contemporaneously written by a deeply involved participant and observer. Of greatest interest in its contents are that Bishop Nulty blamed the travails of the Irish poor on the removals that took place and at no time in his writings does he mention a potato famine.

In the reading I have done on the Irish famine I think it is very important to distinguish between source that are contemporaneous and those published in the 20th century as text books for teaching children.

The Removals

The removals that Bishop Nulty noted and described in his pastoral letter need to be explained.

Prior to 1830, small but significant numbers of Irish left Ireland for opportunities in America and indeed made up a significant minority of the colonial population of the British Colonies of North America and also Spanish South America. Prior to 1830, the British tax on Irish landowners, was based on the number of acres of land that they owned. To afford the tax it was to the advantage of the landowner to have a maximum of his land leased to tenant farmers whose production of cattle, sheep, pigs, wheat, cabbages and other cash crops where to his advantage and generated revenue to pay the tax plus profit. Thus the population of Ireland, since the years of the end of the Civil War in the 1650's, had been increasing steadily and had reached over 8,000,000.

In the 1830's the British government recognizing that tax revenue from Ireland was fixed because the acreage of Ireland was fixed, but that costs of government affairs were increasing with the growing population, changed the tax laws such that landowners were now taxed on a "head" basis. They were taxed on the population of their lands. This was a significant and deadly change.

Almost immediately the most unscrupulous landowners dispossessed their tenant farmers, and hired thugs in some cases to burn them out if they would not leave when directed. This action is called by the name "removals". Soon thousands and finally millions were set afoot wandering on the roads and byways of Ireland looking for a place to live. Other landowners, would not allow them entry, since to so would require that landowner to pay their head tax. Directives were given to remaining tenants banning them from assisting or sheltering the dispossessed in order to prevent them from swelling the population of the landowner's property. They were even banned from feeding the homeless on the street. Punishment was to be dispossessed yourself.

Some people of good will established homes for the dispossessed but there were not enough facilities and the economics of this kind of aid made it temporary at best. Some kinder landowners assisted those they dispossessed by funding them to leave for America.

By the 1930's there were only 2,000,000 people left in Ireland. Over a million had died in the removals while the others had fled to America and Australia.

The Potato Famine

Truthfully, the many Irish that came to America spoke of a potato famine in their homeland. Each year the potato crop of Ireland is subject to blight because of the moist sea air, which favors the blight. However, there is no contemporary evidence that I can find of a potato famine in the 1830's. Recent studies by agronomists found no evidence of food shortages in 1800's Ireland. But what has been found is that the cash crops of Ireland, which were exploited for export by the landowners, were carefully inventoried. All cattle, sheep, pigs, bushels of wheat and other cash crops were closely watched by landowners. Potatoes were not counted or inventoried.

Potatoes were the only food that a kindly tenant farmer could slip over the fence to a family passing by on the road to the seaport where they hoped to gain passage to America. These potatoes would not be missed by the landowner. Unfortunately there were not enough of them to go around or to feed the millions of removed persons

The Myth

The mythology of the Irish Potato famine grew from memories of the shortage needed to feed the many dispossessed, and from efforts of 20th century British educators to explain away the death of a million Irishmen under their governance. But it should not be forgotten that these millions died and those millions fled because of the usual British mismanagement of Irish affairs.

Patrick Anderson
Bishop Thomas Nulty was the 1st cousin of my Great great great grandfather.