Irish Potato Famine - Isle of Blight - Part 1 - Extra History

The Irish Potato Famine ranks as one of Europe's worst agricultural disasters--scattering a people to the winds. bit.ly/EHPatreon

During the height of the famine, the Choctaw Nation, Native American Indians sent $170 to Irish famine victims to try and help. We still remember this generous gift over 170 years later. There's a statue in Cork and Ireland sponsors Choctaw students to come over and study in Universities here. The Choctaws are a great bunch of lads

The Choctaw tribe in the U.S. donated about 170 dollars to the famine relief at the time. It was a huge amount for a people that were barely over their own forced displacement, the Trail of Tears, at the time. There is a sculpture in Cork to mark the generosity of the Choctaw people.

When the Ottoman Sultan tried to help the Irish, while the British tried to stop them. The Ottomans sent aid secretly to avoid angering the british queen. There is still a crescent and a star incorporated in some Irish cities' port in their honour.

As a native New Yorker, I appreciate the depressingly accurate shout out.

Potatoes naturally contain the overwhelming majority of vitamins and minerals humans need, so potato diets allowed people to live healthier and longer (and this was before proper food/nutrition science). It was also a "wonder crop" in China, because it could grow easily in areas where other crops would fail. The spud was responsible for doubling the world's population within a century.

I'd like to point out a minor error in this video. The organism responsible for causing the blight, Phytophthora infestans, is an oomycete, not a fungus. The two are similar in both morphology and lifestyle, but are completely unrelated genetically. Fungi belong to the kingdom fungi, while oomycetes belong to the kingdom chromista. Mixing these two up is like confusing a bat and a bird: they look sort of similar and they do a lot of the same things in the environment, but they aren't related to each other at all. I realize some may see this comment as pedantic, but it is an important difference.

When you realise India and Ireland have the same colour scheme and were both starved out by the British Coincidence? I THINK NOT

As someone who opened a bag of potatoes only to find it completely rotten and filled with blight, I can only imagine what sort of deathly stench a whole field of plague ridden potatoes would would smell like. I still remember that stink.

"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 people." - Sir Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to HM Treasury during the Irish Famine Honestly, this quote must sufficiently demonstrates how little the British Government cared about Ireland.

Fungus caused the blight, England caused the famine

"Oh, hi NYC! I didn't see you in this analogy." Oh shit, shots fired! Wait, it's NYC. They're used to it.

My great, great, great grandfather managed to raise a family during this time. I had no idea it was this bad.

“Prime...Minister...Peel...” Why are you emphasizing his name? Am I supposed to know who that is? Oh, you’re doing a potato pun.

Great Britain: "Why did the Irish Rebel?"

Teacher:What was the name of the parasite that caused the Irish Potato famine? Me:The British Teacher: A+++++++++

The Troubles begin British: SURPRISED PIKACHU

I wonder if Otto Von Bismarck had a plan to counter this? After all Bismarck Always Had a Plan

Don't let starvation get in the way of good land profits.

The blight was responsible for the death of potatoes, while the british was responsible for the death of humans. Just like the famines in India in practically the same decade, famine struck Ireland continued to export farm goods to England because all government positions and ministerial positions were colonial. And the system of Ireland was not designed to protect irish people. They were left to the mercy of the “invisible hand”