#An Gorta Mór

[werewolfetone]

This weird historical fiction book that I'm reading rn and also a nonfiction book which colm tóibín apparently wrote on the same topic which argue that irish ppl took anti british sentiment during the great famine too far and it's some major problem that people hated the british during the famine are so bizarre to me because obviously on one hand, you are the cruellest person ever and it astonishes me that the words "the irish should have been nicer to the british people who were starving and colonising them" have just come out of your mouth and [james joyce the dead voice] west briton! but on the other hand girl it was, how do I put this nicely, nearly two centuries ago

[victusinveritas]

[brw]

genocide, infant death, sickness, mass death are all mentioned and discussed in this post, please take care.

started thinking about all the people who died or were murdered during the great hunger who we don't know the names of and who will never get justice or an apology. 20,000 people were buried in a mass grave in the county my mother's from. many of them were children buried without coffins because they died so young or their families couldn't afford one. we know the names of some of them–Mary Walsh was 6 years old at the time of her death. Michael Collins was 8. Sally Greene was 7. Kate O'Connor was just 9 months old. One baby, just 3 weeks old, named Michael Murphy, was buried there. So many people and children died and there has never been a proper apology for it. And that's not even all the children shot by British soldiers during the Troubles. They did not get justice they did not get an apology they aren't even known about by the people who murdered them. And this is just one mass grave in one County. There's so many of these across Ireland. It was horrific.

[stairnaheireann]

The Final Meal by artist Danny Howes

Ireland 1847 | Cathal Poirteir “The deaths in my native place were many and horrible. The poor famine-stricken people were found by the wayside, emaciated corpses, partly green from eating grass and nettles and partly blue from the cholera and dysentery.” Taken from the Truth Behind The Irish Famine, 72 paintings, 472 eye witness quotes: http://www.jerrymulvihill.com The Truth Behind The Irish…

[theautisticchangeling]

I saw this video, and it made me want to cry. In the video, an Irish person tears down a Palestinian flag hanging off O'Connell Bridge in Dublin. Have the similarities between what is going on in Palestine and what Ireland endured for centuries been forgotten so quickly?

Let me explain what similarities I'm talking about.

First, we have the An Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger), known colloquially as the Potato Famine. It is often agreed that this was a man-made hunger, not a famine (many have called it a genocide, but that is debated, given that it wasn't explicitly planned). Basically, only one crop, the potato, failed. However, food continued to be exported to Britain. People died from hunger, yes, but also from disease. Conservative estimates put the death count at ~1 million.

Currently, in Palestine, over two million people are facing food shortages, and about half a million are experiencing acute hunger. Humanitarian aid has not reached Gaza, in fact, it is being blocked by Israel.

Another similarity we can see is the mass exodus of the Irish during An Gorta Mór, with people trying to escape the starvation and death. But there were also people being forced from their homes by famine clearances- where landlords evicted hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and farms. There are undeniable similarities between these events and the Nakba- an ethnic cleansing where Israel forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their homes.

(Neither of these events were as long ago as you might think- my grandmother's grandfather lived through the An Gorta Mór. I have family friends whose parents whose parents were displaced from the Nakba.)

There is a lot of information on how religion was part of the English subjugation of Ireland- how they justified it in the Tudor Era, and how they arguably used it to justify the effects of the famine*.

(*Please note that this particular source is undeniably biased in favor of Ireland, but I struggled to find a source that was about how Irish people in Ireland were being viewed by England, as most sources were about Irish immigrants were viewed in America.)

To be clear, the Israel-Palestine conflict is not a religious conflict, but there are efforts to make it seem as though it is one, and it is a propaganda tool that Israel uses, so I do think that it is worth bringing up religion in this post.

Now let's fast forward through history. My Great-Grandparents were all, to different extents, involved in the Irish fight for independence. I had family members in the IRA during the 1920's, and later, the organization was considered a terrorist group. But my ancestors were fighting for a free Ireland, and to have rights in their own homeland.

If you don't know the history of Hamas by now, you can read it or listen to it here. But what strikes me is that they were voted into power by people who wanted to be free in their homeland, just like my great-grandparents. Palestinians are fighting to have the same thing Ireland fought for. And Ireland was not peaceful about it. They were loud, and bloody, and engaged in guerrilla warfare.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am an American. But I grew up with the stories of my family who fought for freedom in Ireland. And when I see the video above, with the speaker off camera saying that seeing the Palestine flag makes them "sick," I want to cry.

Where is the compassion? Do you not see how the hurt of the Palestinians is the same hurt my great-great grandfather endured? If Ireland's quest to regain control of their home is honorable and justified, why would the same not be true for the Palestinians?

Colonization and oppression are inexcusable, no matter where they happen, and the only way to fight it is with solidarity.

[quinni91]

Just watched the Irish language film Arracht and couldn't help but make the connection that a genocide is happening right this minute in Gaza and all of our protective measures to prevent this seem to be failing, the Geneva Convention, the UN etc because nearly 200 years after An Gorta Mor, a couple of rich, powerful countries can still decide to starve an ethnic group to death via a deliberate famine and get away with it, because who will stand up to a powerhouse like America?

This affects all humanity because if one group of people is deemed not important enough to sanction America, Israel, China, Russia etc over, will you and your community be?

[tankawanka]

E’tasiw Mijua’jij Mekite’tasit

Do not ask whyThe soil of EpekwitkIs stained red,Unless you care to hearWhy the wild seas baptizeThose shores with Acadian tears.No! No! No!Ai! Ai! Ai! Ai!The geologist will expoundOn the red heart nestledIn the breast of Pangea,Slowly pulling apartFor two hundred million yearsTo become Turtle Island and Africa,But the Middle PassageOpened between here and thereTells its own tales of terrorMany…

[werewolfetone]

Can I be extremely pedantic for 1 moment and say that I hate this post even though it's technically not completely incorrect because it completely ignores. like. everything. about the things in pre famine ireland which led to the famine in favour of making it seem like this was something which just happened with nothing on either side which led to it. also it sounds like it was written by john mitchel

[victusinveritas]

7 or 8.

[infamousjingle-horse]

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?” “It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.” From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. “Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost. They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. “Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more. “They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave Three

[stairnaheireann]

Ireland 1845–52

Sidney Osborne “I took a statement from a clergy-of one case in which an old woman, actually worked her own house down, with her own hands, on the belief that she was to have 5p for doing so, she had not however then got it.” Taken from The Truth Behind The Irish Famine, 100 images, 400 eyewitness quotes http://www.jerrymulvihill.com The Truth Behind The Irish Famine by Jerry Mulvihill

[andnowanowl]

"The Hungry Grass" - Colcannon. Released 1991.

Been thinking of this song a lot lately in regards to Palestine. It's about the an Gorta Mór, the Irish Potato Famine, which wasn't a famine at all but a genocide of the Irish by England.

(Edit. Sorry if the lyrics aren't correct, I had to listen and put them in myself because I couldn't find them anywhere ‐ Colcannon is a bit of an obscure band. And I have a bit of a hearing disability.)

[areawest]

I’m reading a book about an gorta mór for history class and i’m not exaggerating when I say it’s made me break down and cry several times already

[ashs-nerd-den]

🌟and📍for the studyblr ask game!! :)

(also idk if I already sent an ask and forgot but oh well lol!)

One of my acedemic core memories was when my old history teacher realised that I knew a lot more than her on the topic and then got me to teach the class. I was 12 and had just started secondary, and my only friends were my Greek mythology books. Because of this, I was (am) a very big aincent Greece and aincent Rome nerd. So when my teacher asked if anyone knew anything about aincent Rome before we started the chapter, and I went on a fifteen minute speil at about 100km/h, she realised that I knew SO much more about it than even on the junior cert course, so she got me to teach both her and the class about it. From then on, I was her go to for anything relating to mythology, I even explained the Norse mythology in the viking series she was watching to her.

So, becoming a teacher for a chapter, definitely had an impact

My bbiggest acedemic pet peeve would be when people either use ai (that applies to everything though) or when people try to mansplain things that they know nothing about, I've been "corrected" on the name of my native language (it's Gaeilge, Gaelic can mean either the Scots language or relating to or of a certain aincent Irish clan which is how we get the gaelic games) I've had people tell me that the Easter rising accomplished nothing and that people just shot up a post office (I could go on for days about the involvement of Cumman na mBan alone, never mind the primary events, or the tactical wonder of Mount Street Bridge, or even my own town or my own great, great grandads personal involvement)

Basically, when people try to rewrite things to talk down to me. Especially regarding my culture, it's xenophobic as fuck, and Ive had it up to my teeth with people (almost always English or American) dismissing the genocides, the oppression, the colonisation that my ancestors survived, and just pissing on it and claiming to know better