Today, Irish and British historians categorically reject the notion that British actions during the Great Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) amounted to genocide. While the British Government may have been unresponsive to Irish suffering, they assert, its non-action was not a deliberate attempt to exterminate the Irish people. This essay, however, utilizing new research in genocide theory and a correspondingly complicated definition of genocide, argues that the relief efforts undertaken in Ireland by the Russell Administration from the winter of 1846 to 1849 did constitute genocide against the Irish people.
To date, historians have paid little attention to the objectives, both stated and implicit, of British Famine relief efforts. Much of the analysis contends that Famine relief was a compromise between the Whig Party’s adherence to laissez faire governance and Lord Russell’s basic human empathy. However, if British relief is viewed in the context of Britain’s concern with the “Irish Question,” it becomes clear that relief efforts were not designed to relieve Irish suffering as much as to permanently reform the Irish economy. As a result, Irish Famine mortality gradually became the avenue through which the British pursued and attained this objective. By 1849, the forcible displacement of poor Irish cottiers, under the guise of relief legislation, became the major channel through which the Irish economy was remade. Thus, the British Government deliberately facilitated Irish deaths during the Great Famine, and therefore committed genocide against the Irish people.
This analysis of the Irish Potato Famine may serve as a case study for a new method of analysing genocides in history as an unfolding process, rather than a discrete and mechanical occurrence. It should be kept in mind that a designation of genocide from the historian should not serve as a political condemnation, but as an analysis of a recurring human phenomenon.
