Hi Maggie: Are you saying there was no potato blight or was that someone else? My understanding was the blight that with the corn laws caused famine. However, what is often missed is the landowners desire to get the tenants off their farms by increasing rents so high, they could not pay. Doubt there is anyone who wouldn't say the English land owners closed the commons in England, the farms in Ireland and the crofts in Scotland for their own profit. The Aristocrats and Parishes in both England and Scotland encouraged mass immigration at one point using assisted passages. My knowledge of what happened in Ireland is limited to not if there was assisted passages there. Keep in mind that the closures of the Commons in England made many English peasants as desperate as the Scottish & Irish clearances. In Scotland and England there were Poor Laws which had Parishes responsible to some extent for their poor. The clergy in the parishes encouraged by their wealthy land owners pushed immigration. Was this true in Ireland as well? So far have not read anything about the British exporting potatos as they were rotting in the fields. Lauraine ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 3:02 AM Subject: Re: [CAN-USA-MIG] Grosse Ile and potatoes > > Talk about rewriting history! > > A shortage of > potatoes occurred because the British exported their potatoes leaving > millions of Irish to starve to death. > > > > A shortage occurred because, as in America too, there had been successive > waves of potato blight, bringing reduced crops for a number of years. > Blight > destroys the potato tuber itself and then the plant. It reached a peak in > Ireland around the 1840s, and no-one in the world knew how to stop it. > Large > numbers of Irish farmers were by then totally dependent on the crop for > both food > and trade. > > The British were faced with the same problem the UN faces today when there > is a famine: do you supply massive aid and kill off any hope of indigenous > farming keeping its head above water, or do you try to provide new work so > that > the people can earn enough to buy some other food? Remember even posing > that > question requires a degree of hindsight. The British had neither the > experience of the UN nor its resources: they started with the latter > option, but were > supplemented by various charitable bodies in England who thought the > first > option was more appropriate. But neither approach had the resources or > technology to prevent the huge numbers of deaths: remember too this was a > part of > Britain and the nation saw it as a British tragedy as much as an Irish > one. > > I lost ancestors in the famine. They were poor tenant farmers in > Roscommon. > The surviving remnants of my family scattered to various parts of > America, > and it's only now we are re-establishing family links. It was a disaster, > true > enough, but certainly not one caused by the British exporting totally > inedible potatoes! > > cheers > Maggie > > > > > When you want to respond to a query or comment posted on this List, I > find it MUCH easier to post a new message -- remembering to include the > SUBJECT from the post you are responding to !! Please make sure there > is a SURNAME or place-name in the Subject. > > To search the archives: > http://archiver.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/search?path=CAN-USA-MIGRATION > The information page is: > http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Immigration/CAN-USA-MIGRATION.html > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >