British Imperialism vs Ethnic Nationalism

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Nice story. Now tell us the story of the role of his family (and yours) in the famine provoked to anihilate the Irish [Catholic] people.

Don’t you rightly complain about the slander against Spain made by those who distort the history of the Spanish Inquisition? It seems you are taking the wildest stories about the Irish Famine without skepticism. My ancestors had small and middle-sized farms. The only people they could annihilate during the Famine were themselves. In any case, it was the small Catholic landowners who benefited most from the Famine. Catholic farmers had larger and more profitable farms after the failure of the potato crop in the 1840’s. It is not good or bad, but the fact is they did benefit. Some historians even argue that the Fenian movement was greatly strengthened by the new financial security of Catholic smallholders.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Please, could you try to be honest? I am not celebrating the murders of the IRA. I don't support nor approve attacks where civilian population are involved, come these from the IRA, the Ulster Unionists, the British Government and Army, or ETA.

That comment was directed at Milesian who has a picture of IRA members messing around in the woods under his name.

[Milesian]

Originally Posted by A Fist Full of Snow

The only people they could annihilate during the Famine were themselves. In any case, it was the small Catholic landowners who benefited most from the Famine. Catholic farmers had larger and more profitable farms after the failure of the potato crop in the 1840’s. It is not good or bad, but the fact is they did benefit.

Large and profitable farms?
The Irish starved because they had to sell all their produce to pay the exhorbitant rents that the British landowners exacted from them.
That's why tonnes of food where leaving the country bound for British ports while the Irish themselves were forced to subsist on the potatoes that they grew on what land they could spare.

Should I detail the Penal laws here?

The idea that the Irish starved because they grew nothing else in the country other than potatoes is one of the absurdities that the Brits like to push in their "official" versions of history. This was no famine due to a lack of food, there was only a failure of the potato crop just as the blight affected British farms as well.
That alone shouldn't amount to a famine, and it wouldn't anywhere else except through the mismanagement of the British establishment & their refusal to send any kind of significant aid.
One British official even complained that "a million Irish dead wasn't nearly enough" to do any sort of good in Ireland.
That said, there were some soup kitchens set up......on condition that those nasty yokels first allowed themselves to be proselytised and converted.
Nice.

Some historians even argue that the Fenian movement was greatly strengthened by the new financial security of Catholic smallholders.

Would this be British apologist historians, or the new crop of Neo-Unionists who seem to be in abundance in the Republic these days?

That comment was directed at Milesian who has a picture of IRA members messing around in the woods under his name.

Are you sure? Maybe it's Loyalists setting off the bombs in Dublin and Monaghan in collusion with the British Security Services?

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Milesian

Would this be British apologist historians, or the new crop of Neo-Unionists who seem to be in abundance in the Republic these days?

It would indeed. Professor Roy Foster has poisoned my already diseased mind.

Originally Posted by Milesian

Are you sure? Maybe it's Loyalists setting off the bombs in Dublin and Monaghan in collusion with the British Security Services?

I can see their green & white striped jerseys from here.

[Milesian]

Originally Posted by A Fist Full of Snow

It would indeed. Professor Roy Foster has poisoned my already diseased mind.

Professor at Oxford University?

I can see their green & white striped jerseys from here.

[Llywarch Hen]

Originally Posted by A Fist Full of Snow

In any case, it was the small Catholic landowners who benefited most from the Famine.

Aye, that's right. My father's mother's stepfather's farm in Tipperary got to be the size it is because of this. I stand to inherit the very nice little cottage there. Add that to your "800 years of oppression", Anglophobes! [800 years! Why do the people spouting this little mantra always ignore the devastating raids of Meath in the 600s by our very own King Ecgfrith of Northumbria? ]

A lot of distress during the famine was a result of the dogmatic Whiggism [in social affairs and economics] of the British Government of the day. Had the Tories been in, things would have been handled much better.

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Milesian

Professor at Oxford University?

Well the paint-job on his car wouldn't last long in the parking lot of University College Cork.

[Eriugena]

Originally Posted by A Fist Full of Snow

It would indeed. Professor Roy Foster has poisoned my already diseased mind.

That would explain a lot. Do you know how Foster got the chair? Do you know that it was created for him?

[Eriugena]

Originally Posted by Llywarch Hen

Had the Tories been in, things would have been handled much better.

What a load of rubbish. How do you explain English actions prior to the develpment of Whiggism?
Have you ever read Spenser's proposals for Ireland? For that matter, have you ever read of his exploits over here?

[Eriugena]

In answer to a comment from Aptrgangr. That's not a fact but an opinion. Ultimate responibility for everything that happened in the Occupied Six Counties lies with the foreign occupation, just as everything currently happening in Iraq is the responsibility of the Bush-Blair gang. They created the situation.

[Susi]

I wish we could get along .

I think that they should give Ireland the north bit of the island back.. I mean keeping it just seems kind of mean.

This thread is starting to make me wonder why Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England are one nation anyways... They are quite similar and everyone in each is a mix of the other (well quite a few of them).. but it seems that each desires to be part of its own nation rather than another.. So why can't they do that? :\
...The only reason I stated a dislike for the IRA is because they could have killed my mother. And then I wouldn't exist. And I wouldn't be happy. My mother also almost got killed by a bomb that was meant for the pope in 1984. So then I wouldn't exist either. I guess maybe I shouldn't be paranoid about my mother getting killed by a bomb when she doesn't even live there... :\

I guess sometimes you have to fight for what you want but I just hope that innocent people are avoided..

[Almost a Christian]

Originally Posted by Susi

I wish we could get along .

I think that they should give Ireland the north bit of the island back.. I mean keeping it just seems kind of mean.

This thread is starting to make me wonder why Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England are one nation anyways... They are quite similar and everyone in each is a mix of the other (well quite a few of them).. but it seems that each desires to be part of its own nation rather than another.. So why can't they do that? :\
...The only reason I stated a dislike for the IRA is because they could have killed my mother. And then I wouldn't exist. And I wouldn't be happy. My mother also almost got killed by a bomb that was meant for the pope in 1984. So then I wouldn't exist either. I guess maybe I shouldn't be paranoid about my mother getting killed by a bomb when she doesn't even live there... :\

I guess sometimes you have to fight for what you want but I just hope that innocent people are avoided..

One has to fight in some manner with the facilities available. If ones country is under occupation it's difficult to raise an army in the conventional sense so one adopts tactics to correspond with ones situation. At the end of the day the victims are just as dead whether via tanks or bombs.

There should be no dispute that killing is an odious business...

[Susi]

Originally Posted by Juan Perón

There should be no dispute that killing is an odious business...

I just wish there was an easier, less killing-ish way...

I mean everyone kills everyone on both sides and no one wins.

[Llywarch Hen]

Originally Posted by Eriugena

What a load of rubbish. How do you explain English actions prior to the develpment of Whiggism?

English actions? Most of em are of the "I'd better do this or the Norman bastard with the fancy hat on over there'll 'ave me flogged for disobediance!"
Prior to Whiggery, we are back in the Age of Bad Old Days, where anything went. Back then it was the old French King vs. English King stuff, and Ireland was unlucky in being an ideal springboard for a flank attack, to be held at all costs.

Have you ever read Spenser's proposals for Ireland? For that matter, have you ever read of his exploits over here?

The Faerie Queen was bad enough, you want me to read more?

Honestly! Is there a square inch of skin left on the body of the Sean Bhean Bhocht without an old sore that she won't stop picking at?

Originally Posted by Eriugena

In answer to a comment from Aptrgangr. That's not a fact but an opinion. Ultimate responibility for everything that happened in the Occupied Six Counties lies with the foreign occupation, just as everything currently happening in Iraq is the responsibility of the Bush-Blair gang. They created the situation.

Rubbish. Nobody forces anyone to go out kneecapping or blowing up busy shopping streets. Plenty of other ways to struggle.

Originally Posted by Susi

I wish we could get along .

I think that they should give Ireland the north bit of the island back.. I mean keeping it just seems kind of mean.

QUite a lot of people there don't want this. A majority in fact.

It's a shame in a way that the two islands are not joined, as then it would just be a matter of shifting borders matching shifting fortunes, something a man could make his peace with, but Ireland being a unit, the struggle between British/Irish then takes on all kinds of frankly unhelpful romantic symbolic aspects.

Like you just looking at a map and seeing a bit of a whole that's not part of it, perhaps coloured in differently, and this offends the aesthetic sense. Well, we're not talking rules of artistic composition here, but a large population of people whose wishes are not taken into account by romantic Irish Nationalists. The fact that the latter have great PR worldwide exacerbates the problem.

This thread is starting to make me wonder why Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England are one nation anyways...

We're not. We have our separate nations, but in a kind of supernational entity of kinship and shared historical experience.

They are quite similar and everyone in each is a mix of the other (well quite a few of them).. but it seems that each desires to be part of its own nation rather than another.. So why can't they do that? :\

We can, with more devolved power. But tell that to the Plutocrats and powermad Politicos who get to set the agenda.

...The only reason I stated a dislike for the IRA is because they could have killed my mother. And then I wouldn't exist. And I wouldn't be happy. My mother also almost got killed by a bomb that was meant for the pope in 1984. So then I wouldn't exist either. I guess maybe I shouldn't be paranoid about my mother getting killed by a bomb when she doesn't even live there... :\

Of course you should. Nobody need live their lives with this fear hanging over them.

I guess sometimes you have to fight for what you want but I just hope that innocent people are avoided..

There are nonviolent means. But these often require compromise, something which it sadly seems you will rarely see from an Irish Nationalist who has already endorsed terrorism as a legitimate tactic. People who do compromise, like Michael Collins did [when he signed the treaty that set up a division between an Irish Free State and the Six Counties of Northern Ireland], often get murdered for it. And it keeps spiralling... I hope that the signs at present, that this has largely burnt itself out now that all sides are so WEARY, continue into the future.

Originally Posted by Juan Perón

One has to fight in some manner with the facilities available. If ones country is under occupation it's difficult to raise an army in the conventional sense so one adopts tactics to correspond with ones situation.

You've let the extremists set the tone for you. There's no 'occupation' - there's merely a rump continuation of an earlier normality, where Catholic and Protestant lived together in Ireland. The reasons they lived together were rooted in the usual horrible wars and oppressions that make up the usual history of a country, but just before Eire seceded from the Union things were becoming far more ordinary and liveable. Home Rule [a sort of partial autonomy that would have calmed most discontent] was soon to be enacted. People lived their lives.

Then the Great War happened. THat mucked everything up, as it did everywhere on our Continent. At first, all seemed well. Even though there was no conscription in Ireland [so as not to cause undue grievances against the British state] very many Irishmen joined up of their own accord. Did they feel themselves 'British'? I believe many did. I lost a few Irish Great Great Uncles.
And then some trouble-makers decided that now was a good time [in the middle of the greatest war ever seen] to stab England in the back. Quite like the Socialists in Russia a year later. The reaction was far too heavy-handed, martyrs were made, polarisation occured, and the rest is history.

At the end of the day the victims are just as dead whether via tanks or bombs.

And yet nobody need die at all!

Originally Posted by Susi

I just wish there was an easier, less killing-ish way...

THere is. They're trying it now, thank God.

I mean everyone kills everyone on both sides and no one wins.

And the best way to perpetuate that is to keep on bashing out the same tired old propaganda to mislead and radicalise, being the sort of robot that spouts out "800 years of oppression" as soon as you speak to it.