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

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

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.

Fungus caused the blight, England caused the famine

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.

The greatest villain for the longest time in history goes to the British.

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

This was a genocide. Irish langauge and tradition culture are still struggling to this very day.

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.

england: starves irish irish: revolts england: why are the irish so mean :((((

*The Troubles begin* British: *SURPRISED PIKACHU*

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.

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

"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.

The Irish population today is 4.8 million people. More than three MILLION people less than in the 1840s. While every country in the world (I think) has experienced population growth since the 1800s Ireland's population has declined. This is a directly caused by the famine and English colonialism of Ireland.

uk: *SUPPRESSED IRISH PEOPLE* irish: *revolt and hate the uk* uk: *Why ThE iRiSh hAtE uS ?!?!?!?!?!*

My mum once asked my great granny about the famine, and she started crying and said she was too sad to tell her anything.

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.

"Flanders lost 92 percent of potato" oh, God, what have I diddily-doodilly - done wrong?!

*Great Britain:* "Why did the Irish Rebel?"

Clone Propagation was a big part of this. You can grow a potato plant from a potato or even a slice of a potato and since it has fuel to get it going it will grow faster than a seedling will. The problem is that each plant is a clone of it's parent and since each potato plant can yield like twenty potatoes you can quickly fill a field with nothing but clones of the same, or dozens of fields. And if some microbe crops up which effects one one plant, all of them are vulnerable.

2:17 Ehm, isn't Flanders part of Belgium? Besides that, you've used the flag of the province of North-Holland, not the one from the Netherlands.

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

"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.

I'm so glad to see such a huge part of Irish history explored by your show! I really hope you do the 1916 Rising or other events eventually

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”

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

This video did a great job at describing the conditions imposed upon Ireland at the time. A few points left though: Some penal laws were still in place under different names. They also included limiting of the Irish language to the point it nearly died out. They were also expanded in new ways during the famine. The limited aid sent to Ireland was actually used as leverage to gain even more land. If someone wanted to avail of food aid they had to do one of two things: farmers had to give up their tiny strips of land and keep only 1/5 of an acre, essentially meaning after food aid was gone they would die. This was because of Malthusian economic thought at the time proclaimed this as just. This allowed the British to consolidate even more control over Ireland. The other option for urban working poor was work houses. They could not farm so they had to make use of the limited aid which required them to work in work houses. Families were separated, disease was rampant, the diet was terrible and many never left. Families were destroyed by this and was another way of making the Irish population dependent on the English government to suppress rebellion. The Ottomans organised 2000 tonnes of aid to be sent to Ireland, and although some saw this as a political move to anger the British, most of it was actually collected from the poor in the ottoman empire who had heard of the Irish plight and had sympathy for them. The British didn't allow the food to come into Ireland and threatened to sink their ships. The English purposely created conditions that would allow a famine to destroy Ireland. Given the land laws, potatoes were the only option. The English wanted to exterminate the Irish and take their land but wanted to make use of their labour too, so they struck the balance with these laws and conditions which in a way...kind of resembles an island wide gulag or concentration camp. Death as the end goal but making use of their labour in the meantime. The topic of the famine being a genocide is hotly debated today, however the UN definitions of genocide actually define the famine as a genocide. Because the English intentionally created the conditions for it to happen, it kind of is a genocide. After a smaller famine in the 1700s, they changed the laws further to worsen the effects of a future famine. This added with their apathetic response and literal rejection of outside aid means they exacerbated it too, taking advantage of a situation they could remedy, and using it as a genocidal tool. By definition of this UN convention, the famine was indeed a genocide for which the English government has not officially apologised for. There are appeals being issued in international courts to make them acknowledge it as a genocide and possibly even pay reparations. India are going through something similar in relation to their famine in the twentieth century.

Error in the video: Flanders is (and was also back then) a region in Belgium, so to give statistics on both of them seperatly seems a little off in this context.

The Irish famine wasn’t a famine - it was a genocide.

Oliver Cromwell laws for Ireland "that sound like slavery with extra steps"

Literally in Ireland every year we learn about the Irish famine thank you for covering it!

“While English farmers showed similar devastation” *shows Union Jack*

I'm an Irish tour guide working on a famine site and I have to say that this level of research is excellent!

9:06 They didn't dissappear, per-se. They were still being grown in Ireland, the Catholics just weren't allowed to eat it because it was owned by British landowners and had to be exported. The potato was the only crop that could produce enough yield on small Irish-owned plots to support a family, while other crops required larger plots of land that could only be owned by Protestants/British. So they were literally watching boatloads of food taken away while they starved to death. (Source: college Irish History course. I might still have the textbook somewhere...)

As the saying goes "God brought the blight but the British brought the famine"

I love this channel, it actually makes history fun for me☺️

Would love to see a series on the troubles in Northern Ireland. I've lived there all my life and still only have some knowledge. It's so so complex would love to see an outsiders narrative on it

If brexit goes through are we going to get a northern Ireland border DLC for Papers Please

Cromwell was so bad that people actually wanted Royalty again.

My dads dad was baby on the boat from Ireland to newzealand. This is why im here and i feel very much thankful to be in such a lovely country and feel very connected with the people here that went through similar pressure from the British 😂

I have watched every single one of y'all's videos at least three full times now and it has only ever gotten better

The last of us: potato edition.

This was so bad that even to today, the population of Ireland is still only around 6.5 million

Hi extra credits! I've been watching your videos for a long time now and enjoyed all of them including this one! I was just wondering if it would be possible to make an extra history episode on Lapu-lapu and the battle for Mactan in the Philippines. That would be cool. Cheers from the Philippines!

You have to follow this up with a series about Cromwell and the New Model Army in Ireland.

So, Prime Minister Peel...peeled the potatoes away from Ireland. God does have a sense of humor.

2:10 the flag for (North) Holland shown here wasn't a thing until 1958. Before this time the flag for Holland was the regular Dutch red-white-blue flag and if another flag were to be used it probably would've been the red lion of the county of Holland.

"Famine" There was plenty of food, the brits just kept taking the edible food

Your description of the rental system in famine Ireland is a precise description of the rental system in my country (NZ) today.

Ireland got hammered by the potato blight because potatoes are basically magic and they were the only viable strategy in a broken game. Guess god should have done some more balance testing before rolling that out?

1:10 That's a good point. I've only ever heard of 19th century Irish "immigrants," but this isn't just emigration. They were refugees from famine and a repressive (arguably genocidal?) government.

If I had been taught with videos like this in school, I would have paid MUCH more attention. What a great way to present what would be a "not-so-interesting" class video!!

0:37 Such a gentle and pleasant jingle :)

"Irish men are more handsom" *looks at my boyfrIend* "ur damn right they are"

Next the 1916 Easter rising

I love these videos so much. Thank you so much Extra History! Feel like I’ve been living under a rock for years! Hope y’all achieve more success. I love all the comments regarding why Brits are surprised when Irish hate them! Same regarding India.

Both branches of my Irish family were still in Ireland during the blight, and weren't able to leave. They only were able to leave after. The trauma of food insecurity is still encoded in our DNA I swear. We either all panic about not having a surplus non-perishables, or just subconsciously horde things like ramen noodles.

economists and governments prioritizing money over human lives? where have i heard of this before?

This is why my family moved to America. Thanks for covering this!

My Irish ancestors came to NY in the 1840s and I guess this is why. When I look at the census records for NYC for decades after, so many people are listed as being from Ireland.

I loved your comparison to current living situations here in new york city, if we forget history it will repeat itself over and over and over.......

Emigration was the right word.

It’s so cool that you guys are covering this major historical topic. My great-grandmother used to tell stories from her mother about being on the crowded ship.

TANK U SO MUCH THIS IS THE FIRST VID IVE SEEN ABOUT IRELAND ON UKposts EVER. TY

Man this is the best start of a video ever

rip my hash browns

The Earth: exists Englishman: *IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE*

this is so informative accurate and well done. thanks for making it. this is still a very controversial topic in northern ireland.

British: How could the soviet union strave it's own people to death, man they ŜÚĈĈ so much.... *Also British:*

Emigrate not immigrate. They're emigrating from Ireland to immigrate elsewhere.

Belgium and Flanders, what? By Belgium did they mean Wallonia?

I hope there will be more videos about world history and Vietnam. Thank you team, every video is good

Narrator: The Irish potato Famine My brain: don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it Don’t say it. Me: It wasn’t a famine it was a mass genocide by the English government.

If each plot was less than 5 acres then should you now have: "< 5 acres" As opposed to: "> 5 acres"

8:09 less than 5 acres is 5acres

It also happened a lot in Hong Kong with subdivided flats in industrial buildings

A story I always remember is that the fields of Fredricksburg, Virginia had sent corn to the Irish during their famine. After the battle of Fredricksburg had raged a civilian lamented what a tragedy it was that so many of those Irish their fields had fed to keep alive now became their graves

5:18 This sounds like an apartheid state

Probably shouldn’t have clicked on this with food

"the bacteria strain came from America.". America: Totally our bad!!!! Sorry!

Flanders is part of Belgium

*insert literally every potato joke related to Ireland here*

I always learn something knew with this series. I had known for years that Ireland was overly reliant on potatoes to feed their population and that the British government exasperated the problem to their own advantage. But I did not think about how the land laws created the reliance on potatoes which made the famine inevitable once the blight hit. Very well done as always.

If you want a book/movie about the power of the potato, watch/read The Martian. It’s also an amazing sci-fi story with gripping stakes and amazing accuracy, but it really features how amazing the potato is as a survival tool

Thank you for this Rory.

*London* “I have a plan” *Me* “uh oh”

Very well made and explained; but there's so much information crammed into this fast presentation that I would like a transcript :-)

6:58 the farmer looks like Jacques snicket from a series of unfortunate events

Incredible that Ireland is such a great country today, all things considered. They are the country in western europe that had the deck stacked against them the most.

Britain could control 1 third of the world, but they can't control an island of potatoes farmers

The Homestar Runner reference at 9:18 is appreciated.

I've always wanted to learn about the potatoe famine ,mainly becuase my great (×about 6) grandparents managed to leave ireland and that's pretty much the only reason I'm live where I do today

Tysm For Doing This..

Wait . When did the narrator change

Awesome informative Video experience Y'alls God Bless Ya 🙌🙏

Please do a series on the Bengal famine too..