#great famine

[queerindigenouspagan]

Hozier's mention of the word "hushpukena" (a Choctaw word) in the song Butchered Tongue was, of course, not a random decision. In a song about the pain of being disconnected from your ancestral language and culture as a result of colonization and oppression from outside forces- which is something that both Irish and Native American people have experienced to varying degrees. Not only do Irish and Indigenous people have this shared history of colonization at the hands of the British, but Irish and Indigenous communities have a long history of support for one another.

The usage of "hushpukena" is even more specific and important because it calls back to the mutually positive relationship between Irish and Choctaw people specifically. During the Great Hunger in Ireland, the Choctaw Nation donated $170, which is more than $5,000 in today’s money, to aid the Irish. Out of all American aid given to Ireland during the famine, the donation from the Choctaw Nation was the largest donation given.

In 1990, leaders from the Choctaw Nation visited County Mayo in Ireland to participate in the first annual Famine Walk. In 1992, Irish people visited the Choctaw Nation and participated in a trek to commemorate the Trail of Tears. Also in 1992, a plaque commemorating the Choctaw's aid was installed in the house of the mayor of Dublin. In 1995, the Irish President Mary Robinson visited the tribal headquarters of the Choctaw Nation to thank the Choctaw people for their aid. In 2017, a sculpture named "Kindred Spirits" was built in Cork, Ireland to commemorate the Choctaw's aid and to continue friendship between the two communities. In 2018, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland visited Choctaw tribal headquarters and stated,"A few years ago, on a visit to Ireland, a representative of the Choctaw Nation called your support for us ‘a sacred memory’. It is that and more. It is a sacred bond, which has joined our peoples together for all time". In 2020, more than $1.8 million was raised by Irish people as aid for Native American people (specifically the Navajo and Hopi) during the pandemic, to help provide food, clean water, and health supplies.

[mapsontheweb]

Ireland's population before the Great Famine and today.

[dailyhistoryposts]

Famine (1997) by Rowan Gillespie. Bronze. Dublin, Ireland.

[mudwerks]

(via 'Kindred Spirits' Sculpture – Cork, Ireland - Atlas Obscura)

The Choctaw Native Americans raised $170 of their own money—equivalent to thousands of dollars today— in aid to supply food for the starving Irish. This exemplifies the incredible generosity of the Choctaw people, because just 16 years before, they were forced by U.S. President Andrew Jackson to leave their ancestral lands and march 500 miles on the “Trail of Tears,” in terrible winter conditions. Many did not survive.

Today, the Irish people are still grateful for the generosity of the Choctaw people. A monument stands in Midleton’s Bailick Park as a tribute to the tribe’s charity during the Great Famine. Named “Kindred Spirits,” the magnificent memorial features nine giant stainless steel feathers, shaped into an empty bowl.

[revoltedstates]

New article up on Irish the American Civil War. Captain Thomas D. Norris and his wife, Ann (née Hannon), both Irish Famine emigrants, photographed in camp with their children ca 1864. Norris served in Co. H, 170th New York Infantry, of Corcoran's Irish Legion, and was later a leading advocate for the Irish language in the US.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

You may remember Xi Van Fleet. She's the Chinese immigrant who gave a speech to Loudoun County Public School warning about the teaching of concepts relating to Critical Race Theory and seeing alarming similarities to her experience with the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

--

The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.

In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler’s Holocaust in the 1940s.

How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.

We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for more fish in the future.

If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount held by others.  That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the votes of people who are dependent on them.

-- Thomas Sowell on the Fallacy of Redistribution

==

Free stuff doesn't come from nowhere.

"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money." -- Thomas Sowell

One of the big myths about Thanksgiving is that the starving pilgrims were saved by the natives teaching them to farm. That's untrue.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thanksgiving-lessons-about-the-failures-of-socialism-and-the-success-of-private-property-and-capitalism/

The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of abundance after a period of socialism and starvation. The members of the Plymouth colony had arrived in the New World with a plan for collective property ownership. Reflecting the current opinion of the aristocratic class in the 1620s, their charter called for farmland to be worked communally and for the harvests to be shared.

You probably will not be surprised to hear that the colonists starved. Men were unwilling to work to feed someone else’s children. Women were unwilling to cook for other women’s husbands. Fields lay largely untilled and unplanted.

Famine came as soon as they ate through their provisions. After famine came plague. Half the colony died. Unlike most socialists, they learned from their mistakes, giving each person a parcel of land to tend to for themselves. The colonists threw off the statist intellectual fashions of their day.

The results were overwhelmingly beneficial. Men worked hard, even though before they had constantly pleaded illness. Fields were not only tilled and planted but also diligently harvested. Colonists traded with the surrounding Indian nation and learned to plant maize, squash and pumpkin and to rotate these crops from year to year. The harvest was bountiful, and new colonists immigrated to the thriving settlement.

Think about it. Imagine you're in a class, and the teacher says that every student will get the same grade, the average of all students. The low-performing students will be thrilled and won't do much. Why should they when they're going to score as high as the best students? The high-performing students will realize they're being dragged down by everyone else and not bother putting in the effort, because they're being exploited and carrying the weight for the whole class. The average will drop dramatically compared to the class total if each student had been able to keep their own score.

Equity means forcing everybody into poverty - whether that's academic poverty, intellectual poverty or literal poverty.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Happy St. Paddy's Day to those who celebrate.

Please remember that while the potato blight effected potato crops throughout Europe in the mid 19th century, it only reached genocidal levels of famine in Ireland due to the anti-Catholic laws and taxation laws in England.

If you've ever wondered why St. Paddy's Day is treated as a bigger deal in the U.S. than it is in Ireland, it's because of all the refugees who fled to America in order to keep from starving to death, taking time to celebrate the culture they left behind and hold fast to it with both hands.

Have a taste of a master at lilting sing a bit of an Irish jig:

[misscromwellsmonocle]

The Irish Question (1880s) by De Scott Evans

[melbmemories]

Convict ship Success was formerly a merchant ship of 621 tons, 117 feet 3 inches x 26 feet 8 inches x 22 feet 5 inches depth of hold, built in Natmoo, Tenasserim, Burma in 1840. After initially trading around the Indian subcontinent, she was sold to London owners and made three voyages with emigrants to Australia during the 1840s, On one of these voyages, following the intervention of Caroline Chisholm, Success sailed into Sydney town just the week before Christmas 1849 with families who had survived the Great Famine.

On 31 May 1852, Success arrived at Melbourne and the crew deserted to the gold-fields, this being the height of the Victorian gold rush. Due to an increase in crime, prisons were overflowing and the Government of Victoria purchased large sailing ships to be employed as prison hulks. These included Success, Deborah, Sacramento and President. In 1857 prisoners from Success murdered the Superintendent of Prisons John Price, the inspiration for the character Maurice Frere in Marcus Clarke's novel For the Term of His Natural Life.

In 1854 the ship was converted from a convict hulk into a stores vessel and anchored on the Yarra River, where she remained for the next 36 years.

from Tony Beyer

[dreamy-cowplant]

1315:

The Broughton family had always been poor, so when the famine struck at the beginning of 1315 the children barely took notice. Life continued peacefully despite the lack of food. Leif and Arthur were always running off together since there were less chores around the farm.

Being a survivor and a mother, Eydis was prone to stress and worry, the famine did nothing ease her fears. The heavy rains had destroyed most of their crops before they could be harvested, effecting both the family and their livestock. And to make matters worse, the nobles that technically owned their land were asking for a larger share of crops than usual. Eydis had already begun rationing the amount of food she made for her family and prayed they would have enough to last them until they could grow more.

During the first part of 1315 Eydis gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Olive. Eydis and Wilkin were relieved that the birth went smoothly and were constantly checking on their little girl. Both parents understood the grief of losing a child and hoped to prevent any harm from coming to little Olive.

1315 came to a gentle close. The Broughton family had yet to experience the full effects of the famine.

Other births:

Revna Olsen gave birth to twins: Wymond and Marie Olsen

Previous // Next

Beginning

[wandam-history-of-the-decades]

1317 - Something Must Be Done

TW DEATHS BY HUNGER

Zymmer Family - Germany

The year started with Margrite Zymmer aging up into a teen. The whole family were struggling so much to get everyone fed that they couldn't hide their extreme slimness.

One day, Candle's heart couldn't handle it anymore and she passed away because of the lack of food. Wick was so scared that his daughters would suffer the same destiny as his sister that he started working on farming all day long, always hopeful that someday they will have more than gruel to eat.

Also, he had one more mouth to fed: Engel Proczel, Tierra's step-daughter. He would have been happy to take her in, but that was impossible; he coudn't ensure her subsistence. He took her to the village's nunnery, only inhabited by a single nun. Engel was really sad about all of this, but she knew this was her only chance to survive, and the nun seemed pleasant enough. Wick made sure that Engel felt comfortable after living and saying goodbye to the little girl.

Bucket Family - Germany

The family didn't have more food. It was awful. Little Steffan aged up into a toddler and it was the only happy new the family had. Lilly Burner didn't make it, she had waived all her meals without the family noticing until one day she fainted near her husband's grave.

Driftwood Family - England

Without Reynilda, nothing was the same for Tally. He was afraid and, with so many kids, he didn't know what to do to keep them all alive. He rationalized the food every day but all of them where thinner and thinner.

Tome aged up into a teen at the beginning of the year and his main job was taking care of his siblings.

Clementia helped with the kids too, reading them to bed and getting them fed and cleaned.

One day, Denis couldn't stop crying until he passed away because of the mulnutrition all the kids were suffering. They were nine people and there was almost no food left... Tally knew that Denis was only the first one to passed. But he couldn't allow it... That couldn't happen... he promised Reynilda to keep everyone alive.

And he will do it.

The next night he went to the woods and he walked... and walked... and walked... until reaching the place he knew he'll found.

When he was navigating the seas with the pirates, he heard stories about the witch that has been living for centuries... she was older than the sky, the moon and the stars and her power was unmatched.

And there he was, knocking on her door, desperate for help, when the witch opened. He told her what was happening, but that was no surprise for her because he wasn't the first one to asking for help during this difficult times.

Tally pleaded for all his children to survive this awful famine. And she agreed, but everything has a price. She would ensure that everyone survives... but Tally would have to give her one of his young daughters when they reach teenhood.

One daughter in exchange of his whole family? His heart ached when he made the decision... and agreed.

When Tally came home, Joyse and Aubray had aged up into toddlers.

Birthdays [5]

ENGLAND

Tome Driftwood: 1304 -

Joyse Driftwood: 1316 -

Aubray Driftwood: 1316 -

GERMANY

Margrite Zymmer: 1304 -

Steffan Bucket: 1315 -

Deaths [3]

ENGLAND

Denis Driftwood: 1316 - 1317 (1 year), by famine

GERMANY

♰ Candle Zymmer: 1285 - 1317 (32 years), by famine

♰ Lilly Burner: 1265 - 1317 (52 years), by famine

1300s: Start | Next

[dailyhistoryposts]

On This Day In History

September 9th, 1845: The Great Famine of Ireland begins.

[fwughox]

Empire

[jovialbasementbouquetblr]

2022: Zhao Shukai Calls for Politics-Free Historical Research

Rural China where most of China’s people still live and  rural governance across the long histories of the many states that have occupied the Central Plains since very early ‘barbarian peoples’ coalesced into. assimilated others into and inherited what is still known only dimly of early civilizations that existed in what is now southwestern China. The civilized ‘us’ vs the ‘barbarians’ outside…

[sinoeurovoices]

China Keeps Trying to Crush Them. Their Movement Keeps Growing.

Mr. Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent two decades in China. In 1959, a group of university students in the northwestern Chinese city of Tianshui embarked on a quixotic plan. China was in the midst of the Great Famine, a catastrophe caused by government policies that would kill as many as 45 million. These young people had witnessed farmers starving to death and…