The famine is a key touchstone in any Irish child's education. I can remember, for example, helping my class to construct a paper-mâché model of the famous coffin ship memorial, an admittedly engaging way to encourage children to ponder the famine, but there is, on reflection, a failing in how we were taught about what happened. We were young, so, obviously, we couldn't have been expected to handle too many of the intricacies behind the famine's root causes, but I would contend that we were given too limited a view. We were told, vaguely, that the Brits were in some way responsible, but, ultimately, a great deal of rhetorical energy was spent discussing the potato blight itself -- Phytophthora infestans, the nasty microorganism that, once it set in, transformed vibrant potato fields across the land into sordid piles of death-black, stinking mush. The emphasis in our early famine education, in other words, was placed upon the blight, upon nature, and that came with implications that stuck.
This period of my early education, during the 2000s, was also a time in which great charitable drives were common throughout Ireland, when NGOs would seek donations to help the starving and thirsty populations of places far away, like in Ethiopia. Photographs of despairing children with swollen, empty bellies were seared into our young minds, and we were encouraged to develop our benevolent, liberal selves by acknowledging our Western privilege and by donating a can of baked beans and a shiny €2 coin, in the understanding that it would go some way towards buying a goat or constructing a water well for a village. The intention behind these campaigns was undoubtedly good, but these hunger crises were always, in a subtle way, presented as inevitable, a consequence of these poor unfortunates being born in barren lands subject to extreme and brutal weather conditions. The politics were sidelined, as they had been when we were taught of what had happened in Ireland.
Sir Charles Trevelyan, a British civil servant overseeing Irish relief policy during the Great Hunger, characterized the famine as "a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence" -- an act of God, something humans were unable to contend with. It is remarkable what such a perspective can justify. If the famine was God's will, then, surely, Britain was absolved of any duty to intervene. If God was, ultimately, responsible, then the vast suite of British colonial policies that oppressed Ireland and led to the famine in the first place need not be re-assessed.
When the blight spread throughout Ireland, a huge proportion of the population was almost entirely reliant on the potato as their staple food source, which, obviously, proved disastrous when the spuds started to die. But the reason Irish people were reliant on the potato was because bread was too expensive to buy, and bread was too expensive to buy, at least partly, because the Corn Laws, enforced in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland between 1815 and 1846, kept grain prices high and protected the profits of the landowners who sold it. The lazy Irish peasants didn't just love potatoes -- because of British policy, they had few other food options to choose from.
As the famine ripped through the country, up to half a million people were evicted from their homes, which, again, was not an act of God, but rather was the result of landlords, most of whom were wealthy British and Anglo-Irish, acting in their own self-interest. The Irish Poor Law Extension Act, introduced by Britain during the summer of 1847, shifted the burden of famine relief from the British government onto the landlords, which, essentially, created an incentive for them to evict their poorest tenants who couldn't pay rent and to rid themselves of the financial burden they represented. British policymakers could have intervened to put a stop to the evictions. They did not.
An especially disturbing fact about the Irish famine is that, while, indeed, the potato crop failed to a devastating extent, it was not the only food to be produced there at the time. Throughout the entire famine period, Ireland exported huge amounts of food to Britain. Up to 75 percent of Irish soil was, according to Ireland's Great Hunger Museum, "devoted to wheat, oats, barley and other crops that were grown for export and shipped abroad while the people starved," while exports of all livestock except for pigs actually increased during the famine period. Britain could have prohibited the export of grain from Ireland, and it could have established appropriate food distribution networks upon the island to help the hungry get what they needed. But, again, it did not. It is true that it did provide some financial relief throughout the famine, but, obviously, it was woefully insufficient, and the sum of £8 million dedicated to Irish famine relief efforts pales against the £20 million sum that was spent to compensate former slave owners after slavery was abolished a decade or so earlier in 1833. It's funny how money can be found by governments for one thing and not for another.
The Irish famine, and its devastating consequences, was the result of myriad political decisions made by British imperial elites. The potatoes failed because of the blight, a natural phenomenon, and the religious are free to consider the blight's spread as an act of God, but, fundamentally, the famine proved to be as catastrophic as it was because of long-standing policies by British leaders. It was not a solely environmental phenomenon, nor could it have been solved by simple acts of liberal charity. Its causes ran far deeper, and that is true of every food crisis to this day.
Every year, the Global Network Against Food Crises initiative publishes two Hunger Hotspots reports, in which the countries most at risk of mass starvation are identified and analyzed. In its most recent report, the initiative listed 13 hunger hotspots, of which Palestine, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali represent the five most severe cases. In each of these five countries, as well as in the vast majority of the others that make up the full 13, conflict was identified as the primary driver of the food insecurity they face. Climate shocks were noted as a significant factor, too, as were poor economic growth, high debt levels, trade disruption, and state policy. In other words, food insecurity is a consequence of the actions, or, indeed, inactions, of national and global leaders. Famine is political.
Over the next few weeks, this series will discuss each of the five countries listed as the hotspots of highest concern in the 2025 Hunger Hotspots report. The people of Palestine, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali are today suffering under the most appalling conditions, but it is not an act of God that has brought them this plight, nor is it a simple tragedy of nature. Their suffering is born of human action and decision-making. It is a result of choices made and not made. Great Hungers, no matter where they emerge, are never inevitable.