And
no, this is not going to be a damn recipe for Irish Whiskey Cake.
Tomorrow
I’ll post another article that will specifically address how the Irish
Catholic ethos changed America. Today I’m concentrating on how that ethos
was forged out of pain and misery and came to define a people.
It
will tell you why a real Irishman will say “there but for the Grace of God go
I” and not “that man’s in trouble because he deserves to be…”
And
therein is the heart of the difference between Irish Catholicism and the
Protestant Calvinist ethos and why they are in continual battle for the
American soul.
We
need to start with the story about an Gorta Mor which is Gaelic for “The
Great Hunger” and sometimes also called “The Starvation.” You may know of it as
the Irish Potato Famine. It was a period of mass starvation, disease and
displacement that permanently changed Ireland’s demographic, political and
cultural landscape – and also America. Approximately 1.5 million Irish died as
the result of starvation and starvation-caused disease. Another million
emigrated (the Irish “diaspora”).
Cataclysmic
events in history have both remote and proximate causes and the Irish famine
that began in 1845 was no different. The proximate cause of this disaster was a
fungus commonly known as “potato blight.” The blight ravaged potato crops
throughout Europe during the 1840s and caused widespread suffering but the
consequences of the blight were significantly more devastating in Ireland than
other countries. The blight, of course, was not caused by the English. The
ensuing disaster, however, was – both by their oppression before the blight and
because of their reaction to the blight.
Let’s
look at the remote causes first: Ireland suffered an anguished, bloody history
evolving around English invasions, English colonization, and multiple uprisings
and civil wars for roughly 600 years before the potato blight. The country was
repeatedly devastated by brute force and English law, as well as forced
deportations. It is estimated that over 50,000 men, women and children may have
been sent to Bermuda and Barbados in the 1700s as slaves. Most well known of
all the English laws were the infamous Penal Codes. The laws were designed to
obliterate Irish culture, Catholicism, and in the end human dignity.
Here
is a sample of the Penal Laws imposed against Irish Catholics; if you know
anything about the infamous Nuremberg Laws enacted in the Third Reich against
the Jews you’ll see a chilling resemblance between the two:
Under
the Penal Laws an Irish Catholic was forbidden to: receive an education,
practice a profession, hold public office or vote, own firearms, live in a
corporate town or within five miles thereof, own a horse of greater value than
five pounds, purchase land from a Protestant, receive a gift of land from a
Protestant, or inherit land or chattel from a Protestant. Irish Catholics were
also forbidden to educate their children in their own homes, send them to a
Catholic teacher, bring a Catholic teacher into come to the home, or send them
abroad for an education. The laws were not always rigorously applied and
sometimes were even ignored; but the point is they give grim evidence to the brutal
realities of English domination over Ireland.
English
policies toward the Irish during the famine years exacerbated the famine crisis
and turned a natural crop disaster into a disaster of epic proportion. When the
Irish call the famine the Starvation or The Great Hunger or an Gorta Mor
it contextualizes the disaster as less of a recurring natural tragedy or act of
God and more accurately as the consequence of deliberate national policy.
Throughout the famine, the English never stopped importing massive amounts of
crops and livestock from Ireland. Christine Kinealy, the author of Irish
Famine: This Great Calamity and A Death-Dealing Famine, documented
that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon and ham actually
increased during the famine. The food was shipped out of Ireland under
British armed force from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland.
British
policies toward Ireland during the famine were greatly influenced by a refusal
to allow the crisis to harm the English economy and English business interests.
There is debate about whether British policies toward the Irish during the
famine were merely callous or deliberately sinister. Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote
in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845–1849 that no issue has provoked so
much anger and embittered relations between England and Ireland as “the
indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to
England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of
starvation.”
England
had long talked about the “Irish Problem” and during the famine it became more
than a political metaphor; historians have found statements in newspapers and
Parliament about how the starvation of the Irish could finally free England of
its unfortunate problem. What was the problem? Apparently, a stubborn refusal
to die off and give the English absolutely every inch of Irish soil. To give a
measure of what they had lost over a hundred years, the Irish owned 45% of
Irish land in 1760. In 1850 they owned less than 5%. At the time of the famine
they were squatters in their own land.
These
discussions of fact are not inconsequential. At issue is whether an Gorta
Mor represents the first genocide in modern history. International law
defines “genocide” as certain specified acts “committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
In
1996, Francis Boyle, professor of law at the University of Illinois at Urbana,
wrote a report commissioned by the New York-based Irish Famine/Genocide Committee,
which concluded that the British government deliberately pursued a race and
ethnicity-based policy aimed at destroying the group commonly known as the
Irish people and that the policy of mass starvation amounted to genocide per
the Hague convention of 1948. Famine stories have burned deeply into the Irish
cultural consciousness – an effect seen in cultures that have survived
genocide. Based on Boyle’s impressive scholarly research, New Jersey now
includes the famine in its “Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum” at the secondary
education level.
The
English had long viewed the Irish as a separate and inferior race. They were
likened to swine and monkeys and called every other abominable name. The racial
aspects of Irish oppression are very interesting.
After
the Reformation and the devastating religious wars that followed, Catholics and
Protestants learned to live side by side each other in their respective nation
states, such as in France and Germany. This never happened in Ireland. The
English oppression of Ireland, which reached its most devastating period after
Cromwell invaded in 1649 during the Counter-Reformation, incorporated a racial
component that transcended religious intolerance.
In
order to justify its continued political oppression of Ireland, which became
increasingly more difficult to do for religious reasons alone, it became
necessary for the English to think of the Irish as racially inferior. Race hate
needed to be layered over their denominational differences – which were, after
all, very limited. The Anglican Church and the Catholic Church are barely
distinguishable in doctrine and practice. An Anglican has more in common
theologically with a Catholic than with a Lutheran or a Methodist. Therefore,
hatred based on religion alone would not seem logical. Defining the Irish as
racially inferior and incapable of civilized behavior made oppression more
reasonable.
The
English definition of the Irish as a separate and loathsome race followed the
Irish to America and easily fit within a culture that was already severely
racially divided by law and custom. Toward the end of the nineteenth century
pseudo-scientific beliefs about race and the rise of eugenics, as well as
social-Darwinism were also in place. Vilifying and discriminating against the
Irish was as easy for the nativist WASPs in America as it had been for the
English.
The
Irish, however, weren’t buying it. Like post-Holocaust Jews they said “Never
Again.”
Some
references:
No comments:
Post a Comment