Was the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1848) Genocide?
Irish Famine GENOCIDE The American Heritage Dictionary defines genocide as: “The systematic, planned annihilation of a racial, political or cultural group.” The United Nations Convention on Genocide, adopted by the U.N. in 1948 lists this as one of the acts which qualify: “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or part.” Richard L. Rubenstein in his book The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World offers yet another definition. He states, “…a government is as responsible for a genocidal policy when its officials accept mass death as a necessary cost of implementing their policies as when they pursue genocide as an end in itself.” (1.) BRITISH, IRISH AND AMERICAN VOICES: IMMORAL SELF-INTEREST Oxford history professor James Anthony Froude, who once wrote that Irish folk were “more like squalid apes than human beings” wrote the following in his book, English in Ireland : “England governed Ireland for what s
