Ireland's Holocaust

The genocide of the Irish people in the 1840's is most often referred to a a crop failure or so called "Potato Famine." It came after two centuries of land theft by the English colonizer, occupiers. The Penal Laws of the early 1700's required the Irish to change there Catholic religion. The Penal Laws allowed British occupiers to take the land of those who didn't become Protestants. The Irish were left with extremely small parcels of land, to small for most crops (i.e. wheat, barley, etc.). In this way the Irish became dependent on the potato for survival, because sufficient amounts could be grown of very small plots of land. When the potato crop failed due to a blight, Ireland's agricultural bounty was great in terms of wheat, barley, etc. The large landowners were Protestant gentry who shipped all of their agricultural produce to England to keep food prices low in England. As a result, as millions of Irish starved, the English were well fed at low prices. The decision to ship all food to England was made by officials in the English Treasury, knowing millions were starving in Ireland. In doing so 2 million starved and another 2 to 3 million were forced to emigrate. As an occupied English colony, and a part of Great Brittan, the English had an absolute responsibility to feed the Irish people. In not doing so, the English committed genocide as surely as Hitler did when he intentionally starved Jews to death at Malthausen concentration camp. It is only in the last 20 or 30 years that Irish historians have had the opportunity to write about Ireland's history. Prior to that, English historians excused their ancestors holocaust of the Irish people.