Irish Potato Famine Summary And Response

Summary and Response At the beginning of the article, the author described a scene that more and more Irish people were pouring into America during 1845 to 1851 to draw forth the main topic. Then, the author pointed out four points to explain why the Irish potato famine was so serious. The first point was the loss of their homes and possessions to their indifferent landlords. The indifferent landlords extract the poor Irish people who were leading a harder life than before. The second point that the author claimed was the ineffectiveness of the English and Irish government. At this point, the author wrote two actions that were made by local governments. The first one was to import Indian corn, but many Irish people couldn’t adapt the

On the one hand, I agree these four reasons that are significant factors. On the other hand, I still have my own thought about the reason of the Irish potato famine. In my opinion, the Ireland was conquered by English several times and the Irish people were squeezed by the English colonists. The colonists occupied a lot of lands and carried out some strict rules that were benefit to themselves. Therefore, for Irish people, they had no rights to own enough lands and plant whatever they want. “In fact, the most glaring cause of the famine was not a plant disease, but England's long-running political hegemony over Ireland. The English conquered Ireland, several times, and took ownership of vast agricultural territory. Large chunks of land were given to Englishmen” (Meyer). They were forced to serve colonist. The poor farmer had no strength to fight against. The conquest of the English colonists to the Irish people made the local economy worse and

I agree with that. The author described that the local governments hired the farm laborers to build roads and canals. However, some workers died of starvation before receiving their wages. Most people know the Great Depression and one of the policies that carried out was as same as Ireland’s. During Roosevelt time, one of the government’s policies was to implement the “welfare to work”. They thought the simple remedy is palliative and also, the national financial couldn’t afford it. Therefore, through the establishment of the public projects, the governments provided a lot of opportunities to work and thus stimulating the consumption and production to stable the social order. However, why the Roosevelt governments could ease the financial difficulties while the Irish governments couldn’t. Just as the author said, “some workers died of starvation before receiving their wages.” By comparing these two examples, we can see from them that the root was the ineffectiveness of the governments. The ineffectiveness of governments triggers my memory. My grandfather once told me that when he was forty years old, the Great Culture Revolution broke out. At that time, Chinese governments implemented a policy that the organization form of agriculture production must be carried out by groups and whatever you done in one day, you would receive a fixed wage. Frequently, more