Learning the Wrong Lessons: Governments, Hunger and the Great Irish Famine By Gareth G Davis (Copyright: Gareth Davis) (This is a draft- not for quotation without the author's express written permission. Full version of this paper appeared in "Reflections", the journal of the Edmund Burke Institute, Dublin.) (For best viewing widen your browser/notepad) ************************************************** We live in the shadow of the Great Hunger. The famine and the events which accompanied it are the single most important influences in shaping modern Ireland. A century and a half later, this event continues to stir emotions ranging from grief for its victims to venomous anger at the alleged (and long dead) perpetrators. It is scarcely surprising that the impact of the Great Hunger, an event which killed one tenth of the Irish and from which we are separated by a mere five generations, has reverberated through the work of Ireland's social thinkers. Today the deep imprint which the famine made on Irish consciousness can be seen in the current attempt by many commentators to equate the horror of the Irish Famine of the 19th Century with contemporary tragedies in the Third World. The leading, if one of the most restrained, proponents of this view has been President Robinson who stated at the opening of the Strokestown Famine Museum that "the past gave Ireland a moral viewpoint and an historically informed compassion on some of the events happening now."1 Needless to say others have been quick to express this view in much more forceful and starkly political terms. Consider for example the language of Justin Kilcullen writing in the January 5th 1996 edition of the Irish Times to attack the Irish government's failure to drastically increase its aid to the third world: "During the 1840s, poverty, injustice and sheer indifference killed a million of our own people. Much of the widespread hunger and malnutrition in today's world is caused by the same factors. At a time when we are remembering those who perished in the Famine, we have a duty as a nation to speak and act on behalf of the poor of our own time who look to us hopefully. If we are to be heard, we must underpin our concern with genuine compassion." Under this paradigm, famine in the modern world is held to be a direct counterpart of what happened in Ireland in the late 1840s. World hunger, like the Irish Famine, is held to be phenomenon which somehow reflects the "dangers" of "unrestrained" capitalism and "doctrinaire" laissez-faire . Implied in this view is the belief that we, especially in Ireland which has a special "moral viewpoint", are presented with a choice. We in the first world can easily avert these tragedies by following a set of socialistic policy prescriptions which range from massively increasing aid budgets right up to following the vague imperative to "redistribute the world's resources on a more equitable basis." It is implied that a failure on our behalf to take these steps renders us in some way as morally indictable as such villains as Lord John Russell and Charles Trevelyan. Despite the rhetorical eloquence and obvious sincerity with which these sentiments have been expressed they are based on three fundamental assumptions which are false. Firstly the Great Irish Famine is not a generalised illustration of the dangers of "unrestrained" capitalism, rather it was a freak natural occurrence that was in many ways exacerbated by flawed government policies. Secondly, the Irish Famine was very different from the tragedies which have recently being witnessed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thirdly, the fundamental cause of famines in the late twentieth century is not Western "injustice" and "indifference" but are rather the actions of third world governments and their armed political competitors. Irish Economic Consciousness and the Famine It is perhaps one of Ireland's greatest misfortunes that the philosophy of economic freedom was largely ntroduced into Ireland by of Archbishop Richard Whately. An Englishman and formerly Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University, Whately was a man unashamedly and openly afire with the belief that free market ideology (or theology as he saw it) was the ideal means of rendering the Irish lower classes quiescent in the face of the existing status quo of British rule, established church and entrenched social privilege.2 In the Westminster parliament of the time however, Classical Liberalism was represented by the philosophical radicals; a group of which Daniel O'Connell was a prominent member.3 This group, inspired by Smith, Hume and later thinkers such as Cobden and Bright, subscribed to an ideology of free markets and free individuals that was very different from Whately's view of classical economics as the opium of the underclasses. The radicals shared Adam Smith's deep hostility towards imperialism and colonialism as oppressive relics of mercantilism, they opposed protectionism and government intervention in the economy and they fought the feudalistic and sectarian laws which created monopolies of social, religious and economic privilege. Predictably Whately's brash efforts in Ireland invoked a hostile reaction from nationalist and radical intellectuals. However it was the great famine which was to irreversibly fix the hostility of the Irish intelligentsia to economic liberalism. At the nadir of the crisis, British administrators, stung by rightful charges of incompetence and in many cases motivated by an ugly racialist and religious prejudice, used the vocabulary of laissez-faire to deny requests for greater humanitarian aid.4 Their language, like Whateley's all too obvious proselytism, had the inevitable effect on the attitude of Ireland's intelligentsia and political activists towards free markets. The effects of the famine on contemporary social and political thought are well documented if not widely appreciated. The personification of this sea change was of course the young Isaac Butt who was transformed from a young conservative Orange Tory into a quasi-nationalist (complete with hard core protectionist views).5 The mild romanticism of the Young Irelanders was hardened into rabid hostility towards free markets and classical liberalism in general . John Mitchell is perhaps the archetype, writing of Ireland as a "nation perishing of political economy."6 Maynooth literature professor Christopher Morash has recently documented the traumatic impact of the famine on Mitchell and the wider body of Irish nationalists and radicals.7 The emotional result of this horror was a turning away from the universalism and emphasis on individual liberty that was born in the enlightenment. From the famine onwards, Irish thinkers would form what Marxist commentator Terry Eagleton characterises as an "archaic avant-garde";8 rejecting modernity and emphasising more the glories of the past, stressing less the rights of the individual and more the "group rights" of the "Irish nation", putting less emphasis on the brotherhood of all men and more on nationalist solidarity. Carlyle and Hegel, not Hume and Locke, would set the tone of this journey and their road can be followed from the Young Irelanders through to the whole cultural nationalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. The economic content of this movement was added to by successive figures such as John Mitchell, Isaac Butt, William Dillon, Arthur Griffith, Tom Kettle and Patrick Pearse and its chief feature comprised the creation of tariff barriers and other forms of government intervention in order to foster domestic industry and Irish self-sufficiency. The economics of the new Irish nationalism that developed can be neatly characterised in the words of Thomas Boylan and Timothy Foley: "All versions of nationalism attacked free trade, laissez-faire, the doctrine of the sanctity of the market mechanism and the utilitarian philosophy which underpinned political economy. More radical versions challenged the sacredness of contract and of private property especially of land."9 The dominant economic paradigm of Irish nationalism on the eve of independence can be gleaned in "The Economic History of Ireland from the Union to the Famine" (1922), the book from which most of Ireland's post-1922 administrative and ruling classes learned their economic history. Written by George O'Brien, holder of the Chair of Economics at UCD, this described Irish economic failure since 1800 as the result of British perfidy and in particular the "imposition" of free trade. The nationalist ideology's prescription of protectionism was implemented under Fianna Fail from the 1930s through to 1960s. It is reflected in the 1937 Bunreacht na hEireann, a document full of interventionist language. Indeed Irish distrust of free markets and the deep belief in the need for widespread government intervention runs across the political spectrum and has encompassed both social conservatives and radical revolutionaries; stretching from the Roman Catholic Hierarchy to the far left. It has motivated figures as diverse as Eamonn De Valera and James Connolly. Indeed Irish nationalist intellectuals were willing to cling to the interventionist components of their platforms even at the cost of alienating the industrial north-east of Ireland. At least one distinguished historian has concluded that nationalist insistence on protectionism "formed an insurmountable obstacle to any compromise between Protestant Ulster and the South."10 The continuity of this mistrust of economic liberalism can also be seen in the extremely enthusiastic (if belated) adoption of full scale Keynesian social planning in Ireland during the 1970s. While no one would argue that the Ireland of the 1990s is a bastion of Marxist radicalism, few would dispute that the country's intellectual and political life constitute an extremely hostile environment for free market economics. Given the traumatic context of the famine and the nature of the language used by the then English ruling classes, this Irish backlash against laissez-faire is understandable from an emotional perspective. However there is little doubt that the ideology which resulted has extracted a heavy price on the Irish economy and body politic. It is perhaps even more tragic that much of this world-view is based on an inaccurate picture of what occurred during the famine Government Policy and the Famine On a superficial level the proximate cause of the famine can be readily identified; the fungus phytophthora infestans which destroyed a large portion of Ireland's potato crop over the period 1845-9. Indeed it has been convincingly shown that the pre-famine Irish economy did not contain the seeds of its own destruction and that there was nothing inevitable about the famine had the potato blight not occurred.11 The famine was an unpredictable ecological freak; in words of the Dutch historian and scientist Peter Solar it was a case of "Ireland as having been profoundly unlucky"12 rather than being the inevitable product of market forces run wild (or of unrestrained population growth). Traditional nationalist orthodoxy sees blame for the Irish Famine as lying at the door of the British government. Certainly the British government of the day can be held at least morally culpable if money and rhetoric can be used to gauge their level of concern for Ireland. Just a few years after the famine, and in contradiction to the classical liberal rhetoric with which they had justified the meagre 9.5 million pounds that was spent on Irish Famine relief, the British government spent $69.3 million on the futile and imperialistic Crimean War.13 However the shock of the potato blight to the food production system and economy was so catastrophic that hundreds of thousands would have died regardless of the actions of any government. In the words of economic historian Mary Daly "greater sympathy with the Irish cause would (not) have guaranteed a dramatically reduced mortality level."14 Indeed the events of the famine actually serve to reveal many of the dangers of even well-intentioned government intervention. While no sane commentator would today argue, as English economist Nassau Senior did in the 1849 Edinburgh Review, that government intervention was the primary cause of the great famine, it does seem apparent that the bulk of the state intervention which took place served to harm rather than help the famine victims. In 1845, the first year of the famine, Prime Minister Peel bought food on the world market, stockpiled it and later sold it cheaply. This policy had the effect of driving down food prices in late 1845 and early 1846. While on balance these measures may have saved some lives in the first year of the famine, it was a policy which could only have been implemented in one year and which had negative long-run consequences. The immediate victims of this policy in 1845-6 were Irish food importers who incurred losses because Peel's actions had driven Irish food prices below what the merchants had themselves paid for food on the world market. The result was that from 1846 onwards these Irish merchants were extremely reluctant to import food. Indeed Peel's policy of 1845-6 had only succeeded because the government had been able to shroud their preparations to distribute cheap food in the utmost of secrecy.15 Irish importers would have halted all of their import activities at the first sign of government preparations to distribute cheap or free food supplies. Indeed they declared this intention in public.16 The elimination of private imports would have left the British government as the sole source of food imports for a country of 9 million people; a frightening prospect given the nature and capacity of the 19th century government bureaucracy. Peel's policies during the first year of the famine also had the result that private merchants imported less food than they would otherwise have done during the remainder of the famine. In 1846-7, the British government did not import food but set up public works schemes which employed famine victims in return for a cash wage. This policy boosted cash incomes and thus increased the demand for food. However the supply of food in Ireland was relatively fixed over the short-and medium term. Imports from North America once ordered took many months to arrive and in any case potential private merchants, having been burnt once in 1845-6, were reluctant to make arrangements to buy foreign food. The inevitable result of the government's policy of boosting purchasing power, while the supply of food remained relatively fixed, was to increase food prices. These higher prices made it much harder for the more vulnerable groups in society (such as the old, sick, children) to acquire food. These groups, unlike the able-bodied, could not earn a cash income by working on the public employment schemes but were still forced to pay prices for food which had been inflated by the government's policies. 17 Even more disturbing is recent evidence that much, maybe even most, of the extra income/purchasing power generated by the public works scheme accrued, not to the starving, but to the well-off. 18 One historian has recently shown how the local-level administration of the public works schemes was extremely corrupt and skewed to benefit the influential and affluent. Among the abuses of the schemes were the many non-existent "ghost" workers on their payrolls and the numerous large payments to large farmers, businessmen and landlords for various "services". The public works not only acted to redistribute food away from many of the needy but also served to reduce the overall supply of food which was available. It is tragically ironic that in 1847, the worst year of the famine, the potato crop did not actually fail. Food shortages occurred because very few seed potatoes had been planted. This was largely, but not exclusively, due to the fact that during the Spring planting season of 1847, much of the able bodied agricultural labour force had been employed on the government relief schemes while potatoes remained unplanted. These programs, by congregating large numbers of hungry people in one spot, also accelerated the spread of the deadly contagious fevers which killed most famine victims. Even the government-run soup kitchens which replaced the public works in mid-1847 have not escaped criticism. According to the analysis of modern nutritionist Margaret Crawford these kitchens, which fed watery soup to the empty and bloated bodies of famine victims, served to decrease rather than increase the survival chances of recipients.19 From 1848 onwards almost the entire burden of relief was thrown onto the Irish Poor Law system, a system of workhouses funded from local taxation and set up almost immediately before the famine to serve as a welfare safety net. This system has been severely criticised by historians because, in the words of economic historian Joel Mokyr, "there is reason to believe that the Irish Poor Law might have made matters somewhat worse".20 The Poor Law System was financed on a local level by taxes (or "rates") on land and a landlord was held liable for the rates of his or her small tenants. As the crisis worsened these rates were vastly increased; a factor which was to lead directly to mass evictions. Even when a landlord did not receive his or her rent from a tenant, he or she was still liable for that tenant's rates. The astronomical increase in the tax burden which was required to pay for the workhouses made it impossible for many near-bankrupt landlords to bear the presence on their land of famine-stricken tenants who could not pay rent. A vicious circle developed as these evicted tenants flocked to the workhouses, which further increased the tax-burden and led to more evictions. The workhouses, like the Public Works, also helped to spread the contagious diseases which killed most of the majority of famine victims. Despite the evidence that the Great Famine is a tale of the harm wrought by government intervention, the one million or so victims of the famine have been posthumously recruited by interventionists to demonstrate the "dangers" of unfettered markets and the "need" for the state to play a large role in the economy. Famines in the Modern Third World A critical examination of the claim that the great Irish Famine is paralleled by current events in the world's poorer countries and in particular Africa reveals that it is deeply flawed. These famines generally represent the outcome of avoidable and artificial factors; namely policies the of governments and other armed groups which trample on the economic and political freedoms of their people. These tragedies are completely avoidable in a way in which the Great Irish Famine was not. The interventionist prescriptions laid out by the orthodoxy that currently pervades Irish discourse on the Famine fails to properly address the problems faced by these people and indeed if implemented would act to increase hunger. The role and power of governments ,and the economic and political tyranny which they can exercise over their citizens, lie at the heart of understanding mass starvation in the 20th century. The most vivid and frightening demonstration of the power of the state to induce hunger can be seen in two of the most deadly famines of the twentieth century. The Chinese Famine which occurred during Chairman Mao's "Great Leap Forward "of the late 1950s-early 1960s has remained almost unknown and purposely unstudied by the mostly socialist gurus who act as the self-appointed consciences of the first world. Jasper Becker's recent book "Hungry Ghosts" reveals in horrific detail the extent of this "silent" catastrophe. At least 30 million, and possibly up to 50-60 million, Chinese died as the Marxist regime centralised and collectivised agricultural production, seized control of food distribution and denied rations to millions of "enemies of the people".21 The 1932-3 famine in the Soviet Union killed a quarter of the population of the Ukraine in one year; a total death toll of 5-7million. These people died needlessly as Stalin used the state to wage economic warfare on the rural peasant classes. Indeed most people who have starved to death since 1917 have died in Marxist centrally-planned economies; from the Russian Famine of the early 1920s through to the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s. It is perhaps trivial to observe that such atrocities as occurred in China or the Ukraine are impossible in a decentralised capitalist society of property owners, where trade between millions of self-interested individuals will circumvent the whims of a tyrant or bureaucrat. On the other hand, where an entire population depend on a state-controlled food production and distribution system, governments can, and regularly do, single out their enemies for starvation or use denial of nutrition as an instrument of utopian social engineering. Those who argue that increased government control of the economy was the key to Ireland avoiding hunger would do well to consider the comments of the contemporary and influential would-be social engineer, Nassau Senior, who during the famine once publicly bemoaned the fact that "a million deaths would scarcely be enough to do much good."22 The thought of such a man gaining access to the vast power provided by a centralised state-controlled economy is surely a frightening one. Capitalism is also the only economic system which provides the proper incentives and co-ordination to generate the food necessary to conquer malnutrition and hunger. One need only look at the fact that Chinese food production has grown at an annual rate of 12% in the wake of the replacement of a gricultural central planning with a more or less free market in 1977 or at the sad plight of the USSR's agricultural sector in the final days of communism to realise the essential truth of this principle.23 In recent decades, TV pictures of famine in the regions of Biafra in Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Sudan, Rwanda and Somalia have evoked great sympathy among many in the Western World, and in Ireland in particular. However viewers are generally left uninformed of the underlying political and economic circumstances. Sometimes along with the sympathy that is generated, comes a sense of guilt or anger at the supposed indifference of developed countries and a feeling the hunger is the result of an "unfair" Capitalist system. The fate of Africa is a chilling lesson in the dangers of replacing free markets and free individuals with the power of the state. In all of the cases listed above, the proximate cause of hunger was a civil war between rival groups seeking control of the government which disrupted food production and distribution. Ireland in 1845-9 was at peace. In Ireland the proximate cause of famine was a natural phenomenon, the potato blight, and government intervention was only a subsidiary factor. It is also the case that modern Africa is an area rich in natural resources unlike early 19th century Ireland. For example it has been estimated that only 160 million of Sub-Sahara Africa's potential 700-760 million hectares of arable land are presently under cultivation.24 This situation differs immeasurably from immediate pre-famine Ireland where land-hungry cottiers were desperately trying to extract subsistence from tiny patches of land in the depths of the Bog of Allen or on rock strewn mountainsides. It was perhaps the case of the Ethiopian famine in the mid-1980s which generated the strongest reaction in the West. This hunger occurred as a drought added to the effects of Ethiopia's brutal civil war and set off a frenzy of charitable and political activity in the West that included the Band-Aid and Live-Aid initiatives. However it would appear that very few understood the roots of this crisis which have been clearly documented by Lord Bauer, the eminent development economist. In the decade before the crisis, Bauer records how the Marxist-Leninist government set about systematically destroying the traditional exchange and property based agricultural sector in Ethiopia. A massive price control system was set up which artificially cut the price of food received by producers in order to benefit the urban elite from which the government received its support. Individual farmers and villagers were expropriated and enslaved into collectivised farms which were run by party officials in the name of "land reform". There were mass forced population movements and the compulsory usurpation of traditional methods of food production with state-prescribed methods in the name of "modernisation". Western governments can hardly be accused of indifference or lack of sympathy either; in the four years before the beginning of the famine in 1984 they pumped over $1.3 Billion in development aid into Ethiopia.25 An recent study of the Sudanese famine by Oxford Economist David Keen also illustrates the negative role generally played by Third World governments.26 Keen demonstrates that famines, such as that which devastated the Dinka of Sudan in the 1980s, often have powerful beneficiaries within the affected nation, especially among the political elites. Famine in the Sudan was not an apocalyptic natural disaster according to Keen, but was rather "actively promoted by powerful interests within the Sudanese government." Elements of the Sudanese government not only obstructed the operation of relief efforts but also channelled them to their own advantage and used the famine as an opportunity to expropriate and politically neutralise the Dinka ethnic group. For the most part, international donors and relief agencies fail to counteract these processes or speak up on behalf of those who lack political influence in their own society. Unfortunately this inability or willingness to criticise the statist policies of Third World regimes (and not Western callousness) as the primary cause of famines is a feature shared by most contemporary Irish "Third World advocates". Sadly the Ethiopian and Sudanese cases are typical of Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), a group of countries that are mostly run by governments which can be accurately characterised as mere large-scale predatory bandits which exploit and extort their citizens at will. Throughout almost all of Africa farmers are forced to sell their produce to huge state-run "marketing boards" in return for a fraction of the price which they would receive in a free market.27 The government then either sells the food at market prices and thus extracts a surplus or distributes it at artificially low prices to politically-favoured urban dwellers. As in Ethiopia, collectivisation and expropriation have been commonplace across the continent. The results have been sadly predictable. Between independence and the end of the 1980s, per capita food production in Sub-Saharan Africa fell by 25% according to the UN's FAO as farmers responded to these exploitative policies by reducing their production.28 It is also very noticeable that the elements which surface during famines in order to heap blame onto Western governments have long maintained a deafening silence on the abusive and destructive policies of African governments in the period before the famine. Despite these facts, the problem of African hunger is usually presented by the politically correct as a problem of over-consumption by the greedy West. However children in Africa do not go hungry because we in the West over-consume, rather it is because of the disastrous socialistic policies of their own exploitative governments which serve to keep food production in these societies far below its potential. Coupled with the ability and willingness of well-armed governments and guerrilla groups to use denial of food for purposes of warfare or social engineering, it is these policies which cause famine in the today's underdeveloped world. Learning the Right Lessons from the Famine Given the varying circumstances faced by mid-19th century Ireland and by Lesser Developed Countries in the modern era it is perhaps necessary to ask if anything at all from the Irish experience can be instructive. Despite the distance in space and time, cautious inferences can be drawn that can be generally applied. Perhaps the most obvious lesson for modern policy-makers from the famine is that the dichotomy, usually suggested by left-wing theorists, between "social" or "human" needs (such as life expectancy or infant mortality) and economic goals is a false one. As Joel Mokyr's statistical work illustrates, the death rate across different regions and countries during the potato blight is strongly negatively correlated with levels of per capita income.29 Thus Ireland, as the poorest nation in North Western Europe (and the only one which during the 19th Century experienced "de-industrialisation") had a uniquely high death rate when the famine struck. Likewise Holland suffered a much higher death rate than that the more industrialised and richer Belgium and Scotland did much better than less industrialised Ireland. Within Ireland, Mokyr finds that higher death rates are strongly correlated with measures of per capita income across the 32 counties during the famine. Indeed differences in income explain differences in death rates to a much greater degree than factors such as an area's degree of dependence on the potato or population density. Put simply higher income levels and a more industrialised economy would have increased the ability of the Irish economy to absorb the shock of the potato blight. Richer societies had fewer people in vulnerable positions and more income with which to buy alternative sources of food. As Mokyr puts it "Ireland's experience in the first half of the 19th century represents a grim reminder of the costs of failing to industrialise." 30 Secondly the Irish experience gives a vivid illustration of the limitations of state intervention as a means of promoting human welfare. The role of the state during the famine of exacerbating the situation through its relief efforts has already been dealt with. On the eve of the famine Ireland, despite being chronically poor had one of the most advanced and extensive public sectors in Europe. Its public health system was excellent and according to R.B. Mc Dowell "the Irish poor enjoyed better medical services than their fellows in wealthier and healthier countries".31 Vast resources for such a poor country were also expended on the educational system. Ireland in 1841 had 17 school teachers per 10,000 people compared to a figure of 11 for Austria and 14 for Prussia (which had a much vaunted school system).32 In 1845 Ireland also had a Poor Law System that was remarkably modern and extensive given the level of the country's development. During the early and mid 1800s Ireland had an excellent transportation infrastructure, including one of the finest and most elaborate road systems in Europe.33 The Irish civil service was relatively honest and very extensive for its context, indeed Mokyr notes that "Long before Britain, Ireland was run by professional, well-trained and generally conscientious administrators".34 This, of course contradicts, the traditional view of pre-famine Ireland as a land where laissez-faire ran riot. Indeed the opposite appears to have been the case. Roy Foster for example finds that in the century before the famine Ireland had extremely interventionist governments. Commenting on its economic and commercial policy Foster notes that "the Irish political culture was one where state interference in the economy and elsewhere was common practice, grants tariffs bounties and centralisation were accepted..... Government had in this sense a higher profile than across the Irish Sea" and later writes of the post-1800 economic policy that "the most notable post-union development built upon the established tradition of intervention in areas like education, public health and emergency public works where intervention became more decisive and more extensive than in contemporary Britain." 35 Indeed another historian has recently argued that the pre-famine administration was probably "the most advanced and interventionist in Europe" In one sense the preponderance of the state reflects Ireland's history over the centuries before the famine. Unlike in England, the British state's recognition of even the most basic rights of the citizenry was a comparatively recent event for the great majority of the population. In 1840 the penal laws against non-Anglicans had been gone for less than 50 years and while the Dublin Castle regime of the Victorian era was ostensibly more benevolent than that of Cromwell's, it still retained powers and controls over economic and political life that stretched beyond anything that existed in England. Thirdly, Ireland's famine experience draws attention to the need for a widely-supported political system which upholds and is seen to uphold legitimate private property rights. The British administration of Ireland by its nature (and by implication a large proportion of the property rights which it enforced) was not perceived as legitimate by most Irish people. Ireland could be accurately described as a land held by military force alone. Investors and potential entrepreneurs knew that the country was liable to political convulsions and even the likelihood of violent revolution and expropriation. Indeed prior to the famine Ireland was already accounted a "remarkably violent place," largely on account of the violence generated from the landlord-tenant disturbances and from the tithe wars.37 The created a crisis in investor confidence regarding Ireland causing British investment, and indeed Irish investment, to be largely diverted elsewhere. The words of a contemporary businessman reflect this expectation: "The real problem was that Ireland was considered by Britain to be an alien and even hostile country. The economic effects of this hostility were important. English and Scottish capital shied away from Ireland. One contemporary states that "as long as the statue law of the country treats four-fifths of the population as persons who are dangerous to the state and ought not to be trusted, there will exist a distrust on the part of English capitalists which will prevent then from investing capital (in Ireland)". True, some British entrepreneurs did go to Ireland, but many more went to France, Belgium, and Prussia"38 As we have seen the key factor which made Ireland vulnerable to famine when the blight occurred was its poverty and the key reason for Ireland's poverty was its failure to accumulate capital, a failure that was due in large part to the fact that property rights were considered to be insecure. As Joel Mokyr concludes after his exhaustive study: " A variety of causes for Ireland's lack of resilience have been identified, and most of them, in one way or another directly led to increased poverty through the single mechanism of reduced capital formation. Whether we look at agriculture, fisheries, transportation, housing or human capital, the same picture returns time and again: productivity was low because labour lacked the non-complementary inputs it needed"39 The effect of the lack of capital in Ireland was not merely academic. It meant that in 1841 the 30,000 or so rural inhabitants of the rural inhabitants of the barony of Gweedore in Donegal had only one plough between them. It meant that Mayo coast dwellers fished the barren water close to shore for want of a larger boat while a few miles out to sea the ocean teemed with fish. It meant that dozens crowded onto tiny patches of land while nearby boglands went unreclaimed for want of tools. It meant that when the Belfast's linen industry flourished it could only do so by draining capital from the Ulster cotton industry, killing the cotton industry in the process. In short it was the primary underlying reason that Ireland was in such a vulnerable position when the potato blight struck in 1845-9. The lessons of the Irish famine for developing countries are stark. Countries which unable to accumulate capital, develop a secure and widely accepted set of economic rights and nurture a strong private sector to act as the engine of economic growth make themselves vulnerable to tragedies such as mass starvation. In this respect even heavy investment in public and social infrastructure offers little or no protection. Conclusion As we have seen the impact of the famine upon Irish economic and social thought has been considerable and has taken the form of hostility towards free markets. More recently there has been a tendency to equate Modern Africa and 19th Century Ireland as the twin victims of "heartless" and "indifferent" capitalism. However an examination of both the Irish Famine and the experiences of more recent events in Africa reveals that the expansion of the state's role does not necessarily bring about improvement, indeed in most cases its expansion serves to do harm. On a more positive note, experience has also taught that capitalism and the market offer the potential for the economic growth and increased incomes, which in the long run offer the only escape from hunger and scarcity. However it is almost certain that such insights will not form part of the discourse of those who will use the occasion of the famine's anniversary to advance an agenda which has more to do with the vested interests of today than with the lessons of the past. 1 p. 248 in Cathal Poirteir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 1995 2 For a full account of the nature and scope of Whateley's efforts see Thomas A. Boylan and Timothy P. Foley, Political economy and colonial Ireland : the propagation and ideological function of economic discourse in the nineteenth century, (1992) 3 O"Connell for example was a corespondent of Jeremy Bentham who regarded him "as essentially a liberal voice in parliament." He broadly, (if sometimes pragmatically) supported free trade in stark contrast to almost all nationalists who followed him. For an account of the differences between the economics views of O'Connell and those who followed him see Chapter 7 in Richard Davis, The Young Ireland Movement, 1987 4 see for example "Ideology and Famine" by P. Gray in Cathal Poirteir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 1995 5 Isaac Butt, A Voice for Ireland: A famine in the land (1847), Butt had written in favour of tariff before the famine but it is this publication which marks his major break with non-interventionism. 6 quoted on p.138 in C. Morash & R. Hayes (ed.), Fearful Realities: New Perspectives on the Famine. John Mitchell's major work which deals with the famine is The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)(1860) 7 C. Morash, Writing the Irish Famine (1995) 8 T. Eagleton, Heathcliffe and the Great Hunger (1995) 9 p 139 in C. Morash & R. Hayes (ed.), op. cit. 10 p. 280 in E. Strauss, Irish nationalism and British Democracy (1951) 11 pp.1-41 in Cormac O'Grada, Ireland before and after the Famine (1993) (2nd edition) 12 p. 129 in Peter Solar, "The Great Famine was no Ordinary Subsistence Crisis' in E.M. Crawford (ed.), Famine the Irish Experience (1989) 13 p. 291-2 in Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved, (1985) 14 quoted on p. 100 in O'Grada op. cit. It is only fair to note that O'Grada himself feels that the "proper" government relief could have saved some lives but even he concedes that very substantial "excess mortality" (i.e. many thousands of deaths) would have occurred regardless of relief policies. 15 see Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger (1962) pp.55-6 16 see for example Cecil Woodham-Smith, op cit. p.55-8 and p.107, The merchants are quoted as declaring to the cabinet that "they would not import food at all if it were the intention of the government to do so" 17 Indeed contemporary Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin, William Neilson Hancock , predicted that such would be the result of the Public Work's schemes: "On the use of the doctrine of laissez-faire, in Investigating the economic resources of Ireland", in Transactions of the Dublin Statistical Society (1847-9) 18 see Mary E. Daly, "The Operations of Famine Relief" pp. 123-134 in Cathal Poirteir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 1995 19 pp 198-219, "Subsistence Crises and Famines in Ireland: A Nutritionist's View" in E.M. Crawford (ed.), Famine the Irish Experience (1989) 20 p. 291 in Mokyr op cit. 21 see Jasper Becker, "Hungry Ghosts", (1996) 22 p. 127 in O'Grada op. cit. 23 see David Osterfeld, "Hope for the World Food Situation' in Journal of Economic Growth Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 1989-90 24 p. 42 in World Resources Institute, World Resources 1986 (1986) 25 See P.T. Bauer "Famine in Black Africa" in 26 see D. Keen, The benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983-9, (1994) 27 see for example "Africa's Agricultural Disaster" in Journal of Economic Growth Vol. 1, No. 3, Autumn 1986 28 cited on page 43 in David Osterfeld, "Hope for the World Food Situation" in Journal of Economic Growth Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 1989-90 29 see Ch. 9 in Mokyr op. cit. 30 p.276 in Mokyr op. cit. 31 p 33 in R.B. Mc Dowell, "Ireland on the Eve of Famine" in R. Edwards and T. Williams (eds) The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History 1845-52 (1956) 32 pp 183-5 in Mokyr op cit. and p.22-4 in O'Grada op cit. 33 p. 182-3 in Mokyr op cit. 34 p. 290 in Mokyr op cit. 35 p. 227 and 290 in R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (1988) 36 p.102 in P. Gray "Ideology and the Famine", in Cathal Poirteir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, (1995) 37 see Ch. 5 in Mokyr op. cit. 38 p.291 in Mokyr op. cit. 39 p.283 in Mokyr op. cit.