The Great Famine
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2020
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Charles Read joined me on the podcast to discuss the economic and political causes of the Great Famine. We discuss the British government’s economic policies that transferred responsibility onto Irish taxpayers. Within four years, 25% of Irish people died or emigrated.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history at 175 years ago, this month. A terrible potato |
| 0:07.7 | blight was detected. It's astonishing to think, but within four years, a quarter of the Irish |
| 0:16.3 | population had died or emigrated. And in numbers terms, the Irish population has never recovered |
| 0:24.0 | from this catastrophe. This is a podcast all about the great family, the potato family, |
| 0:30.2 | and how initially the government's investments to audit and unprecedented refefeff at, but |
| 0:34.5 | then transferred the burden onto Irish taxpayers themselves. This meant a staggering jump in |
| 0:42.1 | taxation in one area, for example, from a couple of shillings in the pound to over 34 |
| 0:46.8 | shillings in the pound. And that was calculated on the value of your land from before the |
| 0:51.7 | famine had destroyed any income coming from that land. So many people were now paying the |
| 0:58.1 | exchequer, paying the British government to own land because they were paying out more than |
| 1:02.4 | they were taking in rent. Why was this? Was this deliberate genocide? Was this racism? Was it |
| 1:10.6 | astonishing incompetence? Charles Reed is an economic historian and he writes extensively about |
| 1:15.7 | the great financial crises of the 19th century British Isles. He has written about the causes, |
| 1:22.4 | the consequences of famine in this period. And this is a challenging thought-provoking, new |
| 1:30.4 | explanation of the famine and its catastrophic consequences. If you're listening to other episodes |
| 1:35.5 | of this podcast, please get a history hit TV. Thousands and thousands of people are watching |
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| 1:45.1 | sign up because you're a podcast listener with a special introductory rate. If you use the code |
| 1:48.8 | pod1pod1, you get a month for free and then your second month is one pound euro or dollar. |
| 1:55.0 | But the meantime, everyone, here is Charles Reed. |
| 2:06.2 | Charles, thank you very much for joining me on this podcast. |
| 2:08.8 | Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you for having me. |
... |
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