Text | Rogue
Author of Food Changes History (Volumes I and II).
I will try to comb through the stories before, during, and after the Great Irish Famine in the mid-19th century. This is the fifth article in the series, continuous update, your attention and support is my motivation.
In fact, by the early 19th century, Ireland, dominated by an agrarian economy, could not only feed a large population, but also export grain to feed Britain. So why do the Irish themselves only eat potatoes for a living?
If you have read "There is no idle field in the world, farmers starve to death", you can understand the helplessness of the Irish.
Due to the backwardness of industry and commerce, Ireland lacks non-farm jobs, and the vast majority of Irish farmers have to rely on a piece of land to feed their families, and the ownership of land is almost in the hands of foreign landowners. In the 18th century, Ireland had a land lease model similar to "two landlords", and foreign landowners who were unwilling to go to Ireland to see their land signed long-term fixed land rent with intermediaries at one time. After collecting the rent, the foreign landlord spent it outside Ireland, while the middleman paid the advance payment and subleased it to the farmer at a higher price to obtain a high price difference.
Irish farmers had to rent a piece of arable land at a high price to grow grain, but the grain was not eaten by themselves, but sent to the market to barely pay the high rent. There was a small area left, all used to grow potatoes, so that they could feed themselves, which was the cheapest food they could find. This is a gamble that costs the lives of the whole family, because if the crop fails, farmers who cannot pay the rent are ruthlessly evicted.
Irish countryside
While enduring suffocating oppression, young Irish couples are still marrying and having children early. All it takes is a small plot of land, a shovel, a pot, and they can marry in a hut with no furniture. The 1841 census also showed that in parts of western Ireland, more than 60 per cent of houses were just a windowless mud hut.
Ireland's population began to grow by leaps and bounds. In 1750, Ireland's population was about 2.5 million, growing to about 5 million by 1801, and at the time of the 1841 census, Ireland had 8.175 million. If you count the bankrupt peasants who were expelled to live in the valleys and swamps, Ireland's population may have reached 9 million by the time of the famine of 1845.
The emergence of such a situation seems somewhat inconceivable today. "The poorer the more you live, the poorer you get," as if the cocoon of the ignorant and backward is self-bound. But when we go back to this particular period and put Ireland and the ancient kingdoms of the East together, we see that this is a trap dug by the laws of nature.
In 1793 (the 58th year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty), in the year of the 80th birthday of the Qianlong Emperor, the British Macartney delegation visited China. Along the way, the density of Chinese mouth surprised the members of the mission. In the same year, while reading the Kangxi Emperor's Records, the Qianlong Emperor expressed his concern: "Those who live are few, and those who eat are many. According to the Qing government, the Chinese population has exceeded 300 million.
The Macartney mission came to China
In order to solve the problem of "eating the few", Chinese can only invest more and more labor. During his visit, Macartney noted, "I have not seen a piece of land that is not cultivated with infinite toil to produce every grain and vegetable it can grow." ”
In fact, at this stage, the population of the entire Eurasian continent was climbing to new heights, and it was also in 1789 that Thomas Robert Malthus published his pamphlet "The Principles of Population", in which he also proposed a new economic perspective: a high birth rate can increase gross production, but it tends to reduce per capita production.
Malthus
Whether it was China or Ireland at that time, agricultural production technology was close to stagnation, land relations did not change much, to increase land production, can only increase the labor on the unit of land, the most direct way is to increase the population, the formation of labor force filling model. In other words, people's high willingness to have children is to be full, not to create people when they are full. And the multiplication of the population will make the labor input higher and higher, and the return on labor lower and lower.
Population principle
In part, it was also because of the potatoes that Irish farmers dared to take this gamble. People just need to cut the potato cubes and use a shovel to dig a trench to lay the soil. The high-yielding potatoes would feed the whole family, who would then put the abundant labor into the production of food for Britain. By 1845, Ireland's potato cultivation area had exceeded 2 million acres, and in the Irish parlance, "the poor have little potatoes on their table except big potatoes", and potatoes became almost their only food.
Of course, potatoes also have their drawbacks. Because it is not easy to preserve, in the summer between the two harvest seasons, there will be a lack of green, and the June and August months are called "one meal month" in Ireland every year. More importantly, for nearly 300 years, from the introduction of potatoes to European cultivation until the middle of the 19th century, people grew potatoes through the asexual reproduction of tubers.
Irish and potatoes
Buried tubers in the ground without seeing the light of day, like loose mines accidentally stepped on by the Irish, 300 years is enough time to make them feel that they originally grew on the ground.
(To be continued)