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You are wrong in your opinion of the English at the time of the famine most English people lived in poverty as bad as the Irish .. working in factories for long hours living in slums with hardly any food to eat. Government of the time and Landowners were to blame. Yes the Irish had it tough but so did many others from all over Europe.
Thank you for clarifying this. A lot of people generalize and say it was "the English......." but the fact was that the ordinary English citizen lived in poverty too.
It was the government who made people suffer. In those days England ruled a large part of the world and Imperialism was the style everywhere---exploit the people and reap the benefits. Who cared about the people? There were no laws to protect them.
My own English ancestors who were farmers had their land seized and ended up like most of the English, working long hours in the mills. Child labor too. 12 Hours a day, six days a week. A lot of English immigrants came here to work in the mills but they were better off than the Irish because they knew how to work in mills and could earn a living.
My grandfather was a machinist in the mills. He was a normal English person and he hated England (the government/the system) and never went back.
It goes back even further than the Catholicism/Protestantism of 'recent' history.
The Irish when the Romans came to the Isle were a wild and incorrigible folk. They were extensively warlike and pagan in their beliefs, and agreed to Roman trade and influence only by insisting on retaining their own independence. Some were piratical, and the east coast of Ireland became aggressive in trade as well as literary and metallurgy pursuits. The Irish even before the Norse invasion of 800 were known to be sharp traders and merchants, close gamblers, and tight with their families and kin - all others were suspect and could be cheated at will. The later introduction of Christianity even had to make allowances for Celtic beliefs; many pagan rituals were actually incorporated into the Irish Catholic Church practices, to convert more Irish to Christianity. (I'm skimming VERRRY briefly on the topic, so as not to turn this into a theological discussion.)
When the Church of England was created, it was in diametric and political opposition to the Papal supremacy of the Catholic Church. Those wild Irish, with their odd beliefs and determination to cling to Mother Church, even when it was not in their best financial and political interests to do so, and their previous histories of tribal conquering and trade forays into Spain, France, and even India, were intimidating to the 'civilized' folk of the burgeoning times of and prior to the Industrial Revolution. They were seen as clinging to their tribal and familial commitments, as being intense and bold, even brash, in their wars and trade practices. Having people from 'the Wild Countree' invading the Americas provoked a visceral and historical reaction toward the wild-eyed, almost feral, and passionate Irish. They were loud, they were abrupt and intrusive, they were self-protecting and self-promoting, were outwardly physically expressive in both love and hate, could influence not only each other but the people around them with an innate understanding of and ability to manipulate basic human desires (hence the 'Kissing the Blarney Stone" comments) and were a bold, brash, outspoken, independent threat to more civilized and genteel folk. Like many poor immigrants, they formed societies to help and protect those of their own 'blood', and even those who were overjoyed and enthusiastic about becoming American retained their "Irish roots", beliefs, and influences.
My family (both sides) are from County Cork. My mothers' family came over as coal miners and found a trade there; my father's family came over (later) and grandpa became a police officer. The hard and dangerous labors were all they were determined to be fit for - and the fact is that they embraced and profoundly progressed in those dangerous professions.
Thank you for clarifying this. A lot of people generalize and say it was "the English......." but the fact was that the ordinary English citizen lived in poverty too.
It was the government who made people suffer. In those days England ruled a large part of the world and Imperialism was the style everywhere---exploit the people and reap the benefits. Who cared about the people? There were no laws to protect them.
My own English ancestors who were farmers had their land seized and ended up like most of the English, working long hours in the mills. Child labor too. 12 Hours a day, six days a week. A lot of English immigrants came here to work in the mills but they were better off than the Irish because they knew how to work in mills and could earn a living.
My grandfather was a machinist in the mills. He was a normal English person and he hated England (the government/the system) and never went back.
Before industrialization, many british poor lived on estates and farmed, a share theirs and a share the landholders. When industirilizaion came, the land used for farming increasingly became industrialized and was taken away. The land owner owed nothing to the tenants so all they got was an eviction, and there wasn't much but begging, becoming a servant, or a factory.
In the US, factories were just as bad. Child labor was valued for children fit easily in tight spaces. One professor I had in college was missing two fingers, which he lost as a child in Pensulvania working a sluce at a mine. Little hands could reach into compact spaces, and it was not uncommon for children and adults to be missing fingers.
The Child labor laws (the first case based on an animal welfare law for dogs) didn't happen until the early 1900's. It wasn't just England or Ireland that the poor were very poor and very used. The 'merchant' class eventually merged with the 'skilled' to becaome the 'middle' class but even here that came after the early 1900's.
The difference in the English poor who arrived here was many had lived and worked in industrial circumstances, where the majority of the Irish had not. Culturally, they were very different and the rivalry came here with them.
Its a classic case of someone to look down on as worse off than you along with the other reasons.
I would think Catholicism was the main reason. The Americans already here did not want the Pope exerting influence in this country as they had seen happen in European history.
The Irish were really poor, I read somewhere (can't remember where) they often were hired to do work that they did not want the slaves to do. Digging canals, etc. where the conditions were really severe (malaria, etc.)
And the Potato famine was an outright holocaust btw... there is already an existing thread on this subject.
I've read similar things . In the 1850s, when the South was prospering economically, a lot of engineering work was being done, such as building tunnels for trains. They knew a certain number of workers would die during construction, and so they hired Irish immigrants to do the work rather than slaves. The money that had to be paid to the family of a dead Irish worker was much less than the amount that would have had to have been paid to a slaveholder for the loss of his "property".
You are wrong in your opinion of the English at the time of the famine most English people lived in poverty as bad as the Irish .. working in factories for long hours living in slums with hardly any food to eat. Government of the time and Landowners were to blame. Yes the Irish had it tough but so did many others from all over Europe.
The difference between the poor in Ireland and England however, is that the Irish were thrown off their land, banned from public office, and basically forced to become tenant farmers for the new English & protestant-Scottish gentry landlords.
Another thing that most people do not realize is that during the potato famine, yes, the crops were blighted, however the Irish were actually growing enough food to support themselves. Except, they had to pay off their English landlords with crops just so they could keep renting their small plots of land & homes. The landlords were still making their profits while the Irish were starving to death.
Truth is, the Irish & English have a tumultuous history. Neither liked the other. And the English felt everyone was beneath them. And especially after England became a Protestant state instead of a Catholic one, it just gave them one more reason to believe in their superiority over Ireland. This view was transferred to the US. In the 1800s, we were a very Protestant country and extremely English in our thoughts towards the Irish.
Other immigrant groups have been looked down upon too. For example, Benjamin Franklin talked about the "swarthy Germans". Anti-immigrant sentiment has been strong since day 1 in our country. However, it was magnified where the Irish were concerned due to the history of the English/Irish relations.
It goes back even further than the Catholicism/Protestantism of 'recent' history.
The Irish when the Romans came to the Isle were a wild and incorrigible folk. They were extensively warlike and pagan in their beliefs, and agreed to Roman trade and influence only by insisting on retaining their own independence....
Your summation of Irish history is very comical, most especially when wildly inaccurate...and I could almost hear "McNamara's Band" in the background.
I have forwarded it to a couple of cousins in Ireland, it will make their day.
If you have an interest in Irish history I would suggest the six-volume (paperback) New Gill History of Ireland. It is written by top historians, but is eminently readable...though the humor is a bit more subtle.
Sigh.
Of course it was wildly inaccurate; I was talking about perception, not fact. The question was not about Irish history, not in the History forum, but in the Genealogy forum; the question was "why did people not like the Irish"...
I would suggest a thorough reading of the question at hand.
A good example about the mistreatment of Irish railroad laborers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duffy's_Cut . A "google" search shows dozens of other sites about Duffy's Cut.
The national politican Tip O'Neill's autobiography "Man of the House" discusses how in his youth, as late as the 1920s, the banks in Boston would not hire an applicant with an Irish name for any position.
Last edited by slowlane3; 02-27-2012 at 11:22 AM..
Before industrialization, many british poor lived on estates and farmed, a share theirs and a share the landholders. When industirilizaion came, the land used for farming increasingly became industrialized and was taken away. The land owner owed nothing to the tenants so all they got was an eviction, and there wasn't much but begging, becoming a servant, or a factory.
The difference between the poor in Ireland and England however, is that the Irish were thrown off their land, banned from public office, and basically forced to become tenant farmers for the new English & protestant-Scottish gentry landlords.
So what difference IS there? The above 2 paragraphs come from 2 different posters -- both the English and the Irish were thrown off the land. In England the farmers were even thrown off the land they were renting as tenant farmers and forced to beg, become servants, or work in mills.
the new English & protestant-Scottish gentry landlords. were the same people (or their counterparts) who exploited the English people too. When you refer to English people I think you mean the GENTRY or ARISTROCRATS---that small upper class elite in England who thought they were better than anyone else.
The English PEOPLE were exploited. They were POOR. They lived under terrible conditions. No one ever hears about the English PEOPLE themselves.
Working 6 long days a week and living hand to mouth, I don't think they had TIME to look down on the Irish--if they even knew who the Irish were!
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