Potato blight, "phytophthora infestans", did spread from America to Europe in 1844, to England and then Ireland in 1845 but it didn't cause famine anywhere. Ireland did not starve for potatoes; it starved for food.

Ireland starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, Coast Guard and by 200,000 British soldiers (100,000 at any given moment).

The attached map shows the never-before-published names and locations in Ireland of the food removal regiments.

On This Day: 1866 Death of antiquarian, artist and Irish music collector George Petrie.
"One of the most illustrious of Irishmen" - Daniel O'Connell

Thus, Britain seized from Ireland's producers tens of millions of head of livestock; tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry & dairy products; enough to sustain 18 million persons.

Official British intent at the time is revealed by its actions and enactments. When the European potato crop failed in 1844 and food prices rose, Britain ordered regiments to Ireland. When blight hit the 1845 English potato crop its food removal regiments were already in Ireland; ready to start.

The Times editorial of September 30, 1845, warned; "In England the two main meals of a working man's day now consists of potatoes." England's potato-dependence was excessive; reckless. Grossly over-populated relative to its food supply, England faced famine unless it could import vast amounts of alternative food. But it didn't grab merely Ireland's surplus food; or enough Irish food to save England. It took more; for profit & to exterminate the people of Ireland.

Queen Victoria's economist, Nassau Senior [a Jew] expressed his fear that existing policies "will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 & that will scarcely be enough to do much good." When an eye-witness urged a stop to the genocide-in-progress, Trevelyan replied: "We must not complain of what we really want to obtain."

Trevelyan insisted that all reports of starvation were exaggerated, until 1847. He then declared it ended and refused entry to the American food relief ship Sorciére. Thomas Carlyle; influential British essayist, wrote;

"Ireland is like a half-starved rat that crosses the path of an elephant. What must the elephant do? Squelch it - by heavens - squelch it." "Total Annihilation;" suggested The Times leader of September 2, 1846; and in 1848 its editorialists crowed "A Celt will soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as the red man on the banks of Manhattan."

The immortal Society of Friends, the "Quakers," did all in their power to save lives. But in 1847 they despaired and quit, upon learning that the Crown planned to perpetuate the genocide's pretext; the British claim of "ownership" of Irish land. Quakers refused to facilitate the genocide by pretending (as Concern does re African genocides) it was an act of nature.

In the 1870's; too late; British laws were enacted allowing the Irish to buy back the land of which Britain had robbed them. Twice-yearly payments were extracted from Ireland's farmers until that "debt" was paid off in the 1970s.

Ireland's diet, since pre-history, has been meat, fairy products,
grains, fruit and vegetables; latterly supplemented by potatoes. Central to its ancient legends are its livestock, reaping hooks, flails,8 querns, and grain-kilns and -mills. The many Connacht grain-kilns and -mills shown on the Irish Ordnance Survey Map of 1837-1841 operated continually prior to, during the Starvation, and subsequent to it until the 1940s when I observed them still working. Local farmers dried and milled their grain - not potatoes - in them, and this oatmeal and flour were seized and exported by British forces.

The "potato famine" Big Lie was underway and already denounced by John Mitchel in his United Irishman in 1847 (he was soon sent in chains to a Tasmanian death camp; but escaped). Fifty years later G.B. Shaw wrote in Man and Superman: "Malone: 'My father died of starvation in Ireland in the Black '47. Maybe you've heard of it?' Violet: 'The Famine?' Malone: (with smoldering passion) 'No, the Starvation. When a country is full of food and exporting it, there can be no Famine."

But he kept mum on the British army's role; Ireland's whole-truth-tellers don't receive Nobels. To date, the Big Lie prevails. It started in 1846 when, while the British government genocidally stripped Ireland of its abundant foodstuffs, internationally it was begging help for the "starving Irish."

John Mitchel remonstrated; Many will perhaps, be surprised to learn neither Ireland, nor anybody in Ireland ever asked alms or favours of any kind, either from England or from any other nation or people. On the contrary it was England herself that begged for us, asking a penny, for the love of God, to relieve the poor Irish. And further, constituting herself the almoner and agent of all that charity, she, England, took all the profit of it."

Mitchel again; 'Thus any man who had a house, no matter how wretched, was to pay the new tax; and every man was bound to have a house; for if found out of doors after sunset; convicted of that offence, he was to be transported for fifteen years, or imprisoned for three - the court to have the discretion of adding hard labor or solitary confinement. This law would drive the survivors of ejected people (those who did not die of hunger) into the poorhouses or to America; because, being bound to be at home after sunset, and having neither house nor home,