Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)
It’s one thing to have a bad crop. It’s another to have your government enforce some heartless economic system at the expense of people’s lives, and utterly fail at helping them by accepting foreign aid from other countries.<p>Just as the Holodomor[1] and Great Chinese Famine[2] were the result of misguided or malicious “socialist” collectivization efforts by Stalin and Mao, the  Irish Potato Famine[3] and the much later famines in the Bengal regions[4] were the result of misguided or malicious “capitalist” efforts by the British state and empire to enforce who gets to eat.<p>Irish Potato Famine was exacerbated a lot by the system of landlords and private property protections.<p>Bengal Famine was largely exacerbated by Churchill’s policies that heavily favored the British at the expense of people on the Indian subcontinent. And of course the entire British Raj came about through state capitalism (the British East India Company getting the empire’s support and appointing governors).<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Holodomor" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Holodomor</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Chinese_Famine" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Chinese_Famine</a><p>3. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Famine_(Ireland)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Famine_(Ireland)</a><p>4. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bengal_famine_of_1943" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bengal_famine_of_1943</a>