Why do Irish Americans hate the British? well here is a long twitter thread on one of the reasons why. Unsurprisingly it has a lot to do with one major event in Irish and British history; the Irish potato famine, but not in the way you'd think. (1/many) https://twitter.com/fitzfromdublin/status/1306662432937521155

Here's the basic chronology of the Irish famine. The potato blight arrives in late 1845, destroys the potato crop of 1846 and unsurprisingly causes the price of potatoes to skyrocket. Bad harvests continue for the rest of the 1840s.

Unsurprisingly, for a relatively poor pre-industrial nation such as 1840s Ireland, the failure of the primary crop for several consecutive years puts it at the risk of a severe famine and economic collapse. A similar situation in the 1740s had led to extremely high casualties.

Luckily in 1846, the situation is different. Initially the British decide to fund famine relief efforts in Ireland. The government of Robert Peel imports maize to feed people and sets up public works to enable currently destitute and unemployed farmers to buy food.

So far I've given the general narrative. All serious historians agree the relief offered in 1846 was sufficient given the limitations of the 19th-century state. However, things get far more complicated and historiographically controversial in 1847.

At the centre of the controversy is this. The decision of the British government to slash famine relief spending while the famine was still ongoing.

Traditionally this act has been seen as, at best criminal negligence, at worst genocide.

The most common 20th-century historiographical narrative, pioneered by the 1960s author Cecil-Woodham Smith was that it was due to the ideology of the government that replaced Peel.

This was a MINORITY (this becomes extremely important later) Liberal government under Lord-John Russell (pictured first).

Also blamed is the British civil servant Charles Treveylan, currently one of the most hated people in Irish history. Pictured second

These men are generally accused of being influenced by 'laissez-faire' market ideology which made them decide to eliminate relief for the Irish because they believed it would be more economically efficient.

There is one problem with this narrative, all evidence contradicts it.

Firstly Lord John Russell was mostly oblivious to economics. Secondly, Treveylan was a civil servant, he didn't have personal policy discretion. In the classic sense, he was 'just following orders'.

So who made this brutal and catastrophic decision and why did it happen?

Firstly 'why'. Russell was initially committed to famine relief, taking office in June 1846 he praises Peels famine relief measures and continues the effort.

By November the British government is spending approx £110,000 a week on famine relief, or 27% of the national budget.

This is a lot of money. To make things worse the 'railway boom' ends in 1846 and the economy begins to decline. It is clear that Britain no longer has a budget surplus to fund these measures.

The government then decides on two actions. Firstly it decides to wind up the public works and replace them with more economical soup kitchens in January 1847.

Secondly, in February 1847 it decides to take out an £8million loan, known as the 'Irish loan', to fund famine relief.

The raising of the Irish loan is a catastrophe. The bond market collapses and leads to an increase in the interest rate charged on newly issued government debt (see graph).

There is also a run on the banking system and a massive drain on the Bank of Englands reserves.

What went wrong? Well, the administration of Robert Peel had signed Britain up to a certain policy mix. Firstly the pound was fixed to the gold standard and secondly there was free trade and capital flows after the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts.

A modern economist knows that this policy arrangement constrains domestic policy in a financial crisis. You can have two of the three: a fixed exchange rate, free trade and control over your domestic policy.

Didn't know that? Neither did those running the British economy.

Simply put, as Britain had a major budget deficit and trade deficit in 1847, the financial markets did not have confidence in the British government to maintain the gold standard while taking out loans to finance Irish relief.

The financial crisis only abated in April when the British government announced that the debt in its entirety would be repaid by Irish landlords.

Britain may have thought itself the 'workshop of the world'. However by modern standards it was a developing country with a severe debt problem. Debt from the Napoleonic wars still comprised about 140% of GDP and interest on the debt made up more than half the British budget.

This meant that if Britain faced a crisis of confidence in the value of sterling that forced it to raise interest rates to defend the gold standard there was a real risk the country would face a debt-interest spiral.

To make matters worse Britain suffers another financial panic, this time caused by the cost of importing grain from America in October. Interest rates soar to unsustainable levels and Britain has to loosen its gold standard regulations.

Disastrously, this is at the time at which the initial £8 million Irish relief loan is on the verge of expiring. Even worse, the deficit in 1847 is revealed to be £3,092,285.

The British government has no money and it cannot raise a loan for fear of another financial crash.

So, let's take a look at the policy trilemma triangle and see the options Britain can take now.

1) Go off the gold standard
2) End free trade.
3) deflate the economy by cutting government spending.

One extra point to make, Britain in this period is a net importer of food. This is important for 1) and 2).

Option 1) Britain goes off the gold standard, which will devalue the pound.

In the short-run devaluing makes things worse. Your imports become more expensive as you can buy less with your devalued currency. More expensive imported food is the OPPOSITE of what's needed.

Option 2) Britain abandons free trade.

Britain needs as much trade as possible to lessen food shortages as it exports manufactured goods and imports food. Any disruption to trade threatens these imports. Equally, tariffs will make imported food more expensive.

So, as both options 1 and 2 will make the short-term food situation worse at a crucial juncture in the famine, and exacerbate time of political instability in England the government goes for option 3), cut expenditure.

Let's see what the British government is spending money on:

Say approximately 50% is a debt interest

25% is expenses such as 'running the British Empire, the army and the navy'

and 25% is Irish famine relief.

Britain can't cut its debt interest in the short-term without defaulting, risking another financial crisis.

The civil service, army and navy had already faced cuts of around 40% in the 1830s. There simply wasn't enough leeway to slash the spending they needed.

But, I hear you ask, why not just raise taxes?

Here is the problem. To increase short-term revenue without tariffs the only way is through the income tax. The income tax is not permanent, it is renewed every year.

Russell runs a minority government.

He already is having difficulties simply renewing the existing income taxes. He cannot convince the opposition parties, in a parliament mostly elected by the rich, to accept additional taxes during a recession.

However, he tries one group of MP's that might...

The Irish nationalists or 'repealers' are lead by Daniel O'Connel, 'The Liberator'. They largely represent the Catholic Irish upper classes. With their support, Russell can get the income tax rise through and relieve Ireland. After all, don't they want to help their countrymen?

Russell offers them a deal. Britain will raise income taxes to continue the relief. In exchange, he will introduce the income tax to Ireland. It would not be politically possible to raise taxes on English MPs to relieve Ireland while the Irish gentry is still tax-exempt.

O'Connell refuses. The Irish landowners refuse to relinquish their tax-exempt status during a period of extreme economic pressure in which their rents have collapsed.

It is also alleged that O'Connell didn't want an audit as he'd been embezzling his parties funds.

So the situation of the British government is that they are unable to raise a loan to continue paying for famine relief and they cannot raise taxes to pay for it.

The British government doesn't simply cut the famine relief, what happens next is why Irish Americans hate Britain.

Britain is forced into option 3) it launches an austerity programme worth approximately 1% of GDP and further deflates the economy by increasing the bank rate from 3.5% to 8% to restore the bank of England's gold reserves.

Part of this policy is no more loans for Ireland

But the British government are not doctrinaire libertarians they realise that Ireland cannot survive without an adequate relief effort. Due to the central government's inability to fund it, they turn once again to the Irish gentry.

As we have seen, the British government is not able to get tax rises through a national mechanism, but it can do it through local mechanisms.

The way of doing this was through the Poor Law, which was funded through rates collected locally.

This was an embryonic welfare system which had been introduced under Elizabeth I in England. It had only recently been introduced to Ireland in 1838.

Effectively it operated by the local parish funding relief efforts through a tax on local landowners.

The British government decided to keep funding the Irish relief effort through substituting the money of Irish landowners for central government relief money. They will circumvent both the political and economic obstacles to helping Ireland.

This policy was phrased as making 'the property of Ireland pay for the poverty of Ireland'.

It was also the worst British government policy ever made until the appeasement of Hitler, and many of those involved with Ireland knew it.

The main problem was large parts of Ireland didn't have enough resources to pay for their own relief, no matter the distribution

Areas like Connaught, where the rural economy had collapsed and 80% of people were dependent on food handouts was the prime example.

This became clear when the British representatives in Dublin castle began to estimate the required poor law taxes for certain areas. The necessary taxes on Landlords for Irish relief to be sufficient were extortionate. In certain areas, they were above 100%.

These calculations were made based on rent surveys collected during normal harvests. Not during a severe economic crisis that left many tenants unable to pay anything.

The Irish administration reported this fact to the central government. Arguing that these taxes would be unrealistic and counterproductive. Ironically they had discovered the Laffer curve more than one hundred years before the US New Right.

Likewise, Charles Treveylan often portrayed as a sadist obsessed by libertarian ideology broke ranks with the government and wrote to the Times beginning for public charity to cover up the obvious shortfall.

However, the British government did not apparently take these warnings seriously, perhaps considering it the crocodile tears of privileged landlords who didn't want to pay tax to help their impoverished compatriots.

But, despite being hated in most of the historiography, Treveylan, The British administration and the local Irish landlords were all correct.

The British policy shift turned, what had been a manageable food shortage into an economic catastrophe.

Despite the major crop failures and serious financial and administrative constraints, the relief effort in 1846-1847 had proved successful at limiting mortality.

Even the classic nationalist historian Cecil-Woodham Smith agrees.

'from the partial failure in 1845 until the transfer of the Poor Law in the summer of 1847, the Government behaved with considerable generosity'

There are two major consequences of this policy shift.

Firstly most Irish Poor Law unions cannot raise the necessary money to replace English assistance. You don't have to be a raving libertarian to realise that a tax rate of 100% is counterproductive at raising revenue.

Unsurprisingly the lack of money means the relief effort collapses, the destitute flee to already overcrowded workhouses and the mortality rate increases. Despite the memory of 'Black 47' its the winter of 1848-9 that has the highest recorded death rates in workhouses.

However, there is another major effect. The extortionate relief rates chronically exacerbate a serious situation for many Irish landowners.
Many of them cannot pay the rates and go bankrupt, and parts of the economy collapse.

The economic effects of this policy on the overall economy can be seen in the overall money supply.

Between 3rd January 1846 and 2nd January 1847, despite the food shortages the amount of notes in circulation actually increases from 7,404,366 to 7,515,414.

However between the 2nd January 1847 and the 11th August 1849 the total amount of notes in circulation falls to 3,833,072. A collapse of nearly 50%. These are depression level contractions, apparently due to this policy shift.

Source: O Grada the Great Irish famine p.40

So not only does the British policy shift exacerbate the famine, but it also bankrupts a large section of the middle classes and wreaks unprecedented economic havoc. The Irish economy doesn't begin to recover until 1853 when these policies are finally reversed by Gladstone.

This also explains why excess mortality continues in Ireland for so long. Major crop failures stop by 1850 but famine-level winter mortality spikes are still visible in 1851. Ireland is trapped in a vicious circle of economic depression, leading to relief cuts, leading to deaths.

Now the background's been explained I can say the reason why Irish Americans hate the English.

Imagine how most middle-class Irishman would have felt. For reasons they don't understand they have been bankrupted by the British state while countrymen are dying.

Actually, we dont have to imagine, we have a source. 'The last conquest of Ireland, (perhaps)' By one John Mitchel, the son of a clergyman from Camish in Derry/Londonderry.

It is also probably the founding text of nationalist famine historiography.

His opinion is thus 'The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.'

He means this directly. In his view, the British in collaboration with certain 'Israelites' had created the famine to destroy and sequester the land of the Irish.

In particular, he mentions one method 'the landlords, already encumbered by debt, the pressure of the poor-rates was fast breaking them down’'.

If you look at his personal papers the burden of taxation, which he did not want to pay, was his main concern during the famine.

So there you have the view of many of the Irish educated classes. Their country has been destroyed, seemingly deliberately, by punitive British policies that have left them dispossessed, impoverished and starving. This, minus the antisemitism, is still the main nationalist view.

Who can blame them (well apart from the racism)? everything appeared to be going fine until what seemed to be a random measure by the British government bankrupted them. For those not acquainted with 20th-century macroeconomics, it must have seemed like a malicious conspiracy.

Now, finally, after a zillion tweets, is the Irish-American connection.

If you are in late 1840s Ireland and want to emigrate you have two major destinations, America or England. (Canada, Australia and New Zealand haven't been fully colonised yet)

England is cheaper to get to as its nearer. During this time period, it's also has a higher per capita GDP than the US. So it should be the obvious choice.

Well partially. If you were a poor Irish labourer it made complete sense, and millions did emigrate to England.

However, if you were an Irish landowner who had been bankrupted by unplayable taxation rates, emigrating to England made no sense. After all, you still owed the British government a lot of money.

However, if you emigrated to America you would escape the British tax collector.

And that is exactly what happened. A large contingent of educated, formerly well-off Irish with a clear grudge against the British fled as tax exiles. Unsurprisingly they formed a powerful political block within the Irish community and America as a whole.

And this is why, Mitchel (who also went to the US, and ended up supporting the confederacy) ends his book with this quote.

'‘if any American has read this narrative, however, he will never wonder hereafter when he hears an Irishman in America fervently curse the British empire’.

END/

Once again this thread is way more popular than I was anticipating. This is in no way my own research, all of it was done by @EconCharlesRead who can no doubt explain it far better and more convincingly than me.

@antonhowes @s8mb @ronanlyons
you may be interested in his research.

Also @AnMailleach @BuddyYakov