Most people are not aware, but potatoes are a reference to a holodomor-like government-induced famine that occurred in Ireland when the government of England made a policy of paying far over market rate for people to ship food out of Ireland.
This weakened the Irish food market, leading to a situation where many people subsisted on the one crop that they could grow on their own property (as collective farm output was put on ships to elsewhere), which was potatoes.
In that brittle situation, a fungus called a potato blight caused many people to starve to death because they were down to one last food source after the English mucking about.
It didn’t happen in a time of war so it wasn’t a war crime, but what the English government did to the Irish people was definitely genocidal.
Most people are not aware, but potatoes are a reference to a holodomor-like government-induced famine that occurred in Ireland when the government of England made a policy of paying far over market rate for people to ship food out of Ireland.
This weakened the Irish food market, leading to a situation where many people subsisted on the one crop that they could grow on their own property (as collective farm output was put on ships to elsewhere), which was potatoes.
In that brittle situation, a fungus called a potato blight caused many people to starve to death because they were down to one last food source after the English mucking about.
It didn’t happen in a time of war so it wasn’t a war crime, but what the English government did to the Irish people was definitely genocidal.