: ----------My definition of genocide would be the attempt to exterminate an entire group of people based on racial origin. The English mat have wanted to subjugate the Irish but I don't think they really wanted to kill every single Irish person.That is a very modern definition of genocide, very clearly post nazi, would you not consider the vehement anti-irish and anti-celt racism, which is apparent if you appraise the unrepealed laws which mean it is legal in some regions of england to shoot Scots and Welshmen on a Sunday (www.Dumblaws.com), was not a from of genocidal sentiment?
A lot of Historians have suggested that the genocide of the Nazi's was just the age old genocidal sentiment combined with new efficient technologies.
: -------English actions against the Irish (and I don't condone them - I just said the potatoe famine wasn't an English Act of "Genocide") were based on the desire of the strong to subjugate the weak for their own gain, not to exterminate them utterly (as Hitler did the jews). This is, by our standards, wrong, but it isn't genocide.
OK, you are not an apologist for the attempted genocide of the Irish that is OK, it doesnt mean it didnt happen. There was grain shipped out of Ireland like no ones business during the famine, the way in which the Irish where regarded and treated, EG we dont care if they all die, they deserve it the Godless bastards, was truly terrible, I mean if a similar famine breaks out in Africa or somewhere the British Parliament sends or contributes to the cost of aid right away it didnt then.
: ------------oh, and I know all about our imperialist history so you can stop being so bloody patronising. The fact is, it requires a lot more knowlegde about history to realise that the Empire was pretty awful in a lot of ways but not entirely evil than it does just to say "it was 100 per cent evil, aren't we all terrible people.".
Not entirely evil? I think that is the coloured vision of a patriot there, would you appreciate the benefits of being a German Colony if the Nazi imperialists had won the war?
I dont think anyone is attempting to damn anyone either, there is, I think, and there are many here who disagree with me, a legitimate nationalism which is the opposite of imperialism and histroical revisonism, this is not a personal issue.
: ------------Unbridled damnation is the form of agrument usually used by a 15 year olds who have just read an inflamattory pamphlet on something but really don't know much about anything. Actually, it seems more akin politically correct self-recrimination than analysis.
Ans what would you suggest, taking into consideration what I have said about if you had ended up a subject of the glorious third imperial reich?
: ---------"Ever heard of the 1789 rebellion, Darcy?" Yes of course I have. This still misses the central point that desire to dominate (against which the rebellion was aimed) does not equate to a desire to exterminate on racial grounds. That is why use of the word genocide is inappropriate. It doesn't depend on the numbers killed but the motives of the killers.
And you doubt that at that time in question there where racial or sectarian motives at play amongst the forces 'putting down' the rebellion, I accept that domination and genocide are not synominous but in the case of the english in Ireland they are very close to being synominous, the english did concentrate more on planation of the country and death to it's inhabitants than on subgegation.
I think the model of imperial rule you think happened in Ireland is more akin to the occupation of India than Ireland.
None.
