YES, yes, yes, but all other things aside, bow different would world history have been without the Famine? Because the Famine was not just a famine, but an exodus, a vast movement of peoples across the Atlantic and the Irish Sea, as Edward Laxton's marvellous The Famine Ships reminds us.
So imagine if you can the possibility - the admittedly impossible possibility - that a cure was discovered for the fungus which caused the blight, the only lingering consequence of infection being a mildly contraceptive effect which caused the Irish population to fall steadily but peaceably to the manageable proportions of this century. Without the calamity of the Famine, many countries which benefitted from the Irish diaspora would not have done so.
How would the world have been if Henry Ford's family had stayed in West Cork, and instead of Henry becoming the pioneer of both the popular automobile and conveyer belt production, he had remained a small farmer?
Orange Lodge Master
A tough, resilient, cantankerous and doughtily Protestant old bastard, he would no doubt have been the master of his local Orange lodge and famous around Bandon for his skill with tools. His Ford company would not have been able to establish his tractor factory in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, as it did in the post Famine world; that factory went on to be the basis of Russian tank production. In an imaginary non Famine world, without it and the skills which were built around it, the Soviet Union would have been unable to resist the Nazi advance which, though temporarily stalled by the winter of 1941-42, was successfully resumed in the spring, with the Soviet Union disintegrating during the summer of 1942.
Signals indicating an imminent German attack on Britain that September might well have been successfully analysed by a brilliant young Irish intelligence officer called Patrick Hennessey, who in our actual post Famine world had joined the British army from Ford of Cork, and went on to be Sir Patrick Hennessey, managing director of Ford of Britain.
But in our non Famine world, Ford of Cork did not exist, and Patrick Hennessey remained an agricultural labourer in Ireland. He joined the resistance in the spring of 1943 after German paratroops seized Shannon, and he was hanged by the Nazis from the same tree which was already accommodating that uncompromising old ruffian Henry Ford.
No Kennedy Dynasty
America, of course, remained aloof from all this. Its industrial base had never developed in the non-Famine world in the way that it did in the real post Famine world, and it remained outside the war. There was no Kennedy dynasty in this non Famine USA, remember. And when there was an attempt to install nuclear missiles in Cuba - by the Nazis, as it happens, in this non Famine world - there was no John F Kennedy, and perhaps most of all, no Robert Kennedy, to face them down.
In our own post Famine world, the most pivotal event in the entire Cold War was the confrontation over the Soviet missiles intended for Cuba. It required special courage and unbelievable willpower to confront the Soviets. In our nonFamine world, those qualities were not present in the USA, but had been present in half a dozen young brothers the Nazis hanged from a tree near New Ross.
All fantasy, of course, because the Kennedy dynasty was made possible by the Famine, as Edward Laxton recites in The Famine Ships. For it was the Famine which brought the founders of the tribe, Bridget Murphy and Patrick Kennedy, together on the ship taking them both to America. Though they were neighbours, their families were separated by the massif of Sliabh Coillte; the act of departure became the act of union, and from the union a great dynasty grew.
Better Place
It is hard to say this, but in many senses the world was made a better place by the Famine. For Ireland it was a calamity, a hard and bitter rock around which our history and our identity were to grow and by which they were to be misshapen. But for America, Canada, Britain and Australia it was to be blessing. They got so many of the best and brightest; Catholicism in the last two is an Irish creation, and not just Catholicism - no Famine, no Beatles, no Lennon, no McCartney. The Famine is not an Irish event. It is a world event, which changed and enriched the world.
The extraordinary thing is that nobody until now has given us the story of those sailing vessels crossing the Atlantic ocean, bearing their burden of humanity. As Edward Laxton himself says, it must have been an extraordinarily terrible ordeal for a people who had never before seen a sailing vessel, never mind travelled on one for weeks on end, and in abominable conditions. No heat; no laundry; no light; no fire; no warm food; no proper lavatories; below decks, men, women and children mixed indiscriminately for up to two months, seasick, cold and miserable.
It could hardly be surprising that the survivors of this ordeal nursed and nurtured a hatred for the system from which they had fled or been forced to flee. On the one hand, considering the conditions, surprisingly few died on the journey; on the other, it is only against the background of an abominable hecatomb like the Famine that, the figure of 30,000 dying crossing the Atlantic can be seen as "few".
They crossed the Atlantic in a veritable flood of vessels beyond our imagination now; in New York, thirteen ships every 1 1/2 days, Boston, eight ships per day, even through the winter months, when the Atlantic was a truly terrible place, though not as terrible as the place they were leaving.
Courage And Enterprise
We have heard a great deal of the suffering of the Famine; The Famine Ships reminds us of the other side of the coin - of the courage and the enterprise and the family loyalty which sustained our people in leaving their old homes and their old places and in founding new homes in new places. It was an exodus such as Europe has never seen, unique in its scale, and unique in its courage. It is amazing that it has taken so long to tell this tale.