Only one problem with footnote #1, however– Ireland was not dependent on the potato and therefore reliance on the potato did not backfire on them. England, actually, depended on the potato to feed its workforce during its increasingly industrialization. The Times editorial of September 30, 1845, warned; “In England the two main meals of a working man’s day now consists of potatoes.” When the potato blight hit England in 1845, after the 1844 widespread failure of the potato crop, English landowners in Ireland confiscated/appropriated/etc. the potato crops– and other crops– from Ireland to feed the English. There was plenty of other food sources in Ireland during what is erroneously called “The Great Potato Famine” and multiple first-hand sources prove that the English government seized the chance to rid the world of those pesky Irish through starvation and forced emigration. Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of administering “famine relief” in Ireland, published his views on the issue during the middle of the crisis: “We must not complain of what we really want to obtain.” Quaker and other American grain and food ships were denied access to Irish ports by the English.

Not to get on a soapbox, but this is a story that seems to get lost in the history books.