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Notes -
There’s a pretty direct line between the policies enacted by Maoist China and soviet Russia and the mass famines; it’s probably fair to give the British empire some portion of the blame for famines in Ireland and India but there’s also not a state ideology at the time of exterminating huge swathes of the victims(in the case of the holodomor).
And at least some African famines are downstream of socialist policies- most of Africa experimented with communism/socialism. Lots of the most famous bad actors were explicitly Maoist.
British landlords were growing massively profitable food cash crops for export only and were refusing to let them be used for starvation relief. The British navy was using military vessels to prevent food aid ships from other countries from docking in Irish ports. How the hell is that not a “direct line from the policies” of the British empire?
I said Britain didn’t intend to exterminate the Irish, not that Britain bore no responsibility for the famine.
I don’t know how to interpret chasing off famine relief with gunboats as anything other than intentional. It’s equal to any of the evidence that can be produced for the Holodomor and it far exceeds any of the evidence for the intentionality of the Maoist famines.
Not sure about this one as IIRC starving people were killed when trying to access grain in warehouses during the Great Leap Forward, and one of the reasons why the famine was so horrific was because Mao and co. continued to export food for political gain and refused foreign aid for at least a year or two.
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