'Being Irish' - essay by Tom Hayden

tac foley

Mr Norman - please bear with me. I'm not Irish and have never lived there either, so like most other foreigners coming to a forum like this to learn, I look for information, not sarcasm and belittling responses.

I also expect those who propose a theory to be able to explain it, and you, Sir, with your Spanish/Portuguese conundrum, did not. Furthermore, the 'plantations' in Ireland, as I understand it, took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before Edward Jenner had discovered a remedy for smallpox, so your argument falls over at that point. Everybody in the British Isles was at that time susceptible to smallpox. There was no protection for anybody.

tac

Peregrinus

Actually, Eugene Norman may have a point. Nobody in the seventeenth century was vaccinated for smallpox, but the European population was descended from generations who had repeatedly been exposed to it and - natural selection at work - had built up a higher level of natural resistance. Europeans were therefore less likely to contract smallpox, if exposed, and more likely to survive it, than native Americans, who were decimated by the disease on first exposure.

The story goes - I don't know if it's true - that it was the other way around with syphilis. It was endemic in the native American population, but Europeans had never encountered it until they brought it back from the New World, and they had no natural resistance to it. But it doesn't kill as quickly as smallpox, and isn't as easily spread, so this wasn't a disaster on the same scale as smallpox was for the Americans.

Fighting leprechaun 20

whisky_galore wrote: »

Bit of a clunky comparison to make imo.

In what way ? I think it's a perfectly good comparison. .

Fighting leprechaun 20

tac foley wrote: »

Mr Norman - please bear with me. I'm not Irish and have never lived there either, so like most other foreigners coming to a forum like this to learn, I look for information, not sarcasm and belittling responses.

I also expect those who propose a theory to be able to explain it, and you, Sir, with your Spanish/Portuguese conundrum, did not. Furthermore, the 'plantations' in Ireland, as I understand it, took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before Edward Jenner had discovered a remedy for smallpox, so your argument falls over at that point. Everybody in the British Isles was at that time susceptible to smallpox. There was no protection for anybody.

tac

.. pretty sure Europeans had natural immunity ..

Ipso

Peregrinus wrote: »

Actually, Eugene Norman may have a point. Nobody in the seventeenth century was vaccinated for smallpox, but the European population was descended from generations who had repeatedly been exposed to it and - natural selection at work - had built up a higher level of natural resistance. Europeans were therefore less likely to contract smallpox, if exposed, and more likely to survive it, than native Americans, who were decimated by the disease on first exposure.

The story goes - I don't know if it's true - that it was the other way around with syphilis. It was endemic in the native American population, but Europeans had never encountered it until they brought it back from the New World, and they had no natural resistance to it. But it doesn't kill as quickly as smallpox, and isn't as easily spread, so this wasn't a disaster on the same scale as smallpox was for the Americans.

According to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel; syphliss originated in Eurasia. It was originally a livecstock disease that spread to humans.

Eugene Norman

tac foley wrote: »

Mr Norman - please bear with me. I'm not Irish and have never lived there either, so like most other foreigners coming to a forum like this to learn, I look for information, not sarcasm and belittling responses.

I also expect those who propose a theory to be able to explain it, and you, Sir, with your Spanish/Portuguese conundrum, did not. Furthermore, the 'plantations' in Ireland, as I understand it, took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before Edward Jenner had discovered a remedy for smallpox, so your argument falls over at that point. Everybody in the British Isles was at that time susceptible to smallpox. There was no protection for anybody.

tac

There is no Spanish/Potuguese conundrum. I mentioned both. You decided there was a conundrum twice despite the fact I mentioned Spanish twice.

What has the remedy for small pox to do with anything.

The plantations of Ireland preceded the plantations of America but the plantations in America were more successful because the native population was decimated by small pox and other diseases. If Ireland had had less resistance to English diseases then the Irish would have been displaced to Connaught, which was effectively a reservation. Cromwells parliament legislated for that but it didn't happen.

Conversely if the native Americans had resistance to diseases they would have survived. The colonisation of Africa didn't decimate the local population because the disease resistance worked the other way.

DarkyHughes

Yeah, take that David Trimble you ****