The Irish famine of 1845-52 killed over a million people with at least another million emigrating to survive. The people who died were UK subjects yet received inadequate aid from London, since many in the UK Government considered food-aid would discourage the Irish from working. Sir Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to the Treasury, and holder of the relief purse strings, declared:
There was a common view amongst mainly Protestant middle-classes of Irish Catholics being feckless and slothful.The cartoon above, from Punch Magazine, pictures the Irish being lazy and greedy, seeking support on the back of an English worker.
I find it particularly ironic that the Victorian British considered themselves to be morally superior when earlier in the same decade, they went to war with China to push opium onto the Chinese people.
The reality was that Ireland was a net exporter of food to the British mainland. During the famine tens of millions of tonnes of livestock and grain continued to be shipped out of Ireland under British army guard. The laissez-faire UK Government actively endorsed the continuation of these exports, enough food to feed 18 million people.
It is these facts that lead many to consider the Irish famine a genocide.