Misleading claims about the Ottoman empire and the Irish famine
There is a popular claim floating around on the internet alleging something like the following: “during the Irish famine, only the Ottoman empire helped out while the British themselves let Ireland starve”. They go on to add claims like “the Sultan wanted to donate more, but the British didn’t let him” and that the Ottoman Sultan even bypassed a British blockade to deliver more aid (no such blockade is documented).
Unfortunately this is a bizarre piece of Turkish state propaganda.
The Ottomans donated a total of £1000 (~$100K USD today). For comparison the single city of Calcutta in impoverished India donated £14000 (>$2M USD today).
While there is no doubt that British policy towards Ireland was a mess and was responsible for the famine: Britain donated more than any other country: a total of £525,000 (with the U.S. at £170,000 being a distant second). The British monarch’s personal donation was symbolic, because unlike the Ottomans, Britain was not an absolute monarchy where the queen controlled all finances.
The story that the Sultan “wanted to donate £10K but only donated £1K because Queen Victoria didn’t want to be embarassed” or that he evaded British customs to make his donation is comical BS that has no basis in any British government communications from the time: it was made-up by later Irish nationalist authors.
It is worth noting that the Ottomans were in this period a massive slave-trading empire, enslaving literally tens of thousands of Africans and Circassians a year. Kinda weird that they didn’t “succumb to British pressure” and stop that.
