Chapter 515 The Story About Emerald

Albus liked to tease Severus very much, and Severus stayed in the school to "protect" Harry on Christmas the year Sirius escaped from prison.

At the dinner table, Albus used firecrackers to transform into a witch's pointed hat and "gifted" it to Severus.

Neville's Boggart was too famous, and it also damaged Severus's "manly demeanor", and he liked to put on a show that year in order to save face.

It was also at the Christmas banquet that year that Trelawney made another prophecy: If thirteen people eat together, the first person to stand up will be the first to die.

One of Harry and Ron stood up first, and they both nearly died, Harry from the Avada Kedavra and Ron from the poisoning, and that was years after the prophecy.

A prophecy of certain death was shared by two people and "almost" died. Is this considered "lucky"?

Speaking of the famine in France, Pomona thought of the documents she saw in the library during her last trip to Ireland.

When the Opium War ended in 1840, Britain received a large amount of war indemnity from China, but this ill-gotten wealth did not make Britain really rich.

After Columbus discovered America, large-scale species exchanges between the old and new continents began. Potatoes native to America were introduced to Europe at the end of the 16th century.

Potatoes were not accepted by Europeans at first, but they were highly productive and easy to grow, much more stable than wheat, and in the mid-17th century Ireland popularized potatoes throughout the island.

High-yielding potatoes brought population growth. In 1760, the population of Ireland was 1.5 million, but it had climbed to 8.1 million in 1841. "A stable food supply can increase the population." Without so much food, people would not work so hard to have children. In view of the lessons learned from the independence of the United States in the New World, England does not allow Ireland to have industry, and the entire territory of Ireland is dominated by agriculture.

After the opium trade between Britain and China was legalized, the speed at which opium spread in Britain was equally astonishing. From regular pharmacies to taverns and grocery stores, you can buy laudanum when you buy olive oil, but it is different from the concept that rich people in China can afford "fushou balm". Poor people in Britain use laudanum, and its price is extremely low , opium is sold to the Chinese at a high price.

After the Chinese sailors from Chinatown settled in London Chinatown, people from Hongmen also came. They opened opium dens in London. Unlike the medicinal value of laudanum, smoking opium in opium dens is purely psychoactive. Many writers in the Victorian era had the habit of smoking opium, and even Conan Doyle's novels, the famous detective Sherlock Holmes also had records of using cocaine.

While the natives of England were puffing and dreaming, in 1845 a fungus that caused disease in potatoes spread on a large scale. This late blight of potatoes can cause potatoes to rot quickly.

The climate of the British Isles is humid and rainy, which is suitable for the reproduction of fungi. However, at that time, people did not know what the problem was. They were all destroyed, the famine began to spread, and more than 3 million people could not eat. Ireland was starved to death in an instant, like a purgatory on earth.

The Great Irish Famine was also one of the triggers for Britain to launch the Second Opium War.

In order to relieve the victims, Britain used its gold reserves and bought a large amount of corn and oatmeal from the United States. However, these imported grains did not play a role in balancing food prices. Can't afford these grains.

At that time, the Irish members of the British Parliament were all big local landowners, and their income was largely dependent on the tax paid by the farmers in the territory. When the famine caused a sharp drop in income, they did not take any effective measures against their own people. In the words of the Whig Disaster Relief Secretary, "this disaster is a lesson from God to the Irish".

Under the leadership of such people, the government has a laissez-faire attitude towards alleviating the famine, and even the British have shipped whole ships of Irish meat and grain to England, and the poor Irish can only watch the food being transported. Let's go, one they don't have money, two they don't have guns, so they can only starve to death.

On the contrary, because a large amount of cheap food entered the British Isles, the country's agriculture was hit. Irish and English farmers couldn't make money.

Instead of replacing potatoes with cheap grain grains, the price of potatoes skyrocketed because Irish potato production was reduced. If Britain could buy Irish potatoes, the Irish would have the money to buy cheap grain, but the English didn't.

After the baptism of the Industrial Revolution, Britain has become the factory of the world. The transportation capacity is one of the powerful levers to push the national wealth and civilization to all directions. The heavy industry companies headed by the railway company replaced the light industry of the steam engine and the textile machine and became the leader of the industrialization process. .

Tariffs and railways are conjoined twins, they support each other. If tariffs are raised, freight rates will be raised, and if tariffs are lowered, freight rates will also be lowered. In order to import food from abroad, the UK lowered tariffs, and the railway company was affected. The stock of the railway company, which had been rising, fell rapidly, and the British financial crisis broke out.

At the same time, because of the use of gold reserves to buy food, the British financial system may collapse at any time. The outbreak of the financial crisis indirectly led to the failure of rescue measures. The English did not buy the rising prices of potatoes in Ireland.

In the face of this crisis, the United Kingdom established the Central Relief Committee, opened 76 granaries in the west and south of Ireland, and sold grain to the Irish at cost.

However, there are too many poor people, farmers in England have reduced food production, and the grain reserves in the granary are simply not enough for so many people.

Then the Ministry of Finance allocated funds to churches and relief homes. Every time a disaster strikes, some people will show their humanitarian spirit and distribute free food to the victims.

It is a pity that churches and almshouses around the world have limited capacity. Only 100,000 people receive relief, and more than 2 million people have no food to eat.

After July 1846, the United Kingdom, which had been obstructing Ireland's industrialization, proposed to use labor instead of labor to engage in some public works, so that the Irish could have enough to eat.

But in actual operation, the problem appeared again.

First, these projects need to be approved layer by layer, and the protracted process wastes a lot of time.

Second, Ireland does not have any industrial foundation, and the British government, which has experienced the financial crisis, cannot afford to invest too much money in building public works from scratch.

Only 710,000 Irish people received relief through public works, and more than 1.5 million people were in a state of severe starvation, so the English tried to introduce Irish people into local employment. As a result, these hungry people robbed locals of their jobs and disrupted law and order. , in the absence of money and food, the Irish Guardian Council attacked the Irish landowners.

From the mid-17th century, the land of Ireland was almost occupied by English landowners, and most of the big landowners lived in England. The severe land annexation made most Irish farmers become tenant farmers of the British land aristocracy. In addition, the success of the Industrial Revolution allowed the Irish to rely on growing potatoes to survive when agriculture was helpless and industry was hopeless.

Pregnant women passed out in snowdrifts during the Great Famine, and naked children were driven out into the cold fields in their trousers, where their lives would be claimed in a few hours.

The English drove their shining coaches and watched as the desperately poor and half-starved were helpless.

Because they are here for sightseeing, they are just ordinary people, they can only witness and record the history.

In Shelley's record: The rich in Dublin made the poor mean, and then complained about their meanness, they starved the poor, but hanged them if they stole even a loaf of bread.

Because of the knowledge of these people, in 1847 Britain revised the Land Level Law, exempting some tenant farmers from the land tax and collecting it only from the landlord.

The congressmen's plan is to let the rich pay more and the poor pay less, so that there will be money for disaster relief. However, when the country's food harvest is poor, the landlords have no extra money to pay taxes. The tax collector The desperate search for money from the landowners led to a reduction in land leases and the bankruptcy of a large number of landowners.

Self-cultivators, tenant farmers, and landlords are all victims of natural disasters. Britain won the war of aggression, but even if it received war indemnity, it still hurt itself. Only less than 18 million of the 21 million silver dollars in compensation in the treaty actually got it. Gold after buying food Reserves have dropped from 1.34 million tons to 930,000 tons, and the money earned has not been lost much.

As a victor, conqueror, and the most powerful country in the world, how can it accept foreign relief?

Queen Victoria herself donated 2,000 pounds to help the victims, and the Ottoman Turkish Sultan donated 10,000 pounds to aid, but was rejected by the queen.

On the surface, the Sultan agreed to Queen Victoria's request, but secretly sent three ships full of food to Ireland. The Royal Navy tried to prevent these ships from going to Ireland, but the Turkish taxation was not afraid of hardships, and finally transported the food of the three ships to Dublin nearby.

In desperation, the British government organized Irish immigration to other colonies. Before 1845, the rate of Irish immigration to the United States was only about 5,000 per year. After the outbreak of the Great Famine, almost more than 500,000 people came to the New World. In Chinese terms, the government organized "flight".

This time the famine directly caused close to 1 million people to starve to death. The Great Irish Famine also became a watershed in Irish history. The inaction and ineffective assistance of the British government also made the Irish feel desperate and angry. It seems that the UK may not lose, but the Irish are using guerrilla warfare to prevent the English from living a quiet life, planning terrorist attacks to force the UK to agree to Irish independence, and the Irish are still holding the Muggle prime minister accountable after the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine.

The first Opium War did not make Britain rich, but lost an island and millions of people, leaving only superficial scenery.

After the new immigrants arrived in the New World, they were also poorly mixed, not even as good as blacks. They could only do dangerous jobs, such as building railways and loading and unloading docks. holding the dead body of an Irish worker, they were forced to sign the military report when they obtained the visa, or signed a bond to become "white slaves". They even believed that the Great Irish Famine was a planned genocide in Britain. **The massacre of the Jews is exactly the same as the extermination of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

At that time, the Ministry of Magic had no control over the affairs of the Muggle government. The then Minister of Magic, Hortensia Milifat, implemented many laws and regulations. Wizards had their own lives to live, and whoever controlled the life and death of Muggles.

Western wizards are different from Eastern wizards. Eastern wizards care about the life and death of Muggles. For pure-bloods, Muggles can kill each other and they have to do it themselves. Death Eaters like to kill Muggles for fun. .

Death Eaters like to wear peaked hats, and the regulations on them are the reason Milifat is down, she's got too much of it, it's annoying.

In fact, this famine could have been avoided. In the Americas, the origin of potatoes, the locals planted two kinds of potatoes, but people didn’t care at that time, and they were busy with the industrial revolution.

As for the population surge in the Qing Dynasty, it had nothing to do with the Qing government's "well-managed" and "Kang-Qian prosperity".

There was no census in the early Qing Dynasty. Kangxi needed taxation and conscription to pacify the San Francisco. After the tax system was improved, household evasion was alleviated. The first real census in the Qing Dynasty took place in 1741.

The rule of the Qing government was very dark, because they kept the people from thinking like grazing. In those old photos, the eyes of the Chinese people are dull and numb.

From the handling of the Irish issue, we can see how bad the management of the "British Empire" is, but the Manchu Qing is even worse.

Those who flatter her and hope to get an official position will find a way to get what Mary likes. This is the same reason as the "Lafayette" wanted in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the officials under him ran away.

What is good at the top will be followed by the bottom. I heard that the Palace Museum has many gorgeous clocks and clocks. Those clocks are the product of abuse of power and money.

During the French Revolution, the nobles all went to the guillotine. The survivors of the Manchu and Qing Dynasties did not experience it. If they did not experience the bloodbath, they really cannot remember the lesson.

Severus didn't care about the life and death of Muggles at all. The reason why he helped the Ministry of Magic to defend against werewolf attacks was entirely so that people like Draco with the Death Eater logo on their arms would no longer be discriminated against.

Because of Lily's relationship, he no longer discriminates against mudbloods. From 1962 to 1968, Norby Rich, who served as the Minister of Magic, was of Muggle origin. After he came to power, he was questioned. The 1966 World Cup football match, he himself denies the accusation, but the pure-blood nobles do not believe it, in 1968 Norbirich was forced to leave the job due to a mysterious illness, Lucius Malfoy's father, Abraxa Smallfoy is believed to have been involved in the shady move to get Rich out of the job.

When he took office in 1962, several of the oldest members of the Wizengamot resigned from public office and joined the Death Eaters instead.

Hermione Granger is not only a Muggleborn, she is also a girl, making her the Minister of Magic is really like a fantasy, but she still has an advantage because she is a Gryffindor, and she has participated in In the great adventure of destroying Horcruxes, she still has a chance in the Ministry of Magic where Gryffindor is in power.

There is a saying in Buddhism, which is called the reincarnation of heaven, and the retribution is not good. Some retributions are not yet to come, but the time has not yet come.

Voldemort is terrifying, but he is here to collect the bills. Who told Bojinbok to disregard human life for money, even a pregnant woman.

He was just a kid who didn't believe that Mummy was a wizard because she wouldn't die if she was.

A Christian should learn to repent and reflect on why this is the case. Protestants confess directly to God without going through a priest, so there is no confessional in Protestant churches.

Even the formal confession is gone, what is left?

No wonder God wants to destroy the world he created with his own hands.