I think maybe there's an important different ethical and practical situation with genuinely foreign aid (rich countries sending resources to poor countries which have their own government, systems, regulations etc) vs a colonizing power that's effectively already in control of the area in which they helped form the crisis. The British were exporting food from Ireland and India in both of those crises. British land speculators bought Irish land and raised the rents and evicted farmers -- i.e. people already engaged in producing food were forced to stop.
So foreign aid may make governments less accountable to their people. But colonial governments don't start off being accountable to their people. The "aid" that the British ruling class said would create dependence can only be understood in the context of the intense extractive practices that were already in place.
> Yes, a famine is a special case where aid is necessary in the short term, but it’ll be a disaster and destroy local agriculture output if continued in the long term.
... but because Ireland was still exporting food to Britain, "aid" in the form of keeping Irish food to feed Irish people would clearly still have supported local agriculture. Not evicting farmers would have supported local agriculture. This is structurally different from shipping American grain to Afghanistan.
True, I was referring to the modern context of aid, not colonial times with extractive economies.
I don’t think it’s fair to apply the modern concept of aid to previous eras of colonialism, wars, and frequent famines. It was a different ballgame I feel I wouldn’t be qualified to comment on except I experienced it first-hand.
So foreign aid may make governments less accountable to their people. But colonial governments don't start off being accountable to their people. The "aid" that the British ruling class said would create dependence can only be understood in the context of the intense extractive practices that were already in place.
> Yes, a famine is a special case where aid is necessary in the short term, but it’ll be a disaster and destroy local agriculture output if continued in the long term.
... but because Ireland was still exporting food to Britain, "aid" in the form of keeping Irish food to feed Irish people would clearly still have supported local agriculture. Not evicting farmers would have supported local agriculture. This is structurally different from shipping American grain to Afghanistan.