The great famine has inspired more than its fair share of historical interpretations, many of which are wildly contradictory. The Irish used to say, “God gave us the potato blight, but the English gave us the famine.”There is some truth to this statement, but it's not entirely fair to the English. They didn't understand the scope of the problem and some of their policies made matters worse, but the fact remains that many people would have starved even with better help. In the hardest-hit areas there was simply nothing to eat, and there was no easy way to deliver food there, even if it had been available. But whether or not the English were to blame for the famine, Irish Nationalists definitely believed they were. This spurred them to action, and the rest is history.