The initial British response was to buy £100,000 of corn meal from the US to import to Ireland to combat the famine.
This doesn't seem like an action of a government intent on genocide.
It seems more to me that British policy in Ireland during the famine is marked by an extreme ideological commitment to laissez faire economics (ie, letting land owners export food from Ireland in large quantities to make money, letting ports export food etc) and no little incompetence and prejudice against imagined "workshy" irish layabouts.
But I wouldn't say there was a deliberate policy of genocide as such.
As far as I know, the potato blight was not started by British settlers gifting infected towels to the natives.
This doesn't seem like an action of a government intent on genocide.
It seems more to me that British policy in Ireland during the famine is marked by an extreme ideological commitment to laissez faire economics (ie, letting land owners export food from Ireland in large quantities to make money, letting ports export food etc) and no little incompetence and prejudice against imagined "workshy" irish layabouts.
But I wouldn't say there was a deliberate policy of genocide as such.
As far as I know, the potato blight was not started by British settlers gifting infected towels to the natives.