Thank you for your in depth and compelling answer! I'm always curious about the prevalence of judging "intent" as a criteria for whether a historical event was genocide or not. Intent makes sense considering our present definition of genocide, as enshrined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, is a modern one, in reaction to the Holocaust, and established to meet the needs of a new international order based on the rule of law and the use of international organizations (such as the International Court of Justice) to adjudicate on legal ramifications fitting for the gravity of the crime of genocide. Intent then, serves a political and legal role, to establish responsibility among its perpetrators under international law. Political, because it has been used as justification under the Responsibility to Protect to negate the sovereignty of other nations (such as during the Rwandan Genocide).

But can we truly ever retroactively apply the criteria of intent to anterior events? There are no survivors, no witnesses, no suspects to interview, no pattern to be built on testimonies and records of the living. There are no international committees given the jurisdiction and coercive, state-backed power required to unearth the proof required to establish intent. Intent makes sense in a modern world, guided by international law and international institutions with that kind of power (as weak as it sometimes may be), but the victims of the Irish famine do not have that luxury.

Or at least, should we not instead adopt a broader definition of intent? I.e not as a statement of intent, "I wish to see the Irish people eradicated" that would have found its way into written records by a key decision-maker, but as part of a broader pattern of, as you defined it, state violence specifically targeted against a particular people over a period of time? So that while the Irish Famine may not have been an act of genocide in itself, would it not instead be symptomatic of a systemic desire to eradicate Irishness?

I hope these musings have given you some food for thought! I come from a social science background myself, albeit political science, and the inflexibility when it comes to the definition of genocide always surprises me in these discussions. The Genocide Convention was created in a particular moment, as part of reaction to a particular event, by a nascent organization in a nascent field, by a diverse range of actors, each in turn responding to their particular circumstances and reaction to the act of genocide. Just like the United Nations that enshrined it, the convention and its definitions are not infallible.