Ireland 1800 1850

Anyone studying or teaching Irish history, or who likely to be involved in discussions on the subject, should first get the facts straight. It is my aim to provide, as far as possible, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about one particular period. This book is a companion to my other book Pre-Famine Ireland: Social Structure. I had accumulated such a vast quantity of material, often from untouched sources, that I was unable to include it in one volume of reasonable size. So it was necessary to order all material of a social and economic character in one volume, and historical narrative in another. But in places, in explaining legislation for example I felt it necessary to give brief accounts of social, political, or economic circumstances. The period 1800 to 1850 in Irish history has not been particularly frequently or well researched. Distortions too were caused by the political objectives of the various writers. Facts were selected, omitted, or twisted to suit political objectives. Catholic or nationalist writers wrote with their own religious and political objectives in mind, and Protestants or loyalists likewise. To this day the contending factions in Northern Ireland defend their stances by reference to the version of history favoured by their own side. It has often been observed that truth is the first casualty in any conflict, but it is also true that the loss or distortion of truth causes the conflict. Ireland was not an abnormal country in 1800. It could in many ways be compared with the young United States, and the disparities in their wealth and size of population were nothing like what they were later to become. British influence in Ireland had commenced some centuries before it had in the American colonies, and in each case the influence went far beyond political influence. It spread to language customs and institutions. The Irish Parliament received from Britain relative independence in 1782, and the American colonies absolute independence in 1783. Ireland, like the United States, had an upper ruling Protestant elite, and a lower class largely excluded from positions of power. The big difference was that this underclass of coloured people was a minority in the United States, while in Ireland the excluded Catholics formed a majority. By 1829 Irish Catholics had largely achieved political equality with Protestants, while the American Negroes received political equality, by the standards of the time, in 1866. The independence of the Irish Parliament was ended in 1800 because it was realized that the ruling Protestant elite in Ireland would never give political equality to Catholics for precisely the same reasons that southern American States would never give political equality to Negroes. In an era when political corruption was rife the whites would have to bribe the blacks to get anything. Everyone knows what happened to the American Negroes after 1866 when the actual conditions for democratic participation was left to be determined by the individual states. Ireland, like the United States, in the first half of the century was largely at peace. Though a great war raged around it, it was not invaded. Like the United States, its efforts were directed towards the arts of peace. Like the United States also its population grew rapidly. Though America had ultimately a safety valve in the great prairies to its west, and possessed abundant minerals, much of its development in the first half of the century was in the mountainous and forested states of the east. The population expanded up the mountains and into the forests, and, as in Ireland, gradually refluxed either into the great cities, or into the lands to the west. The difference was that in the United States this migration was within the country, while for the Irish the great cities and better lands were outside her borders. Like in Britain and the United States the use of machinery in the textile industry led to

This is a book about the history of Ireland. It is not a history of various groups backed by American money who sought the independence of Ireland. Such histories have been written in the past, largely with the aim of extracting more money from their American financial backers. Writers of such books never felt constrained to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth'. This book is the fifth in a series of books on various periods of Irish history in which I aimed to do just that. This book had its origin when the author was glancing through an English translation of Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf. He was so struck by Hitler's account of German history before, during, and after the First World War that he went and bought the book. What amazed him was its resemblance to the version of Irish history that he had been taught in Irish schools. There was no question of either side borrowing directly from the other, but equally obviously both were drawing on a common set of ideas and used a common method of exposition. Further study showed that both exposed a racist view of history and believed in the Darwinian struggle of the races. Both regarded their countries as subjected by alien races who destroyed the pure native culture. Both attributed every evil in their respective societies to these malign evil influences. Both saw that the alien races would have to be expelled from their countries so that their countries could again prosper when their native cultures were restored. Protestant landlords in Ireland had the same place in Irish racist propaganda and political mythology that the Jews had in Nazi political mythology. Most Irish boys of the author's generation had, like Hitler, come across an inspiring teacher of history who inspired them to nationalism with his one-sided stories of Irish wrongs at the hands of the English. Having realised that the standard version of Irish history was vitiated in its roots the problem arose as to how a version of Irish history could be written which was fair to all parties involved. Many excellent books and monographs on various parts of Irish history have been written, and he has drawn on them considerably in this book. It is noticeable that the further the subject of an historical study is from the present the easier it is to be objective, and the less controversy there is. There are two main themes in this period of Irish history. The first is the growth of Ireland into a modern industrial society. The other is the struggle of principally the Catholic middle classes to wrest control of Ireland, specifically the corruption and racketeering, from the Protestants. Ireland by 1850 was already a well-developed modern society, more advanced than most countries in Europe. The period up to 1920 was one of increasing prosperity, and increasing social improvement. Every new development in the various aspects of society, industry, agriculture, communications, science and education, social improvements were all adopted. The propaganda picture of an impoverished and down-trodden Catholic peasantry crushed by an alien state is shown to be false. At the same time the rosy-tinted picture of brave disinterested young men going out to fight for Ireland's freedom from a foreign oppressor is shown to be equally false. Neither their objectives namely to control the rackets, nor their methods namely terrorism are things that Irish people can be proud of. Nor is the undiscriminating support given by Americans to the terrorists anything that America can be proud of either. But in this book I prefer to concentrate on the achievements Irishmen can be proud of. On can look at Irish industrial achievements. Belfast showed how ships on the North Atlantic run should be built and fitted out. The greatest linen industry in the world was built up. Two of the greatest dev developments in the modern world, the pneumatic tyre, and the three-point l

Technical changes in the first half of the nineteenth century led to unprecedented economic growth and capital formation throughout Western Europe; and yet Ireland hardly participated in this process at all. While the Northern Atlantic Economy prospered, the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50 killed a million and a half people and caused hundreds of thousands to flee the country. Why the Irish economy failed to grow, and ‘why Ireland starved’ remains an unresolved riddle of economic history. Professor Mokyr maintains that the ‘Hungry Forties’ were caused by the overall underdevelopment of the economy during the decades which preceded the famine. In Why Ireland Starved he tests various hypotheses that have been put forward to account for this backwardness. He dismisses widespread arguments that Irish poverty can be explained in terms of over-population, an evil land system or malicious exploitation by the British. Instead, he argues that the causes have to be sought in the low productivity of labor and the insufficient formation of physical capital – results of the peculiar political and social structure of Ireland, continuous conflicts between landlords and tenants, and the rigidity of Irish economic institutions. Mokyr’s methodology is rigorous and quantitative, in the tradition of the New Economic History. It sets out to test hypotheses about the causal connections between economic and non-economic phenomena. Irish history is often heavily coloured by political convictions: of Dutch-Jewish origin, trained in Israel and working in the United States. Mokyr brings to this controversial field not only wide research experience but also impartiality and scientific objectivity. The book is primarily aimed at numerate economic historians, historical demographers, economists specializing in agricultural economics and economic development and specialists in Irish and British nineteenth-century history. The text is, nonetheless, free of technical jargon, with the more complex material relegated to appendixes. Mokyr’s line of reasoning is transparent and has been easily accessible and useful to readers without graduate training in economic theory and econometrics since ists first publication in 1983.

Analyses the construction and dissemination of the image conveyed of Irish society in the early nineteenth century