Post on 14-Dec-2015
Prof. Peter GrayQueen’s University Belfast
Three aspects:
Economic developments Perceptions of the Irish economy and
the politics of the economyEconomic policy
What was the ‘Irish economy’?
A regional economy within UK?
A series of regional economies within Ireland?
A Irish national economy? A colonial economy? A global economy?
Irish railway network, 1900
1. An era of boom c.1793-1815
2. An era of malaise c.1815-45
3. An era of catastrophe 1845-52
4. An era of rising expectations c.1852-77
5. An era of rural conflict c.1878-
1903
6. The eclipse of economics? c.1903-1921
1. A regime of population growth c.1793-18452. A regime of demographic collapse c.1845-513. A regime of sustained decline c.1852-1921
Domestic textile production in Ulster, late 18thC
1793-1815 wars boost Irish agriculture through high demand and rising food prices
Growing shift from pasture to tillage and increasing grain exports to GB
Ireland as Britain’s ‘bread basket’ from 1790s Growing landowning expenditure and
indebtedness Increased labour-power and potato-
cultivation the basis of Irish tillage expansion
Subdivision of landholdings promotes rapid rural population growth from 1770s: early marriage
‘Cottier’ peasants on 5-10 acre holdings rented yearly
‘Conacre’ labourers rent 1-5 acre potato land in return for labour
Growing reliance on potato subsistence
‘Clachan’ settlement, Derrynane, Co. Kerry, 1845
Linen industry expands rapidly from 1770s
Primarily a cottage industry in spinning and weaving, but boosts commercial centres such as Belfast, Derry, Newry and Dublin
Also promotes rapid subdivision and population growth
Epicentre of proto-industrialisation in Co. Armagh
Development of early cotton manufacturing in Belfast, Dublin, Co. Cork 1780s-1820s
First shipyards open in Belfast 1790s
Green Linen Hall Belfast (c 1834)
Cottier’s cabin, Co. Kerry, 1845
1815 Corn Laws fail to protect Ireland from growing competition
Currency deflation creates debt crisis
Harsher landlord-tenant relations increase rural conflict
Expanding grain exports to 1830s make some richer…
But leave ‘cottiers’ and labouring poor impoverished and vulnerable
Emigration starts to rise (c.1.5m 1815-45)
Potatoes being taken to market, Co. Kerry 1845
• Ireland subject to intensified British competition post-1815• Irish cotton and woolens production collapses 1820s • Mechanisation of linen spinning develops from mid-1820s in Belfast• Retreat of linen production into ‘linen triangle’ of east Ulster from 1820s• Small textile producers in NW, SW and midlands thrown back into dependence on agriculture•Collapse of industry in Dublin 1826
Union followed by measures of economic assimilation
Abolition of Irish pound and exchequer 1816Full free-trade between Ireland and GB
18241826 Subletting Act seeks to create English-
style landless labouring classPreference for laissez-faire, especially under
ToriesCrisis response to regional famines, 1817,
1822, 1831
Increase infrastructural spending from c.1815 Irish Board of Works 1831
- develops Shannon waterway, roads and harbours
National Board of Education 1831- offers non-denominational primary education
Irish Poor Law 1838- 130 union workhouses with basic relief of ‘destitute’- some assistance to dispensaries, hospitals
Irish Railway Commission Report 1838 Devon Commission Report 1845 But constraints of laissez-faire
Soup Kitchen queue, 1847
Potato crop hit by fungal blight phytopthora infestans
Partial failures 1845, 1848, 1849 Total failure 1846 Shortfall of 12m tonnes of
potatoes by 1846-7: a real food crisis
Continuing food exports 1846 cause uproar
Failure of affordable imports to meet ‘food gap’ 1846-7
Prices falling with growing imports 1847-50, but ‘crisis of entitlements’ means continuing famine
Famine accompanied by devastating epidemic diseases and fevers
Large numbers of deaths from late 1846-spring 1849
Late and inadequate state response hampered by laissez-faire ideology
Some, but never adequate, private charity
Coincides with industrial downturn in GB 1847-9
Charitable relief in Co. Clare, 1849
Relatively generous aid 1845-6 Withdrawal from interference in
food markets from 1846 Relief through public works
(1846-7); soup kitchens (summer 1847)
Poor Law Extension Act 1847 Encumbered Estates Act 1849
places burden of Irish recovery on ‘free trade in land’
Some relief from famine debts 1853, in return for extension of income tax
Punch on British aid, 1846
1.1m ‘excess deaths’ 1846-51 (1/8 of population)
1m emigrants 1846-51 Crisis accompanied by
widespread ‘clearances’ by landlords
Population decline highest in western counties
Legacy of trauma and political anger in Ireland and its diaspora
Agriculture shifts increasingly to cattle raising and export
Ireland increasingly tied into global market trends
Some rise in living standards, but subject to sharp recessions 1859-63, 1877-80
Expansion of commerce, shops, credit, literacy But continuing poverty and high emigration
especially from rural west Five million emigrants 1851-1914 Tensions between ‘improving’ landlords and tenant
farmers, especially early 1850s, later 1860s, later 1870s – forces Gladstone’s first land act, 1870
Specialised development of linen industry
Harland and Wolff shipyard established 1861
Diversification into engineering, rope making
Population of Belfast more than triples to 386,000 1851-1911
Draws in population from rural Ulster
Harland and Wolff, Belfast: one of world’s largest shipyards by 1900
Eviction scene, 1881
Agricultural crisis 1877-80 The ‘Land War’ 1879-82, led
by Irish National Land League Features ‘boycotts’, rent
strikes, initimidation, riots 1881 Land Act grants ‘3Fs’
(fair rent; fixity of tenure; freedom of sale of tenant right)
1882 Arrears Act Land War curbs powers of
landlords, but fails to deliver full demands of small farmers and labourers
Attack on a ‘process server’, 1880
Further agrarian depressions 1884-9, late 1890s
‘Plan of Campaign’ agitation 1886-90
United Irish League agitation 1898-1901
Conservatives accept principle of land purchase from 1885
Wyndham’s Land Act 1903 begins mass purchase of farms by occupying tenants with state loans – completed 1920s
Anti-landlord cartoon, 1882
New Creamery, Killeshandra, Co. Cavan, 1911
1885 Ashbourne Land Act 1903 Wyndham Land Act 1891 Congested Districts Board seeks to
promote development in westSir Horace Plunkett promotes
agricultural co-operation through Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (1894)
1899 Irish Department of Agriculture established
Widespread establishment of creameries
Growing concerns over urban slums – Iveagh Trust in Dublin
Emergence of mass labour movement:
1907 Belfast dock strike; 1909 ITGWU formed; 1913 Dublin lockout strike James Larkin promotes Irish
syndicalism Marxist James Connolly
attempts to tie Irish Labour movement to Republicanism, Easter 1916
But Labour damaged by national/sectarian divisions
James Connolly
‘Ranch War’ 1906-9, but land radicalism increasingly marginal
Sinn Féin demand for Irish economic autarky from c.1905 – part of ‘Irish Ireland’ movement
1916 Proclamation contains vague socio-economic promises
Dáil Éireann appeals to labour through 1919 ‘Democratic Programme’
‘Labour must wait’ 1919-21 Arthur Griffith, leader of Sinn Féin, 1905-17
High water mark of Ulster heavy industry: RMS Titanic launched 1912
Belfast businessmen fund Ulster Unionism
Argument that Ulster prosperity based on Union and empire
First World War reinforces economic differences of ‘two Irelands’
But collapse of Belfast’s heavy industry after 1920
Titanic propellers, Belfast 1912
Lasting trauma of Great FamineConsiderable economic advances from 1850 Irish living standards above most of E and S
Europe (but below GB and US)Land issue mostly resolved by mid-1920sContinuing high structural emigrationSignificant poverty in rural west and urban
areas IFS heavily dependent on agricultural exports
to GBNI dependent on outdated heavy industry
Visit QUB’s interactive website:
Irish History Livewww.qub.ac.uk/sites/irishhistorylive/