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/