Economic history of Ireland

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History of Ireland series
Early history
Early Christian Ireland
Early medieval and Viking era
Norman Ireland
Early Modern Ireland 1536–1691
Ireland 1691–1801
Union with Great Britain
History of the Republic
History of Northern Ireland
Economic history

1 History until the Enlightenment
2 19th century
3 History since partition
4 Footnotes
5 Sources
6 See also

[edit] History until the Enlightenment

The first settlers in Ireland were seafarers who survived largely by fishing, hunting and gathering. This was the extent of the Irish economy for around 3500 years — until 4500BC when farming and pottery making became widespread. Sheep, goats, cattle and cereals were imported from Britain and Europe. Wheat and barley were the principal crops cultivated. There was an economic collapse around 2500BC, possibly because too much time was being spent building grandiose tombs, and the population declined from its peak of around 100,000. Metalworking began in Ireland around 2500BC, with bronze being the principal metal used. Swords, axes, daggers, hatchets, halberds, awls, drinking utensils and horn-shaped trumpets were produced in the period 2500BC – 700BC (the Bronze Age). Mining began also around this time. Mines in Cork and Kerry are believed to have produced as much as 370 tonnes of copper during the Bronze Age. The Celts brought Iron technology to Ireland around 350BC. They established kingdoms and a system of rule, this enabled the economy to be regulated for the first time.

In the Middle Ages Ireland was invaded by the Normans. During these colonial times, the economy was predominantly one based on subsistence farming, mainly oats and potatoes (after the sixteenth century) and other types of tillage. The country's main resources were exported to England and thus the country's economy scarcely developed. An important industry developed on the south coast involving catching, processing and exporting pilchards see Munster pilchard fishery 1570-1750. One major change was the large amount of infrastructure created by Britain in Ireland — roads, railways and canal lines were established.

In the eighteenth century English trade with Ireland was the most important branch of English overseas trade¹. The Anglo-Irish absentee landlords drew off some £800,000 in the early part of the century, rising to £1 million, in an economy that amounted to about £4 million. Completely deforested for timber exports and a temporary iron industry in the course of the seventeenth century, Irish estates turned to the export of salt beef and pork and butter and hard cheese through the slaughterhouse and port city of Cork, which supplied England, the Royal Navy and the sugar islands of the West Indies. The bishop of Cloyne wondered "how a foreigner could possibly conceive that half the inhabitants are dying of hunger in a country so abundant in foodstuffs?"². In the 1780s, under pressure from salted meat exported from the Baltic and from the United States, the Anglo-Irish landowners rapidly switched to growing grain for export, while the Irish themselves ate potatoes and groats.

[edit] 19th century

For much of the 1800s, the only factories in Ireland were the textile mills of the north, and the Guinness brewery and the Jacobs biscuit factory in Dublin. For much of the period the Irish economy existed solely to provide cheap raw materials to the far more industrialised British economy such as timber, beef, vegetables and marble. Ireland underwent major highs and lows economically during the nineteenth century: from economic booms during the Napoleonic Wars and in the late nineteenth century (when it experienced a surge in economic growth unmatched until the 'Celtic Tiger' boom of the 1990s), to severe economic downturns and a series of famines, the latest threatening in 1879. The worst of these was the Great Famine of 1846-1848, in which about 750,000 people died and another million were forced to emigrate, with millions more leaving in the following decades.

Ireland's economic problems were in part the result of the small size of Irish landholdings. In particular, both the law and social tradition provided for subdivision of land, with all sons inheriting equal shares in a farm, meaning that farms became so small that only one crop, potatoes, could be grown in sufficient amounts to feed a family. Furthermore many estates, from whom the small farmers rented, were poorly run by absentee landlords and in many cases heavily mortgaged.

When potato blight hit the island in 1845, much of the rural population was left without food. Unfortunately at this time British politicians such as the Prime Minister Robert Peel were wedded to a strict laissez-faire economic policy, which argued against state intervention of any sort. While enormous sums were raised by private individuals and charities (Native Americans sent supplies, while Queen Victoria personally gave the equivalent in modern money of €70,000) British government inaction (or at least inadequate action) led to a problem becoming a catastrophe; the class of cottiers or farm labourers was virtually wiped out.

The famine spawned the first mass wave of Irish emigration to the United States. There was also a large amount of emigration to England, Scotland, Canada, and Australia. This had the long term consequence of creating a large and influential Irish diaspora, particularly in the United States, who supported and financed different Irish independence movements, beginning with the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

[edit] History since partition

Main articles:

After the War of Independence, most of Ireland gained independence from the United Kingdom. Twenty-six counties of Ireland became the Irish Free State, while the other six remained in the Union as Northern Ireland. There had already been a significant economic divide between these two parts of Ireland, but following partition both regions further diverged, with Belfast, as the North's economic centre, and Dublin becoming the capital of the Free State. Partition had a devastating effect on what became Ireland's border area. County Donegal for example was economically separated from its natural regional economic centre of Derry. The rail network struggled to operate across two economic areas, finally closing across a vast swath of Ireland's border area (the only cross-border route left being that between Belfast and Dublin). In general the economy of the Republic was much weaker than that of the North throughout the twentieth century, with the situation reversing due to the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland, and the Celtic Tiger era in the Republic spurred on by the high technology industries that took root in the country.

[edit] Footnotes

See: Braudel, F, 1979.
See: Plumb, J.H., 1973.

[edit] Sources

Braudel, Fernand, The Perspective of the World, vol III of Civilization and Capitalism (1979, in English 1985)
Plumb, J.H., England in the 18th Century, 1973: "The Irish Empire"