FaminePart 1: Causes

Anglican Ascendancy• The cultural and political elite, about 10-

15% of the population. • Owned the majority of land in Ireland,

and rented it out to (mostly Catholic) labourers.

• Ascendancy power was mostly based around Dublin.

• Much of the Ascendancy were educated in England, and would have had English accents and traditions.

• The Ascendancy controlled the Irish parliament, until it was abolished after the act of Union of 1801.

Ulster Calvinist/Dissenter Settlers• Descended from English and Scottish Planters,

who had populated Ulster settlements since 1609.

• About 10% of the population.

• Spoke English (and sometimes a Scottish dialect known as Scotch).

• Were loyal to the British crown.

• Since they were not Anglican, they were not part of the Ascendancy.

• The Calvinist north, unlike the rest of the Island, became a centre of the Industrial revolution (mostly ship building and Linen production).

The Catholic Irish

• The vast majority of the country (75-80%)

• Mostly spoke Irish and followed Gaelic traditions.

• A highly agricultural society.

• Had been banned from public life until 1829 by the Penal Laws.

• Even after 1829, the penal laws had ensured that most Catholic Irish owned little or no land, were poorly educated, and had minimal authority in the community.

• Among the poorest peasantry in Europe.

• Through renting practices and inheritance laws, the Catholic Irish often had miniscule areas of land to farm; increasingly, many could not rent any land at all.

Problems with Landlordism

• At the beginning of the 19th century, 95% of Irish land was owned by a small Anglican elite.

• According to British tradition, landlords were expected to take care of their tenants’ needs.

• In Ireland, however, landlords were largely absentee.

• Management of estates was handed over to middle-men, who collected rent from the tenants.

• Middle-men often outsourced their work to more middle-men.

• Due to lack of investment, many Irish estates became extremely rundown and unproductive – leading to increases in rent.

Gustave de Beaumont on Ireland, 1835

“I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland ... In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland."

British economist, William Nassau Sr, on the problem of Irish ‘overpopulation’.“If the agricultural population of the greater part of Ireland is three times as large as can be profitably employed in cultivating … if the reclamation of the waste lands by the Government would afford only a slow and very partial relief, and, by rendering possible a still further increase of population, might in its ultimate results act as a poison instead of a medicine, … if under the double operation of increased pauperism and diminished employment, the population which last year was only three times, may next year be four times, and the year after be five times, as great as is wanted, what possible resource can there be except to diminish the number of people, since, while that number continues to increase, the demand for their labour is impossible ? … if we allow the cancer of pauperism to complete the destruction of Ireland, and then to throw fresh venom into the already predisposed body of England, the ruin of all that makes England worth living in is a question only of time.

1837

1888

1837

1888

Laissez Faire policy

• Since the Union, Ireland’s economy depended on Free Trade with Britain.• According to the British Government, it was the local landlord’s

responsibility to help the starving – so they received little or no Government help.

• Since many landlords actively wanted the land cleared for livestock, eviction and emigration was often economically beneficial to them.

• Irish poor who had been evicted would have to work through the workhouse system if they wanted food (this was the same for the poor on Britain). This was supposed to prevent them from becoming lazy.

• Many were put to work on symbolic projects, such as roads that led nowhere, or giant decorative ‘follies’.

• The workhouse system, though extensively developed during the famine years, was immediately overwhelmed by the mass of starving peasants.

Workhouse in Galway, one of the poorest regions in 19th-century Ireland

Sir Charles Trevelyan

Trevelyan on the Famine:

"The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated … We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country” – from a letter of 1846

Extract from the Documentary ‘When Ireland Starved’ – Full series available on youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQuvcafhSMk&index=6&list=PLADBD43FFE1DC191D