The following is a briefly review of the history of Ireland [1] beginning at the start of the eighteenth century and ending in the mid-nineteenth century.
I am only touching upon issues directly related to the daily life of Maytor Healy and his immediate family. During the eighteenth century Ireland was ruled by Britain but Ireland retained it's own parliament until it was dissolved on January 1, 1801 During the latter part of the eighteenth century there was a great degree of political upheavel and rebellion in northern Ireland. Because Maytor Healy lived in rural, southern Ireland and was a tenant farmer with no land ownership or wealth he was removed from the possibility of involvement in the political uprising, violence and rebellion of the times.
My sources are footnoted below if you wish to study in greater detail the history of Ireland.
"Ireland. How do we understand the history of such a significant, yet such a geographically and demographically small nation? To write the history of a nation is problematic at the best of times. An instant problem for anyone writing a history of Ireland is to deal with the question of what is meant by the term 'Ireland'. As a geographical concept, Ireland is straightforward. The island of Ireland is a clearly definable landmass located in the eastern Atlantic. Since the twelfth century, however, Ireland has been a contested area in political, religious and military terms. There has been a continuous battle for control of the island. At times thia has been an internal battle, while, more usually, the fortunes of Ireland have been linked to its proximity to, and problematic relationship with England or a British state dominated by England." 1
"Ireland was invaded by the Normans, ruled over by the crown, brought under the Union of a greater Britain, and finally partitioned so that one part views itself as Irish and sovereign, (southern Ireland) the other as British and loyal. Throughout this history there has been a process of coercion, acceptance, assimilation, rebellion, positive choice, and a wlter of other attempts to make the different groups within and outside the island of Ireland agree on any one vision of the future." 1
"In Ireland, north and south, and for the Irish across the world, history is vitally important. for the politically active, the history of previous generations provides martyrs, victories and a sense of being on the winning (or losing) side which they can transpose on their current situation. For the millions around the world who claim Irish descent this history of famine, poverty, struggle and emigration provides a sense of belonging, idealistic notions of home, and the reassurance that they have successfully survived and prospered in a new oand, while never forgetting where they came from. History is a ghost to be conjured up and used to justify many different ideas of Ireland, and whit it is to be Irish. In this there is no one Irish history." 1
"In Ireland, north and south, and for the Irish across the world, history is vitally important. for the politically active, the history of previous generations provides martyrs, victories and a sense of being on the winning (or losing) side which they can transpose on their current situation. For the millions around the world who claim Irish descent this history of famine, poverty, struggle and emigration provides a sense of belonging, idealistic notions of home, and the reassurance that they have successfully survived and prospered in a new oand, while never forgetting where they came from. History is a ghost to be conjured up and used to justify many different ideas of Ireland, and whit it is to be Irish. In this there is no one Irish history." 1
"At the beginning of the eighteenth-century the concerns of Irelands economy was secondary to those of Britain. Ireland had a good range of resourdes, a potentially profitable land stock, an easy access to the trading lanes of the sea and a geographical closeness to Britain so it should have entered the eighteenth century as a rapidly growing economy. However, in the same manner that it controlled Irish parliamentary powers, Britain controlled and restricted Ireland's economic potential.
In 1699 the London parliament passed legislation that would allow the export of woolen goods, an important part of Irish economic production only, into England. Irish woollen goods could not be sold to any other country. Additionally, any Irish woollen exports into England paid such excessive duties that the English market had been effectively closed for years. The 1699 legislation destroyed the Irish woollen industry at a stroke. The spirit of the legislation set the scene for English attitudes toward Irish economic affairs for the new century. If the English parliament, or at least powerful groups that exerted influence onit, believed that the Irish posed an economic threat to England, then the imposition of legislation would be swift. To counter the dismay felt by the Irish over the loss of their woollen industry, the English parliament encouraged the establishment of an effective, and mass scale, linen industry in Ireland. The industry grew steadily over the eighteenth century but there was a difference - wool production had been a genuinely national business, and had covered most of the country. While linen produced as as much wealth and employeed as many people it's production was centered on the north of Ireland. The wealth and power that emerged from such an industry was concentrated on the hands of the large, non-Catholic population of Ulster.
The concentration of success in one area, and the loss of the woollen trade, effectively symbolised the problems of the Irish economy in the eighteenth century. There was no industry or business that could be developed rapidly that was truly national and could bring about sustained levels of prosperity. As a result the Irish were heavily dependent on agriculture; not only as a way to feed themselves, but also as the sole method available to produce wealth in the country.
Another problem that Ireland faced as the eighteenth century progressed, was common across Europe: a rapid growing population. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Ireland's population totalled no more than two million. By the end of the eighteenth century it had more than doubled to five million and that figure would grow even more rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The problems in Ireland that prevented the land from feeding its population and creating a surplus of wealth were numerous. The single most important problem was the sheer scale of absenteeism.
Absentee landlords had long been a common feature of the Irish landscape. The difficulties that had accompanied the process of invasion, repression and plantation meant that residence in Ireland was not an attractive prospect for those who had bought or had been granted land in Ireland. It was easier for the landlords to appoint a middleman to administer the land. This usually meant that the estates of landlords were broken into smaller plots and rented out at a very high charge, to the Irish. The absentee landlord was then assured of an income, but free of the problems of developing the land, investing in it or having to live in Ireland. By the eighteenth century the problem of absentee landlords had reached a crisis point." 1
The tenants on the land payed a high fee, were unsure of their tenure and constantly close to the bread line, additionally their fee was increased by the landlord for any improvements they make on the property - that the improvement of their land was not an option for them.
As the nineteenth century moved forward a greater number of people and less available land, resulted in smaller and smaller plots. What land was available for rent was subdivided to such an extent that tenant farmers were trying to make a living, and feed their families, on the basis of two or three acres of land. To make their rent, tenants would have to work in paid employment, something that was not freely available, and sell the best of the crops they produced on their own land. In turn such a state of affairs meant that the Irish tenants looked to potatoes as the major source of their diet. It was a crop that could be easily, and plentifully, farmed off a small plot of land. There was no margin for error however. With the tenants labor and their best crops sold, the potato crop had to succeed. It was the lifeline of the tenants and their families. When the potato crop failed in the 1720's and again in the early 1740's, the effects were devastating.
The failure of the potato crop in the 1740s cost tens of thousands of lives (contemporary reports talk of 400,000 dying of starvation). In the eighteenth century, a dwindling amount of land available for cultivation, an increasing population, the profit-driven perspective of the absentee landlords and middlemen, and a lack of scientific application, all combined to make the conditon of Ireland at the end of the eighteenth century far worse than at the beginning.
By mid-eighteenth century, the growth in the British population and increasing demand on their own agricultural industry meant that it could no longer keep pace. Ireland offered a nearby, and easily controllable market, and so the previously high duties that had severly restricted the Irish cattle market was removed. Such a decision had a profound effect on Ireland. The amount of pasture was increased massively and land tenants were removed, ( evicted ) from the land by the absentee landlords. In the middle years of the eighteenth century, Ireland was rapidly transformed from a land of cultivation in to a land of pasture. The process only served to exacerbate the problems that already existed.
Sixty years previously London parliment had chosen to destroy one Irish industry, wool, because it threatened English profitability; in 1759 it chose to create an Irish industry, cattle, as England need more food. The abject poverty of Irish rural-life increased as tenant farmers were evicted from their lands.
Alongside the abject poverty of eighteenth century Irish rural life, there was a steady growth of an affluent ascendancy lifestyle that was centered on the rapidly developing Irish towns and cities. Much of the revenue that was created in Ireland went straight out of the country, and into the hands of the absentee landlords. Because of the cheap availability of labor, and many raw materials in Ireland, the wealthy in Ireland were able to indulge there whims on a grand scale. They built large in impressive Georgian mansions, planned-out town and city areas set around beautiful squares. Trinity College in Dublin was developed as a centre of refinement and intellectual development. In the eighteenth century the bulk of Dublin's appealing buildings, and it's basic shape, that still exists today was laid out by the elite ascendancy class. A similar process, albeit on a small scale, was witnessed in Belfast and elsewhere in Ireland.
Such riches contrasted sharply with the extremes of poverty that existed across many parts of the country and created, in social terms at least, two Irelands. One was wealthy, educated, and began to demand power and recognition for Ireland and the Irish parliament; the other was poor, weak and concerned solely with the maintenance of life.
1800 - THE GROWING ECONOMIC CRISIS
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the population of Ireland grew from under five million to over eight million by 1841. Irish agriculture was not undergoing modernising transformation, mainly because of absentee landlordism. Ireland's wealth was being exported to Britain. The reality was that Irish agriculture could not cope with the challenge of extra mouths to feed. While younger sons chose to emigrate rather than face subdividing a small land plot as each generation passed away. The standard of living in Ireland especially for the Catholic peasantry, who relied on the land for their family income, dropped to a crisis point. It is evident that many families survived on the thin line that existed between poverty and starvation. For the Irish who were locked into such a cycle, there was little chance of escape. For those who were not among the considerable number who chose to emigrate to the New World, especially to America, there was no choice but to stay on their small plot of land and try to survive. There was no alternative employment in most parts of Ireland, few of the landlords appeared interested in the peasants' plight, and the government seemed unprepared to intervene.
THE GREAT FAMINE 1845 - 1851
THE GREAT FAMINE 1845 - 1851
Sources
1. Cronin, Mike; A History of Ireland, published 2001, Archive.org
