Marx and Engels on Ireland

[C. Flower]

Marx and Engels wrote tirelessly about Ireland and were active on Irish questions - particularly the rights and welfare of Irish political prisoners (the Fenian prisoners) in England and the question of the right of Irish people to organise independently within the British working class movement.

Marx viewed the Irish question as a central one for the British revolution and supported the aspirations of Irish nationalists.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1867/irish-speech.htm

Marx and Engels often pointed to the support that the Irish cause had from British workers, and expressed frustration that nationalist leaders did not see anything to be gained for themselves by this support.

Engels wrote the draft of a history of Ireland.

There is a wealth of analysis in their work on Ireland, much of which is still very relevant today.

Lawrence and Wishart brought out a volume of Marx and Engels' writings in 1971, published in English and printed in the USSR.

This appears to be an online version, with some additional letters included.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/ireland/index.htm

I don't know if this volume has been influential in Ireland, but I have never heard it mentioned in discussions.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/ireland/index.htm

Marx gave a speech to visiting German socialists in which he homed in on the issue of land. His view was that the deindustrialisation of Ireland that followed Union forced a preoccupation with land.



During the American War of Independence the reins were loosened a little. Further concessions had to be granted during the French Revolution. Ireland rose so quickly that her people threatened to outstrip the English.

The English government drove them to rebellion and achieved the Union [390] by bribery. The Union delivered the death blow to reviving Irish industry. On one occasion Meagher said: all Irish branches of industry have been destroyed, all we have been left is the making of coffins.

It became a vital necessity to have land; the big landowners leased their lands to speculators; land passed through four or five lease stages before it reached the peasant, and this made prices disproportionately high.

The agrarian population lived on potatoes and water; wheat and meat were sent to England; the rent was eaten up in London, Paris and Florence. In 1836, £7,000,000 was sent abroad to absent landowners. Fertilisers were exported with the produce and rent, and the soil was exhausted. Famine often set in here and there, and owing to the potato blight there was a general famine in 1846. A million people starved to death. The potato blight resulted from the exhaustion of the soil, it was a product of English rule.

[antiestablishmentarian]

Engels was very critical of the Irish in some of his earlier works- in 'the Condition of the English Working Class', written in the early 1840s, Engels wrote a scathing account of the effects of Irish immigration on wages and conditions.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm


I don't know if this volume has been influential in Ireland, but I have never heard it mentioned in discussions.

I'm afraid that's your answer, I've never heard this volume mentioned or discussed before and while I'm sure others here have read it and know about it, I've never heard them referenced in discussions on the national question.

[antiestablishmentarian]

Engels was very critical of the Irish in some of his earlier works- in 'the Condition of the English Working Class', written in the early 1840s, Engels wrote a scathing account of the effects of Irish immigration on wages and conditions.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm


I don't know if this volume has been influential in Ireland, but I have never heard it mentioned in discussions.

I'm afraid that's your answer, I've never heard this volume mentioned or discussed before and while I'm sure others here have read it and know about it, I've never heard them referenced in discussions on the national question. There are many other interesting facets of the Irish labour movement and its history (both here and contributions in England and other countries), especially the great role men like Bronterre O'Brien and Feargus O'Connor played in helping to found the English labour movement, their influence on Marx's economic thinking (O'Brien formulated a version of the theory of surplus value in the 1830s), as well as that the history of the Land League and Michael Davott's role and progressive politics.


With a lucidity which cannot escape even the most obtuse mind, O'Connor shows that the Irish people must fight with all their might and in close association with the English working classes and the Chartists in order to win the six points of the People’s Charter — annual parliaments, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament, payment of M.P.s and the establishment of equal electoral districts. Only after these six points are won will the achievement of the Repeal have any advantages for Ireland.

Written in 1848.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09.htm

[C. Flower]

Engels was very critical of the Irish in some of his earlier works- in 'the Condition of the English Working Class', written in the early 1840s, Engels wrote a scathing account of the effects of Irish immigration on wages and conditions.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm

I'm afraid that's your answer, I've never heard this volume mentioned or discussed before and while I'm sure others here have read it and know about it, I've never heard them referenced in discussions on the national question.

That piece is a short extract from "The Condition of the English Working Class" and misses out on its context in the book.

He doesn't mince words, but I think it is a misreading to say that Engels was critical of the Irish. He was highly critical of their conditions of life of the Irish immigrants who arrived in England as a result of famine and poverty as he was of those of the English working class.

"The Condition of the English Working Class" was a very important book that had a big impact in its day. It described minutely the horrific conditions in which the British working class lived.

He quotes Carlyle on the Irish but then says -
If we except his exaggerated and one-sided condemnation of the Irish national character, Carlyle is perfectly right

except = omit / leave out.

Engels said that hundreds of thousands of Irish people poured into England and supplied the labour that made possible the big economic development that took place in Britain.

They were penniless and rural, with no possessions, who had lived in the single room, windowless, mud cabins (only a few remain these days, and people often think they were animal houses, not homes) in which most people in rural Ireland lived. They were driven by hunger to Britain and their arrival created terrible overcrowding and drove down wages. They drank because there was nothing else to do to take the edge off life and relieve it.


At home in his mud-cabin there was only one room for all domestic purposes; more than one room his family does not need in England. So the custom of crowding many persons into a single room, now so universal, has been chiefly implanted by the Irish immigration. And since the poor devil must have one enjoyment, and society has shut him out of all others, he betakes himself to the drinking of spirits. Drink is the only thing which makes the Irishman's life worth having, drink and his cheery care-free temperament; so he revels in drink to the point of the most bestial drunkenness. The southern facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which places him but little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very crudeness makes him incapable of sharing, his filth and poverty, all favour drunkenness. The temptation is great, he cannot resist it, and so when he has money he gets rid of it down his throat. What else should he do? How can society blame him when it places him in a position in which he almost of necessity becomes a drunkard; when it leaves him to himself, to his savagery?

Even in the late 20th century Irish immigrants, who had no education and came from poor rural families to work in building in Britain, lived often six or eight to a room, with a small locker and a suitcase under the bed, and no personal comforts, and only the pub to go to for some humanity, company and warmth. The term "savage", used by Engels about the Irish, had the sense of primitive, untamed, not violent as it would be used today.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=savage

Reading further into Engels' and Marx's writing on Ireland and the Irish will make it clear that they did not share Carlyle's "exaggerated and one-side view" of the Irish.

[C. Flower]

I'm going to post up the Marx and Engels material on Ireland piece by piece, one post a day.

This one, to start off, is a record of a speech made by Marx to Germans, so is an approximate version only of what he said, but is a good (if rough) overview of Marx's view of Irish history and the relationship with England.


Source: MECW Volume 21, p. 317;
First published: in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, 2nd Russian Edition, 1960.

This record of Marx’s speech on the Irish question on December 16, 1867 was made by Eccarius. It was intended for the journal Der Vorbote and was sent by Friedrich Lessner to Johann Philipp Becker in Switzerland but remained unpublished. The record of Marx’s speech was first published in English in Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.

To the German Workers’ Educational Society In London
On December 16, 1867

On December 16, Karl Marx delivered a lecture to the London German Workers’ Educational Society on the conditions in Ireland, in which he showed that all attempts of the English government to Anglicise the Irish population in past centuries had ended in failure. The English, including aristocrats, who immigrated before the Reformation [386] were transformed into Irishmen by their Irish wives, and their descendants fought against England. The brutalities of the war against the Irish under Queen Elizabeth, the destruction of crops and the displacement of the population from one area to another to make room for English colonists did not change anything in this respect. At that time, gentleman and merchant adventurer received large plots of land on condition that they would be colonised by English people. In Cromwell’s time, the descendants of these colonists fought with the Irish against the English. Cromwell sold many of them as slaves in the West Indies. Under the Restoration[387], Ireland received many favours. Under William III, a class came to power which only wanted to make money, and Irish industry was suppressed in order to force the Irish to sell their raw materials to England at any price. With the help of the Protestant Penal Laws[388], the new aristocrats received freedom of action under Queen Anne. The Irish Parliament [389] was an instrument of oppression. Catholics were not allowed to hold public office, could not be landowners, were not allowed to make wills, could not claim an inheritance; to be a Catholic bishop was high treason. All these were means for robbing the Irish of their land; yet more than half of the English descendants in Ulster have remained Catholic. The people were driven into the arms of the Catholic clergy, who thus became powerful. All that the English government succeeded in doing was to plant an aristocracy in Ireland. The towns built by the English have become Irish. That is why there are so many English names among the Fenians.

During the American War of Independence the reins were loosened a little. Further concessions had to be granted during the French Revolution. Ireland rose so quickly that her people threatened to outstrip the English. The English government drove them to rebellion and achieved the Union [390] by bribery. The Union delivered the death blow to reviving Irish industry. On one occasion Meagher said: all Irish branches of industry have been destroyed, all we have been left is the making of coffins. It became a vital necessity to have land; the big landowners leased their lands to speculators; land passed through four or five lease stages before it reached the peasant, and this made prices disproportionately high. The agrarian population lived on potatoes and water; wheat and meat were sent to England; the rent was eaten up in London, Paris and Florence. In 1836, £7,000,000 was sent abroad to absent landowners. Fertilisers were exported with the produce and rent, and the soil was exhausted. Famine often set in here and there, and owing to the potato blight there was a general famine in 1846. A million people starved to death. The potato blight resulted from the exhaustion of the soil, it was a product of English rule.

Through the repeal of the Corn Laws Ireland lost her monopoly position on the English market, the old rent could no longer be paid. High prices of meat and the bankruptcy of the remaining small landowners further contributed to the eviction of the small peasants and the transformation of their land into sheep pastures. Over half a million acres of arable land have not been tilled since 1860. The yield per acre has dropped: oats by 16 per cent, flax by 36 per cent, potatoes by 50 per cent. At present only oats are cultivated for the English market, and wheat is imported.

With the exhaustion of the soil, the population has deteriorated physically. There has been an absolute increase in the number of lame, blind, deaf and dumb, and insane in the decreasing population.

Over 1,100,000 people have been replaced by 9,600,000 sheep. This is a thing unheard of in Europe. The Russians replace evicted Poles with Russians, not with sheep. Only under the Mongols in China was there once a discussion whether towns should be destroyed to make room for sheep.

The Irish question is therefore not simply a question of nationality, but a question of land and existence. Ruin or revolution is the watchword; all the Irish are convinced that if anything is to happen at all it must happen quickly. The English should demand separation and leave it to the Irish themselves to decide the question of landownership. Everything else would be useless. If that does not happen soon the Irish emigration will lead to a war with America. The domination over Ireland at present amounts to collecting rent for the English aristocracy.

NOTES

386 The Reformation, begun in England under King Henry VIII (Act of Supremacy, which declared the King the head of the Church in place of the Pope, and other Acts), was completed under Elizabeth I (the adoption, in 1571, of the “39 articles” of the Anglican Church — a variety of Protestantism). The introduction of the Reformation to Catholic Ireland was a means of subjecting her to the English absolute monarchy and expropriating her population in favour of the English colonists on the pretext of struggle against Catholicism.

387 A reference to the Restoration of the Stuart dynasty in England in 1660. The restored Stuarts (Charles II and James II) continued to rule up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. The Restoration was the result of a compromise between the bourgeois elite and the “new” nobility, which had grown rich during the revolution, and the aristocrats supporting the Stuarts. The adherents of the Stuarts, many of whom had lost their estates in England, now received title to confiscated Irish lands in compensation. Only in rare cases did the representatives of the new regime take action on complaints and petitions for the return of property, to Irish owners, and after the 1665 Act such complaints were no longer considered. Thus, the sweeping expropriation of the Irish population implemented during the English bourgeois revolution was sanctioned by the restored monarchy.

388 The Penal Code was a set of laws passed by the English for Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century and in the first half of the eighteenth century on the pretext of a struggle against Catholic conspiracies. The laws deprived the Irish, most of whom were Catholic, of all civil and political rights. Some of the laws were abrogated at the end of the eighteenth century as a result of the growing national liberation struggle in Ireland.

389 The Anglo-Irish Parliament, convoked at the end of the thirteenth century, was initially made up of representatives of the Church and landed aristocracy. In the 1780s, under the impact of the growing national liberation struggle, the English Government extended its rights, but it was abolished in 1801 under the Act of Union.

390 The Anglo-Irish Union was imposed by the British Government after the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1788. The Union, which came into force in 1801, abrogated the autonomy of the Irish Parliament. A consequence of this was the abolition of tariffs which had been set by the Irish Parliament.

[antiestablishmentarian]

I've read the book a number of times, and I understand the context and what Engels was trying to say in it. Your interpretation of it is at odds with other parts of the passage he quoted after that 'excepting' clause.


And even if the Irish, who have forced their way into other occupations, should become more civilised, enough of the old habits would cling to them to have a strong, degrading influence upon their English companions in toil, especially in view of the general effect of being surrounded by the Irish. For when, in almost every great city, a fifth or a quarter of the workers are Irish, or children of Irish parents, who have grown up among Irish filth, no one can wonder if the life, habits, intelligence, moral status -- in short, the whole character of the working-class assimilates a great part of the Irish characteristics.

I'm aware he developed his ideas later in life and co-habited with an Irish woman for the better part of it, but this passage stinks to me of the Punch definition of 'savage' and Irish, rather than the Oxford definition. Also, if you look at my original post, I think you'll find that you misinterpreted what I was trying to say. In any case I think it's more in the spirit of this thread to discuss his and Marx's later contributions on politics in Ireland and the national question.

[C. Flower]

I've read the book a number of times, and I understand the context and what Engels was trying to say in it. Your interpretation of it is at odds with other parts of the passage he quoted after that 'excepting' clause.

I'm aware he developed his ideas later in life and co-habited with an Irish woman for the better part of it, but this passage stinks to me of the Punch definition of 'savage' and Irish, rather than the Oxford definition. Also, if you look at my original post, I think you'll find that you misinterpreted what I was trying to say. In any case I think it's more in the spirit of this thread to discuss his and Marx's later contributions on politics in Ireland and the national question.

Apologies - there is a double post of yours, and I missed reading the second, fuller one.

Engels certainly laid on very thick his view of the character of Irish rural immigrants and their effect on the English working class. I wonder what he would have said about the "chavisation" of parts of the English working class under Thatcherism?

There is nothing gratifying about Engels description of the Irish immigrants, but I don't think its purpose was the same at all as that of the Punch version of the Irish as brutal and subhuman.

I would like this thread to take Engels and Marx's writing "warts and all," and work through them and debating them, disagreeing or agreeing as the case may be.

[Sam Lord]

Apologies - there is a double post of yours, and I missed reading the second, fuller one.

Engels certainly laid on very thick his view of the character of Irish rural immigrants and their effect on the English working class. I wonder what he would have said about the "chavisation" of parts of the English working class under Thatcherism?

There is nothing gratifying about Engels description of the Irish immigrants, but I don't think its purpose was the same at all as that of the Punch version of the Irish as brutal and subhuman.

I would like this thread to take Engels and Marx's writings "warts and all," and work through them and debating them, disagreeing or agreeing as the case may be.

Neither Marx nor Engels were divine beings descended from Heaven. They were brilliant thinkers with advanced ideas and a scientific outlook but they were still human beings and products of a certain age. It would be impossible, I think, for them not to display any of the imprint of their time in any of their writing on a host of subjects.

[Ogiol]

VERY coincidential. I have this book and have just been rereading it since after christmas. Was just talking to my bro about it yesterday before seeing this post.
My reading of the engle's debate is that he may state that the irish are degraded but he clearly recognises the historical role of the english rulers in creating their degradation. In the notes for his history of ireland he carefully plots out how in the 16th-18th centuries the english continually destroy the wealth of the irish nation and create the conditions for abject poverty and thus the 'condition' of the irish in the 19th century.

On a bit of a tangent but still about the work, I was genuinely shocked (but did have a suspition) at the worker figures for irish industry pre-act of union. I have never studied this part of history and can only ever recall ireland being taught as a heavily populated RURAL country. If you look at the figures for 'industrial' employment (cottage or agricultural industries i think they're called) you can clearly deduce that there was significant urban development all around the island. E.G. in Dublin there were about 20,000 workers in selected industries, which would seem to indicate at least a 70,000 -100,000 population. This in itself might not be suprising but if you look at selected towns like Wicklow (1000 handlooms at work) this would point to a big population, maybe upto 10,000. Thus, Ireland may not have been so rural afterall and this great devalerian national myth of rurality was actually just plain bollox.
It does have to be said though that these figures are given in order to show just how the act of union devastated all these industries and forced probably hundreds thousands to the land to seek subsistance. But still, if this is the case then this rurality was clearly a forced creation and not an innate characteristic of the irish.

what say ye?

[C. Flower]

VERY coincidential. I have this book and have just been rereading it since after christmas. Was just talking to my bro about it yesterday before seeing this post.
My reading of the engle's debate is that he may state that the irish are degraded but he clearly recognises the historical role of the english rulers in creating their degradation. In the notes for his history of ireland he carefully plots out how in the 16th-18th centuries the english continually destroy the wealth of the irish nation and create the conditions for abject poverty and thus the 'condition' of the irish in the 19th century.

On a bit of a tangent but still about the work, I was genuinely shocked (but did have a suspition) at the worker figures for irish industry pre-act of union. I have never studied this part of history and can only ever recall ireland being taught as a heavily populated RURAL country. If you look at the figures for 'industrial' employment (cottage or agricultural industries i think they're called) you can clearly deduce that there was significant urban development all around the island. E.G. in Dublin there were about 20,000 workers in selected industries, which would seem to indicate at least a 70,000 -100,000 population. This in itself might not be suprising but if you look at selected towns like Wicklow (1000 handlooms at work) this would point to a big population, maybe upto 10,000. Thus, Ireland may not have been so rural afterall and this great devalerian national myth of rurality was actually just plain bollox.
It does have to be said though that these figures are given in order to show just how the act of union devastated all these industries and forced probably hundreds thousands to the land to seek subsistance. But still, if this is the case then this rurality was clearly a forced creation and not an innate characteristic of the irish.

what say ye?

I agree. I think the picture given by Conor McCabe of Ireland held in place as a big ranch to supply England with meat, with small holders rearing weanlings to supply to ranchers, and export of cattle on the hoof, needs to be seen in the context that Ireland and England were far more on an equal par with each other in the 18th century than I used to believe, and that the Act of Union was a colonialist disaster for Ireland from which came the famine and future fixation on land and landownership that fed into the disastrous property boom we've just had. With industry stripped out by English control over imports and exports, there was nothing else apart from land for people to live off.

We're now faced with a similar coup, threatened on the peripheral countries in the EU, with their capacity to develop independently and equally being stymied for decades if not permanently.

Georgia is an interesting comparison. It used to be a food exporter, and to have manufacturing industry, but since the fall of the USSR farming collapsed and more than 50% of the population is now dependent on small subsistence plots for their living. It's easy to see that they are now vulnerable to starvation if there is a crop failure and that they may become fixated on the importance of owning land - those who have none are even worse off.

[Ogiol]

I agree. I think the picture given by Conor McCabe of Ireland held in place as a big ranch to supply England with meat, with small holders rearing weanlings to supply to ranchers, and export of cattle on the hoof, needs to be seen in the context that Ireland and England were far more on an equal par with each other in the 18th century than I used to believe, and that the Act of Union was a colonialist disaster for Ireland from which came the famine and future fixation on land and landownership that fed into the disastrous property boom we've just had.

We're now faced with a similar coup, threatened on the peripheral countries in the EU, with their capacity to develop independently and equally being stymied for decades if not permanently.

I agree, perfectly summarized. As you say this 'ranch' idea was in fact created by the act of union and as we all know also laid the foundations for the famine and its devastating effects on this country.

Nowadays we may well be seeing a similar outcome. Maybe casting the new EU as a new type of act of union would make things a little easier to understand for the irish people at large. The indicators certainly seem to point towards a new but all to familiar period of serfdom.:(

[C. Flower]

I agree, perfectly summarized. As you say this 'ranch' idea was in fact created by the act of union and as we all know also laid the foundations for the famine and its devastating effects on this country.

Nowadays we may well be seeing a similar outcome. Maybe casting the new EU as a new type of act of union would make things a little easier to understand for the irish people at large. The indicators certainly seem to point towards a new but all to familiar period of serfdom.:(

And a new period of resistance :)

There are big pluses today, most particularly that Ireland is not on its own, there is Greece and Portugal and all of Eastern Europe (and for that matter, North Africa), in a similar situation, and the working classes right across Europe are natural allies, with much better communications than there were two hundred years ago. There's a global crisis, and our situation is just one part of it.

[Garibaldy]

I think Marx and Engels on Ireland isn't quoted that much simply because the historical circumstances to which they were responding had changed so much, and because there is no single work bringing together their views in a coherent and developed way.

As for the act of union and its putative effects, such as causing the famine or turning Ireland into a ranch. The population was already rising incredibly quickly well before 1800, a rise due in great measure to the potato, but also due to the rise of farming for the market. Much of this demand stemmed from trade with the Americas (and to a lesser extent countries like France), as well as the demands of war as armies got bigger, as well as Britain, and again the trend significantly predates the union. We shouldn't deny the agency of Irish people in the economic decisions that were made.

To say that Irish industry was destroyed by the union is to take an unconsciously partitionist view of what constitutes Irish industry. After all, industry in Ulster benefited greatly from the union, although we need to be wary of giving any single cause too much weight in seeking to explain the development of the Irish economy in the C19th.

There is a recent book called Marx at the Margins that has a chapter on Marx and Ireland.

[C. Flower]

[QUOTE=Garibaldy;222815]I think Marx and Engels on Ireland isn't quoted that much simply because the historical circumstances to which they were responding had changed so much, and because there is no single work bringing together their views in a coherent and developed way.

Perhaps this thread can pull together some conclusions.
Imo, all of this book is valuable from the point of view of methodological approach of M and E, of Irish history, and much of it is still relevant.



As for the act of union and its putative effects, such as causing the famine or turning Ireland into a ranch. The population was already rising incredibly quickly well before 1800, a rise due in great measure to the potato, but also due to the rise of farming for the market. Much of this demand stemmed from trade with the Americas (and to a lesser extent countries like France), as well as the demands of war as armies got bigger, as well as Britain, and again the trend significantly predates the union. We shouldn't deny the agency of Irish people in the economic decisions that were made.

To say that Irish industry was destroyed by the union is to take an unconsciously partitionist view of what constitutes Irish industry. After all, industry in Ulster benefited greatly from the union, although we need to be wary of giving any single cause too much weight in seeking to explain the development of the Irish economy in the C19th.

Did it? Do you know of a source for stats on this? Is there a history of industry in Ireland ?

[Garibaldy]

[quote]

Perhaps this thread can pull together some conclusions.
Imo, all of this book is valuable from the point of view of methodological approach of M and E, of Irish history, and much of it is still relevant.




Did it? Do you know of a source for stats on this? Is there a history of industry in Ireland ?

Marx and Engels were clear that the main question at the time was the question of land ownership. The Land Acts altered that question for ever. Throw in the changed nature of the British-Irish relationship, and much of it becomes of historical interest more than contemporary relevance. I'd agree on the methodology question though.

Andy Bielenberg's Ireland and the Industrial Revolution is a very recent book on Irish industrial history, though the main lines challenging the image of the union leading automatically to industrial decline were laid out by Louis Cullen's Economic History of Ireland (second edition about 1988). As for figures, in 1800 there were 80,000 acres of what Bielenberg calls native flax and in 1825 there were 140,000. Partly this was due to population growth, providing the British army during the Napoleonic Wars, but exports to Britain were vital - and the union made it cheaper to trade with Britain. Bielenberg points out that after the union, Ireland became the centre of the global linen trade, and at the end of the C19th the world's largest shipyard and brewery were in Ireland. Ireland's industrial history is a mixed one in other words, with massive successes as well as failures.

[C. Flower]

[quote=C. Flower;222872]

Marx and Engels were clear that the main question at the time was the question of land ownership. The Land Acts altered that question for ever. Throw in the changed nature of the British-Irish relationship, and much of it becomes of historical interest more than contemporary relevance. I'd agree on the methodology question though.

Andy Bielenberg's Ireland and the Industrial Revolution is a very recent book on Irish industrial history, though the main lines challenging the image of the union leading automatically to industrial decline were laid out by Louis Cullen's Economic History of Ireland (second edition about 1988). As for figures, in 1800 there were 80,000 acres of what Bielenberg calls native flax and in 1825 there were 140,000. Partly this was due to population growth, providing the British army during the Napoleonic Wars, but exports to Britain were vital - and the union made it cheaper to trade with Britain. Bielenberg points out that after the union, Ireland became the centre of the global linen trade, and at the end of the C19th the world's largest shipyard and brewery were in Ireland. Ireland's industrial history is a mixed one in other words, with massive successes as well as failures.

Thanks, that's interesting. The Economic History of Ireland wikipage here does not acknowledge the existence of industry in Ireland apart from Jacobs Biscuits, Guinness and some textiles in the north. Even from the evidence of the eyes, looking at remaining industrial structures, that is nonsense. In one county I know there were more than 200 mills in the 18th-19th centuries. There was a 20th century motor industry in Cork that's rarely mentioned.

There does seem to have been a buy in to an image of Ireland that has no place for industry in it. Some work on this wiki page might be worth while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Ireland

[Garibaldy]

Thanks, that's interesting. The Economic History of Ireland wikipage here does not acknowledge the existence of industry in Ireland apart from Jacobs Biscuits, Guinness and some textiles in the north. Even from the evidence of the eyes, looking at remaining industrial structures, that is nonsense. In one county I know there were more than 200 mills in the 18th-19th centuries. There was a 20th century motor industry in Cork that's rarely mentioned.

There does seem to have been a buy in to an image of Ireland that has no place for industry in it. Some work on this wiki page might be worth while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Ireland

I admire the ambition of whoever put that together, but it's not great

[C. Flower]

Today's extract, which is the first piece in the book that I have and also on the online version.

It's a letter from Engels, in London, writing about O'Connell.


Schweizerischer Republikaner No. 51, June 27, 1843

One hears nothing now but talk about O'Connell and the Irish Repeal (abolition of the Union of Ireland and England). [149] O'Connell, the cunning old lawyer, who during the Whig government sat calmly in the House of Commons and helped to pass “liberal” measures in order to be rejected by the House of Lords, O'Connell has suddenly left London and absented himself from the parliamentary debates and is now raising again his old question of repeal. No one was thinking about it any more; and then Old Dan [Daniel O'Connell] turns up in Dublin and is again raking up the stale obsolete lumber. It is not surprising that the old yeast is now producing remarkable air-bubbles. The cunning old fox is going from town to town, always accompanied by a bodyguard such as no king ever had — two hundred thousand people always surround him! How much could have been done if a sensible man possessed O'Connell’s popularity or if O'Connell had a little more understanding. and a little less egoism and vanity! Two hundred thousand men — and what men! People who have nothing to lose, two-thirds of whom are clothed in rags, genuine proletarians and sansculottes and, moreover, Irishmen, wild, headstrong, fanatical Gaels. One who has never seen Irishmen cannot know them. Give me two hundred thousand Irishmen and I will overthrow the entire British monarchy. The Irishman is a carefree, cheerful, potato-eating child of nature. From his native heath, where he grew up, under a broken-down roof, on weak tea and meagre food, he is suddenly thrown into our civilisation. Hunger drives him to England. In the mechanical, egoistic, ice-cold hurly-burly of the English factory towns, his passions are aroused. What does this raw young fellow — whose youth was spent playing on moors and begging at the roadside — know of thrift? He squanders what he earns, then he starves until the next pay-day or until he again finds work. He is accustomed to going hungry. Then he goes back, seeks out the members of his family on the road where they had scattered in order to beg, from time to time assembling again around the teapot, which the mother carries with her. But in England the Irishman saw a great deal, he attended public meetings and workers’ associations, he knows what Repeal is and what Sir Robert Peel stands for, he quite certainly has often had fights with the police and could tell you a great deal about the heartlessness and disgraceful behaviour of the “Peelers” (the police). He has also heard a lot about Daniel O'Connell. Now he once more returns to his old cottage with its bit of land for potatoes. The potatoes are ready for harvesting, he digs them up, and now he has something to live on during the winter. But here the principal tenant [150] appears, demanding the rent. Good God, where’s the money to come from? The principal tenant is responsible to the landowner for the rent, and therefore has his property attached. The Irishman offers resistance and is thrown into gaol. Finally, he is set free. again, and soon afterwards the principal tenant or someone else who took part in the attachment of the property is found dead in a ditch.

That is a story from the life of the Irish proletarians which is of daily occurrence. The half-savage upbringing and later the completely civilised environment bring the Irishman into contradiction with himself, into a state of permanent irritation, of continually smouldering fury, which makes him capable of anything. In addition he bears the burden of five centuries of oppression with all its consequences. Is it surprising that, like any other half-savage, he strikes out blindly and furiously on every opportunity, that his eyes burn with a perpetual thirst for revenge, a destructive fury, for which it is altogether a matter of indifference what it is directed against, so long as it can strike out and destroy? But that is not all. The violent national hatred of the Gaels against the Saxons, the orthodox Catholic fanaticism fostered by the clergy against Protestant-episcopal arrogance — with these elements anything can be accomplished. And all these elements are in O'Connell’s hands. And what a multitude of people are at his disposal! The day before yesterday in Cork — 150,000 men, yesterday in Nenaph — 200,000, today in Kilkenny — 400,000, and so it goes on. A triumphal procession lasting a fortnight, a triumphal procession such as no Roman emperor ever had. And if O'Connell really had the welfare of the people in view, if he were really concerned to abolish poverty — if his miserable, petty juste-milieu aims were not behind all the clamour and the agitation for Repeal — I should truly like to know what Sir Robert Peel could refuse him if he demanded it while at the head of such a force as he now has. But what does he achieve with all millions of valiant and desperate Irishmen? accomplish even the wretched Repeal of the solely because he is not serious about it, because he is misusing the impoverished, oppressed Irish people in order to embarrass the Tory Ministers and to put back into office his juste-milieu friends. Sir Robert Peel, too, knows this well enough, and hence 25,000 soldiers are quite enough to keep all Ireland in check. If O'Connell were really the man of the people, if he had sufficient courage and were not himself afraid of the people, i.e., if he were not a double-faced Whig, but an upright, consistent democrat, then the last English soldier would have left Ireland long since, there would no longer be any idle Protestant priest in purely Catholic districts, or any Old-Norman baron in’ his castle. But there is the rub. If the people were to be set free even for a moment, then Daniel O'Connell and his moneyed aristocrats would soon be just as much left high and dry as he wants to leave the Tories high and dry. That is the reason for Daniel’s close association with the Catholic clergy, that is why he warns his Irishmen against dangerous socialism, that is why he rejects the support offered by the Chartists [151], although for appearances sake he now and again talks about democracy — just as Louis Philippe in his day talked about Republican institutions — and that is why he will never succeed in achieving anything but the political education of the Irish people, which in the long run is to no one more dangerous than to himself.

[Sam Lord]

He had O'Connell pegged at any rate.

I always thought one of the best sights in Ireland was the bird excrement running down O'Connell's head at the top of the street named after him. What will we rename it after the revolution? James Connolly boulevard?

[Apjp]

I think Marx and Engels on Ireland isn't quoted that much simply because the historical circumstances to which they were responding had changed so much, and because there is no single work bringing together their views in a coherent and developed way.

As for the act of union and its putative effects, such as causing the famine or turning Ireland into a ranch. The population was already rising incredibly quickly well before 1800, a rise due in great measure to the potato, but also due to the rise of farming for the market. Much of this demand stemmed from trade with the Americas (and to a lesser extent countries like France), as well as the demands of war as armies got bigger, as well as Britain, and again the trend significantly predates the union. We shouldn't deny the agency of Irish people in the economic decisions that were made.

To say that Irish industry was destroyed by the union is to take an unconsciously partitionist view of what constitutes Irish industry. After all, industry in Ulster benefited greatly from the union, although we need to be wary of giving any single cause too much weight in seeking to explain the development of the Irish economy in the C19th.

There is a recent book called Marx at the Margins that has a chapter on Marx and Ireland.

Bottom line, was that the famine itself came about largely because, if not solely because of, the anglo-saxon demand for cost free produce which exhausted Irish soil, leading to the spud blight and the great hunger. In my view, from what I've looked up here and elsewhere, the Irish gombeen aristocrats emerged around the time of the famine and have been in elite power positions in Ireland ever since. The same Irish elites who made slaves of the natives by loaning them produce(normally food) at ruinous rates which they then had to work off, are the same gombini in charge today. But lets be honest as well-the British empire is on record as not only refusing to end the Great Hunger after they caused it(which would not have costed so much for them), but in the case of Turkish aid ship's being turned away from Drogheda, they refused foreign aid to a great extent, only allowing a minimum amount through. In my view, the views of the Irish gombeens and English emprie were always compatible and still are, as lately as last year's visit of the German speaking English queen.

Having said that, you do make some good points. The decline of industry had a few different factors in it.

[Garibaldy]

Bottom line, was that the famine itself came about largely because, if not solely because of, the anglo-saxon demand for cost free produce which exhausted Irish soil, leading to the spud blight and the great hunger. In my view, from what I've looked up here and elsewhere, the Irish gombeen aristocrats emerged around the time of the famine and have been in elite power positions in Ireland ever since. The same Irish elites who made slaves of the natives by loaning them produce(normally food) at ruinous rates which they then had to work off, are the same gombini in charge today. But lets be honest as well-the British empire is on record as not only refusing to end the Great Hunger after they caused it(which would not have costed so much for them), but in the case of Turkish aid ship's being turned away from Drogheda, they refused foreign aid to a great extent, only allowing a minimum amount through. In my view, the views of the Irish gombeens and English emprie were always compatible and still are, as lately as last year's visit of the German speaking English queen.

Having said that, you do make some good points. The decline of industry had a few different factors in it.

APJP,

Have you read any of Cormac Ó Gráda's stuff on the Great Famine? I think you'd find it very interesting. The story of the Famine is a lot more complicated than people often think. For example, for the first few years, the government organised a massive system of relief on a scale not seen before (even if it produced nothing but pointless roads), and was feeding something like 2 million people IIRC. This was pulled on ideological grounds basically.
I'm not really sure why the supposed exhaustion of Irish soil is taken by you as causing the blight. That's not what caused it. It spread to Europe from the US and hit much of northern Europe (contributing to the outbreak of the 1848 revolutions).
As for the gombeens. I'd agree with much of what you say, but the middleman class dates from the C18th and not the C19th. The Famine represents the most important event in modern Irish history, but many other factors shaped Ireland, even in the C19th.

[Kev Bar]

The half-savage upbringing and later the completely civilised environment bring the Irishman into contradiction with himself, into a state of permanent irritation, of continually smouldering fury, which makes him capable of anything.

Sounds like the story of my life.

[Sam Lord]

Andy Bielenberg's Ireland and the Industrial Revolution is a very recent book on Irish industrial history, though the main lines challenging the image of the union leading automatically to industrial decline were laid out by Louis Cullen's Economic History of Ireland (second edition about 1988).

In "Labour In Irish History" (published 1910) James Connolly vigorously and at length attacked the arguments that Grattan's Parliament had anything to do with a coincidental period of prosperity in Ireland and that the Act of Union had anything to do with the decline in Irish manufacture.




Here again the Socialist philosophy of history provides the key to the problem -- points to the economic development as the true solution. The sudden advance of trade in the period in question was almost solely due to the introduction of mechanical power, and the consequent cheapening of manufactured goods. It was the era of the Industrial Revolution when the domestic industries we had inherited from the Middle Ages were finally replaced by the factory system of modern times. The warping frame, invented by Arkwright in 1769; the spinning jenny, patented by Hargreaves in 1770; Crampton's mechanical mule, introduced in 1779; and the application in 1778 of the steam-engine to blast-furnaces, all combined to cheapen the cost of production, and so to lower the price of goods in the various industries affected. This brought into the field fresh hosts of customers, and so gave an immense impetus to trade in general in Great Britain as well as in Ireland. Between 1782 and 1804 the cotton trade more than trebled its total output; between 1783 and 1796 the linen trade increased nearly threefold; in the eight years between 1788 and 1796 the iron trade doubled in volume. The latter trade did not long survive this burst of prosperity. The invention of smelting by coal instead of wood in 1750, and the application of steam to blast- furnaces, already spoken of, placed the Irish manufacturer at an enormous disadvantage in dealing with his English rival, but in the halycon days of brisk trade -- between 1780 and 1800. -- this was not very acutely felt. But, when trade once more assumed its normal aspect of keen competition, Irish manufacturers, without a native coal supply, and almost entirely dependent on imported English coal, found it impossible to compete with their trade rivals in the sister country who, with abundant supplies of coal at their own door, found it very easy, before the days of railways, to undersell and ruin the unfortunate Irish. The same fate, and for the same reason, befell the other important Irish trades. The period marked politically by Grattan's Parliament was a period of commercial inflation due to the introduction of mechanical improvements into the staple industries of the country. As long as such machinery was worked by hand, Ireland could hold her place on the markets, but with this application of steam to the service of industry, which began on a small scale in 1785, and the introduction of the power-loom, which first came into general use about 1813, the immense natural advantage of an indigenous coal supply finally settled the contest in favour of English manufacturers.

A native Parliament might have hindered the subsequent decay, as an alien Parliament may have hastened it; but in either case, under capitalistic conditions, the process itself was as inevitable as the economic evolution of which it was one of the most significant signs. How little Parliament had to do with it may be gauged by comparing the positions of Ireland and Scotland. In the year 1799, Mr. Foster in the Irish Parliament stated that the production of linen was twice as great in Ireland as in Scotland. The actual figures given were for the year 1796 -- 23,000,000 yards for Scotland as against 46,705,319 for Ireland. This discrepancy in favour of Ireland he attributed to the native Parliament. But by the year 1830, according to McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary, the one port of Dundee in Scotland exported more linen than all Ireland. Both countries had been deprived of self-government. Why had Scottish manufacture advanced whilst that of Ireland had decayed? Because Scotland possessed a native coal supply, and every facility for industrial pursuits which Ireland lacked.

The `prosperity' of Ireland under Grattan's Parliament was almost as little due to that Parliament as the dust caused by the revolutions of the coach-wheel was due to the presence of the fly who, sitting on the coach, viewed the dust, and fancied himself the author thereof. And, therefore, true prosperity cannot be brought to Ireland except by measures somewhat more drastic than that Parliament ever imagined.

[Sam Lord]

Have you read any of Cormac Ó Gráda's stuff on the Great Famine? I think you'd find it very interesting. The story of the Famine is a lot more complicated than people often think. For example, for the first few years, the government organised a massive system of relief on a scale not seen before (even if it produced nothing but pointless roads), and was feeding something like 2 million people IIRC. This was pulled on ideological grounds basically.
I'm not really sure why the supposed exhaustion of Irish soil is taken by you as causing the blight. That's not what caused it. It spread to Europe from the US and hit much of northern Europe (contributing to the outbreak of the 1848 revolutions).
As for the gombeens. I'd agree with much of what you say, but the middleman class dates from the C18th and not the C19th. The Famine represents the most important event in modern Irish history, but many other factors shaped Ireland, even in the C19th.

Connolly blames capitalism pure and simple for the deaths in the famine. He is good on this point I think:




Had Socialist principles been applied to Ireland in those days not one person need have died of hunger, and not one cent of charity need have been subscribed to leave a smirch upon the Irish name. But all except a few men had elevated landlord property and capitalist political economy to a fetish to be worshipped, and upon the altar of that fetish Ireland perished. At the lowest computation 1,225,000 persons died of absolute hunger; all of these were sacrificed upon the altar of capitalist thought.

Early in the course of the famine the English Premier, Lord John Russell, declared that nothing must be done to interfere with private enterprise or the regular course of trade, and this was the settled policy of the Government from first to last. A Treasury Minute of August 31, 1846, provided that `depots for the sale of food were to be established at Longford, Banagher, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, and Sligo, and subordinate depots at other places on the western coast', but the rules provided that such depots were not to be opened where food could be obtained from private dealers, and, when opened, food was to be sold at prices which would permit of private dealers competing. In all the Acts establishing relief works, it was stipulated that all the labour must be entirely unproductive, so as not to prevent capitalists making a profit either then or in the future. Private dealers made fortunes ranging from £40,000 to £80,000. In 1845 a Commissariat Relief Department was organised to bring in Indian Corn for sale in Ireland, but none was to be sold until all private stores were sold out: the State of Massachusetts hired an American ship-of-war, the Jamestown, loaded it with grain, and sent it to Ireland; the Government placed the cargo in storage, claiming that putting it on the market would disturb trade. A Poor Relief Bill in 1847 made provision for the employment of labour on public works, but stipulated that none should be employed who retained more than a quarter of an acre of land; this induced tens of thousands to surrender their farms for the sake of a bite to eat, and saved the landlords all the trouble and expense of eviction. When this had been accomplished to a sufficient extent 734,000 persons were discharged, and as they had given up their farms to get employment on the works they were now as helpless as men on a raft in mid-ocean. Mr. Mulhall, in his Fifty Years of National Progress, estimates the number of persons evicted between 1838 and 1888. as 3,668,000; the greater number of these saw their homes destroyed during the years under consideration, and this Poor Relief Bill, nick-named an `Eviction-Made-Easy- Act', was one main weapon for their undoing. In 1846, England, hitherto a Protectionist country, adopted Free Trade, ostensibly in order to permit corn to come freely and cheaply to the starving Irish. In reality, as Ireland was a corn and grain exporting country, the measure brought Continental agricultural produce to England into competition with that of Ireland, and hence, by lowering agricultural prices, still further intensified the misery of the Irish producing classes. The real meaning of the measure was that England, being a manufacturing nation, desired to cheapen food in order that its wage- slaves might remain content with low wages, and indeed one of the most immediate results of free trade in England was a wholesale reduction of the wages of the manufacturing proletariat.

The English capitalist class, with that hypocrisy that everywhere characterises the class in its public acts, used the misery of the Irish as a means to conquer the opposition of the English landlord class to free trade in grains, but in this, as in every other measure of the famine years, they acted consistently upon the lines of capitalist political economy. Within the limits of that social system and its theories their acts are unassailable and unimpeachable; it is only when we reject that system, and the intellectual and social fetters it imposes, that we really acquire the right to denounce the English administration of Ireland during the famine as a colossal crime against the human race. The non-socialist Irish man or woman who fumes against that administration is in the illogical position of denouncing an effect of whose cause he is a supporter. That cause was the system of capitalist property. With the exception of those few men we have before named, the Young Ireland leaders of 1848 failed to rise to the grandeur of the opportunity offered them to choose between human rights and property rights as a basis of nationality, and the measure of their failure was the measure of their country's disaster.



The last bit reminded me of a discussion I'm having about Sinn Fein, the Young Irelanders of today, on another thread. :)

[Garibaldy]

In "Labour In Irish History" (published 1910) James Connolly vigorously and at length attacked the arguments that Grattan's Parliament had anything to do with a coincidental period of prosperity in Ireland and that the Act of Union had anything to do with the decline in Irish manufacture.

He did indeed, and right he was. But UCD Professor George O'Brien's books, which argued the traditional line and were published around the early 20s, were more influential.

[Garibaldy]

Connolly blames capitalism pure and simple for the deaths in the famine. He is good on this point I think:




The last bit reminded me of a discussion I'm having about Sinn Fein, the Young Irelanders of today, on another thread. :)

Yeah Connolly excellent on all this stuff. Really, he was the first revisionist - in the sense that he was the first person to write a serious work of history that challenged head on the myths of sectarian nationalism. Not of course that a lot of modern revisionists think like him, but there has been a strand of class-based analysis that challenges the traditional story, of which Conor McCabe's book is a fine example.

As for the Provos as Young Ireland. More like O'Connell I'd have thought. Catholic sectional interests within the UK.

[Sam Lord]

Not of course that a lot of modern revisionists think like him ....

I suspect it would actually offend him very much to be in any way associated with the "revisionist" historians of recent decades.

[Garibaldy]

I suspect it would actually offend him very much to be in any way associated with the "revisionist" historians of recent decades.

You're probably right, but the point is that the revision of nationalist pieties is part of the job of Marxists when it comes to Ireland so that we can properly understand the class nature of politics and society here.

[Kev Bar]

Yeah Connolly excellent on all this stuff. Really, he was the first revisionist - in the sense that he was the first person to write a serious work of history that challenged head on the myths of sectarian nationalism. Not of course that a lot of modern revisionists think like him, but there has been a strand of class-based analysis that challenges the traditional story, of which Conor McCabe's book is a fine example.

As for the Provos as Young Ireland. More like O'Connell I'd have thought. Catholic sectional interests within the UK.

:D

[Gerard]

Doing an extended Philosophy essay on Engels and Ireland at the mo, good times!

[Apjp]

He had O'Connell pegged at any rate.

I always thought one of the best sights in Ireland was the bird excrement running down O'Connell's head at the top of the street named after him. What will we rename it after the revolution? James Connolly boulevard?

I'd be in agreement with that now. Sceal na Teanga also recently highlighted the damage the great 'patriot' did to Irish. He was a native speaker like everyone in the 1840s and he only spoke to the crowds in English as he saw Gaeilge as a backward language for the impoverished. He was no Irishman in that he wanted us to be as English as possible.

[Apjp]

:eek:
Sounds like the story of my life.

I can definitely relate to it as well. Maybe its why German and English friends seem so boring to me ;)