Notes on Ireland's Transition to Capitalism
Coakley, Maurice. Ireland in the World Order: A History of Uneven Development. Pluto Press, 2012
Duffy, Seán, Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf. Gill Books, 2014.
McCann, Gerard. Ireland’s Economic History: Crisis and Development in the North and South. Pluto Press, 2011.
Mjoset, Lars. Irish Economy in a Comparative Institutional Perspective. National Economic and Social Council, 1993.
O’Hearn, Denis. The Atlantic Economy: Britain, the US and Ireland. Manchester University Press, 2015.
Ó Siochrú, Micheál. God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland. Faber, 2008
People first came to Ireland ~9,000 years ago. ~4,000 BC domesticated livestock, stone axes which were used to clear forests to provide farmlands, grindstones to mill grains and clay pots to cook in were introduced. By ~2,500 BC copper was being mined in Cork and Tyrone, tin in the Mourne mountains and gold in Antrim (O’Hearn 2015 28).
Celtic society was surprisingly coherent; one can see from the Brehon Laws - a body of surviving law tracts surviving from the 7th - 9th centuries - that there is a clear unity of culture and language across the island, a clear conception of Ireland as a nation before such concepts would have been regnant in Europe.
The language used in these laws is uniform and grammatically standardised; it was written by members of the Áes Dána, who were professional jurists whose authority transcended local boundaries.
Lebor Gabála Érenn recounts a national origin myth in which successive waves of invaders from the time of Cessair to Noah’s son Bith to Partholón, who fought the Formorian demons, to Nemed the Scythian to the Fir Bolg (who may be related to the Continental Celtic tribe Belgae) to the Tuatha Dé Danann, the climax coming with the Milesians, descended from the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh, Scota, which gives the island its Latin name.
Scota’s son Goídeal Glas gives his name to the people and their language; which seem to have been derived from the Welsh, Gwyddyl; this fixation on genealogy, probably derived from the Bible, grants a powerful sense of dynastic solidarity. (Duffy 4 - 12)
The Celts controlled major trade and ritual centres and practiced more efficient lowland agriculture, milling grain with rotary querns and outperforming upland cereal farmers (Duffy 4; O’Hearn 2015 29).
The basic unit of political organisation was the túath. While many within the túath were related, there would often have been many who were not related to the túath by blood. In that sense it was not strictly tribal, despite the system of naming túath and other territories after an ancestor.
Brian Bóraime’s dynasty was called Dál Cais because it claimed to be the dál of a supposed ancestor called Cass. But this was the name of both the lineage and the territorial kingdom from which the lineage ruled, not everyone in that territory belonged to the lineage (Duffy 7).
The Irish population was organised into 100 - 150 of these túath, led by a rí. Mid-level kingdoms exacted tributes from each tuath and in turn were partly controlled by an ard rí drawn from political groupings calling themselves the Uí of or the cenél of or the corcu or the dál of x (Duffy 8).
Early medieval Ireland was therefore extremely hierarchical; they were were divided into royal kin, aristocrats, free farmers and slaves, a hierarchy of professional craftsmen, lawyers, clerics and poets formed a fifth group, which was itself sub-divided.
Slavery was very common; a person could be born into it, taken as a spoil of war, or condemned to it as punishment for a crime.
The commoner or non-lordly class comprised those who owned or aspired to own land. There were eight different ranks of commoner, the disparity between grades can be seen by the differing ‘honour prices’ or compensation payable for a legal offence against them.
Thus a man of cultivated land had an honour price of three milch cows, a cow-freeman would be owed two and a half, that of a between-house man - a son yet to acquire his own land - was a two year-old heifer (Duffy 5 - 7; O’Hearn 2015 29).
Individuals did not therefore own land in their own right but as part of a kin-group, which was not the modern family, but a four-generation derbfhine, comprising male descendants of a common great-grandfather, though women could inherit movable goods and a life interest in the family if their father had no sons.
The derbfhine held land jointly, which was marked off from that of the neighbouring kin-group by fences and boundary stones, each member having an equal share of the family land. With the passage of each generation the land was re-partitioned between surviving members so each had an equal portion of good and bad land, arable, pasture or bog etc.
Over time inheritance came to be confined to a closer male-descent group, the gelfhine, comprising a man, his sons and his son’s sons; there is only limited evidence that land was held by large numbers of people in common (Duffy 4).
Privately owned land was a source of income for the rí; the relationship between the rí and a client was based on granting cattle in return for a rent of produce, surplus livestock, physical labour or military service; this is the basis of feudalism as a mode of production.
Unusually for Europe at the time, clients could terminate their contract with a rí to seek a better one elsewhere and in this way, free commoners could become relatively wealthy, take on their own clients and be elevated to royal kin after a few generations (Duffy 6; O’Hearn 2015 29).
The Hill of Tara preserves monuments from the late Stone Age. There are extensive remains from the Bronze and Iron age but little archaeological evidence for its occupation or use during the middle ages.
It features prominently in Irish mythology as being connected with the the gods of ancient Ireland; when the sons of Míl, the ancestors of the Irish, first arrived in Ireland they confronted the Túatha Dé Danann at Tara and defeated them at nearly Tailtiu, this underlined their claim on Tara and Ireland in general.
On the Hill of Tara there is a stone called the Lia Fáil which cries out beneath the feet of the rightful king of Ireland; the individual concerned did not necessarily ever manage to control each kingdom but he special status was recognised (Duffy 13).
The kingship of Tara was monopolised by the Uí Néill, one great dynasty with many sprawling branches, and Tara came to be associated with their attempts to claim hegemony across the island.
Muirchú, who wrote a life of St. Patrick around the year 700, describes the celebrated historical or pseudo-historical figure Niall Noígiallach (“Niall of the Nine Hostages”) as one who descended from the royal stock of the entire island, which is an exaggeration but indicative of how many dominant lineages traced themselves back to Niall.
Assuming he was real he may have lived in the fifth century and descended from Conn Céthathach (“Conn of the Hundred Battles”) who is believed to have lived seven generations before Niall, in the late Iron Age (Duffy 15).
This dynasty was divided in the southern Uí Néill of the midlands and the Northern Uí Néill, both of which are terms of convenience for competing branches (Duffy 16).
Irish churchmen were active on the continent from the seventh century, beginning with Columbanus. They were missionaries but also teachers, grammarians, classicists and philosophers.
The most important social change introduced by Christian, Viking and Norman settlers was the development of towns; the Celts’ settlements were decentralised and indigenous forms of centralisation came in the form of the rí’s homestead, which usually consisted of a ring fort and church or monastery (O’Hearn 2015 30 - 1).
Gibson argues that an early state form emerges from this context around the twelfth century when Muirchertach Uí Briain of Thomond moved his capital outside of his kinship area from Clare to Limerick. This reflects the development of a diocesan system of territorial administration indicating that political units were for the first time not co-terminous with the tuatha (O’Hearn 2015 30 - 1).
Dícúil writes about hermits in the Faroe Islands being harassed by Vikings; indicative of experiences of churchmen in north-west Europe faced with raiding (Duffy 44).
The first recorded raid took place in 793 when a monastery founded by Irish monks on Holy Island at Lindisfarne in Northumbria was attacked.
Raids on Ireland began in 795 as either Rathlin or Lambay Island was burned by the Vikings, its shrines were broken and plundered (Duffy 46).
Writings also describe their settling areas they raided, setting up sheep pastures. Patterns of warfare suggest territorial engagements against an established force, all indicating that more sophisticated social and economic relations than mere raiding had developed (Duffy 45 - 6).
In the 830s Ireland was exposed to intensive Scandinavian assault, beginning at Leinster and Southern Uí Néill territory in Brega, with fleets operating in the Boyne, the Liffey, the Shannon, the Erne and Lough Neagh. In 841 the Vikings built a ship-camp in Dublin and another at Linn Duachaill followed by one on Lough Ree.
The late 840s saw a string of Irish victories; the King of Osraige Cerball mac Dúnlainge made a name for himself as an opponent of Viking activity in the Barrow Valley, killing 1,200 Vikings. The following year Máel Sechnaill killed 700 in a battle at Skreen, the combined forces of Munster and Leinster killed 200 or 1,200 near Castledermot.
The Frankish Annals of St-Bertin record the following year a delegation arrived at the court of Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Bald bearing gifts from presumably Máel Sechnaill, announcing the vanquishing of the heathens by the Irish (Duffy 52).
Unclear whether Irish military tactics adapted to the Vikings using ships, their being located permanently in parts of Ireland led to them take sides in Irish wars and becoming vulnerable to Irish resistance; this disunity provoked some to join the Irish side or if Iceland presented a more appealing prospect for unsettled land (Duffy 53).
Many Scandinavian rulers acquired wealth from trade in slaves and luxury commodities such as walrus-ivory; Norse settlement in the form of coastal ports therefore increased the volume of Irish trade and communication with Europe. (Duffy 45 - 6).
Successive waves of English conquest transformed the Irish economy and society as an Anglo-French aristocracy established military supremacy across most of the island, confining Gaelic power to the west and mountainous, boggy parts of the south and the east, seeking to convert parts of Leinster and Munster into a seignoral social order and manorial culture based on intensive arable agriculture as opposed to pastoral husbandry to grow corn for English and continental holdings; the Normans nominally controlled two-thirds of Irish land in the fourteenth century, with their wooden castles scattered throughout the countryside along with mills (especially in Leinster) which were ruled by agents who acted as military officers, local justices.
Clan members were striped of legal right to lands and chieftans were made landowners. Lands were confiscated and resettled. This created a class hierarchy between native Irish, settler or absentee Irish, Anglo-Irish and Scotch-Irish.
Market towns the Viking had established along the coasts were consolidated under the English monarch. Towns were a base of operations for a substantial English artisan, merchant community and were also sites of trade for both Irish and foreign goods such as wine from France; political instability had little effect on new commercial relations (Coakley 6 - 9; O’Hearn 30 - 1).
The 1366 Statutes of Kilkenny mandated that any English person who did not speak English were given six months to learn it or they would forfeit their Church appointments; these laws were also directed against Irish customs, dress, sport, names, indicative of an English anxiety regarding the Anglo-French aristocracy (hereafter referred to as the Old English) becoming Gaelicised (Coakley 11 - 2).
The Black Death reached Ireland in 1348; it hit more developed Anglicised areas much harder, strengthening the position of the peasantry against the lords and further undermined the position of the Normans in the cities who depended on trade. This encouraged them to establish trade relationships with the indigenous population, despite this being illegal; Gaelic forms of pastoral farming re-asserted themselves against agrarianism (Coakley 14 - 5).
Over time Normans began to enter into marriage alliances with Gaelic chiefs. Some Gaelicised lords abandoned all loyalty to the crown, some did not. A syncretic form of law drawing from English, Brehon and French traditions began to develop.
This is at once an example of political, economic and legal formations following economic ones and within this there are more pragmatic aims; serves the purpose of reducing cattle raids and the instability which would have followed were adherence to English laws of primogeniture not abandoned. By the fifteenth century English documents begin to refer to the ‘degenerate English’ in Ireland. (Coakley 19 - 20)
The lowland region around Dublin, ’the Pale’, was the only place in Ireland that an English-style gentry emerged, but it too diverged from the English model; though it was the only place arable farming was happening in Ireland there was no prosperous yeomanry existing between the landowners and the broader peasantry (Coakley 21).
From the thirteenth century on Gaelic chiefs began building castles, first of wood then stone. They also recruited Norse-Gaelic mercenaries from the Scottish islands, indicating their growing capacity to mobilise resources outside of their kin groups (Coakley 26 - 7).
The expansion of militaries in the early modern era facilitated the emergence of state bureaucracies, rendered nation states more coherent. State centralisation and religious reform were part of the same process in Ireland; this was an attempt to subordinate autonomous Gaelic communities beneath English law (Coakley 35 - 6)
One of the means of doing so was ‘surrender and re-grant’ whereby the chiefs would surrender their land and have it granted under the authority of the British monarch (Coakley 37).
This programme was implemented largely through coercion; the Earl of Kildare, who owned the richest agricultural land in Ireland, was executed and garrison were built across the country; the social order was further undermined by the Brits backing some Gaelic chiefs in internecine conflict against others. (Coakley 41)
Coakley argues the Reformation caught on in Europe because it provided an internal and impersonal answer to the collapse of feudal customs. [We also know it served as a superstructural response to / legitimation of the dissolution of bonds of kinship, productive limits and moral law in usury, land ownership]
It didn’t take outside of urban areas in Ireland because these bonds of kinship were still strong, there was a persisting paganism in Catholic practices [this is often over-stated] and because it became identified with military conquest. (Coakley 44 - 7)
Coakley attributes the distinct developmental patterns of Ireland, Wales and Scotland to the less aristocratic character of its Norman settlers and a strong Gaelic literary tradition. (Coakley 51 - 74)
In the sixteenth century the Brits adopted more coercive policies in Ireland with a view to Anglicising and subjugating the country. This was aim of Elizabeth I’s conquest which began with a 1556 project to confiscate all lands in Laois and Offaly, granting them to English settlers (O’Hearn 2015 39).
At this time the majority of the population lived in small clustered rural settlements situated around the manorial residence of the feudal lord. Many peasants drove their livestock to the highlands during the summer for pasture, where they built temporary accommodation for themselves and their families; this often led to foreign observers mistaking the Irish for a nomadic people.
The fertile lands of Leinster and Munster supported a number of well-established towns, the largest being Dublin with around 20,000 with the next four, coastal ports of Waterford, Limerick, Cork and Galway with less than 5,000.
The native Irish lived almost exclusively in rural communities dominated by leading clans or families such as the O’Neills, the MacCarthys and the O’Briens.
Programmes of dispossession and plantation followed the English victory over the native Irish of Ulster in the Nine Years War (1594 - 1603) and the defeat of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, who went into exile with thousands of unemployed swordsmen who fought in French and Spanish armies.
The Old English dominated the big urban centres - with the exception of the Pale - and newly created plantation boroughs in Ulster. They formed part of a broader European trading network, exporting wool and cattle hides and importing textiles and wine from Flanders, France and Spain; each town guarded its local autonomy from outside interference and prevented the native Irish from living within the defensive walls of the settlement.
James VI regarded the Old English with suspicion, referring to them as ‘half-subjects’; the King retained his predecessor’s policy of excluding them from public office, appointing more reliable and more rapacious English Protestant officials who intrigued for control over the big landed estates.
This New English population consisted of soldiers and administrators, from 1610 a government-sponsored plantation scheme redistributed lands seized from Hugh O’Neill and his northern allies among thousands of Protestant migrants from England, alongside ever greater numbers of Scotland.
By the 1630s the Protestant population of Ulster stood at 80,000, many of whom identified themselves as British. There were tensions between the new English and the Scots but fear of the indigenous kept them united.
A series of boroughs were created to stimulate urban development but apart from Derry, Enniskillen and Carrickfergus the vast majority of the settlers lived in small fortified settlements, anxious about threats to security from bands of native outlaws in the woods, mountains and bogs of the province.
There were other concentrations of Protestants along the southern coastline, in Cork, Kinsale, Bandon and Youghal and the Munster Plantation, by 1640 they numbered over 20,000 and came mainly from the southern and western counties of England.
The Old English hoped to retain their influence and mitigate the worst excesses of religion discrimination through the Irish parliament. This hope seemed to be validated in 1628 when Charles I, at war with France and Spain, granted a series of concessions to Irish Catholics known as the ‘graces’, which included a statute of limitations on royal claims to land, protecting Old English estates from possible future confiscation and plantation. In 1629 peace overseas reduced political pressure on the king, allowing him to rescind the graces.
Thomas Wentworth was appointed Lord Deputy in 1632, who, supported by the king, made extensive use of arbitrary powers to further erode the Old English position.
In 1637, Scottish presbyterians, outraged by the King’s attempts to impose Anglican religious rites signed a national covenant in protest. Their actions escalated into a full-scale revolt, with covenanters seizing control of Edinburgh and recruiting a large army, including veterans who had fought for King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.
Charles looked to Wentworth to provide money and troops and the Lord Deputy recruited Catholics in the rank and file of a new army of 10,000 men.
Charles signed a treaty with a Scots before Wentworth could employ his force and the Lord Deputy, promoted to the earl of Strafford, left Ireland shoftly afterwards to assist the King at Court.
In his abscence the Old English leaders successfully colluded with Stafford’s Protestant opponents in the English and Irish parliaments to get him executed. They did not manage to convince the king of the need to make concessions to Irish Catholics and considered taking up arms, drawing on troops Wentworth had raised, while native Irish landowners in Ulster, in debt and worried about the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the covenanters, contacted influential Irish exiles such as Owen Roe O’Neill to discuss the possibility of a rebellion supported by intervention from the continent.
This programme of dispossession and enforced reform, including recusancy fines, imposed for failing to attend Protestant services, prompted the 1641 rebellion, which began as an elite revolt and then spread across the country. It overlapped with the English Revolution during which a new agrarian and colonial merchant elite was asserting itself against the monarchy and seeking support for the Protestant cause in Europe (Ó Siocrú 9 - 14; Coakley 79).
Sir Phelim O’Neill’s father Turlough Oge had fought for the English during the Nine Years War and was killed while trying to suppress a subsequent rebellion in 1608. In recognition of his father’s services Pehlim received estates in the Ulster Plantation. He was raised as a ward of the court in the Protestant faith, attended Lincoln’s Inn in London then returned to Ireland in the 1620s where he reverted to Catholicism; he was knighted in 1639 but was still subject to religious persecution as well as being heavily in debt. (Ó Siocrú 22)
As the senior resident O’Neill Phelim attracted the attention of similarly disgruntled Catholic landowners searching for his support for a pre-emptive strike against the colonial administration, based on the success the Scottish covenanters had obtained, negotiating with the king from a position of strength.
The Ulster Irish envisioned an assault on two fronts. Sir Pehlim targeted Charlemont and other key points in South Ulster to prevent Protestant settlers in the area from linking up with forces from the capital. At the same time Lord Conor Maguire’s men would storm Dublin castle, paralyse the government and obtain access to a vast quantity of weaponry.
Sir Phelim’s plan was successful, rallying thousands of followers to his banner, especially among landed labourers and small tenant farmers, but in Dublin a companion of Lord Maguire, Owen O’Connolly, managed to slip away from his colleagues and alert the authorities. The conspirators were rounded up, incuding Maguire, who was executed in London (Ó Siocrú 23).
This still motivated unrest in north Leinster and a few weeks after O’Neill had seized Charlemont violence broke out in Munster.
The original conspirators belonged to the landed elite, they claimed to be acting in self-defence against the colonial administration but remained loyal to the king and aimed at communicating their grievances to him.
Local Catholic landowners assumed command in their areas but found it difficult to control the rank and file, who increasingly attacked Protestant settlers, particularly in Ulster. This was evident at first with a series of thefts but soon reached more extreme atrocities, as at a massacre in Portadown in November, where estimates suggest ~5,000 Protestants died. A roughly equal number of Catholics were killed in government reprisals, who exploited the ituation to attack vilians (Ó Siocrú 24 - 5).
These atrocities fanned hysteria; a series of unlicensed publications in England reported 150,000 Protestant deaths, far exceeding the total settler population (Ó Siocrú 28 - 9)
As refugees from the rebellion came into Dublin witness depositions were collection, the bulk between 1642 - 3, but a Commission for Despoiled Protestants continued its work until September 1647, with Henry Jones, Dean and later Bishop of Clogher, recognising the propaganda value of the testimonies, exploiting the harrowing accounts of death and destruction to build a case for the re-conquest of Ireland by an English army.
Jones travelled to Westminster to present these findings to parliament, described a general massacre of innocent English and Scottish Protestant settlers but savage and cruel papists, convincing MPs of the need for action.
Parliament passed the Aventurers’ Act to raise money for a military campaign using 2,500,000 acres of forfeited Irish land as collateral. Under pressure to crush the rebellion as soon as possible Charles agreed to sign the act on the basis of the assumption of the unconditional defeat of the rebels.
One of those charged with organising the relief efforts was the obscure MP Oliver Cromwell, who sat on a number of key parliamentary committees dealing with the rebellion throughout 1642, he also devoted £600 of his own money (Ó Siocrú 29 - 30)
After some initial successes the rebels were on the defensive by early 1642. Phelim’s efforts to capture Drogheda failed, exposing his limitations as a military commander and the irregular rebel forces were poorly armed and lacked military training. The Lords Justices, buoyed by reinforcements from England and the promise of a Scottish intervention, adopted an increasingly aggressive strategy, declaring any commander could execute any pillager rebel or traitor, inviting attacks on civilians.
Lord Moore subsequently murdered 140 men women and children in the vicinity of Dublin. Contrary to early modern convention women were specifically targeted as being responsible for stirring up their husbands (Ó Siocrú 31),
This offensive was halted by he death of the most energetic colonial commanders Coote and St Leger as well as outbreaks of flux and war between the king and parliament in August 1642.
The native Irish and old English sought to regain the initiative and re-establish law and order, the collection of subsidies and the support of the Catholic church by creating a confederate association.
The confederacy was based at the centre of rebel-controlled territory in Kilkenny. A legislative General Assembly, similar to the Dublin parliamentm would debate the war and peace while an Executive Supreme Council assumed responsibility for the daily functions of government. Provincial and county councils extended confederate authority throughout the localities while standing provincial armies replaced the irregular levies. It was effectively a parallel government, raising taxes and maintaining armies, minting coins, sending envoys to foreign courts (Ó Siocrú 32).
There were historic tensions between the Old English and native Irish but both sides made great efforts to preserve ethnic harmony; the General Assembly ordered that no distinction e made between old Irish, and old and new English or between clans or families. They had come together as Catholics but declared themselves committed to an inclusive form of national identity, calling on the king to treat all Irish subjects equally before the law, with place of birth rather than blood being the essential criterion for membership of an Irish nation.
As a confederate delegation explained during peace talks with the royalists in 1644: ‘for he that is born in Ireland, though his parents and all his ancestors were aliens, nay if his parents are Indians or Turks, if converted to Christianity, is an Irishman as fully as if his ancestors were born here for thousands of years’ (Ó Siocrú 33).
Initially the administration in Dublin, staffed by English parliamentary sympathisers, rejected all peace overtures from Kilkenny. Unable to sustain a military offensive, the Lords Justices consolidated control of enclaves around Dublin, Cork and Derry, launching occasional offensives in defense of specific outposts.
However, word came that the crown desired a peace settlement to free soldiers up to confront parliament, which the Lords Justices reissted in favour of wiping the population out. The commander of the colonial forces, James Butler, earl of Ormond, was a royalist and suspected of sympathising with the confederates. With the support of Charles I Ormond seized Dublin for the royalist cause, removing the Lords Justice from office and establishing lines of communication with Kilkenny (Ó Siocrú 35 - 6).
With the outbreak of hostilities Irish and Scottish veterans on the continent returned to fight at home and were shocked by the brutality of the warfare, the imposition of military command increasingly moderated the behaviour of the troops (Ó Siocrú 37).
This opened up a space for political dialogue; in September 1643 the confederates and royalists agreed to a truce, enabling Ormond to ship troops back to assist the king in England. For three years the two sides engaged in negotiations seeking a settlement that would allow them to unite their forces against the English parliament and the Scottish covenanters who had signed their own treaty, the Solemn League and Covenant, in September 1643.
There were two main blocs at Kilkenny, the peace faction of existing landowners which favoured a limited settlement guaranteeing religious toleration, preservation of their estates and access to public office and a clerical faction, convinced the confederate leadership would not insist on major religious or political concessions and demanded the full restoration of the Catholic church.
They were supported by General Owen Roe O’Neill. As a returnee, he tended to be more radical and supported more comprehensive land settlements to recover lost territory. Internal tensions increased with the arrival of a papal nuncio, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini appointed by Pope Innocent X, who was horrified that Protestant services continued to be held in Confederate towns (Ó Siocrú 39 - 40)
The royalists were defeated in Scotland and Sir Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell crushed the king’s forces at Naseby in June 1645, the first major triumph of the New Model Army. Charles I surrendered to the Scottish covenanting army at Newark in Nottinghamshire in May 1646, ending the war in England. The king spent two years negotiating with parliament while trying to create a new royalist alliance from supporters in England, Ireland and Scotland (Ó Siocrú 45)
In late July 1646 the marquis of Ormond proclaimed peace with the Catholic confederates. Although too late to intervene in the English civil war, Ormond hoped to force concessions from parliament by threatening royalist / confederate invasion from Ireland.
The peace treaty granted many of the political and economic concessions sought by the confederates, including guarantees for estates, but postponed any decisions on religion until after the king regained his liberty. This compromise satisfied the moderate landowning faction but outraged the clerics, led by Rinuccini, who condemned the treaty as contrary to the confederate oath of association and excommunicated those who favoured peace with the royalists. Backed by Owen Roe O’Neill Rinuccini staged a coup and ordered him O’Neill to march to Dublin against Ormond, but the offensive was delayed allowing Nicholas Plunkett, a moderate, to dictate policy (Ó Siocrú 46).
Royalist Scots mobilised an army and invaded England, prompting royalists to stage a series of uprisings. In August the New Model Army, led by Cromwell, inflicted a crushing blow on this army at Preston and in Edinburgh a regime sympathetic to parliament took power.
The second civil war radicalised political opinion, with parliamentary and army circles demanding the king be put on trial. This forced the confederates to come to terms.
When Charles was executed Ormond and the Scottish covenanters in Edinburgh declared the dead monarch’s son Charles Stuart Prince of Wales king of Scotland, England and Ireland and the parliamentarians prepared for an offensive on Ireland out of revenge for 1641 and out a need to shore up the popularity of the parliament, which had discreditd itself against the king against native Irish barbarism and popery (Ó Siocrú 62).
English cavaliers supported to Ormond in the hope of restoring the Stuart dynasty and receiving lucrative positions though they viewed each other with suspicion. The southern parts of Munster, contained a significant concentration of Protestant settlers, their commander Lord Inchiquin had sided with the parliament initially but now switched to the king, due to the radicalism of the parliamentarians; Protestant concern with Catholic clergy and Catholics with the Protestants steadily undermined the fragile alliance. (Ó Siocrú 53 - 4)
On 13 August a fleet of 35 ships sailed to Dublin. Henry Ireton and 77 ships departed from Milford Haven for the southern coast to find out of any Munster ports would declare for parliament. Finding out that they did not, course was changed to Dublin (Ó Siocrú 78 - 9)
Cromwell planned for a campaign against the town of Drogheda, 30 miles to the north of the capital, to open the way to Ulster while the New Model Army marched into former confederate heartland in Kilkenny. Cromwell also forbade soldiers from harming civilians to retain order in Dublin (Ó Siocrú 79).
Ormond wanted to fortify Drogheda to embroil the parliamentarians in a protracted siege and give the royalists time to re-assemble an army, but the regimental commanders holding the city disagreed, arguing for a tactical withdrawal. Ultimately the walls were not constructed to take cannon fire and the lack of cavalry made it impossible to get supplies (Ó Siocrú 80).
Cromwell justified the massacre as the judgement of God on the barbarous Irish, making no discrimination between who was actually in control of Drogheda during the 1640s or the English and Irish Protestants who were killed. What made and makes Drogheda controversial was the extent of the killing; no prisoners were taken, no attempts at ransom, it was an historically unprecedented war of extermination; the extent of the assacre prompted Dundalk, Newry and Carlingford to surrender (Ó Siocrú 84 - 5).
Eyewitnesses attest that many men women and children were similarly killed in an assault on Wexford (Ó Siocrú 97).
Cromwell’s arrival in Ireland prompted Owen Roe O’Neill to to reconcile with Ormond; he agreed to serve under Ormond at the head of an army of 6,000 infantry and 800 cavalry.
The New Model Army’s arrival increased desertion rates of Irish Protestants from the royalists’ army and his advance into Munster, risking an encounter with Ormond’s superior army and a harsh winter, prompted Youghal, Cork and Kinsale to repudiate Ormond’s authority altogether, providing Cromwell’s army with army quarters and ports to receive supplies and new recruits (Ó Siocrú 98 - 101).
Royalists experienced significant difficulties in supply lines and O’Neill’s advance was delayed due to ailing health. He diedat Cloughoughter Castle in County Cavan, depriving the Catholics of their most successful military commander and the only general with the skills and experience to challenge the parliamentarians.
Ormond failed to take advantage of an opportunity to capitalise on divided parliamentary forces; in an attempt to cross the Barrow they had divided to work on bridges, rather than destroying these bridges Ormon hoped supply lines and illness would eat into enemy forces (Ó Siocrú 103).
Cromwell instead succeeded in taking the entire eastern northern and southern coastlines with the exception of Waterford and Duncannon and the royalists continually postponed facing him in the field and tenuous alliances between Catholic and Protestants were weakening especially as increasing numbers held Ormond responsible for the miltiary disasters and giving important position to English rather than Irish recruits, prompting demoralisation, desertions, towns refusing garrisons (Ó Siocrú 108).
Much of this came from personal distaste for Ormond and his policies; Irish Protestants distrusted the marquis because of his leniency towards Catholics who accused him of withholding vital religious concessions; Ormond did distribute important posts more among his family friends and new arrivals from England (Ó Siocrú 109 - 10).
Cromwell ignored calls to return to England to lead a pre-emptive strike against the Scottish covenanters who were negotiating with the exiled Prince Charles and divided his forces into three columns to mop up garrisons in Munster and Leinster to isolate Clonmel and Kilkenny and then take Waterford and Limerick. They were assisted by a mild winter and a steady supply of supplies and manpower from England; amounts which completely dwarfed what Ormond had available; each loss of territory inflicted further damage on their tax base (Ó Siocrú 118)
Cromwell’s advance unnverved the royalist garrisons across Munster and secured surrender terms at Tipperary, the garrison at Cashel fled. Cromwell then took Kilkenny, moved towards Clonmel, with Ormond preferring to reinforce Limerick which was not under threat (Ó Siocrú 119 - 123).
Hugh Dubh O’Neill set up a narrow killing zone around the breach Cromwell made in Clonmel’s wall, repelled the cavalry then left the garrison under cover of night. Cromwell pursued the column and cut them down (Ó Siocrú 124 - 5).
On 8 March the bishops presented a list of demands to Ormond which complained of a lack of Catholic appointments to the army and called for a major re-structuring of civil and military government with greater power to the bishops; the cities also wanted a freer hand to negotiate a separate peace from Cromwell.
The oyalists collapsed completely after an offensive by Bishop McMahon, a leading figure of the confederate association representing Ulster on the Supreme Council throughout with 1640s with no military experience.
William Petty’s survey shows Cromwell confiscated eleven million acres, more than half of the island’s landmass.
In 1652 the English government decreed that settled areas must be cleared of native Irish. An act of 1653 banished all indigenous Irish whether innocent or guilty to barren lands west of the Shannon River; the average adventurer held 700 acres after Cromwell’s settlement.
However even under pasturage estates required substantial numbers of workers; most settlers wanted Irish tenants who would take less wages and pay higher rents than English settlers adventurers desired cheap Irish labourers who would pay higher rents than English settlers, some dispossessed Irish stayed in the east to work the estates of the new owners.
The English intermittently attempted to shape economic development by dispossessing Catholic merchants and replacing them with Protestants, giving town patrons were given grants to hold markets and fairs.
These schemes, designed to attract tradespeople, were only moderately successful. The more organic pre-plantation towns, by contrast, grew stronger with systems of administration and commerce, courts and local political institutions based on corporate guilds. Apart from Belfast and Dublin which were dominated by Protestants, most towns were dominated by indigenous Irish and Anglo-Irish Catholics, seen as unreliable.
Cromwell barred Catholics from local government and merchant trades and physically removed them from Irish towns. Byelaws disenfranchised people who did not speak Irish and did not attend Protestant worship; Catholics were barred from local government, citizens who used Irish dress language and other customs were subject to degrading punishments (O’Hearn 2015 43).
Later Penal Laws extended this discrimination further; acts of 1695 and 1704 disarmed Catholics, prevented them from going abroad for schooling holding property or entering the professions (O’Hearn 2015 44).
English law had been replaced by Brehon law first in the Pale in the twelfth century but only in the seventeenth was it made illegal (O’Hearn 2015 42).
English incorporation of Irish land was completed after 1689 when William III defeated the Jacobites in the western front of England’s European war. After the Willimate victory those who failed to support William were indicted for ‘high treason’ and their lands were confiscated and transferred to settlers.
Catholic share of land fell from 59% in 1641 to 22% in 1688, 14% in 1703 and 5% by 1776. Catholics lost 6 million of the 6.5 million acres they owned in 1641 (O’Hearn 2015 40 - 1).
This further centralised Dublin as a centre of economic, legal and political order in Ireland with administration, education and other state functions being concentrated there (O’Hearn 2015 45).
As part of Britain’s attempts to wrest maritime hegemony from the Dutch Ireland was prevented from trading directly with Europe or the continent. Irish producers were also forced into producing commodities and services crucial to England’s Atlantic project such as armaments and provisions (O’Hearn 2015 45 - 7).
Profit on Irish land was derived by the shipping of livestock to England (as well as salted provisions to the West Indies to feed slaves); Ireland’s cattle and sheep exports - exceeded size any similar trade in the world in the period - flooded Britain with low-cost pastoral products, squeezing the profits of England’s landed proprietors.
The Cattle Acts 1663 and 1667 excluded Irish produce from British markets, the woollen industry was excluded in 1669, so Ireland was integrated into the imperial system at the same time it was cut off from its markets, forcing it to specialise in products which benefitted British ones.
Garrisons and military networks were strengthened and the economy was restructured to align as closely as possible with the requirements of a military supply chain; wool, rope, uniforms, armaments. By 1845 it was the barracks for more troops than we stationed in imperial India (McCann 7).
Growth and development up to the early nineteenth century facilitated by:
i) the introduction of a potato crop which sustained a low-wage agrarian class which could subsist by cultivating land without any capital other than a spade and seed potatoes - surplus over families’ nutritional needs could be used to fatten pigs, fuelling population growth and declining mortality until an Gorta Mór
ii) eastern and coastal areas tied into British mercantilism
iii) wool, linen cotton industries in the north; domestic production by skilled weavers in these rural hinterlands was possible due to Ulster custom, which provided security against rack-renting. As this industry mechanised it moved to Belfast but declined by the emergence of large factories in England in the course of the industrial revolution.
The Act of Union between England and Ireland was introduced in January 1801 after the United Irishmen rebellion, from that point on the indigenous economic system was forced into a more centralised laissez-faire trading system dominated by London; Irish stewardship over the Irish economy was ended and the relative autonomy of the Irish parliament was subsumed by London under a compliant Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Undergirding the act of union was a fear of the influence of Jacobinism in Ireland and the need to subdue an increasingly politicised Irish nation.
This provoked a rebellion led by Robert Emmet, Thomas Rusell and Thomas Emmett, which decreed a republic that would revoke the union, abolish tithes, transfer all Church land to the new nation, universal suffrage. The rebellion was suppressed and Emmett was hung, drawn and quartered (McCann 5 - 6).
Demand for labour-extensive cattle and sheep grazing overtook that which existed for barley, wheat and potatoes, driving people off the land, concentrating farming and reducing the number of people earning money from agriculture; for the vast majority of the population the new order was one of socio-cultural domination and poverty.
A decline in Irish industry set in as English industry centralised and increasingly benefitted from economies of scale textiles moved to Glasgow and Lancashire, milling, brewing, iron-founding, shipbuilding, rope, paper and glass-making moved to Britain, raising unit costs, depressing Irish demand and putting out cottage industries, increasing emigration.
There was also pressure on Irish grain, since Britain was also able to buy at lower grain prices after the repeal of the corn laws, the context in which An Gorta Mór broke out when the potato crops failed in 1817, 1821, 1829, and most of the 1830s, destroying the staple food of the underclass, significantly reducing the population by starvation and emigration, outcomes which were exacerbated by unemployment and lack of sufficient landholdings among the rural poor. It should be noted that there was no absolute shortage of food, but unemployment and lack of access sufficient land among the rural poor.
Belfast was the one industrial centre that survived, becoming the largest centre of linen manufacturing in the world from the mid nineteenth century. Linkages to engineering sectors were established; steam engines boiler-making, all important to building iron ships, machines for the preparation and spinning of flax.
In the post-independence period there were a number of attempts to use interventionist strategies to bolster Ireland’s weak manufacturing sector. These did not involve the state taking any active role in production, rather they took the form of subsidies.
Protectionist measures succeeded in increasing employment and outward engagement with the US, Britain or Germany, delivering economic growth, but did not succeed in raising output to the extent needed to absorb labour surpluses or raise raise living standards.
Production also remained unsophisticated; there were no linkages developed between multinationals and indigenous firms.
This is a pattern familiar to colonial contexts, which tend to be developmental latecomers; in developing their own industries they are working against significant barriers to entry in a crowded world market in which many firms have extensive product differentiation, ownership over proprietary technology, brand identification and larger capital investments; latecomers have difficulty developing initial fixed and variable capital investments necessary for entering into markets.
In order to better understand this phenomenon Dieter Senghaas derives two models of development from Samir Amin; auto-centric development in established core states versus dependent development in peripheral zones.
In auto-centric economies development can happen independently of the periphery, but but not the other way around.
The quintessential example of an auto-centric economy is the postwar mass production / consumption model in the postwar US, subsequently exported to Western Europe. Here there is a strong connection between the production of means of consumption and mass consumption goods, allowing for the flourishing of a domestic market.
The domestic market in peripheral economies is limited and industrial connections arise for the purposes of export.
In an auto-centric model basic needs of the broad masses, such as food, housing, education and culture are provided to a greater extent; overall this means that there is a tendency for standards of living to rise.
Peripheral development is therefore a vicious circle that inhibits development, though it should be noted that this does not prevent growth.
In applying Amin’s concept to Europe in the the early nineteenth century Senghaas finds that Eastern, Southern and Scandinavian nations have been exposed to similar pressures and forced to export single products in a world market dominated by larger powers but over time these succeeded in escaping the vicious circle, against Amin’s claim that delinking from the world economy and the creation of regional common markets was necessary to development.
It seems auto-centric development is therefore possible via liberal association with the world-market by state intervention, regulating foreign investments, retaining possession of natural resources; Ireland’s policy however, has been pure association, largely due to being colonised by Britain.
Decolonisation, land reforms and mobilisation of a nationalist separatist movement benefitting certain groups instead of the broad masses also repeats patterns seen in other colonial contexts. In Ireland these were the graziers, who benefitted from land reforms agitated for by Parnell and the Land League; the breaking up of large untenanted estates allowed them to accumulate more land but now acted as a block on any further reforms which might have facilitated the development of an industrial or manufacturing base; these dominant classes seek to conserve and remove the impediments to the further development of a social order established by the metropolitan powers.
The prerequisites for industrialisation seemed present at independence; low taxation, absence of national debt, no heavy burden of military spending, large external capital reserves, extensive banking system, highly literacy, labour supply, extensive railway and communications network, a large proprietor class, but this did not happen.
We see this in the continuity that exists between the nominally independent Irish state apparatus and the administrative system established by the British; Catholic social teaching also undermined any efforts there might have been towards production organised by the state.
At first Irish trade relations with the UK were unrestrained; the Irish government considered free trade a precondition of stability. This aligned well with better off farm-interests that dominated Cumann na nGael.
When Fianna Fáil came into office they initiated a protectionist policy to reduce economic dependence on Britain to provide employment and reduce emigration, more in line with the interests of the working class and small farmers and succeeded in creating employment through import substitution; also aligning with a trajectory followed by third-world countries’ import-substitution strategies later in the century.
The share of Irish live agricultural exports increased and the share of manufacturing exports declined during the interwar period and remained low until the fifties, indicating Irish exporters’ inability to increase the share of products with higher value added.
Import substitution therefore only succeeded in changing the character of Ireland’s foreign dependence rather than ending it, since employment and consumption depended on an ability to import; Ireland, unlike all other European nations, did not succeed in developing a well-functioning national system of innovation in this period.
The US offered Marshall Aid to Europe to secure markets for US exports and establish Western Europe as a free trade bulwark against Communist expansion. Ireland was offered aid, acceptance of which was favoured by an Atlanticist wing in the state apparatus, but opposed by others who still favoured a deflationist policy continuity with British fiscal policies; the Bank of England remained highly influential in Irish financial policymaking and the British government was keen to limit dollar imports.
US officials emphasised the investments be productive rather than purchases of British or other securities; the IDA, a constellation of export boards and grant schemes were the result.
In 1948 restrictions on imports were rolled back, partly because of Fine Gael coming into power, partly due to external pressure from the OEEC. A record balance of payments deficits led to the introduction of deflationary measures which triggered recessions throughout the fifties: Ireland sacrificed the right to afford protection by quota when it was most needed.
Imports of capital goods and other advanced goods that could not be produced domestically continued to grow and a small home market, negligible exports reduced the possibility of developing industry to the point of producing more advanced industrial goods; we see a similar trajectory in former colonies in Latin America, Asia and Africa over the course of the twentieth century.
In the late fifties a strategy of export-led industrialisation was embarked upon. O’Hearn reads this as Ireland prioritising the interests of the US, the IMF and transnational corporations, this does not make Ireland distinct in a European context in and of itself; the degree to which Ireland’s indigenous productive capacity was still constrained does.
Ireland’s industrialisation by invitationhad three components:
i) substantial capital grants and tax concessions to export-oriented manufacturing
ii) the attraction of foreign manufacturing enterprise, again aimed at exports iii) the dismantling of protection in return for greater access to markets abroad
The first element relied on a complex of state-sponsored bodies with the IDA as the core. The Industrial Grants Act of 1959 set up grant boards which established industrial estates with advanced factories; grants were apportioned according to shares of plant / machine building / land costs. There were also additional grants for training and R&D. Competitiveness was a major condition for these grants; in practice only export-oriented firms received then.
A low corporation tax regime was introduced after an Export Profit Tax Relief Tax was abolished under EEC pressure, which gave a remission on the increment of profit exports over the previous year. The Industrial Development Act of 1958 contained further incentive, including waiving the Controls of Manufactures Act, enduring from the protectionist period. This was wholly repealed in 1964, meaning that there was now no restriction on foreign ownership and control, and no restraints on repatriation of profits. These arrangements put a considerable drain on State finances.
The attraction of foreign firms became a goal in itself, with the result that there was a direct inflow of foreign direct investment with only minor flow to indigenous Irish firms.
Free trade was a distinct, third element in the new Irish strategy. Quotas had been dismantled, but tariffs were still quite high in 1959, when the two other elements of the strategy were in place. The move to free trade followed. Ireland was not interested in EFTA membership, since it gave no further advantages as its manufacturing production, however small, had free access to the British market.
Following Britain, Ireland applied for EC membership in 1961. A Commission on Industrial Organisation and adaptation councils were established to prepare for freer trade but France vetoed English, and consequently Irish, membership. Further tariff reductions were put through in 1963 and 1964. In December 1965 a full Anglo-Irish free trade area was established, according to which Ireland was to remove all protection against British manufacturing imports.
From January 1973, Ireland agreed to remove all protection against EC manufacturing industry, adding a layer of foreign multinational firms to the Irish industrial structure and making Ireland uniquely dependent on multinational firms, which were attracted not by favourable natural resources but extraordinarily generous government subsidies, grants and export tax reliefs on the Irish state’s dime.
Ireland can sustain higher wages than many third-world host countries, since its favourable location and political reliability reducing uncertainty for foreign investors.
Production became more technically complex and manufacturing more export oriented, improving industrial performance, again only weak links to a domestic manufacturing industry which remains low skill, without R&D, high import content, low value added and an absence of capital goods production [this was written in the 90s, not sure if this remains true]
Raymond Crotty argues the fundamental reason for Ireland’s underdevelopment is the continuing influence of colonial capitalism; the imposition of structural and institutional defects, though it should be noted that his definition of idiosyncratic; from Crotty’s point of view capitalism is an organic and adequate social formation in other Western European states due to patterns of ancient agrarian civilisation established 7000 years ago: irrelevant to modern accumulation and state formation.
In any case: one of the ways in which Crotty indicates Ireland’s apparent divergence from third-world economies while sharing their substances is emigration, preventing the development of crowded cities full of un or underemployed people; we also have a relatively high per capita income share and wage levels.
Crotty’s argument does not depend on ideas of unequal exchange drived from dependency but rather distinguished between places where capitalism developed organically out of cattle-raising societies rather than being imposed on tribal society to which capital intensive agriculture is alien, as well as dubious arguments that the state, rather than class composition, determines mode of accumulation.