Depopulation of Ireland

Flamed Diving

CDfm wrote: »

Or it could have been something in the potatoes or maybe even ignorance:cool:

Probably.

CDfm

Here is a link to the Summary of the 1841 & 1851 Census by County with decreases etc noted.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/ire1841.htm

You will need to scroll down to see the table

sensibleken

heres a link not related to the famine but to the cromwellian reconquest and subsequent slavery

http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT


In 1641, Ireland's population was 1,466,000 and in 1652,
616,000.

Fratton Fred

Tarzan007 wrote: »

They may well have been. I've heard that their was a short song by Irishmen working in England regarding WW2 when poor old grandad Tommy was locked up in a German or Japanese POW camp etc that went like this -

The English are a funny lot, they try to put down us Paddy's
But little do the bastards know, the Paddy's are their Daddy's !!!!

( So maybe the soccer team could call on a few more of Irish ancestery over there. Obviously the Yanks were having their share of crumpet at the time too )

and your snide comment has what, exactly, to do with this topic

CDfm

Fratton Fred wrote: »

and your snide comment has what, exactly, to do with this topic

I imagine it was a quick retort to your priest comment. Pot & Kettle comes to mind.

Fratton Fred

CDfm wrote: »

I imagine it was a quick retort to your priest comment. Pot & Kettle comes to mind.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with suggesting that Priests were encouraging people to have large families?

were they not then?

CDfm

Fratton Fred wrote: »

And what, pray tell, is wrong with suggesting that Priests were encouraging people to have large families?

were they not then?

i dont know post comparative birth rates for catholics vs protestants and support it by evidence and you may have a valid point -otherwise the post is going to attract the type of comment it recieved unless the post was one you knew would get negative reaction.

edit - and the offensive part of having an irish parent is??

Fratton Fred

CDfm wrote: »

i dont know post comparative birth rates for catholics vs protestants and support it by evidence and you may have a valid point -otherwise the post is going to attract the type of comment it recieved unless the post was one you knew would get negative reaction.

edit - and the offensive part of having an irish parent is??

Methinks you are looking for offence where there is none.

CDfm

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Methinks you are looking for offence where there is none.

Ah is that rhetorical :pac:

Anyway -if you are serious about your priest comment and want to prove it you would provide proof.

Otherwise people will think you are attention seeking

Ostrom

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Ok, well it really isn't that hard to get. Let's start with an agrarian population, growing just one crop. They are all living on subsistence level, meaning that they grow enough to feed themselves, and that's about it. So now we introduce a new technology to this community (a new seeding technique) which increases the yield of food they produce each year. So now everyone has a bit more to eat, and move beyond subsistence living. But increasing health might also decrease infant mortality, reduce miscarriages, increase life expectancy, etc. This will cause the population to grow. We still have a fixed amount of land, with our new technology and our one type of crop. So as the population increases, everyone's share of the food decreases, until we are back at subsistence level again, birth rates drops, death rates increase, but we still have levelled out at a slightly higher population.

True, in theory, but your agrarian economy is far more diverse before the introduction of the spud. A combination of pre-industrial cottage industry and mixed farming characterised the pre-famine Irish economy up until the mid 18th century. Rent-in-kind was common amongst grain producers, with a steadily rising cottier population amongst middle farmers before the napoleonic wars.

The introduction of the potato allowed poorer tenants on enclosed estates to subdivide and subsist. KH Connell suggested that the particular ability of the spud to quickly prepare new ground for intensive cultivation compounded the problem, which in turn facilitated population growth. I'm not sure Malthus' approach is best, as the problems on congested estates were compounded by falling grain and linen prices, and communal tenure before population stress through enclosure came to bear - although of course it was a factor

edit - have you seen Liam Kennedy's 'Irish Agriculture: A Price History from the Mid-18th Century to the eve of the first world war?'. Good reading for an economist Exhaustive review

CDfm

Didnt you also have falling prices as a result of the end of the napoleionic wars and say industrialisation in the UK which meant that cash crops had little value and were a thing of the past. You did not have a flow of people from the land to compensate.

Dont forget that the urban population was just 15% and 85% of the population was rural.

One of the things we forget is that not all landlords were the same and some areas were disproportionately tougher. As far as I know my fathers family had a lot of support from Protestant cousins and the area in Wexford was not hit badly by the famine.

So it differed.

Ostrom

CDfm wrote: »

Didnt you also have falling prices as a result of the end of the napoleionic wars and say industrialisation in the UK which meant that cash crops had little value and were a thing of the past. You did not have a flow of people from the land to compensate.

Dont forget that the urban population was just 15% and 85% of the population was rural.

One of the things we forget is that not all landlords were the same and some areas were disproportionately tougher. As far as I know my fathers family had a lot of support from Protestant cousins and the area in Wexford was not hit badly by the famine.

So it differed.

Absolutely. The worst aspects of debates such as these is the tendency to generalise. There were huge local and provincial variations in agriculture, tenure arrangements, local produce markets, rent regimes, landlords, middlemen and agents. Kevin Whelan came closest to a sensible overview with his concept of regional archetypes.

The problem is that an ag scientist's typology could rely on crops (as many have with RDS ag census data), an economist on price data, a historian/historical geographer on valuation records, rent rolls, and estate records - different units and levels of analysis. The famine affected these regions in profoundly different ways.

My 2c, the closest any accounts have come to capturing the complexity of it are Christine Kinealy's and O' Grada's. Also Michael Turner's analysis of post-famine crop yields points to huge variations in pathways to recovery.

CDfm wrote: »

You did not have a flow of people from the land to compensate.

You did, if you are referring to seasonal migration?

CDfm

efla wrote: »

You did, if you are referring to seasonal migration?

I was thinking industrialisation.

So the structure of the issue was different to the UK in both the organisation of society, agriculture and the alternatives available.

Ostrom

Exile 1798 wrote: »

I've heard the claim a number of times that in the years before an Gorta Mór, that the population of Ireland was 8 million and the population of England was 12 million. This is then usually contrasted with today's population of Ireland, 5 million, and England, 50 million.

This is a claim that obviously has Nationalist overtones. So I'm wondering do any of the history heads in here know the facts of it?

I've never read anything solid as far as evidence goes, and haven't been able to come up with anything with google. What I was looking for in particular was any census figures from the time preceding the Famine.

The first two waves* of the Irish census are notoriously unreliable.


*Probably 4, up until 1861 - I cant remember exactly whom took over, it was mentioned in Crawford's research guide to the Irish census. Supervision of enumeration changed hands after the 50's, so the post-famine statistics are generally viewed as more reliable. If you're looking for reading, KH Connell's Population of Ireland is the foundational text.

The following is a brief obituary from Irish Historical Studies, which is probably the shortest possible summary of the big debates. Connell was criticised in later years for basing his fertility rate inferences on his concept of the 'peasant' class, something which is still mooted amongst agricultural historians.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30006178?seq=1

If you're looking for research material, Carmel Hannan is due to publish her phd research soon, which (as best I remember) looked at changing workforce structures from pre-famine to present. She developed a large dataset, although I have never searched for any papers she may have published.

Flamed Diving

efla wrote: »

True, in theory, but your agrarian economy is far more diverse before the introduction of the spud. A combination of pre-industrial cottage industry and mixed farming characterised the pre-famine Irish economy up until the mid 18th century. Rent-in-kind was common amongst grain producers, with a steadily rising cottier population amongst middle farmers before the napoleonic wars.

The introduction of the potato allowed poorer tenants on enclosed estates to subdivide and subsist. KH Connell suggested that the particular ability of the spud to quickly prepare new ground for intensive cultivation compounded the problem, which in turn facilitated population growth. I'm not sure Malthus' approach is best, as the problems on congested estates were compounded by falling grain and linen prices, and communal tenure before population stress through enclosure came to bear - although of course it was a factor

edit - have you seen Liam Kennedy's 'Irish Agriculture: A Price History from the Mid-18th Century to the eve of the first world war?'. Good reading for an economist Exhaustive review

I'm not sure Malthus' model even considers food prices. I think there is a strong tendency for people to take models a little too literally when presented with one, but they are just guides to understanding phenomena, they can never capture everything, however, and hence should never be taken as gospel truth. As it stands, I think his model stands up pretty well to the empirical data (see pic), which is how I would judge any model.

Anyway, no, I haven't read that book. Sounds interesting.

CDfm

I asked Brian to do a split of a thread on deportation experiences etc Ireland vs UK that were on my slavery thread

Here is what we have on Colony or Class - the real thing is to get a handle on Civil Rights Ireland Vs England

Fratton Fred put the idea in my head as I know very little of how the English were treated or the structure of their society.A James Connolly aficionado if ever there was one

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055905013

The original slavery thread is here and we had got bogged down on issues like bonded servitude and anyone who could throw any light on the different experiences Ireland vs England or any other nationality we all may learn a bit.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055755192

I mean there were still serfs in Europe till the late 19th Century -if my recollection is correct.

SlabMurphy

Fratton Fred wrote: »

and your snide comment has what, exactly, to do with this topic

....About as much as yours

CDfm

LOL I see you are both keen to look at our democracy/suffrage analisys of circa 19th century Britain and Ireland and its evolution..

I can see you both itching to take pops at rotten boroughs and working class insurections etc.:D

Ruling classes and the colonial system.

But we are looking to analyse the voting systems to show them up factually. I thought it would be right up your streets and you would be able to tell us what was what.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055905013

InTheTrees

sensibleken wrote: »

heres a link not related to the famine but to the cromwellian reconquest and subsequent slavery

http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT

In 1641, Ireland's population was 1,466,000 and in 1652,
616,000.

Fascinating.

MarchDub

CDfm - I think what you are proposing here - a discussion on how the average Joe in Ireland and England did is a much more convoluted task that simply looking at rotten boroughs or the franchise. For one, the Irish economy was hindered over hundreds of years by the various English parliamentary Acts which favoured English trade and production over Irish. The various Cattle Acts and the Wool Act are good examples. In the 1666 Cattle Act it is clearly stated that no Irish cattle is to be imported to England or Wales or anywhere that English beef was being sold because such action is detrimental to the English economy. While this served the English economy, the result was loss of income in Ireland. Wool - a very important commody in the days before synthetics - was likewise curtailed in Ireland from export trade in favour of English wool.

While these were economic and political decisions made on behalf of vested interests they would have impacted on the ordinary person's ability to make a living.

CDfm

I am looking at top level indicators.

For example, take the feminism debate - as in men had it better and women didnt get the vote till 1922 - well in Ireland the majority of men didnt get it until 1918.Now I have only known that recently so I am trying to understand how things worked.

For example, as you say , the colonial system did affect Ireland as you didnt have redistribution of wealth via trade owing to British protectionism and the remitence of rents to absentee landlords and the resultant lack of capital for investment in the economy.

So on the basis of political, military & economic factors colony seems to be the winner here.

What I had hoped was that Fratton Fred would help us compare the role of class with the "UK" and explain it to us.

Now the absence of democracy is not peculiar to the UK. Out of around 180 or 190 countries in the world there were only 20 something democracies in 1920.

While it is fine for us to use the colonial model Christian Brothers style at some level class interplayed too. James Connolly thought so -as did Larkin.

So how did class play in with in.

MarchDub

CDfm wrote: »

While it is fine for us to use the colonial model Christian Brothers style at some level class interplayed too. James Connolly thought so -as did Larkin.

So how did class play in with in.

I sincerely hope that you are not suggesting that I am using "the colonial model Christian Brothers style". I hope I have more credibility than that.

As regards women and their legal equality with men. Equal legal status for women did not come with the vote. As recently as the 1970s married women had no legal standing and little property rights independent of their husbands. As a student in the 1970s I did summer work for a UK TV rental company and we were instructed to NEVER accept the lone signature of a married woman on any document as it was not legal for a married woman to sign a legal agreement without the consent of her husband. A woman could only sign a rental agreement if her husband agreed to co-sign. I am sure that the same applied to Ireland. Changes to these laws regarding the legal status of married women only came in the early 1980s.

CDfm

lets tease out all that stuff

legal rights class and stuff

like education rights too

the facts and not trhe theory

parts of it may be a bit un pc but a man never made an omellette without walking on eggshells

CDfm

MarchDub wrote: »

I sincerely hope that you are not suggesting that I am using "the colonial model Christian Brothers style". I hope I have more credibility than that.

.

not aimed at anyone at all and certainly not you marchdub

it was just a comment on the style of history i was taught and i am trying to assemble my own thoughts on inconsistancies as they appear to me