Although the rebellion of 1798 was not successful, the persistence of the rebels and the constant threat of French assistance made the new British Prime Minister, William Pitt (1759–1806), realize that Irish discontent and Irish problems must be solved. Pitt thought that a union of the Irish and British parliaments would both please Irish reformers and reassure nervous British politicians. Such a union would wipe away the corruption of the Irish parliament (which would please Irish reformers), and would bring Ireland under more direct control from London (which would satisfy British politicians). He also thought that a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland would encourage the modernization of Irish trade and commercial life. British investors would be more willing to set up industries in a placid Ireland, and rising living standards would make calls for Irish independence seem irrelevant amongst the majority population in Ireland. Many Catholics supported the idea of union because it brought the hope of Catholic Emancipation (Pitt had implied that this was the next logical step after union). Pitt thought that Catholic Emancipation could be granted more safely under the Union because, within the entire United Kingdom, Catholics would be in a minority and could not threaten the existence of a Protestant state. Within Ireland alone, however, Catholics were the majority of the population. As long as they had no chance of any political power, they would always be disgruntled, he thought. An unhappy majority ultimately makes for an ungovernable country, and so Pitt’s solution to a powerless Catholic majority in Ireland was to change it to a Catholic minority (with increased political rights) within the United Kingdom. Many members of the Irish parliament opposed the Union, however. These included reformers and radicals who wanted an independent Irish parliament (but an improved one), Protestants who feared Catholic Emancipation, commercial interests who thought they would be swamped by more powerful British firms and people who benefited from the status quo. Pitt’s proposals were initially rejected in the Irish parliament by a majority of five on 24 January 1799. The British government was, however, able to persuade and use its powers of patronage (which were commonly accepted at the time) to get enough members of the Irish parliament to vote for union on 6 February 1800. Under the Union, the Irish Parliament was dissolved, and a number of Irish MPs would now sit in the British House of Commons. Economic restrictions between the two countries were to be eliminated gradually, and free trade was to operate between the two. On 1 January 1801, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was officially proclaimed. Some Irish rebels, led by Robert Emmet (1778–1803), tried to raise a rebellion against the union with French help. None was forthcoming, and Emmet’s rising proved little more than an isolated scuffle in Dublin on 23 July 1803. Emmet was captured and executed on 20 September.
INTERPRETATIONS
Scholarly work on early modern Ireland has mainly concentrated on the broad question of what kind of place Ireland was in this period. Did it comprise a nation on its own, with its own politics, culture and social structures? Was it a colony of Britain, having been settled and half-conquered over a number of centuries? The question of whether Ireland was a nation or colony has had a great deal of significance for Irish history up to the present day.
The traditional interpretation of the hundred or so years before the Act of Union was that Ireland was a colony of Britain. It was under its political control through the subordination of the Irish parliament to the British one, and British interests in Ireland were always considered more important than native Irish ones. Economically, Ireland was also under British control, and since British political interests were dominant, it followed logically that British economic interests were also paramount. This kept Ireland poor, and the poorest members of Irish society were those who were the least likely to be able to interact with the ruling Protestant class – the Catholics. Irish trade was restricted when it suited British economic needs, landholding relationships were skewed heavily in favour of landlords (largely, in this interpretation, English or Anglo-Irish), and, consequently, peasant agriculture was primitive and mired in backwardness. Finally, Irish society was completely divided between the Protestant and English-speaking landed classes (who in many ways mirrored landed English society) and a Catholic and Irish-speaking peasantry (which, although it had its own rich and distinct culture, could never gain dominance). Although these two groups were geographically and physically very close, they were worlds apart in all other aspects. This interpretation has largely been the work of Irish and British historians of the period before the 1950s and 1960s. Representative examples of this include George O’Brien’s Economic History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1918) and Daniel Corkery’s Hidden Ireland (1924), which concentrates on Munster in the eighteenth century.
In part, this interpretation was a holdover from the view of Irish history held by nineteenth-century Irish politicians and nationalists. From Daniel O’Connell in the early part of the century (see chapter three) to Charles Stewart Parnell and other Home Rulers at the end of the century (see chapter six), ideas of Irish independence were largely based on what they saw as the national and economic success of the country during the brief independence of the Irish parliament under Henry Grattan. This, they argued, showed that Irish problems were solved under Irish rule, and that it was only the unhelpful presence of Britain that kept Ireland impoverished and nationally frustrated. Priests also remembered the discrimination that Catholics endured under the Penal Laws, and passed those memories on to generations of their congregations. And throughout the nineteenth century, landlord-tenant relations were generally strained, and it was not too difficult to see these problems as having their historic roots in plantation and Anglo-Irish estate building. This was not only the view of nationalists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however. Two important British historians, W.E.H. Lecky (History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 1892) and J.A. Froude (The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 1874), saw eighteenth-century Ireland in similar ways. But they were supporters of the Union, and argued that the mis-governing of Ireland during this period meant that it had been impossible to bring Ireland into the British fold, and that the subsequent problems with the Union and the agitation against it can be traced to the politics and economics of this period. In short, they argued, the British government was its own worst enemy by its mismanagement and suppression of Ireland. Better governing practices would have brought the benefits of British rule to Ireland, and there would have been little cause for native Irish opposition to it.
The first area of the traditional interpretation to come under revision was religion, specifically the Penal Laws, which had been seen as the legal manifestation of the suppression of Catholics and Catholicism. Maureen Wall, in her Penal Laws 1691–1760 (1961), and J.G. Sims, in his Williamite Confiscation of Ireland 1690–1703 (1956), argued that the Penal Laws and their enforcement were much more complex than previously understood. The complexity they showed was within the English government (where there was much uneasiness about whether the laws were just and feasible), and in the patchy way in which they were enforced, both regionally and over the decades of the eighteenth century. In most instances, this school of thought argued, there was only a token enforcement of the laws. On the whole, although officially restricted, Catholics were allowed to practise without much difficulty. Further, Maureen Wall argued, the Penal Laws could not be blamed for the poverty of the Catholic population. While taking land away from many Catholics and giving it to Protestants had done a great deal to damage the Catholic landed class, she argued, the Penal Laws did not affect the economic circumstances of the Catholic poor (neither did the lifting of the Laws improve their economic standing).
Similarly, political life underwent a reinterpretation. R.B. McDowell, in his 1944 Irish Public Opinion, and E.M. Johnston’s later Great Britain and Ireland 1760–1800 (1963), revised the traditional interpretation by examining previously unknown sources and sketching out the broadness and complexity of the politics of the period. Further reinterpretations
questioned the previous belief in both the independence of the Irish parliament, and the benefits that it supposedly brought for the population. J.C. Beckett argued in 1964 that, prior to the ‘independence’ of Grattan’s parliament, the London government had only rarely used its powers to overrule Irish legislation coming out of Dublin, and also that the Irish parliament was not as independent during the Grattan period as the traditionalists had maintained. London retained a great deal of control, while allowing only a veneer of Irish distinctiveness and independence (see J.C. Beckett, ‘Anglo-Irish Constitutional Relations in the Later Eighteenth Century’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 14, 1964). Joseph Lee took this even further in the 1970s, when he argued that, far from the independent Irish parliament being a beacon for a tolerant and progressive Irish nation, it served mainly to support the Protestant elite and their economic interests (see his article, ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ in Brian Farrell (ed.), The Irish Parliamentary Tradition, 1973). In his Irish Politics and Social Conflict in the Age of the American Revolution (1965), Maurice O’Connell also argued that the traditional interpretation had been too quick to attribute radicalism and tolerance to the patriotic movements of the late eighteenth century (such as the Volunteers). A more accurate impression of their motives, he argued, came from their middle-class backgrounds and preoccupations and tolerance of Catholics (and agitation for Catholic rights) that can at best be called tepid.
Other revisions of the traditional interpretation began in the 1960s. L.M. Cullen argued that the Irish economy was far more diverse and had more healthy periods than the research of Corkery and O’Brien had allowed for. Cullen argued in a series of articles and books that not only did the Irish economy expand from the 1740s onward, but also that Gaelic society was more diverse than the traditional interpretation allowed. Previous studies, he argued, had partly relied on the evidence presented in Irish poems, which reflected a lament for a more traditional way of life that may have been fading as much due to economic modernization as to English cultural dominance. Further, he argued, there was a large class of Gaelic lesser gentry and moderately wealthy farmers. There were also great differences in the Irish peasantry, which had previously been seen as one group sharing poor economic circumstances. Cullen argued that peasant economics depended greatly on regional differences, which manifested themselves in the quality of land used, the commercialization of agriculture and the existence of local industry.
The interpretation of landlord–tenant relations also underwent a revision during the mid-twentieth century. Several economic historians (including W.H. Crawford, Peter Roebuck and David Dickson) argued that such relations were more complex, and indeed were more contractual, than the traditional interpretation allowed. Dickson showed that, in Munster, landlords had much less freedom to dispose of their land than previously thought. Through careful and exhaustive work in the records of landed estates, these historians were able to show that tenants were somewhat sophisticated in negotiating the terms of their leases and rentals. This certainly complicated the traditional picture of land questions during this period. Another aspect of this, of course, was rural violence such as the Whiteboys’ risings of the 1700s. Maureen Wall and J.S. Donnelly both did important work to argue that rural violence was not so much an expression of proto-nationalism as an aspect of local and regional discontent over the economic questions of tithes and the enclosure of land. Indeed, some Whiteboys had sworn loyalty to George III, which makes them seem less anti-English than the traditional interpretation of this period has implied. In more recent years, however, there have been further reinterpretations of this general revision of the traditional interpretation. This is partly due to a renewed emphasis on the rebellions of the 1790s. Mainly, this newer work has shown that the level of sectarian differences and mistrust between different groups of Protestants and Catholics was higher than the revisionist argument would imply. While the complexities of the situation and the different social and political aspirations of the various groups played a part, Thomas Bartlett, among others, has shown how important the partisan violence was once it broke out. His Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation (1992) argues this strongly.
By 1800, therefore, Ireland was already a very diverse place, with many different people and forces affecting its political and social history. The varying historical interpretations discussed here mirrored the contested situation in Ireland during the period before the Act of Union. Chapter three will examine an equally contested period, a time when further political rights for Catholics were sought and a new type of nationalism appeared. Reactions against both of these events were also strong, and the theme of complexity in Irish history continues.
THREE
O’Connell, Religion and Politics, 1800–48
Political power in Ireland had been transferred to London after the passage of the Act of Union. While on the one hand this meant that the inefficiency and exclusiveness of the Irish parliament no longer had an impact on Irish affairs, on the other it meant that there was effectively no native control of the country. Although representative of the Irish population within the United Kingdom, the fact that the new Irish MPs only made up one-fifth of the total in the House of Commons meant that any Irish issue was ultimately in British hands. Throughout the nineteenth century, the British parliament wrestled with Irish problems, but it was always done with British preoccupations paramount in the minds of most members of parliament. This was not necessarily a case of wilful misgovernment of Ireland or ignorance of the concerns of the different groups who lived there. For most British MPs, the Union was thought to be a worthy and noble arrangement because it would bring benefits and better government to the Irish people. At best it was a sort of proto-internationalism based on what they saw as the real benefits of British government and British ideals. At worst, it was simply an attempt to subjugate another people and protect Britain’s western flank from invaders. ‘The Union’, therefore, became an important and contested issue for most of the nineteenth century. It had a significant impact on both religion and politics.
Pitt had implied that Catholic Emancipation (the right of Catholics to sit in parliament) would be the natural next step after the Act of Union. When Emancipation took nearly thirty years and much political agitation to become reality, many Irish people called into question both the justice of direct British rule in Ireland, as well as the benefits that Union was supposed to bring. Emancipation, therefore, was related directly to the question of the Union. Both of these concerns became the life’s work of Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), the most prominent Irishman of his time, and the man who would come to symbolize a certain type of restrained and constitutional Irish nationalism. His failure to get the Act of Union repealed in the 1840s would help bring about another type of nationalism, that of Young Ireland – a separatist movement that created its own issues through its own propaganda, and that eventually turned to violence. While O’Connell had a direct and immediate impact during his lifetime but was nearly forgotten a few decades after his death, Young Ireland would provide a model for militant Irish nationalism for generations.
O’CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION
Daniel O’Connell was born in County Kerry, the son of a local Catholic landowner. He studied to become a lawyer and was admitted to the bar in 1798. He was one of the first Catholics allowed to become a lawyer after the Penal Law preventing this was removed in 1792. O’Connell became very successful very quickly, and he rose in prominence amongst Catholics after joining the Catholic Committee in 1804. The Committee was suppressed in 1811, and O’Connell and many others began to agitate for Catholic Emancipation and other reforms by writing pamphlets and holding public meetings on the subject. The country, however, was generally preoccupied with other matters. Catholics in Ireland had shown their loyalty strongly during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), and during those wars the British goverment had made a few informal proposals for Emancipation. But after the wars (that is, after 1815), the government became less intere
sted in making serious Emancipation proposals, and the difficulties of the post-war economy meant that Catholics across Ireland turned to more pressing matters than Emancipation. A rising population and the lack of sufficient good farming land was forcing up rents, which hit the poor hardest. Farming methods were outdated and desperately needed to be improved to make the land more productive. Unfortunately, land concerns did not trouble the government until the famine of 1845–52 made them ominous (see chapter four). Other problems seemed to get more attention than Catholic Emancipation. Local government was generally corrupt and in the control of exclusive small groups. There was no official relief for the poor, and many Irish industries were suffering from direct competition from more powerful British companies. There was also resentment over the fact that Catholics and Presbyterians had to pay tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland.
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