Ireland: Historical Background--19th Century


Figure 1.--This is Richard Thomas Moyan's painting "Home Again" showing Irish recruits to the British Army returning home. Another painting shows barefoot Irish boys being "drilled" by English soldiers. This is the late 19th century when the English Army were still redcoats. As you know due to poverty the Scots and Irish had many people in the British Army. It was when Baden Powell seemed to be setting up the scouts in Ireland for a similar purpose (with World War I in the offing) that Con Markievicz fought to form Na Fianna Eireann.

The wars of the French Revolution and the encsuing Napoleonic Wars envolved Europe in over 20 years of warfare. It began in the 1790s. The result was on-again, off-again war with France which did not end until Waterloo (1815). Ireland experienced an economic boom. Many Irish served with the British military. The Irish Parliament passed the Act of Union (1800) As a result, the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain (England had merged with Scotland in 1707) to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801). Union led to important reforms in Ireland: electoral reform, land reform, and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. The Irish Parliament in agreeing to the Act of Union obtained a commitment that Parliament would repeal the Penal Laws and Catholics emancipated. King George III was opposed to emancipation and blocked its approval. Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) led the campaign for Catholic Emancipation. O'Connel founded the Catholic Association (1823). The campaign finally succeeded (1829). Catholics were finally allowed to serve in Parliament. O'Connel was deeply committed to solving Land Question at the hear of the Agrarian Problem. The Irish economy was based primarily on agriculture. The Irish economy did not participate in the Industrial Revolution like England. There were major problems with Irish agrculture. Irish agriculture was very inefficent. Many land holdings were too small for profitable farming. The Irish Potato Famine began with a blight of the potato crop. The Irish had come to depend on the potato as a mainstay of their diet. No other crop produced so much food per acre of land. The blight was devestating and spread with amazing speed. Within a year a bountiful crop was reduced to rotting fields. Potato crops accross Europe failed, but nowhere in Europe was the poopulation so dependant on the potato. The Famnine abd the British Government failure to fund an adequale relief effort resulted in an Irish Holocaust. The famine resulting from the potato blight and British policies caused the Irish to emmigrate in massive numbers, primarily to the United States. The result was a very sunstantial Irish diaspora which pasionately supported Irish independence. In Ireland the political debate which consumed Irish politics was Home Rule.

Napoleonic Wars

The wars of the French Revolution and the encsuing Napoleonic Wars envolved Europe in over 20 years of warfare. It began in the 1790s. The result was on-again, off-again war with France which did not end until Waterloo (1815). That battle was won by Arthue Welsley, Duke of Wellington, a mener of the Anglo-Irish gentry. Ireland experienced an economic boom. Many Irish served with the British military. The War resyulted in a huge expansion of the British military. When regiments were transferred over seas, there was great suffering on the part of the families who were left behind. To deal with this suffering the Hiberian military school was established to help the children of Irish servicemen.

Act of Union (1801)

The Irish Parliament passed the Act of Union (1800) As a result, the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain (England had merged with Scotland in 1707) to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801).

Reform

Union led to important reforms in Ireland: electoral reform, land reform, and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. This meant that the Church of Ireland could no longer tax the entire population. The fact that the Catholic Irish remained largely landless, however, meant that many of the reforms had little real impact on the people as a whole. Most Irish people were empoverished tennant farmers often on estates operated by absentee English labdowners. This helped to fuel Irish nationalism.

Catholic Emancipation (1829)

The Irish Parliament in agreeing to the Act of Union obtained a commitment that Parliament would repeal the Penal Laws and Catholics emancipated. King George III was opposed to emancipation and blocked its approval. King George was a Hannover monarch and the Hannovers had bee opposed by Catholics. George III maintained that to emancipate Catholics would violate the oath he took to to defend the Anglican Church. Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) led the campaign for Catholic Emancipation. O'Connel founded the Catholic Association (1823). The campaign finally succeeded (1829). Catholics were finally allowed to serve in Parliament. O'Connel was deeply committed to solving Land Question at the hear of the Agrarian Problem. O'Connell campaigned to repeal the Act of Union. This would mean in effect complete independence under a shared monarch and Crown similar to dominion status eventually granted to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. This was a step that Britain was not yet willing to accept and the effort failed..

Agrarian Problem

The Irish economy was based primarily on agriculture. The Irish economy did not participate in the Industrial Revolution like England. There were major problems with Irish agrculture. Irish agriculture was very inefficent. Many land holdings were too small for profitable farming. Irish law and tradition involved that land be divided among all the sons and not, as in England, inherited by the eldest son. On these small holdings only one crop was priductive enpogh to feed a family--potatos. There were also problems on the large estates. Most were owned by absentee landlords with little real interest in farming. As a result, many estates were poorly managed. Much of the Irish population lived as tennant farmers on these estates. They eaked out a meager existence, surviving mostly on pottos. Few of the children went to school and had any hope of bettering themselves.

The Potato Famine (1845-50)

The Irish Potato Famine began with a blight of the potato crop. The Irish had come to depend on the potato as a mainstay of their diet. No other crop produced so much food per acre of land. The blight was devestating and spread with amazing speed. Within a year a bountiful crop was reduced to rotting fields. Vast expanses of Irish firelds were ruined by black rot. It would have not been as bad if the Irish diet had been more diverse, but the poor Irish peasantry survived on the potato harvest. Potato crops accross Europe failed, but nowhere in Europe was the poopulation so dependant on the potato. Not only was the potato gone, but the crop failure caused the price of other food crops to soar, placing substitute foods beyond the purchasing power of the destitute Irish peasantry. The Irish peasantry were tennantv farmers who eked out a subsistaence existance with the potato not only found their food stocks roting, but were unable tom pay their rents. Soon their British and Irish Protestant landlords were evicting them from their homes. Some of the Irish peasants out of desperation attempted to eat the rotting potatos. Whole villages were devestated by cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperately tried to tend to their congregtions and feed the starving. Inn some cases the dead went unburried. Many were burried without caskets. English relief efforts wre inadequated and even these wereec abandoned in the midst of the famine. Work houses because of inadequate nutrition and unsanitary conditions were death traps. The Irish famine has been seen by many as the greatest humanitarian disasaster of the 19th centuy. This was in part because so many died and others forced emmigrate. Over 1 million are believed to have actually sucumbed to statvation and disease. But most tragic of all was that it was preventable. Throuhout the Famine, Irish, and English landowners were exporting food. One author points out that a quarter of the peers in the House of Lords owned land in Ireland and failed to act. [Wilson] As the 19th century moved on, independence became a possibility, but not an inevitability. The central development in the 19th century was the Irish Potalo Famine (1845-50). The reforms of the 19th century could have succeeded in integrating Ireland within the rest of the United Kingdom. This did not occur and the central reason was the Famine. The potato famine and more importantly the British reaction to the Famine resulted in a Holocaust of horendous proportions. After the Famine, Irish independence was inevitable.

The Irish Diaspora

The famine resulting from the potato blight and British policies caused the Irish to emmigrate in massive numbers, primarily to the United States, but smaller numbers went to Britain, Canada, and Australia/New Zealand. The result was a very sunstantial Irish diaspora which pasionately supported Irish independence. While the British could suppress the discussion of independe in Ireland itself, it could not do so in America. The Irish in America supported and financed the Irish independence movement.

The Fenians

Irish nationalists founded the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) or Fenians (1858). The Fenians were a secret society committed to an armed struggle against the British. The Irish in America formed Fenian Brotherhood, which organized attacks on the British in Canada. Irish republicans were, however, able to generate only minimal support for independence.

Irish Politics

Most Irish voters supported the two major British plitical parties, either the Liberals or the Conservatives. A relatively small number of voters, primarily centered in Ulster, supported Unionists who staunchly supported the Act of Union with Britain.

Home Rule Movement

Home rule emerged as a major political issue in Britain during the late 19th century. Home rule was rather like devolution in the late 20th century. Home Rule did not mean independence. Rather it mean that Ireland would gain control of domestic maters as a largely autonomous region within the United Kingdom, Isaac Butt founded a moderate Irish nationalist movement--the Home Rule League (late 1870s) After Butt's death, William Shaw and a charismatic young Protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91). He fashioned the Home Rule movementb (also called the Irish Parliamentary Party) ino a major force in Irish poltics. Parnell through pasionate oratory managed to focus Ireland on Home Rule. Parnell's Home Rule movement trounced the other political parties in Irish elections. Parnell became known as "The 'Uncrowned King of Ireland". 'Parnell's genius was shown in his ability to appeal to a wide range of Irish voters, including both land owners and the Land League advocating fundamental reforms in land ownership. Militant republicanis were a small fringe group, attracting more support in America than Ireland itself.

Home Rule Bill

Parnell effectively campaigned for 'Home Rule'. This would mean that Ireland would govern itself and address those questions affecting Ireland itself. Parnell reasoned that he could succeed where O'Connel had failed because Ireland would remain a region within the United Kingdom. Parnell was elected to Parliament (1875). He used fillabusters to stress the urgency of Home Rule. He was a controversial figure in part because of his agitation on the Land Question. Attacks on landowners increased in Ireland. Blaming Parnell, he was arrested. Parnell issues the "No Rent Manifesto" from jail. Home Rule was considered by the British Parrliament (1886). Parnell won over Liberal stalwart Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone who championed the Home Rule cause. The bills were opposed by his protagonist Benjamin Disreali who also became primeminister. Gladstone failed to muster a majority both times. A second Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons, but vetoed by the House of Lords (1893). Ireland itself was divided on Home Rule. Much of the opposition ame from the Protestant north. Protestant's feared a Catholic dominant arliament. There were also economic issues. Ulster was the most ndustrialized area of Ireland and many there were concerned abour a parliament dominated by agrarian interests. For many in the Catholic south, the defeat of Home Rule was a deep disappointment causing many to wuestion their future in the United Kingdom. Even so at the end of the 19th century there was no widespread support for rebellion and break with Britain.

Parnell's Fall

Ireland's most prominent politcian and advocate for Home Rule was ruined in a divorce scandal. It was common knowledge among many that Parnell had been living with a Mrs O'Shea, the wife of another member of Parliament. He fathered some of her children. O'Shea filed for divorce and named Parnell a co-respondent (1889). The result was the most infamous public scandal of the late 19th century. Religious non-conformists in Britain were a major component of Gladstone's Liberal Party which was supporting Home Rule. There Victorian sensibilities were aroused by Parnell's adultry. They demanded that Gladstone drop support for the Irish cause as long as Parnell was associated with it. The Irish Parlimentary Party and the country as a whole divided on Parnell. There were pro- and anti-Parnellites, who contested elections. Parnell in the end was ruined.

Richard Thomas Moynan (1856-1906)

Irish nationalists were frustted in the late 19th century as to the degree Ireland had been integrated into the United Kingdom. A good representation of this is the work of Irih artist Richard Thomas Moynan. Hre was born in Dublin during 1856 abd entered the Metropolitan School in 1883. Moyan was a contemporary of Roderic O'Conor. Both He and O'Conor entered the Academy in Antwerp (October 1883). They were taught by Verlat. Moyan studied at the Academy 2 years until 1885. He then moved to Paris, returning to Dublin during the late 1880's. [Kennedy] We notev paintings showing Irish men who had joined the British armyreturning home (gfigure 1). Irish boy are show as admiring these Anglo-Irish soldiers. We are not familiar with his full range of work, but the paintings we don note do not show any hint of Irish nationalism or anti-British feeling. He used French titles when exhibited his work.

Economic Expansion

Ireland experienced a major economuc expansion in the late 19th century.

Sources

Kennedy, Brian P. Irish Painting (Town House: Dublin. 1993).

Wilson, A.N. The Victorians (Norton), 724p.






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Created: 12:32 PM 7/17/2004
Last updated: 2:54 AM 7/21/2004