Is History Poorly Taught In School (Up To Junior Cert.)?

pedroeibar1

steddyeddy wrote: »

Pedro can we have an intelligent discussion without smiley faces? There's no need to be patronising because my view is different to yours

You’re being very defensive there eddy. I’m not being condescending, I’m querying your assertions. I love listening to other views, it’s how I learn. But I’m entitled to ask for sources which is both acceptable and the norm here.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Yes, really, the Penal Laws played a large part in the Irish famine. Although the worst of the laws had been repelled about 1790 the consequences of those laws were certainly evident through several generations.

History is written by the victor, and much of it is designed to fulfil a political need, create or bolster a national identity, whatever. Most is based on propaganda be it written by Irish Catholic clerics, British MPs or Russian revolutionaries. The job of a historian is to dig deeper, to question everything and not to accept ‘dogma’ that has been served up by self-serving politicians. I believe that you are incorrect because:

• The worst of the Penal Laws had been repealed more than 60 years before the Great Famine. Additionally, the bulk of those laws never at most times affected the ‘peasantry’ and most others of the population, because they were largely ignored. It requires more than a considerable stretch of the imagination to blame them for the Famine. (I’m not being pejorative on ‘peasant’, I’m using the term to classify the rural landless/cottier /labourer class)

• For example, on education - Lord Broghill, who had been one of Cromwell’s leading officers, wrote from Munster to Charles II after his Restoration:- “I have several complaints this week from divers parts of this province, of the great insolency the popish clergy are suddenly grown unto. They have lately set up several schools, which the Jesuits publickly teach in. Though I know they are the best school masters in the world, yet it is to be doubted they teach their scholars more than their books, and imbue them with ill principles.”

• For example religion - the Act of Uniformity (1560) compelled attendance at the State (Protestant) church, it never was enforced in Ireland during the following 250 years; nor was there any effort made to collect the one shilling fine imposed for each non-presence.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Catholics could not purchase land (and most of them had been dispossessed of their holdings in the aftermath of the Cromwellian and Williamite wars of the 17th century). Further, Catholics could not lease land for a period of more than 31 years.

• While the numbers were small, Catholics could and did purchase land pre Famine, and several had for long retained their land. Lord Kenmare is an example. Browne, of Castlebrowne (?), held his ancestral home and land in Co. Kildare until the early 1814, when he sold it to the Jesuits to become what is now Clongowes. (Fifteen years before Catholic Emancipation BTW.) Daniel O’Connell’s family had a leasehold of such long duration on a large chunk of Iveragh that it arguably constituted a freehold.

• Most legal obstacles on Catholic land ownership were either repealed or not enforced by the mid 1700’s Look at the repeal Acts of 1774 and 1778, and the last remaining barriers had fallen with the 1782 Act. The Relief Act of 1793 granted Irish Catholics the franchise and admission to most civil offices. OK, to become a judge took a bit longer, but how many did that affect? What impact did that have on the Famine era?

• After the Cromwellian Settlement most ordinary Irishmen left alive remained as tenants but were renting from or working for an English landlord instead of an Irish one. Simply put, after that war they lived “under the radar”. Most did not have to relocate to “Hell or to Connaught” as the new planters needed workmen/tenants and it was primarily the Old Irish nobility with their servant retinue who were forced to leave for Connaught. Not even all of them went and several had their property returned at the Restoration (although usually diminished in size) There are lots of examples in Prendergast’s book. Even as late as 1690 after his victory at the Battle of Boyne, William III granted a pardon to Jacobite soldiers although he excluded the senior officers from its provisions. Similar to other European countries, the vast majority of Irish country-dwellers of that era never owned land , they were simple tenant farmers.

• The 31 year lease is another example of an irrelevance – read the various reports in the Devon Commission and see the multiple mentions of tenants not wanting leases of any description, preferring to have a relationship with the landlord. Many had leases for ‘lives’. Furthermore, a lease can be renewed on the same/similar terms and there are ample examples of this happening, and both landlords and agents frequently wrote on retaining ‘good farming families’ and their worth to the overall value of an estate.

• If you look at landholdings and trace back who the tenants were before the Lands Acts, and look at the names in Griffiths and even the names in various surveys you will see that the same families very often lived in the same places.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Protestants, on the other hand, practiced primogeniture so that holdings remained intact over time. But if one son of a Catholic family converted to Anglicanism, he inherited all the family land and his brothers got nothing.
Even if sons of a Catholic family were inclined to (illegally) forgo their inheritance so that one son could inherit and keep the land intact, there were few other options available. Many occupations, including the professions and the officer ranks of the army were closed to Catholics.

• But earlier you were saying that Catholics could not own land, so how could the bequeath land?
• The simple fact of the matter is that landlord after landlord and agent after agent tried their utmost to prevent sub-division. Some 'middlemen' - not often head-landlords - turned a blind eye but most landlords were against subdivision and went to the extent of threatening eviction should a parent subdivide without permission. They are excoriated in history, with tales of ‘Tenants often were forbidden to marry’ – not so, they had to ask to sub-divide, and if that was not permitted no marriage could take place.

• To enter the professions one has to have an education. That was not an agenda item for the peasant class.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Worst of all was the effect of a system of inheritance called gavelkind whereby a deceased person's land is divided equally among all male heirs.

• Again you seem to be defeating your own argument as it appears you do not understand inheritance laws and the differences concerning land tenure. Nor do you appear to understand the law of gavelkind or its history. Gavelkind was an Old Irish tradition, enshrined in Brehon Law and one fought for by the Irish nobility when the Normans tried to extinguish it. However, the self-same Normans saw its uses reintroduced it and it regained widespread acceptance much to the disgust of successive British monarchs until it finally was outlawed by Elizabeth I, nailed by Cromwell but then reintroduced by the Popery Act of 1703. The class it affected was the big landlord, not the one that survived on potatoes more than a century later. It also saw a surge of conversions to the Established Church in the following couple of decades.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Therefore, Catholics’ leased landholdings became successively smaller and poorer with each passing generation (leading Catholic peasants to become dependent on potato monoculture, which had catastrophic effects in the 1840s.

• That has nothing to do with gavelkind or ‘inheritance’. Putting it clinically, It has to do with uneducated people breeding and surviving too long on a healthy diet that was about to be destroyed. Ireland’s death rate was too low, (much lower than in Europe) so more people survived/had healthier children/lived longer. That put huge pressures on land resources because sons married, carved off a plot from the father’s holding and started families.

• I’ve previously written on this forum that by the outbreak of the Famine, Ireland economically was a basket case, one with a totally unsustainable population of 8 million in 1841 most of which were in the bottom cohort of society and dependent on the monoculture of a single root variety.

steddyeddy wrote: »

The crop-monoculture didn't just mean one type of crop, it meant one strain (genetic) of crop. So not only were Irish Catholics dependent on one type of crop, they were using one strain of crop. In other words one genetically similar crop. There wasn't the genetic diversity in the potato crop in Catholic holdings to survive Phytophthora infestans

We know all about that, it was discussed before –I and several others have written on a monoculture within a monoculture in several threads on the Famine.. I also referred to a very interesting book that has a chapter on the Famine. Its author was among the first to (widely) publish possible connections between the blight and the huge influx of guano fertiliser from Latin America.

dubhthach

A more interesting question which is rarely asked is what was the dynamic that led to the Irish population growing by about 25% in period of 1820-1845. One thing that is generally missing in much discourse is the period 1798 -> 1820 and the effects of the Napoleonic war on Irish agriculture economy and population growth. Let alone discussion of agarian secret societies etc.

In general I also think the 18th century is usually ignored when it comes to popular history. I plan on buying 'The Popular Mind in 18th century Ireland' once my bank account has recovered from my recent Grecian holiday

This book is a study of the Irish popular mind between the late-seventeenth and the early-nineteenth century. It examines the collective assumptions, aspirations, fears, resentments and prejudices of the common people as they are revealed in the vernacular literature of the period.

The topics investigated include: politics, religion, historical memory, European conflicts, Anglo-Irish patriotism, agrarian agitation, the tumultuous decade of the 1790s, and the rise of Daniel O’Connell.

Extensive use is made of contemporary song and verse preserved in literary manuscripts from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries – an essential source that has previously been neglected by historians. Elements of both continuity and change are identified, and the evolution of popular attitudes is traced over the hundred and fifty years from the Williamite conquest to O’Connell’s campaign for Repeal of the Union.

The texts of eight important works composed between 1691 and 1830 are presented in full – seven of them translated for the first time – to allow those who are unable to read the originals an opportunity to assess the temper of Irish popular culture during a formative period in the country’s history.

This book substantially revises, extends and updates the view of eighteenth-century Irish literature that was presented in Daniel Corkery’s classical account, The Hidden Ireland.

The fact that book relies heavily on Irish language texts many of which had never been translated to english might provide some insight as to why we tend to ignore the long 18th century, after all Ireland was a majority Irish speaking island for the bulk of the century. If you can't read the sources (or they aren't translated) it has an impact!



A review can be read here:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-popular-mind-in-eighteenth-century-ireland-review-an-elegant-and-luminous-study-1.3032259

steddyeddy

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

You’re being very defensive there eddy. I’m not being condescending, I’m querying your assertions. I love listening to other views, it’s how I learn. But I’m entitled to ask for sources which is both acceptable and the norm here.

It wasn't asking for sources that's the problem. It's the use of smiley faces in an academic discussion.

History is written by the victor, and much of it is designed to fulfil a political need, create or bolster a national identity, whatever. Most is based on propaganda be it written by Irish Catholic clerics, British MPs or Russian revolutionaries. The job of a historian is to dig deeper, to question everything and not to accept ‘dogma’ that has been served up by self-serving politicians. I believe that you are incorrect because:

I'm well aware of agendas in history. I think there's a nationalist agenda but I also think there's an agenda that negates facts to see British rule through rose tinted glasses.

The worst of the Penal Laws had been repealed more than 60 years before the Great Famine. Additionally, the bulk of those laws never at most times affected the ‘peasantry’ and most others of the population, because they were largely ignored. It requires more than a considerable stretch of the imagination to blame them for the Famine. (I’m not being pejorative on ‘peasant’, I’m using the term to classify the rural landless/cottier /labourer class)

While you're partly right insofar as the Irish Penal Laws were not enforced with rigorous consistency between 1693 and 1793 (or 1829, if you prefer). Frequently, a local magistrate or justice of the peace might exercise a prudent discretion with the result that a Catholic farmer would be able to keep his horse or a hedge schoolmaster to continue quietly to ply his trade.

But the Penal Laws were on the books and could be enforced, and in fact were applied to most of the people for most of the time. There is no getting away from the multi-generational effects of enforced gavelkind and the repeated subdivision of land held by Catholics, which was a major cause of the Great Famine years later.

Basically I think you might be confusing "sometimes unenforced" with "ignored" regarding the penal laws.

For example, on education - Lord Broghill, who had been one of Cromwell’s leading officers, wrote from Munster to Charles II after his Restoration:- “I have several complaints this week from divers parts of this province, of the great insolency the popish clergy are suddenly grown unto. They have lately set up several schools, which the Jesuits publickly teach in. Though I know they are the best school masters in the world, yet it is to be doubted they teach their scholars more than their books, and imbue them with ill principles.

”

Yes the ruling classes and Protestant classes view Catholic education as a bad thing. I'm not seeing how this backs your thesis that the laws were unenforced? It certainly tells us that the ruling classes and Cromwell, a figure not known for his composure knew about Catholic education and viewed it as insolent.

And there is also no escaping the fact that the Irish people, who had once had a rich culture and enjoyed an unusually high literacy rate from the earliest times, were reduced to an illiterate rabble. For example, an 18th century chieftain of the O’Conors, a descendant of kings of Connacht and high kings of Ireland, had to hire himself out as a laborer and died penniless in a mud hut in Co. Sligo.

For example religion - the Act of Uniformity (1560) compelled attendance at the State (Protestant) church, it never was enforced in Ireland during the following 250 years; nor was there any effort made to collect the one shilling fine imposed for each non-presence.

No but this is a small example of the Penal laws and they were on the books and could be enforced at anytime.

While the numbers were small, Catholics could and did purchase land pre Famine, and several had for long retained their land. Lord Kenmare is an example. Browne, of Castlebrowne (?), held his ancestral home and land in Co. Kildare until the early 1814, when he sold it to the Jesuits to become what is now Clongowes. (Fifteen years before Catholic Emancipation BTW.) Daniel O’Connell’s family had a leasehold of such long duration on a large chunk of Iveragh that it arguably constituted a freehold.

Yes despite the laws some Catholics But despite the Penal Laws, some Catholics did manage to hold on to some of their land, often with the connivance of sympathetic Protestant neighbors. I recommend the book Grace’s Card by Charles Chenevix Trench, a highly readable history of this subject.

The O’Connells had once been substantial landowners in Co. Kerry. Members of the family managed to hold on to some of their land, apparently evading the law with the help of Protestant neighbors.

Moreover, the most hard-line proponents of the Penal Laws may have had a perverse point of sorts: if you gave the Catholics an inch, they would take a mile!

But while the Penal Laws were not always enforced with their full rigor, even for members of the remnant Irish landed classes there was always the danger that they would be. No matter how well an individual Catholic might do, his security depended on the good will of his neighbors. One wrong move and be could, literally, be dead.

Most legal obstacles on Catholic land ownership were either repealed or not enforced by the mid 1700’s Look at the repeal Acts of 1774 and 1778, and the last remaining barriers had fallen with the 1782 Act. The Relief Act of 1793 granted Irish Catholics the franchise and admission to most civil offices. OK, to become a judge took a bit longer, but how many did that affect? What impact did that have on the Famine era?

Edmund Burke’s father converted to the Church of Ireland in order to follow a career as a lawyer. Edmund’s mother was Catholic and he may have had a Catholic childhood, having been partly raised by his maternal cousins in Co. Cork. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that one of the great causes of Burke’s Parliamentary career was repeal of the Penal Laws, and that he went a long way towards that goal through a series of incremental reforms in the 1780s and ’90s.

It affected many, because the laws were cumulative. For instance the Catholic restrictions on education as evident above meant an extra layer of resistence towards becoming a lawyer or a judge.

After the Cromwellian Settlement most ordinary Irishmen left alive remained as tenants but were renting from or working for an English landlord instead of an Irish one. Simply put, after that war they lived “under the radar”. Most did not have to relocate to “Hell or to Connaught” as the new planters needed workmen/tenants and it was primarily the Old Irish nobility with their servant retinue who were forced to leave for Connaught. Not even all of them went and several had their property returned at the Restoration (although usually diminished in size) There are lots of examples in Prendergast’s book. Even as late as 1690 after his victory at the Battle of Boyne, William III granted a pardon to Jacobite soldiers although he excluded the senior officers from its provisions. Similar to other European countries, the vast majority of Irish country-dwellers of that era never owned land , they were simple tenant farmers.

I don't think "living under the radar" is conducive to thriving. As I said the laws were on the books and whether or not they were enforced was at the whim of their church of Ireland neighbors.

The 31 year lease is another example of an irrelevance – read the various reports in the Devon Commission and see the multiple mentions of tenants not wanting leases of any description, preferring to have a relationship with the landlord. Many had leases for ‘lives’. Furthermore, a lease can be renewed on the same/similar terms and there are ample examples of this happening, and both landlords and agents frequently wrote on retaining ‘good farming families’ and their worth to the overall value of an estate.

I'm not sure we're reading the same Devon Commission. The one I know of came to the conclusion:

"that the leases were unfair and were favorable to the landowners (who were usually Anglo-Irish). The majority of Irish tenants had no form of protection, they could be, and often were, summarily evicted. They also had no claim to the Ulster Custom of landholding - this would have granted tenants the "3F's": fixity of tenure, fair rents and free sale. The Devon Commission had wide reaching consequences and though too late to prevent the famine, it did galvanize change afterwards."

If you look at landholdings and trace back who the tenants were before the Lands Acts, and look at the names in Griffiths and even the names in various surveys you will see that the same families very often lived in the same places.

That's not indicative to the size of their land though.

But earlier you were saying that Catholics could not own land, so how could the bequeath land?

Some owned land such as the O'Connells mentioned earlier. Enforce sectarian gavelkind made distinctions in how the law applied to Protestant VS Catholic land inheritance. Again I suggest you read Grace’s Card by Charles Chenevix Trench.

The simple fact of the matter is that landlord after landlord and agent after agent tried their utmost to prevent sub-division. Some 'middlemen' - not often head-landlords - turned a blind eye but most landlords were against subdivision and went to the extent of threatening eviction should a parent subdivide without permission. They are excoriated in history, with tales of ‘Tenants often were forbidden to marry’ – not so, they had to ask to sub-divide, and if that was not permitted no marriage could take place.

The bit in bold is an opinion, not a fact as you back it up with more opinion.You're talking about tenants, not Catholics who once owned land.

To enter the professions one has to have an education. That was not an agenda item for the peasant class.

Education access was severely restricted for Irish Catholics.

Again you seem to be defeating your own argument as it appears you do not understand inheritance laws and the differences concerning land tenure. Nor do you appear to understand the law of gavelkind or its history. Gavelkind was an Old Irish tradition, enshrined in Brehon Law and one fought for by the Irish nobility when the Normans tried to extinguish it. However, the self-same Normans saw its uses reintroduced it and it regained widespread acceptance much to the disgust of successive British monarchs until it finally was outlawed by Elizabeth I, nailed by Cromwell but then reintroduced by the Popery Act of 1703. The class it affected was the big landlord, not the one that survived on potatoes more than a century later. It also saw a surge of conversions to the Established Church in the following couple of decades.

You're completely confusing two systems of gavelkind. Gavelkind was indeed an old Brehon law dictating that the land of the deceased should be divided. Sectarian gavelkind, as seen during the Penal laws was enforced only on Catholics. In other words it dictated that Catholics who owned lands were subject to additional laws regarding passing on lands. I.E owned lands got smaller.

That has nothing to do with gavelkind or ‘inheritance’. Putting it clinically, It has to do with uneducated people breeding and surviving too long on a healthy diet that was about to be destroyed. Ireland’s death rate was too low, (much lower than in Europe) so more people survived/had healthier children/lived longer. That put huge pressures on land resources because sons married, carved off a plot from the father’s holding and started families.

Well you can put it clinically but I fail to see how you fail to make the connection between uneducated people and a series of laws limiting access to education based on religion. It's not a hard leap to make.

Their diet was dependent on a genetically identical crop resultants from mono culture resultant on lack of land to grow diverse crops.

I’ve previously written on this forum that by the outbreak of the Famine, Ireland economically was a basket case, one with a totally unsustainable population of 8 million in 1841 most of which were in the bottom cohort of society and dependent on the monoculture of a single root variety.

Due to education restriction and enforced sectarian gavelkind.

We know all about that, it was discussed before –I and several others have written on a monoculture within a monoculture in several threads on the Famine.. I also referred to a very interesting book that has a chapter on the Famine. Its author was among the first to (widely) publish possible connections between the blight and the huge influx of guano fertiliser from Latin America.

The genetic reason that blight took hold on the potato is due to the lack of variability in the potato strains. Due to a mono-culture resultant on smaller land sizes.

pedroeibar1

dubhthach wrote: »

A more interesting question which is rarely asked is what was the dynamic that led to the Irish population growing by about 25% in period of 1820-1845. One thing that is generally missing in much discourse is the period 1798 -> 1820 and the effects of the Napoleonic war on Irish agriculture economy and population growth. Let alone discussion of agarian secret societies etc.

The book is a bit steep at €40 for a purchase, but it’s now on my reading list. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
At school level most history teachers would say the 18th century Ireland was quite peaceful, nothing much happening until the last decade, when the French were the cause of some uppity-ness. The famine of 1740-41 rarely gets a mention (crop failures due to weather, not disease). I’ve seen comment that comparatively speaking it was almost as devastating as the Great Famine, so it should feature. Also, the early 19th c famines rarely are mentioned.

The Napoleonic Wars were a boon for Ireland, particularly for Cork (and its hinterland as far as Kerry) profiting from its naval bases. The wars boosted the exports of butter, meat and horses. A flax industry got going in Cork to provide canvas for the RN. (It failed.)

I query the population stats - Ireland’s population rose from about 5 million in 1800 to 7 million in 1820 and 8.5 million in 1845, so the rise 1820 to 1845 is about 14%, not 25%. The slowdown was due to a reducing birth-rate and to emigration. However, the drop was not as significant in the western part of Ireland, where labourers/their families lived on a massive intake of potatoes. Daily consumption average per man, woman, child was more than 2 kgs. (Next time in a supermarket look at a bag that size!) Due to the nutritional combination of potatoes and buttermilk they had healthier lives so their mortality rate was lower. (I cannot recall who said that the issue was not a high birth-rate but a low mortality rate.) Turf from a nearby bog provided cheap fuel. By 1845 Ireland economically was a basket-case, with income per head of population about half that of the UK.

Poetry/ballads/folklore as sources…… I agree that they should be examined and fill an important corner of research, but they need to be taken with a measured spoon. Many of them (e.g. those collected by Frank Harte) are highly entertaining but polarised and inaccurate in equal portions. Imagine the impact of the Folklore Commission data on a book on the Famine.
Morley is a fan of the poet Eoghan Ruadh O’Súilleabháin, he who loved ladies and strong drink in equal measure, so he gets my vote for that. Poor old Eoghand deserves a decent biography.

pedroeibar1

steddyeddy wrote: »

It wasn't asking for sources that's the problem. It's the use of smiley faces in an academic discussion.

If it’s an academic discussion you would have been more succinct/accurate and I would not have had to ask for sources.. I used just one emoticon. Get over it.
This is actually a discussion on how history is taught. Your posts wander off into a claim that the Penal Laws were the cause of the Famine, and now you ignore their effect on the Famine and concentrate (incorrectly in many cases) on what they meant. However, all of your comments indicate that history must be taught badly because they contain multiple errors.

steddyeddy wrote: »

I'm well aware of agendas in history. I think there's a nationalist agenda but I also think there's an agenda that negates facts to see British rule through rose tinted glasses.

I’m not negating anything, I’ve asked you for sources and you have not provided any, only your opinions ( and the name of one book)..

steddyeddy wrote: »

While you're partly right insofar as the Irish Penal Laws were not enforced with rigorous consistency between 1693 and 1793 (or 1829, if you prefer). Frequently, a local magistrate or justice of the peace might exercise a prudent discretion with the result that a Catholic farmer would be able to keep his horse or a hedge schoolmaster to continue quietly to ply his trade.

But the Penal Laws were on the books and could be enforced, and in fact were applied to most of the people for most of the time. There is no getting away from the multi-generational effects of enforced gavelkind and the repeated subdivision of land held by Catholics, which was a major cause of the Great Famine years later.

Basically I think you might be confusing "sometimes unenforced" with "ignored" regarding the penal laws.

I’m not confusing anything. With regard to the mass of the population, the Penal Laws did not affect them because they were inconsequential people and even if they were of some consequence, the laws usually were not enforced. Firstly you do not yet appear to understand gavelkind (it did not apply to leasehold property) and secondly you seem to be unaware that they were not ‘Irish’ Penal Laws, or that they applied to a broader section than just RCs. The Penal laws were not Irish, they applied throughout Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales and affected all non-Established Church sects. Why for e.g. do you think the Presbyterians had a role in the United Irishmen?

steddyeddy wrote: »

Yes the ruling classes and Protestant classes view Catholic education as a bad thing. I'm not seeing how this backs your thesis that the laws were unenforced? It certainly tells us that the ruling classes and Cromwell, a figure not known for his composure knew about Catholic education and viewed it as insolent. And there is also no escaping the fact that the Irish people, who had once had a rich culture and enjoyed an unusually high literacy rate from the earliest times, were reduced to an illiterate rabble. For example, an 18th century chieftain of the O’Conors, a descendant of kings of Connacht and high kings of Ireland, had to hire himself out as a laborer and died penniless in a mud hut in Co. Sligo.

Really? A high literacy rate from the earliest times? Some nobles and the clerics were literate, the mass of the population were illiterate. Give me sources, not Bord Failte waffle about bards on the mountain and poets in the bog. The vast bulk of the population were illiterate. Examine the attempts to educate the Irish ‘peasant’. Look at the early days of State education in the early 1800s. Look at post-Emancipation efforts. Look at the levels achieved in the post-Famine period. Clearly you have not made that comparison. Neither does your O’Connor yarn stand up. Go Google the ‘O’Connor Don’.

steddyeddy wrote: »

(Pedro- - the Act of Uniformity (1560) compelled attendance at the State (Protestant) church, it never was enforced in Ireland during the following 250 years; nor was there any effort made to collect the one shilling fine imposed for each non-presence) No but this is a small example of the Penal laws and they were on the books and could be enforced at anytime.

They were a dead letter. Give me one example of a recusancy fine. Have you looked at the history of Lough Derg pilgrimages during the Penal Law era and the numbers of pilgrims attending? Research it, and look at the views of the bishops and the views of the Leslie family of the day, on whose lands it was situated.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Yes despite the laws some Catholics But despite the Penal Laws, some Catholics did manage to hold on to some of their land, often with the connivance of sympathetic Protestant neighbors. I recommend the book Grace’s Card by Charles Chenevix Trench, a highly readable history of this subject.

The O’Connells had once been substantial landowners in Co. Kerry. Members of the family managed to hold on to some of their land, apparently evading the law with the help of Protestant neighbors.

Moreover, the most hard-line proponents of the Penal Laws may have had a perverse point of sorts: if you gave the Catholics an inch, they would take a mile!

But while the Penal Laws were not always enforced with their full rigor, even for members of the remnant Irish landed classes there was always the danger that they would be. No matter how well an individual Catholic might do, his security depended on the good will of his neighbors. One wrong move and be could, literally, be dead.

Trench - wrong again. If you had read Trench;s book you would know that a substantial number of Catholics held onto their land, that the issue with the Penal Laws was that Catholics could own land legally, but during a certain period they could not buy land, inherit it from a Protestant or bequeathing it to ONE child if there were more than one in the family.
O’Connell family – wrong again. The O’Connells held onto a considerable amount of their own land and also acquired a head-lease from a descendant of Sir William Petty (and various others, such as the Herberts of Killarney). The O’Connells were middlemen and also held huge tracts of land in their own names – it had nothing to do with ‘friendly Protestant neighbours’

steddyeddy wrote: »

Edmund Burke’s father converted to the Church of Ireland in order to follow a career as a lawyer. Edmund’s mother was Catholic and he may have had a Catholic childhood, having been partly raised by his maternal cousins in Co. Cork. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that one of the great causes of Burke’s Parliamentary career was repeal of the Penal Laws, and that he went a long way towards that goal through a series of incremental reforms in the 1780s and ’90s.

It affected many, because the laws were cumulative. For instance the Catholic restrictions on education as evident above meant an extra layer of resistence towards becoming a lawyer or a judge.

What relevance has this to the millions of people (peasant labourers/cottiers) who could not read/write? I’d suggest that the points system of today’s leaving Cert makes it more difficult to get into Law.

steddyeddy wrote: »

I don't think "living under the radar" is conducive to thriving. As I said the laws were on the books and whether or not they were enforced was at the whim of their church of Ireland neighbors.

I never said the Irish were thriving. I said the laws never were enforced and that they did not affevt the great mass of the population.

steddyeddy wrote: »

“The simple fact of the matter is that landlord after landlord and agent after agent tried their utmost to prevent sub-division “The bit in bold is [your] opinion, not a fact as you back it up with more opinion. You're talking about tenants, not Catholics who once owned land.

When are you going to realise that the bulk of the Famine-era population was of peasant stock, people that never owned land down through history? Clearly you have not examined land tenure in Ireland pre- Elizabethan Plantation or pre-Cromwell? It’s not my opinion, it’s fact. I’m talking about professional Agents such as Stewart Trench and many others. I’m talking about the O’Connells in Kerry, I’m talking about landlords and agents throughout Ireland who saw (possibly too late) what was happening and the result of subdivision. Are you familiar with Jumpers and Grabbers, and the coalescing of holdings? Have you ever read ‘Realities of Irish Life’?

steddyeddy wrote: »

Education access was severely restricted for Irish Catholics.

Yes, I agree. But only pre c1800 so irrelevant to this discussion. Education was not of interest to the peasant class who were affected by the Famine, which is what we are talking about.

steddyeddy wrote: »

You're completely confusing two systems of gavelkind. Gavelkind was indeed an old Brehon law dictating that the land of the deceased should be divided. Sectarian gavelkind, as seen during the Penal laws was enforced only on Catholics. In other words it dictated that Catholics who owned lands were subject to additional laws regarding passing on lands. I.E owned lands got smaller.

Wrong again. Go look up gavelkind and Brehon Law. Sophir Bryant’s book ‘Liberty, Order & Law is a good place to start.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Well you can put it clinically but I fail to see how you fail to make the connection between uneducated people and a series of laws limiting access to education based on religion. It's not a hard leap to make.

I repeat - the vast majority of Irish country-dwellers of that era never had or wanted an education - it also was an era when book ownership was highly unusual and confined to a very wealthy minority. There was no perceived need for a labourer to read or write, and conditions were such that almost all children did not attend school for long – if at all – due to cost (hedge schools included) and a need to work to contribute to the family unit. An ‘ordinary’ printed book c1800 cost about seven shillings and sixpence, the equivalent of more than a full month’s income for a labourer. The barrier to education was poverty, not religion

If you don’t accept all this I’m not going to change your mind, so I’ll not bother any more. Point of thread title is made.

dubhthach

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

The book is a bit steep at €40 for a purchase, but it’s now on my reading list. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
At school level most history teachers would say the 18th century Ireland was quite peaceful, nothing much happening until the last decade, when the French were the cause of some uppity-ness. The famine of 1740-41 rarely gets a mention (crop failures due to weather, not disease). I’ve seen comment that comparatively speaking it was almost as devastating as the Great Famine, so it should feature. Also, the early 19th c famines rarely are mentioned.

The Napoleonic Wars were a boon for Ireland, particularly for Cork (and its hinterland as far as Kerry) profiting from its naval bases. The wars boosted the exports of butter, meat and horses. A flax industry got going in Cork to provide canvas for the RN. (It failed.)

I query the population stats - Ireland’s population rose from about 5 million in 1800 to 7 million in 1820 and 8.5 million in 1845, so the rise 1820 to 1845 is about 14%, not 25%. The slowdown was due to a reducing birth-rate and to emigration. However, the drop was not as significant in the western part of Ireland, where labourers/their families lived on a massive intake of potatoes. Daily consumption average per man, woman, child was more than 2 kgs. (Next time in a supermarket look at a bag that size!) Due to the nutritional combination of potatoes and buttermilk they had healthier lives so their mortality rate was lower. (I cannot recall who said that the issue was not a high birth-rate but a low mortality rate.) Turf from a nearby bog provided cheap fuel. By 1845 Ireland economically was a basket-case, with income per head of population about half that of the UK.

Poetry/ballads/folklore as sources…… I agree that they should be examined and fill an important corner of research, but they need to be taken with a measured spoon. Many of them (e.g. those collected by Frank Harte) are highly entertaining but polarised and inaccurate in equal portions. Imagine the impact of the Folklore Commission data on a book on the Famine.
Morley is a fan of the poet Eoghan Ruadh O’Súilleabháin, he who loved ladies and strong drink in equal measure, so he gets my vote for that. Poor old Eoghand deserves a decent biography.

Awh well €40 isn't too bad for an academic publishing, but perhaps I spend too much time tumbing books that are in the €40-€80 range :P

With regard to the census the 1821 census had a population of 6,801,827, if we assume 8.5m in 1845 well that works out as 24.97%

However if we assume that guestimate is high for 1845 and go with 1841 census well the growth in 20 years between census is: 20% (1,373,297 to bring it to 8,175,124).

Now what's interesting here and it's only on further reading that I've come across this (I tend to read medieval Irish history! :P ) is that there is some controversy over the figures for 1821, 1831, 1841 census. For example JJ Lee I believe has written that 1821 census under-reported the population size I believe, also some debate that census enumerators in 1831 thought they were been paid by numbers of people they enumerated etc.

I see there is an article on history Ireland which also helpfully talks about 1741 or as it's known in Irish 'bliain an áir' (the year of Slaughter)

http://www.historyireland.com/volume-23/the-1841-census-do-the-numbers-add-up/

Just going back to 1741, indeed it's interesting that 'An Gorta Beag' (to give it another irish term) hardly ever gets a mention when if anything it was probably equally devastating.

Now I'm not standing over the above article as I only just discovered it via google but does provide an interesting addendum for further discussion.

Interesting here is an article from the 'Dublin University Magazine' from 1844 on the very topic of accuracy of 1821,1831 and 1841:
http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/CensusIrelandDUM23-137/

Leaving that aside when it comes to population I see that the 1926 census report has some interesting 'prehistory' when it comes to estimating the population:



Taken from Introduction section here:
http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/census1926results/volume10/C_1926_V10.pdf

--

As for Irish language sources, it's not just poetry, the Royal Irish Academy has the following number of Irish language manuscripts from the 17th/18th/19th centuries:

• 70+ manuscripts in Irish from the seventeenth century
• 400+ from the eighteenth century
• c. 800 from the nineteenth century

The scribal tradition only actually really dies out in the mid 19th century, there's full range of texts from prose satire (poetic satire in shape of Midnight Court) to stuff like personal journals. For example Charles O'Conor Don kept a journal in Irish in mid 18th century where for example he mentions stuff like the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie. All of which have basically been ignored outside of people working in Irish language university departments.

Anyways I picked up the following today:

The Fenian Problem
Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858–1874
by Brian Jenkins

€9.99 for a hardback (in Chapters on Parnell street) is a steal especially given the price online!

pedroeibar1

dubhthach wrote: »

Awh well €40 isn't too bad for an academic publishing, but perhaps I spend too much time tumbing books that are in the €40-€80 range :P

With regard to the census the 1821 census had a population of 6,801,827, if we assume 8.5m in 1845 well that works out as 24.97%

However if we assume that guestimate is high for 1845 and go with 1841 census well the growth in 20 years between census is: 20% (1,373,297 to bring it to 8,175,124).

Now what's interesting here and it's only on further reading that I've come across this (I tend to read medieval Irish history! :P ) is that there is some controversy over the figures for 1821, 1831, 1841 census. For example JJ Lee I believe has written that 1821 census under-reported the population size I believe, also some debate that census enumerators in 1831 thought they were been paid by numbers of people they enumerated etc.

I see there is an article on history Ireland which also helpfully talks about 1741 or as it's known in Irish 'bliain an áir' (the year of Slaughter)

http://www.historyireland.com/volume-23/the-1841-census-do-the-numbers-add-up/

Just going back to 1741, indeed it's interesting that 'An Gorta Beag' (to give it another irish term) hardly ever gets a mention when if anything it was probably equally devastating.

Now I'm not standing over the above article as I only just discovered it via google but does provide an interesting addendum for further discussion.

Interesting here is an article from the 'Dublin University Magazine' from 1844 on the very topic of accuracy of 1821,1831 and 1841:
http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/CensusIrelandDUM23-137/

Leaving that aside when it comes to population I see that the 1926 census report has some interesting 'prehistory' when it comes to estimating the population:



Taken from Introduction section here:
http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/census1926results/volume10/C_1926_V10.pdf

--

As for Irish language sources, it's not just poetry, the Royal Irish Academy has the following number of Irish language manuscripts from the 17th/18th/19th centuries:

• 70+ manuscripts in Irish from the seventeenth century
• 400+ from the eighteenth century
• c. 800 from the nineteenth century

The scribal tradition only actually really dies out in the mid 19th century, there's full range of texts from prose satire (poetic satire in shape of Midnight Court) to stuff like personal journals. For example Charles O'Conor Don kept a journal in Irish in mid 18th century where for example he mentions stuff like the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie. All of which have basically been ignored outside of people working in Irish language university departments.

Anyways I picked up the following today:

The Fenian Problem
Insurgency and Terrorism in a Liberal State, 1858–1874
by Brian Jenkins

€9.99 for a hardback (in Chapters on Parnell street) is a steal especially given the price online!

Welcome back from Greece. I note that their economy already is growing faster than expected - must have been an expensive holiday!

You’re math is correct, i looked at the wrong decade .:o (Another answer being “Pedro, do not do sums in your head after midnight!”)

A reminder of the famine of 1740/41 is staring most Dubliners in the face daily – look east and see the obelisk on Killiney Hill, built to give employment during that particular Ocras. It’s generally accepted that the deaths to population ratio was as big a calamity as the great Famine, but as you say, it’s ignored. Those people just died, few emigrated.

Ireland’s population numbers always are a topic for debate. A book I’ve often seen mentioned is H Connell, "The Population of Ireland 1750-1845", and inevitably it’s figures are called into question. I’ve not read it, the debate is too ethereal for me and any fine precision does not make much difference. Petty’s figure was an estimate calculated on household numbers, but as his team of surveyors visited every corner of the country it should be reasonably accurate. The 1731 count stems I think from returns both by magistrates and clergymen (a Lords’ Committee “Report on the State of Popery”) in Ireland, neither of them ‘expert’ on the ordinary Irishman, though I’d accept the clergy’s count on Popish Priests.. However, the clergy’s count for most of Kerry is not included. The survey by Dr. Beaufort (a ‘list-maker’ who categorized everything from plants to people) primarily was ecclesiastical and he too would have had a coloured view on numbers as he stayed mainly with ‘gentry’. (His book on Kerry is an interesting read and his son was the admiral, he of the Scale.) The 1836 Drummond Commission Report has good data on population density – they were analysing it for planning the ‘new’ railway lines.

Trying to enumerate an unwilling population that was distributed across often roadless terrain of mountain and bog would have been an impossible task. Mobility was another issue, as huge numbers of families were semi-nomadic, migrating seasonally, or at the drop of a hat were there a possibility of work elsewhere. Another big difficulty with any count was population distribution. Accepting that Ireland’s population more or less doubled between 1770 – 1841, it still remained primarily rural – about 20% in 1850’s, whereas in England at the same time more than half lived in towns/cities due to the Industrial Revolution. Rural poverty was widespread – the full description (part-quoted in the History Ireland link) from the French Gustave de Beaumont (traveller / sociologist) who visited Ireland in 1835 is:

"I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland...In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland.

Gustave de Beaumont. Ireland: Social, Political, and Religious. ed. William Cooke Taylor, Tom Garvin, and Andreas Hess. (Cambridge (Mass.): Belknap Press, 2006), pg. 130.

By British standards Ireland was poor, and the Irish paupers constituted two-thirds of the population. The cities were not much different, an early 1800’s report illustrates the contemporary housing situation in Dublin:

“In the ancient parts of this city, the streets are, with a few exceptions, generally narrow, the houses crowded together, and the rears, or back-yards, of very small extent. Of these streets, a few are the residence of the upper class of shop-keepers, and others engaged in trade; but a far greater proportion of them, with their numerous lanes and alleys, are occupied by working manufacturers, by petty shop-keepers, the labouring poor, and beggars, crowded together, to a degree distressing to humanity. A single apartment, in one of these truly wretched habitations, rates from one to two shillings per week; and, to lighten this rent, two, three, and even four families, become joint tenants. As I was usually out at very early hours on the streets, I have frequently surprised from ten to sixteen persons, of all ages and sexes, in a room, not fifteen feet square, stretched on a wad of filthy straw, swarming with vermin, and without any covering, save the wretched rags that constituted their wearing apparel … The crowded population, wherever it obtains, is almost universally accompanied by a very serious evil; a degree of filth and stench inconceivable, except by those who have visited those scenes of wretchedness.”

(Whitelaw, J, An Essay on the Population of Dublin (Dublin, Graisberry & Campbell, 1805), p50.)

Obviously that too was a very transient segment of the population and difficult to count accurately.

That article in the Dublin University Magazine of 1844 does have some very valid points but it is a bit of a polemic, being anti-O’Connell, anti-Whig, anti-Catholic and pro-Established Church (Link to the original issue in full here While the un-named author whines about the ‘destruction’ of ten bishoprics and the reduction of clerical income, he does not allude to the fact that proportionally the burden of the C of I was far greater than its English counterpart and a huge majority of the Irish were not adherents to its creed. About two thirds of Irish parochial clergy enjoyed higher incomes ranging between £200 -£1,000 p.a. than their counterparts in England and Wales, where 3,300 livings were paying less than £150 p.a. (Noreen Higgins McHugh, UCCThe Irish Anglican clergy elite: 1801-38 )

The key factor in population growth was the healthy diet of the majority, which led to increased fertility and a lower death rate. Marriage at a younger age, subdivision (and its attendant reasons) did play a part, but health arguably was the main factor.Native Americans had ‘the three sisters’ of maize, beans and squash. The Irish needed just two for healthy survival - a diet of potatoes supplemented with dairy products such as milk or butter, the latter containing the two vitamins (A and D) not provided by potatoes. Both were in plentiful supply until the Famine. Prison registers and army/navy records show that the Irish were taller and healthier than their British counterparts.

Unused or unexplored 17th/18th century documents as Gaeilge – yes, and they will remain so unless brought to light in English. That’s a matter for the academics, it’s beyond the capabilities of ordinary folk. The most head-wrecking task I ever performed by way of research was to decipher and transcribe an early 1600’s English text.

Good luck with the Fenians book, on a par for me with a treatise on the finding of two glass beads in a recently excavated medieval bawn. But to each his own, and every cow her calf!

robp

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

steddyeddy wrote: »

Pedro can we have an intelligent discussion without smiley faces? There's no need to be patronising because my view is different to yours

You’re being very defensive there eddy. I’m not being condescending, I’m querying your assertions.  I love listening to other views, it’s how I learn. But I’m entitled to ask for sources which is both acceptable and the norm here.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Yes, really, the Penal Laws played a large part in the Irish famine. Although the worst of the laws had been repelled about 1790 the consequences of those laws were certainly evident through several generations.

History is written by the victor, and much of it is designed to fulfil a political need, create or bolster a national identity, whatever. Most is based on propaganda be it written by Irish Catholic clerics, British MPs or Russian revolutionaries. The job of a historian is to dig deeper, to question everything and not to accept ‘dogma’ that has been served up by self-serving politicians. I believe that you are incorrect because:

• The worst of the Penal Laws had been repealed more than 60 years before the Great Famine. Additionally, the bulk of those laws never at most times affected the ‘peasantry’ and most others of the population, because they were largely ignored. It requires more than a considerable stretch of the imagination to blame them for the Famine. (I’m not being pejorative on ‘peasant’, I’m using the term to classify the rural landless/cottier /labourer class)

I don't see how anyone could expect events 60 years before to have no effect. 60 years is a very short time for economic disadvantage to even out. Slavery ended in the US 160 years ago but the economic disadvantage of African Americans today is impossible to avoid. It is very hard to know what would have happened if penal laws and associated laws were never enacted but there is a case to be made that they had an impact.

pedroeibar1

robp wrote: »

I don't see how anyone could expect events 60 years before to have no effect. 60 years is a very short time for economic disadvantage to even out. Slavery ended in the US 160 years ago but the economic disadvantage of African Americans today is impossible to avoid. It is very hard to know what would have happened if penal laws and associated laws were never enacted but there is a case to be made that they had an impact.

Well why do you not make that case? Steddyedddy’s assertion

It's more accurate to say the penal laws, food exports and blight caused the famine

was on similar lines but he ran off after his arguments were knocked on the head.
Of course blight as a cause is a no-brainer, and while some food left the country a lot more was imported, so Ireland was a net importer of food. If the Penal Laws had an impact, it was minor, and considerably less than the impact of the Napoleonic Wars or the discovery of an agricultural use for guano and its rampant distribution here from the 1830s. Why not stretch to blaming the RDS for advocating its use? For the craic of it why not argue that the landlords were blameless – they were financially broke because the tenants were unable to pay the rent and thus as landlords were short of the cash to fund the relief system in accordance with the law?

It also is senseless to compare the life of a slave in the US with the life of an Irish landless labourer. Irish people had rights (legal & civil), a slave had none. Also, for the fun of it, taking personal liberty out of the equation, it could be argued that life was a lot worse for the Irish labourer. One of the Royal Dukes (William, who went on to be King William IV) was against the abolition of slavery in the Colonies because he said that the that British slaves were well looked after, and that freedom would do the slaves little good, adding that the living standard among freemen in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland was worse than that among slaves in the West Indies. He also was a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, but how many know that because it is not taught?

One of Obama's big problems was the current anti-black, racist view that remains heavily evident below the surface in US politics. Unspoken, but very present, even to this day.
The great hero of Irish nationalists, Mitchell, was diehard supporter of the Confederates and slavery. It is strange 'that' little fact is rarely mentioned in Ireland, but then, only his daring escape from Australia is taught, not his racism and what he got up to in the USA.

robp

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

robp wrote: »

I don't see how anyone could expect events 60 years before to have no effect. 60 years is a very short time for economic disadvantage to even out. Slavery ended in the US 160 years ago but the economic disadvantage of African Americans today is impossible to avoid. It is very hard to know what would have happened if penal laws and associated laws were never enacted but there is a case to be made that they had an impact.

Well why do you not make that case? Steddyedddy’s assertion

It's more accurate to say the penal laws, food exports and blight caused the famine

 was on similar lines but he ran off after his arguments were knocked on the head.
 Of course blight as a cause is a no-brainer, and while some food left the country a lot more was imported, so Ireland was a net importer of food. If the Penal Laws had an impact, it was minor, and considerably less than the impact of the Napoleonic Wars or the discovery of an agricultural use for guano and its rampant distribution here from the 1830s.  Why not stretch to blaming the RDS for advocating its use? For the craic of it why not argue that the landlords were blameless – they were financially broke because the tenants were unable to pay the rent and thus as landlords were short of the cash to fund the relief system in accordance with the law?

 It also is senseless to compare the life of a slave in the US with the life of an Irish landless labourer. Irish people had rights (legal & civil), a slave had none. Also, for the fun of it, taking personal liberty out of the equation, it could be argued that life was a lot worse for the Irish labourer. One of the Royal Dukes (William, who went on to be King William IV) was against the abolition of slavery in the Colonies because he said that the that British slaves were well looked after, and that freedom would do the slaves little good, adding that the living standard among freemen in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland was worse than that among slaves in the West Indies.  He also was a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, but how many know that because it is not taught?

One of Obama's big problems was the current anti-black, racist view that remains heavily evident below the surface in US politics. Unspoken, but very present, even to this day.  
The great hero of Irish nationalists, Mitchell, was diehard supporter of the Confederates and slavery. It is strange 'that' little fact is rarely mentioned in Ireland, but then, only his daring escape from Australia is taught, not his racism and what he got up to in the USA.

It is not senseless. African Americans are an excellent group to compare with. Of course racism exists today but the vast bulk of African American economic disadvantage relates to inherited disadvantage. It is surprising that anyone thinks that graduation rates, life expectancy and earnings would just level out in a few years if people's attutdes changed.  That is evident in the fact that some ethnic minorities have outpaced whites in the US.

pedroeibar1

robp wrote: »

It is not senseless. African Americans are an excellent group to compare with.

This has nothing to do with the Penal Laws. Nor is there much point in debating if you believe that slavery in the Americas was the equivalent of the legal position of the bulk of the Irish under a series of laws that were rarely used and then only selectively against a few dozens of people (mainly clergy). Slaves had no rights under law.

A summary of South Carolina slave Laws:

Prop VI. " The slave, being personal chattel, is at all times liable to be sold absolutely, or mortgaged or leased, at the will of his master"
Prop. XI "Slaves cannot redeem themselves, nor obtain a change of masters, though cruel treatment may have rendered such change necessary for their personal safety"
Prop. X. "Slaves being objects of property, if injured by third persons, their owners, may bring suit, and recover damages for the injury."
Prop. XI "Slaves can make no contract."
Prop. XII Slavery is heriditary and perpetual

(George M. Stroud, A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery, p. 88-89).

Under the Penal Laws education was available, but eventually laws had to be passed to force the Irish to send their children to school; poverty was the main reason they did not attend. The middle classes could and did educate their sons and for university pre 1793 some did send them to the many continental Irish Colleges.

The clause (quoted by steddyeddy) about no Catholic owning a horse valued at more than £5 is another bit of pointlessness. About two thirds of the population lived in poverty as a result of the dire Irish economy. Pre-Famine a labourer got 4d per day. If lucky he got paid work for about 60 days a year or 240d, which is £1. That was needed for his family's survival. It would take his entire income for five years to save for a horse of that value. He then had to buy feed as he had no grazing land. That clause is - in today's terms - like banning someone on the dole from owning a Rolls Royce - s/he could neither afford to buy or run one.

Your insistance on a Black - Irish comparison shows a lack of understanding of both the Penal laws, the legal condition of a slave and the history of 'Black' America. Thirty years after the US Civil War there was a series of enactments that were designed to continue the enforcement of oppression against coloured people. Look up the Jim Crow laws. And, FWIW, it is in that era (mainly post 1890's) that most of the Confederate statues were erected, more as a means of rubbing the Blacks' noses in it than celebrating a bunch of long-dead generals. That is why there is a movement to remove those statues.

robp

I am finding your reply baffling. I don't really what you mean with the word 'equivalent', but I certainly never said anything is 'equivalent'. You can't just dismiss my point based on what you imagined I said. I stand by what I said, African Americans are an excellent comparison group as the context is well studied and there is tons of data.

I am aware of the Jim Crow laws. They are many states without Jim Crow laws and disadvantage continues in those states too just like where they existed. The last of Jim Crow laws ended in the 1960s and yet we haven't seen levelling up in socio-economic indicators of African Americans. The only simple conclusion is that economic disadvantage can take a huge amount of time to overcome. It is hard to prove but I'd wager there is a lot less racism now in the US than there was say in the 1970s but actually you don'td see any accelerating improvement in African American welfare and in some indicators its been getting worse in the last 20-10 years.

pedroeibar1

robp wrote: »

I am finding your reply baffling. .........

Most people here are baffled on how a thread carrying this title has moved (descended?) through blaming the Penal Laws for the Famine to comparing the Irish labourer with the African- American population and slavery.

You have asserted that the

robp wrote: »

……. African Americans are an excellent group to compare with………….

And you later add

robp wrote: »

............ I stand by what I said, African Americans are an excellent comparison group as the context is well studied and there is tons of data.............

Despite your claim that ‘there is tons of data’ you have provided none. You have not shown how the Penal Laws were enforced against the labourer, nor how they Penal Laws affected him economically, nor how they contributed to the Famine nor how a 19th century Irish labourer could compare with his African American counterpart. No comparisons whatsoever. .........

The nearest some posters have been to the topic is that no evidence has been provided by them, contrary to what history requires and (perhaps thereby?) proving that history is badly taught at several levels.

robp

The point is relative economic disadvantage can be passed down through generations, or more precisely the lack of advancement.There is wealth of data to show that and Africans Americans are a great example, ideal for comparison, unfortunately there is a wealthy of data for Landless Irish. Without the penal laws, the wealth of many could have grown in  a small but significant way as it was across Europe, buffering them from blight. I don't know what you think I am arguing but I get the impression you reading so many outrage culture Liam Hogan articles on slavery that that you unable to engage with my point and assume I am drawing some sort of moral equivalence between US slavery and oppressed Irish landless. They urgently need to teach what the word compare means in schools, to counter outrage culture.

steddyeddy

robp wrote: »

I don't see how anyone could expect events 60 years before to have no effect. 60 years is a very short time for economic disadvantage to even out. Slavery ended in the US 160 years ago but the economic disadvantage of African Americans today is impossible to avoid. It is very hard to know what would have happened if penal laws and associated laws were never enacted but there is a case to be made that they had an impact.

Indeed. I think what's at play is a denial of facts to rebuff anything that deviates from a particular narrative.

These were Catholic land holdings following the popery act was introduced:

1688: 25% of land
1704: 14% of land
1776: 5% of land

It's nonsense to say that A) the laws had no effect on Catholic land holdings and the size of the land available for crops didn't contribute to crop monoculture. Catholics, by far the most numerous ethnic group in Ireland and owned 5% of the land. That's a diasaster in the making.

steddyeddy

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Well why do you not make that case? Steddyedddy’s assertion was on similar lines but he ran off after his arguments were knocked on the head.
Of course blight as a cause is a no-brainer, and while some food left the country a lot more was imported, so Ireland was a net importer of food. If the Penal Laws had an impact, it was minor, and considerably less than the impact of the Napoleonic Wars or the discovery of an agricultural use for guano and its rampant distribution here from the 1830s. Why not stretch to blaming the RDS for advocating its use? For the craic of it why not argue that the landlords were blameless – they were financially broke because the tenants were unable to pay the rent and thus as landlords were short of the cash to fund the relief system in accordance with the law?

It also is senseless to compare the life of a slave in the US with the life of an Irish landless labourer. Irish people had rights (legal & civil), a slave had none. Also, for the fun of it, taking personal liberty out of the equation, it could be argued that life was a lot worse for the Irish labourer. One of the Royal Dukes (William, who went on to be King William IV) was against the abolition of slavery in the Colonies because he said that the that British slaves were well looked after, and that freedom would do the slaves little good, adding that the living standard among freemen in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland was worse than that among slaves in the West Indies. He also was a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, but how many know that because it is not taught?

One of Obama's big problems was the current anti-black, racist view that remains heavily evident below the surface in US politics. Unspoken, but very present, even to this day.
The great hero of Irish nationalists, Mitchell, was diehard supporter of the Confederates and slavery. It is strange 'that' little fact is rarely mentioned in Ireland, but then, only his daring escape from Australia is taught, not his racism and what he got up to in the USA.

Hey Pedrobear I'm not sure of your age but making comments like "ran off" isn't indicative of a mature conversation. I'm not yet finished writing a reply to your post, but a lot of what you say seems to be based on a particular narrative rather than common sense conclusions from facts.

Also the poster was using slavery to illustrate trans-generational economic restraints. Not like for like. You might have well have argued that the analogy falls down because Irish weren't black.

pedroeibar1

steddyeddy wrote: »

Hey Pedrobear I'm not sure of your age but making comments like "ran off" isn't indicative of a mature conversation. I'm not yet finished writing a reply to your post, but a lot of what you say seems to be based on a particular narrative rather than common sense conclusions from facts.

Also the poster was using slavery to illustrate trans-generational economic restraints. Not like for like. You might have well have argued that the analogy falls down because Irish weren't black.

My posts are based on fact, usually with sources supplied. I leave 'narrative' to others. Using slavery 'to illustrate trans-generational economic restraints' (or anything else) is more than strange in this debate.

pedroeibar1

steddyeddy wrote: »

Indeed. I think what's at play is a denial of facts to rebuff anything that deviates from a particular narrative.

These were Catholic land holdings following the popery act was introduced:

1688: 25% of land
1704: 14% of land
1776: 5% of land

It's nonsense to say that A) the laws had no effect on Catholic land holdings and the size of the land available for crops didn't contribute to crop monoculture. Catholics, by far the most numerous ethnic group in Ireland and owned 5% of the land. That's a diasaster in the making.

I never said that. Again you appear to be ignoring what I have written; also, it is incorrect to suggest that I even intimated that the Popery Laws had no affect on Catholic landholdings. My point, clearly made. was that the landless labourer was not affected by the land-owning aspects of the Penal Laws. The point I have consistently made has been that the Penal Laws were aimed at breaking the power of the Irish nobility and that the landholding aspect related to the cottier class was not affected as they were not landowners. I suggest you read what I have written and also have a look at Maureen Wall's book.
No point in a debate if your don't read what I write and then attempt to misquote me.

robp

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

steddyeddy wrote: »

Hey Pedrobear I'm not sure of your age but making comments like "ran off" isn't indicative of a mature conversation. I'm not yet finished writing a reply to your post, but a lot of what you say seems to be based on a particular narrative rather than common sense conclusions from facts.

Also the poster was using slavery to illustrate trans-generational economic restraints. Not like for like. You might have well have argued that the analogy falls down because Irish weren't black.

My posts are based on fact, usually with sources supplied. I leave 'narrative'  to others.  Using slavery 'to illustrate trans-generational economic restraints' (or anything else) is more than strange in this debate.

Well that approach is the norm in economics and I would argue that methodologies in the field of economics is the only way one would prove it either way. It would be great to do it from a within population sample but that sort of data is not available in the same way as a US black population. No one has really presented any economic indicators so whether the landless were really unaffected is an unproven theory.

pedroeibar1

robp wrote: »

Well that approach is the norm in economics and I would argue that methodologies in the field of economics is the only way one would prove it either way. It would be great to do it from a within population sample but that sort of data is not available in the same way as a US black population. No one has really presented any economic indicators so whether the landless were really unaffected is an unproven theory.

Sorry, but I have no idea what that means. Would you like to review your syntax?

steddyeddy

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Sorry, but I have no idea what that means. Would you like to review your syntax?

Whoops just seen this P. The poster implies that trans-generational economic effects are well described in the field of economics. You appear to be negating economic circumstance having an effect 60 years down the line.