Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland, 1662–2016

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Douglas Kanter, Patrick Walsh

   Pages 1-17

3. Ireland, Mercantilism, and the Navigation Acts, 1660–1686

   • James Guilfoyle

   Pages 19-42

4. Politics, Parliament, Patriot Opinion, and the Irish National Debt in the Age of Jonathan Swift

   • Charles Ivar McGrath

   Pages 43-87

5. Patterns of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

   • Patrick Walsh

   Pages 89-119

6. Finance and Politics in Ireland, 1801–17

   • Trevor McCavery

   Pages 121-150

7. That ‘Absurd Phantom Called Free Trade’: The Politics of Protection in Ireland, c. 1829–52

   • Andrew Shields

   Pages 151-172

8. Resistance to the Collection of Rates Under the Poor Law, 1842–44

   • Mel Cousins

   Pages 173-198

9. Taxation and the Economics of Nationalism in 1840s Ireland

   • Charles Read

   Pages 199-225

10. The Campaign Against Over-Taxation, 1863–65: A Reappraisal

    • Douglas Kanter

    Pages 227-252

11. Tides of Change and Changing Sides: The Collection of Rates in the Irish War of Independence, 1919–21

    • Robin J. C. Adams

    Pages 253-275

12. Taxation and the Revolutionary Inheritance: Tax Proposals, Legitimacy, and the Irish Free State, 1922–32

    • Jason Knirck

    Pages 277-304

13. The Economic War and the Pamphlet War

    • Aidan Beatty

    Pages 305-330

14. The Irish Tax State and Historical Legacies: Slowly Converging Capacity, Persistent Unwillingness to Pay

    • Michelle D’Arcy, Marina Nistotskaya

    Pages 331-355

15. Back Matter

    Pages 357-367

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This book examines the politics of taxation in Ireland between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. Combining political, economic, and policy history, it contributes to a growing interdisciplinary literature on public finance, while also providing context for the ongoing debate on taxation and austerity in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland illuminates a neglected aspect of Irish history, and will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and members of the public who wish to understand a subject that is central to the modern Irish experience.

• Ireland
• Taxation
• Financial history
• Fiscal policy
• Economic policy
• Social policy

“This is an excellent and important book. Kanter and Walsh do an able job as both writers and editors, and ensure that several significant themes are capably developed across multiple essays. As a result, this volume makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of taxation in Ireland and invites further research.” (Karen Sonnelitter, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Vol. 34, 2019)

“The book is very well compiled, the panel of contributors well chosen and it reads coherently—aided by the chronological order of studies. … This provides us with a very clear and detailed illustration of the maxim in the introduction that ‘taxation is first and foremost a political issue’, and that the formulation and implementation of taxation initiatives are determined politically rather than forideological or philosophical reasons.” (Ciarán Mac an Bhaird, Studia Hibernica, Vol. 45, 2019)
“This is an important and agenda-setting collection on a significant and long-neglected subject. From the Navigation Acts to the tax marches of the 1970s, the contributions to this ambitious and timely volume attest to the centrality of the ability to tax to the operational capacity of the state, and to the resistance and resentment it inevitably provoked.” (James Kelly, Cregan Professor of History, Dublin City University, Ireland)

“Kanter, Walsh, and their colleagues have produced a landmark collection of essays on both the high politics of Irish taxation and the popular reaction to it since the seventeenth century. This work gives convincing evidence for their contention that fiscal policy has affected not only the economy but also the state, national identity, and civic morality.” (James H. Murphy, Director of Irish Studies, Boston College, USA)

 

• Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

  Douglas Kanter

• Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

  Patrick Walsh

Douglas Kanter is associate professor of modern British, Irish, and British imperial history at Florida Atlantic University, USA. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is the author of The Making of British Unionism, 1740-1848: Politics, Government and the Anglo-Irish Constitutional Relationship (2009).

Patrick Walsh is assistant professor of eighteenth-century Irish history at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His publications include The South Sea Bubble and Ireland: Money, Banking and Investment, 1690-1721 (Woodbridge, 2014) and with Aaron Graham The British and Irish Fiscal-Military States, 1660-1783 (London, 2016).

Policies and ethics