Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Class and Community in Provincial Ireland, 1851–1914 pp 1–24Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 155 Accesses

Abstract

This book argues that the lower classes in Victorian and Edwardian provincial Ireland were not an inarticulate mass, but rather they were sophisticated and politically aware in their own right. Their experiences have gone largely unrecorded and this book redresses this imbalance by deliberately focusing upon their experiences in order to further develop our understanding of the complex class relations in provincial Ireland. The lower classes developed their own identity and interests which were expressed in a vigorous, democratic popular culture. The complexities of social relations in provincial Ireland are best understood through a micro-study of this nature because of the presence of the large urban centre of Ballinasloe, county Galway, that was surrounded by and dependent upon a rural hinterland for survival, with an emphasis on the particularism of regional identity through the prism of a community in flux.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   34.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Evidence of Matt Harris, 16 July 1889, Parnell Commission, vol. 1, p. 179, Q. 94,630.

  2. 2.

    Brian Casey, ‘The battle of Saunders’ Fort’, in South East Galway Archaeological and Historical Society Newsletter (Spring 2013).

  3. 3.

    For published and unpublished work on Woodford and the Saunders eviction, see Casey, ‘The battle of Saunders’ Fort’; L.P. Curtis, The depiction of eviction in Ireland, 1845–1910; Anne Finnegan, ‘The land war in south-east Galway, 1879–1890’ (MA thesis, NUI Galway, 1974); Thomas Feeney, ‘The Woodford evictions’ (MEd thesis, NUI Galway, 1976) and Miriam Moffit, The Clanricarde planters and land agitation in east Galway (Dublin, 2011).

  4. 4.

    David W. Howell, ‘The land question in nineteenth-century Wales, Ireland and Scotland: A comparative study’, Agricultural Historical Review 61, no. 1 (2013), p. 90.

  5. 5.

    K.D.M. Snell, Parish and belonging: Community, identity and welfare in England and Wales, 1700–1950 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 13–14.

  6. 6.

    David Howell, The rural poor in eighteenth-century Wales (Cardiff, 2000); James Hunter, The making of the Crofting community (Edinburgh, 1976, 2000, 2010); E.P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (London, 1963); Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, 1976).

  7. 7.

    David F. Crew, ‘Alltagsgeschichte: A new history from below’, Central European History 22, no. 3/4 (1989), p. 397.

  8. 8.

    Michael Huggins, Social conflict in pre-Famine Ireland: The case of county Roscommon (Dublin, 2007); Liana Vardi, The land and the loom: Peasants and profit in northern France, 1630–1800 (Durham, NC, 1993); Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen.

  9. 9.

    For some examples of discussions on class relations in Ireland, see: Paul Bew, Land and the national question in Ireland, 1858–82 (London, 1980); idem, Conflict and conciliation in Ireland, 1890–1910 (Oxford, 1987); John W. Boyle, ‘A marginal figure: The Irish rural labourer’ in Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly Jr. (eds.), Irish peasants: Violence and political unrest, 1780–1914 (Dublin, 1983), pp. 311–38; Fergus Campbell, Land and revolution: Nationalist politics in the west of Ireland, 1891–1921 (Oxford, 2005); Maura Cronin, Country, class or craft? The politicisation of the skilled artisan in nineteenth-century Cork (Cork, 1994); John Cunningham, Labour in the west of Ireland, working life and struggle, 1890–1914 (Belfast, 1995); L.P. Curtis Jr., ‘On class and class conflict in the Land War’ in Irish Economic and Social History viii (1981), pp. 86–94; David Fitzpatrick, ‘Class, family and rural unrest in nineteenth century Ireland’, in P.J. Drudy (ed.), Ireland, land, politics and people (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 37–75; Brian Graham and Susan Hood, ‘“Every creed and party”: Town tenant protest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland’, Journal of Historical Geography xxiv, no. 2 (Apr. 1998), pp. 170–87; Donald Jordan, Land and popular politics in Ireland: County Mayo from the Plantation to the Land War (Cambridge, 1994); Fintan Lane, ‘Rural labourers, social change and politics in late nineteenth century Ireland’, in Fintan Lane and Donal Ó Drisceoil (eds.), Politics and the Irish working class, 1830–1945 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 113–39; P.G. Lane, ‘Agricultural labourers and the land question’, in Carla King (ed.), Famine, land and culture in Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 101–16; Gerard Moran, ‘The Land War, urban destitution and town tenant protest, 1879–1882’, Saothar 20 (1995), pp. 17–32.

  10. 10.

    Martyn Lyons, The writing culture of ordinary people in Europe, c. 1860–1920 (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 1–2.

  11. 11.

    Thomas Summerhill, Harvest of dissent: Agrarianism in nineteenth-century New York (Chicago, 2005), p. 173.

  12. 12.

    Crew, ‘Alltagsgeschichte’, pp. 398, 406.

  13. 13.

    Alun Howkins, Poor labouring men: Rural radicalism in Norfolk, 1870–1923 (London, 1985), p. 15.

  14. 14.

    Séamas Mac Philib, ‘The Irish landlord system in folk tradition: Impact and image’ (PhD thesis, Department of Irish Folklore, UCD, 1990), p. 2.

  15. 15.

    For more, see David Dickson, Dublin: The making of a capital (Dublin, 2014); Mary E. Daly, Dublin, the deposed capital: A social and economic history, 1860–1914 (Cork, 1984); Jacinta Prunty, Dublin slums, 1800–1925: A study in urban geography (Dublin, 1998) and Ruth McManus, Dublin, 1910–1940: Shaping the city and suburbs (Dublin, 2001).

  16. 16.

    See Philip Bull, Land, politics and nationalism: a study of the Irish land question (Dublin, 1996); Campbell, Land and revolution; Samuel Clark, Social Origins of the Irish War (Princeton, 1979); Terence Dooley, The decline of the Big House in Ireland. A study of Irish landed families 1860–1960 (Dublin, 2001); David Seth Jones, Graziers, land reform and political conflict in Ireland (Washington, DC, 1995).

  17. 17.

    Howard Newby, ‘The deferential dialectic’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 17, no. 2 (Apr. 1975), p. 158.

  18. 18.

    Howard Newby, The deferential worker: A study of farm workers in East Anglia (London, 1977), p. 48.

  19. 19.

    Newby, The deferential worker, p. 49.

  20. 20.

    Newby, ‘The deferential dialectic’, pp. 144–51.

  21. 21.

    Newby, ‘The deferential dialectic’, p. 150.

  22. 22.

    Kevin Whelan, ‘Towns and village in Ireland: A socio-cultural perspective’, The Irish Review 5 (1988), p. 36.

  23. 23.

    Crew, ‘Alltagsgeschichte’, pp. 402–3, 405.

  24. 24.

    Crew, ‘Alltagsgeschichte’, p. 396.

  25. 25.

    Crew, ‘Alltagsgeschichte’, p. 395.

  26. 26.

    Howell, ‘The land question’, p. 91; Mac Philib, ‘The Irish landlord system’, pp. 107–9.

  27. 27.

    Crew, ‘Alltagsgeschichte’, pp. 395–7.

  28. 28.

    Paul Rouse, Ireland’s own soil: Government and agriculture in Ireland, 1945 to 1965 (Dublin, 2000), p. xiii.

  29. 29.

    See Ciara Breathnach, The congested districts boards of Ireland, 1891–1923 (Dublin, 2005); Gerard Moran, ‘James Hack Tuke and his schemes for assisted emigration from the west of Ireland’, History Ireland 21 (May/June 2013).

  30. 30.

    K.T. Hoppen, Elections, politics and society in Ireland, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984), p. 242.

  31. 31.

    See Campbell, Land and revolution, conclusion.

  32. 32.

    See Maeve Mulryan-Moloney, Nineteenth-century elementary education in the archdiocese of Tuam (Dublin, 2001).

  33. 33.

    P.K. Egan, The parish of Ballinasloe: its history from the earliest time to the present century (Galway, 1994), chapter 12.

  34. 34.

    Cit. in Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, p. 359.

  35. 35.

    On the ‘challenging collectivity’, see Samuel Clark, Social origins of the Irish Land War (Princeton, 1979), chapter 8.

  36. 36.

    R.V. Comerford, The Fenians in context: Irish politics and society, 1848–82 (Dublin, 1998), W.L. Feingold, The revolt of the tenantry: The transformation of local government in Ireland, 1872–1886 (Boston, 1984).

  37. 37.

    Thompson, The making, pp. 663, 669.

  38. 38.

    Stephen P. Frank, ‘Popular justice, community and culture amongst the Russian peasantry, 1870–1900’, in Ben Elkof and Stephen P. Frank (eds.), The world of the Russian peasant: Post-emancipation culture and society (London, 1990), pp. 134–6.

  39. 39.

    Eugenio Biagini, Liberty, retrenchment and reform. Popular liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992); idem, British democracy and Irish nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, 2007); idem, Citizenship and community. Liberals, radicals and collective identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge, 1996); Ewen A. Cameron, Land for the people? The British government and the Scottish Highlands, c.1880–1925 (East Linton, 1996); Patricia Lynch, The Liberal party in rural England 1885–1910: Radicalism and community (Oxford, 2003); Andrew G. Newby, The life and times of Edward McHugh (1853–1915), Land reformer, trade unionist and labour activist (New York, 2005); idem, Ireland, radicalism and the Scottish Highlands, c.1870–1912 (Edinburgh, 2007).

  40. 40.

    David Cannadine, The decline and fall of the British aristocracy (London, 1990), p. 139.

References

Official Publications

Secondary Sources

  • Bew, Paul, Land and the national question in Ireland, 1858–82 (London, 1980).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bew, Paul, Conflict and conciliation in Ireland, 1890–1910 (Oxford, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  • Biagini, Eugenio F., Liberty, retrenchment and reform. Popular liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  • Biagini, Eugenio F. (ed.), Citizenship and community. Liberals, radicals and collective identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  • Biagini, Eugenio F., British democracy and Irish nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, 2007).

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyle, John W., ‘A marginal figure: The Irish rural labourer’, in Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly Jr. (eds.), Irish peasants: Violence and political unrest, 1780–1914 (Dublin, 1983), pp. 311–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breathnach, Ciara, The congested districts boards of Ireland, 1891–1923 (Dublin, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bull, Philip, Land, politics and nationalism: A study of the Irish land question (Dublin, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, Fergus, Land and revolution: Nationalist politics in the west of Ireland, 1891–1921 (Oxford, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, Ewen A., Land for the people? The British government and the Scottish Highlands, c.1880–1925 (East Linton, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cannadine, David, The decline and fall of the British aristocracy (London, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  • Casey, Brian, ‘The battle of Saunders’ Fort’, in South East Galway Archaeological and Historical Society Newsletter (Spring 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Samuel, Social origins of the Irish Land War (Princeton, 1979).

    Google Scholar 

  • Comerford, R.V., The Fenians in context: Irish politics and society, 1848–82 (Dublin, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  • Crew, David F., ‘Alltagsgeschichte: A new history from below’, Central European History 22, no. 3/4 (1989), pp. 393–407.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronin, Maura, Country, class or craft? The politicisation of the skilled artisan in nineteenth-century Cork (Cork, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cunningham, John, Labour in the west of Ireland, working life and struggle, 1890–1914 (Belfast, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  • Curtis, L.P. Jr., ‘On class and class conflict in the Land War’, Irish Economic and Social History viii (1981), pp. 86–94.

    Google Scholar 

  • Curtis, L.P., The depiction of eviction in Ireland, 1845–1910 (Dublin, 2011).

    Google Scholar 

  • Daly, Mary E., Dublin, the deposed capital: A social and economic history, 1860–1914 (Cork, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  • Dickson, David, Dublin: The making of a capital (Dublin, 2014).

    Google Scholar 

  • Dooley, Terence, The decline of the Big House in Ireland. A study of Irish landed families 1860–1960 (Dublin, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  • Egan, P.K., The parish of Ballinasloe: Its history from the earliest time to the present century (Galway, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  • Feeney, Thomas, ‘The Woodford evictions’ (MEd thesis, NUI Galway, 1976).

    Google Scholar 

  • Feingold, W.L., The revolt of the tenantry: The transformation of local government in Ireland, 1872–1886 (Boston, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  • Finnegan, Anne, ‘The land war in south-east Galway, 1879–1890’ (MA thesis, NUI Galway, 1974).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzpatrick, David, ‘Class, family and rural unrest in nineteenth century Ireland’, in P.J. Drudy (ed.), Ireland, land, politics and people (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 37–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Stephen P., ‘Popular justice, community and culture amongst the Russian peasantry, 1870–1900’, in Ben Elkof and Stephen P. Frank (eds.), The world of the Russian peasant: Post-emancipation culture and society (London, 1990), pp. 134–6.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, Brian and Susan Hood, ‘“Every creed and party”: Town tenant protest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland’, Journal of Historical Geography xxiv, no. 2 (Apr. 1998), pp. 170–87.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoppen, K.T., Elections, politics and society in Ireland, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  • Howell, David W., The rural poor in eighteenth-century Wales (Cardiff, 2000).

    Google Scholar 

  • Howell, David W., ‘The land question in nineteenth-century Wales, Ireland and Scotland: A comparative study’, Agricultural Historical Review 61, no. 1 (2013), pp. 83–110.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howkins, Alun, Poor labouring men: Rural radicalism in Norfolk, 1870–1923 (London, 1985).

    Google Scholar 

  • Huggins, Michael, Social conflict in pre-Famine Ireland: The case of county Roscommon (Dublin, 2007).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunter, James, The making of the Crofting community (Edinburgh, 1976, 2000, 2010).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, David Seth, Graziers, land reform and political conflict in Ireland (Washington, DC, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jordan, Donald, Land and popular politics in Ireland: County Mayo from the Plantation to the Land War (Cambridge, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lane, Fintan, ‘Rural labourers, social change and politics in late nineteenth century Ireland’, in Fintan Lane and Donal Ó Drisceoil (eds.), Politics and the Irish working class, 1830–1945 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 113–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lane, P.G., ‘Agricultural labourers and the land question’, in Carla King (ed.), Famine, land and culture in Ireland (Dublin, 2000), pp. 101–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lynch, Patricia, The Liberal party in rural England 1885–1910: Radicalism and community (Oxford, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyons, Martyn, The writing culture of ordinary people in Europe, c. 1860–1920 (Cambridge, 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  • McManus, Ruth, Dublin, 1910–1940: Shaping the city and suburbs (Dublin, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  • Mac Philib, Seamus, ‘The Irish landlord system in folk tradition: Impact and image’ (PhD thesis, UCD, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  • Moffit, Miriam, The Clanricarde planters and land agitation in east Galway (Dublin, 2011).

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, Gerard, ‘The Land War, urban destitution and town tenant protest, 1879–1882’, Saothar 20 (1995), pp. 17–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, Gerard, ‘James Hack Tuke and his schemes for assisted emigration from the west of Ireland’, History Ireland 21 (May/June 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  • Mulryan-Moloney, Maeve, Nineteenth-century elementary education in the archdiocese of Tuam (Dublin, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  • Newby, Andrew G., The life and times of Edward McHugh (1853–1915), Land reformer, trade unionist and labour activist (New York, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  • Newby, Andrew G., Ireland, radicalism and the Scottish Highlands, c.1870–1912 (Edinburgh, 2007).

    Google Scholar 

  • Newby, Howard, ‘The deferential dialectic’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 17, no. 2 (Apr. 1975), pp. 139–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newby, Howard, The deferential worker: A study of farm workers in East Anglia (London, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  • Prunty, Jacinta, Dublin slums, 1800–1925: A study in urban geography (Dublin, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rouse, Paul, Ireland’s own soil: Government and agriculture in Ireland, 1945 to 1965 (Dublin, 2000).

    Google Scholar 

  • Snell, K.D.M., Parish and belonging: Community, identity and welfare in England and Wales, 1700–1950 (Cambridge, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  • Summerhill, Thomas, Harvest of dissent: Agrarianism in nineteenth-century New York (Chicago, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E.P., The making of the English working class (London, 1963).

    Google Scholar 

  • Vardi, Liana, The land and the loom: Peasants and profit in northern France, 1630–1800 (Durham, NC, 1993).

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, 1976).

    Google Scholar 

  • Whelan, Kevin, ‘Towns and village in Ireland: A socio-cultural perspective’, The Irish Review 5 (1988), pp. 34–43.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Brian Casey

Authors
  1. Brian Casey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Casey, B. (2018). Introduction. In: Class and Community in Provincial Ireland, 1851–1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71120-1_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71120-1_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71119-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71120-1

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation