Farmers, Merchants and Priests: The Rise of the Agrarian Petty-Bourgeoisie in Ireland, 1850-85

Abstract

<p>While traditional modes of historical analysis of Irish development have justly focussed upon the national question. on the contradiction between the British Empire and the Irish nation. equally important questions of the development of class struggles within the Irish nation have tended to be obscured. This study seeks to redress the balance by examining the internal forces which determined the ultimate shape of the truncated, partitioned independence achieved in 1921.</p> <p>The fundamental axis of this work can be simply stated. The principal motive force in social development is class conflict. the complex interplay of class contradictions which comprises the systematic framework of a given mode of production. In Ireland, the determinant class struggles in the nineteenth century were the Great Famine of 1848-50 and the Land War of 1879-82. These two events served as the temporal and systematic limits of the crucial formative period for the agrarian petty-bourgeoisie, a class consisting of strong farmers. rural merchants and businessmen ..nd Catholic clergy. Both Famine and Land War represented significant victories for the agrarian petty-bourgeoisie. The first opened the way for them., clearing the social and economic ground for the consolidation of their economic strength; the second allowed them to translate economic strengths into social and political power.</p> <p>The Great Famine was neither the result of divine intervention nor the outcome of British malice. It was more systenlatic -the outcome and resolution of the concrete class contradictions which characterised the tillage system, the predominant form of agriculture in the pre-Famine period. That system appeared as the contrast between commercial production of grain and f!lubsistence cultivation of potatoes. The lynch-pin was the "potato-nexus ", the primary economic form of the exploitation of the cottier-proletariat, upon whose labour depended the commercial output of corn. Around this potato-nexus clustered a set of distinctive features of pre-Famine rural society rapid population growth, increasing immiseration, structural unemployment, and the progressive alienation and subdivision of the land by middlemen, tenant-farmers and cottiers. The land was the fundamental condition of production in pre-eminently agrarian economy; not surprisingly, therefore, it was the source of the most important class struggles throughout the nineteenth century.</p> <p>The potato blight destroyed the foundations of the tillage system; starvation and emigration drastically reduced the agricultural labour force; and the repeal of the Corn Laws quickly altered the central economic incentive for Irish agriculture. The Famine effected a rapid and decisive transformation in the rural class structure. Subdivision was halted; farms became larger and more viable; the population fell steadily, reducing the pressure on the land; and a consistently rising market for animal products brought the key productive force, the strong farmers, into the foreground. Within two decades, Irish agriculture became relatively highly capitalised, as these farmers increased their livestock holdings. The boom during the quartercentury after the Famine generated a distinctive agrarian capitalism. Agriculture became almost entirely commercial; most transactions became monetarised. As the range and quantity of goods on offer and in demand increased, a burgeoning mercantile petty-bourgeoisie arose alongside the farmers. The great failing of the period, however, was the absence of the industrial development which might have absorbed the surplus labour generated by the rising organic composition of capital in agriculture.</p> <p>The translation of economic strength into social and political power is not an automatic process. The second half of this study traces the development of the hegemony of the agrarian petty-bourgeoisie within the Irish nation. The basic force in the process was the Catholic Church. The distinctive Puritanism of Irish Catholicism may be defined as the moral boundaries of the world-view of the rising class. Nor was religion and national identification the only bond, for priests, farmers and merchants were also linked by financial and personal ties.</p> <p>Economic strength, moral authority and political power were tested in the most important arena: the material conflicts for control over the means of production (the Land War) and the subsequent political contest for representation of the Irish nation in the imperial parliament and in local administration. Under the banners of the Land League and Home Rule, a national united front was forged. Led by Parnell, this movement simultaneously reflected and engendered a qualitative advance in the maturity of the agrarian petty-bourgeoisie. In the early 1880s, the Irish farmers, merchants and priests established their claim to rule society, in the interests of the agrarian petty-bourgeoisie but in the name of the whole nation.</p>