Spalpeens, Gombeens, Squireens: Class Relations in Nineteenth Century Ireland
May 22nd, 2010 by Conor McCabe
[Terry Dunne writes:]
A one day interdisciplinary conference aiming to bring together researchers whose work offers an insight into the lives of ordinary people in nineteenth century Ireland. The particular focus is on class as those lives were bound up with production, domination, exploitation and conflict.
Given the relatively sparsely documented nature of this topic and the consequent challenges to research, employing the different approaches represented by different disciplines can be of great utility in giving us a fuller picture.
In addition political/elite history is still the predominate focus of research on the Irish past, but a comprehensive understanding is only possible with a commensurate orientation towards the mass of the population.
It is intended that the conference will attract the participation of people from different fields including post-medieval archaeology, historical geography, historical sociology, social history, and economic history (and others are welcome).
We are particularly interested in involving postgraduate students and early career scholars.
The conference will take place in N.U.I. Maynooth on Saturday the 31st of July 2010.
Persons interested in presenting should send a title and abstract (no more than 250 words), and contact details, to the organising committee – Eoin O’Flaherty and Terry Dunne at classconferencenuim@gmail.com by the 21st of June 2010.
It would be convenient if people interested in attending but not presenting also got in touch by the 21st of June 2010 (so as to help getting an idea of necessary room size etc..).
Sponsored by the Historical-Comparative Research Cluster, Sociology Department, N.U.I. Maynooth.
I’m afraid that title will be able to run and run in application to Irish society
Has your new slum landlord already got you hooked up to the internet Conor ?
O2 have a mobile broadband stick which you can “test-run” for a few days, so I’m using that at the moment. I’m going to get the landline reconnected, though. I just can’t function without the internet. Hopefully by next Sunday I’ll be up and running again.
The house is suitably grotty, but it’s quiet and bright. Perfect for its purpose anyway.
That is an interesting topic. Will Fergus Campbell be there? He wrote a reaslly intereing book on the land question in early 20th century Galway called “Land and Revolution”.
Also, just found out the other day that my mother’s family was one of small band of families that intermarried and kept the best land to themselves in 19th century Offally. (And they weren’t Ango-Irish landlord types).
Just goes to show you that a straight landlord/tenant divide jsut won’t wash.
As in most societies there were layers. This does not mean that the primary divide was not the one between the broad masses and a small group of intermarried aristos on top. In modern society some sections of the workingclass are relatively well off in comparison to say unskilled workers, this does not mean that they are not part of us as distinct to them to use Fintan O’Tooles remark. The tragedy is that some see their interests not as part of the left but as part of the ruling class. For example workers who vote for FF/FG here or the Tories in the UK. I could mention loyalty to ex empires but it would probably upset.
On agrarian matters, what do you think of ribbonism, the caravats an shanavests etc. There is a whole hidden Ireland out there.
Hello Jim, I would have to disagree with you in regard to the primary divide in C19th society being between the broad masses and a small group of intermarried aristos on top. In the pre-famine period I think there would have been significant regional differences so perhaps this may have been true for the North and/or West, but it certainly would not be true for East Munster and Leinster, where, in short, one was likely to have as your employer and/or landlord not the landed proprietor but someone who held a lease from the actual landowner (or a lease from someone who held the original lease) and hence there was a three sided social conflict. The category of ‘tenant farmer’ included people who held (on long leases) hundreds and hundreds of acres and lived in big two storey slated houses. They would not be equivalent to working class people voting for FF in the contemporary period (given the premise that such people are acting against their interests) as this social group of substansial farmers are found as the leading group in the Emancipation campaign and the Tithe War (and probably also in the United Irishmen and the Repeal Association) - that is challenging the ruling elite, whom they were in conflict with as much as they were with the people under them.
Thanks to Conor for putting the event notice up on this site.
5Terry, thats exactly it. That is the hidden Irish history and the cause of much confusion. Something I bet you were not told about in school. I wonder why? A vast chunk of Irish problems were caused by the gradual undermining of the poor and disenfranchised from the 17th century onwards by a ruling elite both Irish and British. Would it not be a flight of fancy to say it probably always went on even before the introduction of a foreign power? Of course the British got all the blame, again I wonder why? Although not a uniquely Irish trait to subdue the poorer in society but I cant think of many other nations which brainwashed its own people into believing something which was not so black and white.
I still stick by my thesis. The primary ruling class was the landed aristo. I stick with Davitt on that. Intermediate layers overexpliuted the poor to try and gain a little margin. This did not make them anything but an intermediate class.
As regards social tension, sure they were hated. But again in a factory it is easier to hate the foreperson (or Irish plant manager) who gives the orders than than a Capitalist elite in SF or wherever who you have never met.
The intermediate renters and agents (like Boycott) were just that intermediate with little security themselves.
On an abstract note it is a pity that the land was not nationalised as was Davitts wish but instead divided in many cases into uneconomic units. In an extreme way the same is happening in Southern Africa where the units will be too small to be economic and the way forward is factory faming on a grand scale rather than small plots where capital investment is impossible.
I may be wrong but am I thinking that you think Emancipation, TithesRepeal and 1798 were diversions from a real class struggle or am I extrapolating madly.
A last note the dominant ruling political class was British Imperialism. It had allies in Ireland , the Church esp. and layers who gleaned some benefit. But in the last analysis it was British Imperialism who ruled.
Jim no one disputes that the primary ruling class were landed proprietors and as you say there was an intermediate class I think we are on the same page there, but that does look different to me though than collapsing everyone into the broad masses plus
‘a small group of intermarried aristos on top’.
Also on ‘The intermediate renters and agents (like Boycott) were just that intermediate with little security themselves’ an agent who is an employee is a different category I think than a leaseholder and someone who held a long lease e.g. for three lives, had accumulated wealth, and better yet held several leases, they had plenty of security, indeed I believe some locally prominent strong farmer families can be traced (remaining in a similar social position) from the late C18th into the C20th, though I can’t say I have ever tried to do this.
My point in regard to the Tithe War and Emancipation (and probably also Repeal and the United Irishmen) is that the fact these were real challenges to the ruling elite shows that social groups like big farmers and middlemen did not occupy a position analogous to foremen or working class people today who vote for FF - that is to say they were acting autonomously of ruling elites.
“I would have to disagree with you in regard to the primary divide in C19th society being between the broad masses and a small group of intermarried aristos on top”
Perhaps I did not see that you were more nuanced than I thought.
On a generalised point not necessarily on this topic I am allergic to those who would see some element of the elites in Ireland as being progressive, to use the old term, a progressive natiuonal bourgeoisie. Given the disaster we are in I would wonder is there a bourgeoisie proper at all rather than the middle men of old in a new guise. As the maoists of my knowledge used to say a comprador bourgeoisie getting a cut but not creating anything.
Wish I could attend. Would love to hear more about shanavests, caravets, ribbonmen etc. and what they represented.
“Wish I could attend. Would love to hear more about shanavests, caravets, ribbonmen etc. and what they represented.”
Unfortunate you cannot. Hopefully there will be similar events announced here in the future.
Sounds like a very interesting gathering. I am working on a biography of Thomas Aloysius Hickey, who left Ireland in 1892 and ended up becoming a newspaper editor and prime organizer of the pre-war Socialist Party in Texas. Hickey learned the machinist’s trade in Dublin in the late 1880’s, but I cannot find any information on what life and work would have been like for him during this time. Does anyone have suggestions about sources? Thanks, Peter Buckingham, Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon, USA
Hi Peter, Terry Dunne would be better to answer this than myself, but in the meantime I would suggest three titles which may be of help to you.
Fintan Lane, The Origins of Modern Irish Socialism 1881-1896 (Cork, 1997)
John W. Boyle. Irish Labor Movement in the Nineteenth Century (Washington DC, 1988)
Jacinta Prunty, Dublin Slums, 1800-1925: Study in Urban Geography (Dublin 1995)
There is a conference fee of €10 which includes light refreshments and lunch.
The summary programme is below.
Spalpeens, Gombeens and Squireens: Class Relations in 19th Century Ireland
Conference
Saturday July 31st, 10am – 6pm
AX1, Auxilla House, North Campus, NUI Maynooth
9:30 – 9:45 Registration, Auxilia Foyer
9:45 – 10:00 Welcome; Eoin Flaherty (NUIM) and Terry Dunne (MIC)
10:00am – 11:00am Industry and Proto-Industry
Education in 19th century model villages in Ireland
Elena O’ Brien, Archaeology, (UCC)
Mapping social class in 19th century Ireland: towards a more systematic approach
Dr. Jane Gray, Sociology, (NUI Maynooth)
11:00am – 11:15am Break
11:15am – 12:15pm Health
‘In death there is no remembrance’: The evidence of post-medieval health from human skeletal remains
Linda G. Lynch, Archaeology, (UCC)
The silent voice: Narratives of health at the 19th century watering-place
Dr. Ronan Foley, Geography, (NUIM)
12:15pm – 12:30pm Break
12:30pm – 1:30pm Late Nineteenth Century
Social change in 19th century Ireland: The advent of narrow gauge railways in Munster
Edel Barry, Archaeology, (UCC)
The poorest classes? Language and social class in post-famine Ireland
Dr. Nicholas Wolf, History, (Virginia Commonwealth University)
1:30pm – 2:30pm Lunch
2:30pm – 4:00pm Pre-Famine
Class conflict in the 1830s Tithe War
Noreen Higgins-McHugh, History, (UCC)
Between a rock and a hard place: The reality of being a land agent in Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s
Laura Vickers, Moore Institute, (NUIG)
“No more at present from your friend, Captain Rock”: ‘Threatening letters’ and social attitudes in pre-famine Ireland
Terry Dunne, History, (MIC)
4:00pm – 4:15pm Break
4:15pm – 5:15pm Modes of Production
The rundale system in 19th century Ireland: Conceptualising and exploring the ecological dynamics of primitive communism
Eoin Flaherty, Sociology, (NUIM)
‘Wooden idols triumph and human beings are sacrificed’: Marx on legal theft in the Rhineland and Ireland
Dr. Eamonn Slater, Sociology, (NUIM)
Sponsored by the Comparative-Historical Research Cluster; Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth.
Co-conveners: Terry Dunne and Eoin Flaherty.