Political Economy and Colonial Ireland

In 19th century Ireland, consensus was sought in the new discipline of political economy which claimed to transcend all divisions. The authors explore the failure of that mission in the wake of the great famine of 1846-47.
Through the first half of the 19th century, there was a widespread notion that political economy was little known and not highly thought of in Ireland, and that the Irish and Roman Catholic "character" was either "non-economic" or "anti-economic". Such economic ignorance came to be seen as a major cause of Irish backwardness and of social divisions. The educational system was identified as the chief non-coercive means of establishing hegemony over the Irish, with political economy playing a leading role in promoting the "economically" progressive virtues (seen as English and rational) of self-interest and individualism, the "socially" desirable objective of neutralizing class antagonisms, and, above all, the "political" objective of "tranquillizing" Ireland and assimilating it to English norms, the better to promote the integrity of Empire. In a country so spectacularly divided as Ireland, ideological consensus was sought in that allegedly value-free and incontrovertible form of knowledge, political economy. But this book argues that political economy was partisan and defended the social, political and ideological status quo. This book should be of interest to lecturers and student