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Dispossession has a long and tortuous history in Ireland, reaching
back to the eleventh century. In the Victorian era, evictions
became major social, cultural and political events, especially with
the notorious clearances of the Great Famine years. In numbers,
evictions declined dramatically after the mid-1850s, but in terms
of media attention and political import they reached their zenith
in the 1880s after the founding of the Irish National Land League.
When tenantry defended their abodes, reporters and artists flocked
to the scene and their descriptions of these conflicts form the
central part of this book. Drawing on memoirs, ballads, poems,
folklore and novels and providing numerous illustrations of
contemporary prints and photographs, Curtis provides the first
book-length study of rural evictions over a period of sixty years.
Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes
Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and
researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of
the Famine in Ireland from 1845-1852 - the worst demographic
catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are
interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in
Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history,
art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political
economy, literature and music.During the peak years of the great
famine at least 750,000 men, women, and children died from either
starvation or disease. At the same time roughly 350,000 individuals
were driven out of their dwellings. Overall the population of
Ireland fell from some 8.5 million people in 1845 to around 6.5
million in 1851. This ominous drain of humanity continued at a
slower rate well into the twentieth century.Whereas nature could be
blamed for the lethal effects of acute hunger or malnutrition,
human agency caused much of this devastating loss owing to mass
evictions of the poorest tenants and squatters after the agent or
bailiff had served them with the dreaded Notice To Quit. This
richly illustrated pamphlet seeks to contextualize the mass
evictions by focussing on the ideological and economic factors as
well as the role of religious and racial prejudice in prompting
owners to rid their estates of what was known as a "surplus
population." Determined to avoid paying for the maintenance of
unprofitable tenants and squatters, landlords sought to avoid
insolvency by expelling these pauperized peasants. After destroying
their cabins, they consolidated all these small holdings into
larger farms or cattle ranches that were rented to solvent tenants.
Relying on the laws governing land tenure, letting contracts, and
rent, these landlords used the mechanism of eviction to ensure that
their estates would become profitable enough to pay for their own
privileged way of life.Whether or not the victims of eviction
received private or public assistance to emigrate overseas, the
results of these clearances were much the same. Thousands of acres
were converted to pasturage in parts of Munster and Connaught and
small villages or clachans were abandoned. Only the skeletal
remains of stone cottages remained - some of which can still be
seen today.No wonder that many Irish contemporaries called the
evictors "exterminators. "
Dispossession has a long and tortuous history in Ireland, reaching
back to the eleventh century. In the Victorian era, evictions
became major social, cultural and political events, especially with
the notorious clearances of the Great Famine years. In numbers,
evictions declined dramatically after the mid-1850s, but in terms
of media attention and political import they reached their zenith
in the 1880s after the founding of the Irish National Land League.
When tenantry defended their abodes, reporters and artists flocked
to the scene and their descriptions of these conflicts form the
central part of this book. Drawing on memoirs, ballads, poems,
folklore and novels and providing numerous illustrations of
contemporary prints and photographs, Curtis provides the first
book-length study of rural evictions over a period of sixty years.
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