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Ireland Under the Union 1800–1900

Ireland's social and economic transformation across the century

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 1

Overview

Social structure of pre-Famine rural Ireland, essential causes of the Famine and demographic consequences of the Famine.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

How did emigration become a permanent feature of Irish life?

Numbers

How did education and literacy change over the century?

Key term

How did economic change in the north-east differ from the rest of the country?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Describe the social structure of pre-Famine rural Ireland.

    Model answer

    Beneath a small class of proprietors came comfortable tenant farmers, then a great mass of smallholders, cottiers and labourers who held a cabin and a patch of conacre and lived almost entirely on potatoes.

  2. 2

    Why did the pre-Famine population grow so fast?

    Model answer

    Early marriage, the subdivision of holdings among sons and the extraordinary yield of the potato on poor ground allowed the population to reach 8.2 million by 1841.

  3. 3

    What happened to industry outside Ulster in the first half of the century?

    Model answer

    Domestic spinning and weaving in the south and west were destroyed by mechanised British competition after 1815, so the countryside lost the by-employment that had supplemented tiny holdings.

  4. 4

    What were the essential causes of the Famine?

    Model answer

    A population dependent on a single vulnerable crop, holdings too small to yield anything else, tenures that gave no security and no relief system designed for general failure met a blight that destroyed the potato in successive years from 1845.

  5. 5

    What were the demographic consequences of the Famine?

    Model answer

    Roughly a million people died and well over a million emigrated, the population fell from 8.2 million in 1841 to about 6.55 million in 1851, and it continued to fall for the rest of the century.

  6. 6

    How did landholding change after the Famine?

    Model answer

    Subdivision gave way to consolidation, the smallest holdings and the cottier class largely disappeared, farms passed undivided to a single heir, and much tillage was turned over to cattle.

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