“That Coming Storm”: The Irish Poor Law, Colonial Biopolitics, and the Great Famine

Abstract

The potato blight, Phythophthora infestans, was first recorded in Dublin in August 1845. Over the next five years the Irish potato harvest failed four times, triggering mass hunger and disease on a magnitude the European continent had not endured for centuries. During this period, over one million Irish perished and a further two million fled the land, never to return. Thus, in a relatively short period, three million people were dead or gone. The purpose of this article is to situate this story of human deprivation and suffering within the context of an evolving “colonial biopolitics” aimed at regenerating Irish society. Although recent writings demonstrate an interest in the regimes of power that produce famine, there has been little attempt to connect such arguments to the theory and practice of colonialism, especially its investments in the liberal goals of development and social improvement. Building on the perspectives of Michel Foucault, particularly his discussion of “biopolitics,” I argue that the Great Famine was shaped by a regulatory order willing to exploit catastrophe to further the aims of population reform. The article draws particular attention to the development of an Irish Poor Law system, arguing that this legislative debate exposes the growing perception that agricultural rationalization, fiscal restructuring, and population clearances were necessary to “ameliorate” and “improve” Irish society. This twining of relief and development facilitated dangerous distinctions between productive and unproductive life and allowed the colonial state to apply its own sovereign remedy to Irish poverty.

El tizón tardío o pulgón de la papa, Phythophthora infestans, se registró por primera vez en Dublín en agosto de 1845. En los siguientes cinco años, la cosecha irlandesa de la papa fracasó cuatro veces, desencadenando hambre y enfermedades masivas de una magnitud que el continente europeo no había experimentado en siglos. Durante este periodo, más de un millón de irlandeses perecieron y dos millones más abandonaron el país para nunca más regresar. Así que, en un periodo de tiempo relativamente corto, tres millones de personas estaban muertas o se habían ido. El propósito de este artículo es situar esta historia de privación y sufrimiento humanos dentro del contexto de una “biopolítica colonial” en desarrollo dirigida a regenerar la sociedad irlandesa. Aunque escritos recientes demuestran un interés en los regímenes de poder que producen la hambruna, se han realizado pocos intentos para relacionar tales argumentos con la teoría y práctica del colonialismo, especialmente sus inversiones en las metas liberales de desarrollo y mejoramiento social. Tomando como base las perspectivas de Michel Foucault, particularmente su discusión sobre “biopolítica,” mi argumento es que la Gran Hambruna fue conformada por un orden regulatorio dispuesto a explotar la catástrofe para favorecer sus propósitos de reforma de la población. Este artículo llama la atención particularmente al desarrollo del sistema de la Ley de Pobres de Irlanda, aduciendo que este debate legislativo expone la creciente percepción de que la racionalización agrícola, la reestructuración fiscal y los despejes de la población fueron necesarios para “mejorar” y “perfeccionar” la sociedad irlandesa. Esta combinación de alivio y desarrollo facilitó distinciones peligrosas entre vida productiva y vida improductiva, y permitió que el estado colonial aplicara su propio remedio soberano a la pobreza irlandesa.

Key words:

• biopolitics
• colonialism
• famine
• Ireland
• political economy

关键词:

• 生物政治学
• 殖民主义
• 饥荒
• 爱尔兰
• 政治经济学

Palabras claves:

• biopolítica
• colonialismo
• hambruna
• Irlanda
• economía política

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge and thank Jim and Nancy Duncan, Derek Gregory, Gerry Kearns, Steve Legg, Estelle Levin, John Morrissey, and three anonymous referees for their comments on previous drafts of this article. Audrey Kobayashi provided timely and constructive editorial advice and Owen Tucker, at the University of Cambridge, produced the accompanying maps. A version of this article was presented at the School of Geographical Sciences, Bristol University, and the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield. I would like to thank both audiences for their thoughtful feedback. Any remaining errors and omissions are my sole responsibility.

Notes

1. This is not to overstate the case. The economic historian Cormac Ó Gráda (1993, 99–100) puts the point well:

• [T]hemes central to mainstream famine history research have until recently been ignored in Irish work. So, for example, the basic point in Amartya Sen's Poverty and Famines (1981), that starvation is not the product of food shortfall only but a function of a market solution to unjust property rights, was made (in so many words) by contemporaries in Ireland during the famine, but has found no echo in the “serious” Irish literature. Again, Ambirajan's classic treatments of government policy toward Indian famines in the nineteenth century leave little doubt but that the constraints imposed by ideology on the state bureaucracy added to mass starvation, but Irish historians tend to be silent or apologetic on that issue also.

2. The most notable exceptions are Ó Gráda (1993) and Mokyr (1983).

3. Likewise, scholars working on nineteenth-century Indian famines (Ambirajan 1976; Currie 1991; Hall-Matthews 1999; Davis 2001; Sharma 2001) have noted strong connections with Ireland in the 1840s.

4. Field Day began with the founding of the Field Day Theatre Company (1980) by playwright Brian Friel and actor Stephen Rea. The company's first production was Friel's play Translations. What began as an artistic collaboration became a politico-cultural project designed to question the stultifying stereotypes of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland and notions of cultural identity more generally. In 1990, the Field Day commissioned a series of pamphlets by three prominent scholars—Terry Eagleton, Frederic Jameson, and Edward Said—who have all made significant contributions to literary criticism, history, politics, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory. The company also launched The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (five volumes between 1991 and 2002) and a number of important monographs as part of its Critical Conditions series (1996–present). Most recently, in the spring of 2005, Field Day launched a new peer-reviewed journal called Field Day Review under the editorship of Seamus Deane and Breandán Mac Suibhne. See Eagleton, Jameson, and Said (1990).

5. Recently, a number of geographers have begun to explore how Foucault's notion of governmentality and biopolitics might apply to Europe's overseas colonies (see especially Nally 2006; Duncan 2007; Legg 2007).

6. It must have been difficult for Victorian readers to grasp the scale of these “Leviathan” workhouses and Poor Law unions. Here, for example, is James Tuke (1847, 19) trying to impress on his readers the enormity of a Poor Law union in the extreme west of Ireland:

• The union of Ballina (County Mayo) is about sixty miles wide by 30 miles in breadth, or nearly three times the size of Middlesex, containing an area of 509,154 acres, with a population of 120,797 persons, and a net annual value of £95,774. Let us suppose a union stretching from London to Buckingham or Oxford in one direction, and from London to Basingstoke in another, with a poorhouse at St. Albans, and we shall have a good idea of the extent of the Ballina union.

7. The Labour-Rate Act (9th and 10th Vict., cap. 107. “An Act to Facilitate the Employment of the Labouring Poor for the limited Period in the distressed Districts in Ireland”) substituted a system of task work for the daily wages previously paid. It was advised that payment should be below what was normally provided in the district.

8. See Kearns and Laxton (2002, 13–40) on the colonial fusion of care and calculation regarding the Famine Irish in Liverpool.

9. A more explicit connection between the Old and the New World colonies is drawn by Canny (1978, 17–44) and more recently by Smyth (2006). This interpretation is challenged by Hiram Morgan (1991, 50–55). For a response see Hadfield (1993, 15–19).

10. For an interesting account of policing see Griffin (1995–1996, 21–25). In relation to the Irish Famine see Lowe (1994, 47–67).

11. 14th and 15th Vict., cap. 68. “An Act to provide for better Distribution, Support, and Management of Medical Charities in Ireland; and to amend an Act of the Eleventh Year of Her Majesty, to Provide for the Execution of the Laws for the relief of the Poor in Ireland.”

12. Massive advances were also made in the science of cartography with the establishment of an Ordnance Survey Office in 1824. By 1846, the entire island had been surveyed at a scale of six inches to one mile, making Ireland the first country in the world to be entirely mapped at such detail (see Andrews 1975; B. Klein 2001). Here my reading has been influenced by Nikolas Rose (1999), especially chapters one and two.

13. Nicholls also states that the prohibition of drunkenness and the careful supervision of the insane were also necessary as a “measure of police” (British Parliament 1837c, 207, 232).

14. Whatley later recalled “receiving a pretty broad hint, once or twice while the inquiry was going on, what the government expected us to report … there was a very great desire among many persons in England, to assimilate the two countries, as far as regarded poor laws” (cited in Collison Black 1960, 108 footnote 5)

15. Hannah Arendt (1958, 176) has written that: “all our definitions are distinctions, [which is] why we are unable to say what anything is without distinguishing it from something else.”

16. The commission did, however, recommend providing relief for “the aged and infirm, orphans, helpless widows with young children, and destitute persons in general.”

17. 1st and 2nd Vict., cap. 56. “An act for the more effectual relief of the destitute poor in Ireland.”

18. Considerable sums of money were also donated for famine relief by individuals around the world (these sums are partly detailed in Trevelyan 1848). The Quakers and the Catholic Church also raised large sums of money. The role of religious organizations in the relief process is complex and vexed. There are claims and counterclaims of proselytism. However, where monies were donated to the government, government also determined their use. Moreover, the administration took charitable grain and refused to allow those groups that had donated it to oversee its release from the government's provision stores. For further discussion see Newsinger (1996, 11–20). My thanks to Gerry Kearns for this last point.

19. In his report, Nicholls (British Parliament 1837c, 205) states that he visited Dublin, Carlow, Kilkenny, Thurles, Cashell [sic], Tipperary, Clonmell [sic], Cork, Killarney, Limerick, Galway, Connemara, Westport, Castlebar, Ballina, Sligo, Enniskillen, Armagh, and Newry.

20. In England, for instance, Edward Lytton Bulwer (later known as Bulwer-Lytton) announced that the Poor Law established a new theory of government, what he christened “directive government”:

• At present, my friends, you only perceive the government when it knocks at your door for taxes; you couple with its name the idea not of protection, but of extortion; but I would wish that you should see the Government educating your children, and encouraging your science, and ameliorating the condition of your poor; I wish you to warm while you utter its very name, with a grateful and reverent sense of enlightenment and protection; I wish you to behold all your great Public Blessings repose beneath its shadow. (Himmelfarb 1985, 173)

21. Nicholls evokes a spiralling vision of vice worthy of Dante's Inferno:

• Ireland is now suffering under a circle of evils, producing and reproducing one another. Want of capital produces want of employment—want of employment, turbulence and misery—turbulence and misery, insecurity—insecurity prevents the introduction or accumulation of capital—and so on. Until this circle is broken, the evils must continue, and probably augment. (British Parliament 1837c, 214)

It is unsurprising that the originating sin should be a “want of capital” because Nicholls associates capital with individual industry: “Capital we are told is the accumulation of savings, which are the fruits of industry, which again is nourished and supported by its own progeny” (British Parliament 1837c, 214, 211; Nicholls [1856] 1967, 91).

22. Nicholls (British Parliament 1837c, 224) rationalized:

• In forming the country into unions, it will I think be necessary to observe the civil rather than the ecclesiastical boundaries of parishes, but cases will arise in which it may be requisite to disregard all such boundaries—it being obviously more important that the district to be united should be compact, convenient and accessible, and be naturally connected with its centre.

23. A Scottish Poor Law Act was formulated in 1845 (see O'Brien 1988, 161).

24. During the first quarter of 1839 almost 100,000 people were granted outdoor assistance in England and Wales (see Burke 1987, 99).

25. Moreover, one commentator has argued: “George Nicholls' rejection of the Scottish system was founded less on its unsuitability to Irish conditions than on the more fundamental point that recipients of such relief came to regard it as a right rather than as a gift” (see O'Brien 1988, 161).

26. “The workhouses are as handsome in their outward elevation, as their contents are the contrary,” commented one tourist (Osborne 1850, 51).

27. Nicholls understood that the application of the “workhouse test” presented problems in Ireland where the standard of living was already so low that the establishment of still lower conditions would be almost impossible, or in Nicholls's words, “inexpedient.” Hence, strict confinement and segregation acted as an important surrogate for the “workhouse test” as applied in England (British Parliament 1837c, 216).

28. It is important to recall that power is never unidirectional and at certain times and places individual agency might distort, reverse, and oppose these edicts and norms. Indeed, Dymphna McLoughlin (2002, 723) reminds us that “in practice the amount of control functionaries had over their inmates varied considerably.” Others have written with considerable insight on resistance within Poor Law workhouses (Edsall 1971; Clark 2005; Green 2006).

29. These classifications are slightly different from those presented in British Parliament (1840; see also O'Brien 1986, 115).

30. Apprenticeships were sometimes used to relieve the “problem” of orphaned children, to ensure that they became “useful members of the community” (British Parliament 1837c, 231). At the Ennis workhouse in 1849, for example, Osborne (1850, 38–39) observed that every article of clothing had been made from raw materials spun within the workhouse.

31. In 1804, an anonymous traveller (Grimes 1980, 25–26) described a Dublin House of Industry as a “horrid scene of filth, profaneness, and obscenity … a great seminary of prostitution, thieves, plunderers, and rebels.” It is worth noting the use of the word seminary in this memorable description.

32. For an excellent discussion of this colonial ruse in another nineteenth-century setting see Olund (2002, 129–57).

33. Economist Amartya Sen (2000, 175) notes Trevelyan's derogatory remarks on Irish diet to which he issued the sharp response: “it is rather rare for an Englishman to find a suitable occasion for making international criticism of culinary art.” Moreover, Sen says, the “pointing of an accusing finger at the meagreness of the diet of the Irish poor well illustrates the tendency to blame the victim.”

34. Moreover, Trevelyan (1848, 195) wrote: “One main cause of the fact which has been so often remarked, that the Irishman works better out of Ireland than in it, is, that when he leaves his native country and obtains regular employment elsewhere he commences at the same time a more strengthening diet than the potato” (for the Commissioners dietary recommendations see British Parliament (1836a, 63–66).

35. For a description of consolidation on Lord Lucan's estate see Ashworth's (1850, 114) account.

36. The following sections on the “politics of aid” focus primarily on the role of the state. There were of course nonstate programs of aid during the Great Famine, of which the work of Quakers in the Society of Friends is perhaps the best known example. It is worth pointing out, however, that private philanthropy and nonstate contributions of aid were also accused of ulterior motives. See note 17 and Bowen (1970).

37. The repeal of the Corn Laws was a hugely significant moment in political and economic history. “Short of the civil war,” writes Woodham-Smith (1962, 44), “no issue in English history has provoked such passion as Corn Law repeal.” It is surprising, therefore, that this issue has received relatively little attention in histories of the Irish Famine.

38. On the issue of “economic experiments” the linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky (1999, 357) has written:

• There have been quite a few experiments in economic development in the modern era, and though it is doubtlessly wise to be wary of sweeping generalisations, still they do exhibit some regularities that are hard to ignore. One is that the designers seem to come out quite well, though the experimental subjects, who rarely sign consent forms, quite often take a beating.

39. Food strategies would be a more appropriate term. The use of food aid to pursue ulterior economic agendas is still evident today. To take just one example, the U.S. Food for Peace Program also acts as a convenient means to dispose of food surpluses. See Millman et al. (1990, 315).

40. Irish exceptionality constantly demanded new departures in law. Indeed, the familiar pattern of centralization, government by administration, and the deployment of exceptional juridical powers was clearly extended to the new policy of “free trade in land.” In Robert Peel's words:

• I believe, although the ordinary courts of law are admirably suited for the conduct of ordinary proceedings and for the administration of justice between man and man, without extraordinary courts, yet I must say, when great social difficulties have to be contended with, my belief is that you should step beyond the limit of those ordinary courts of justice and establish some special tribunal, unfettered by reference to technical rules, for the purpose of solving those difficulties. (cited in Burn 1848, 70)

W. L. Burn explains what Peel had in mind: “The powers of the Commissioners were absolute. They were empowered to make their own rules of court, subjected only to the sanction of the Irish Privy Council; they could decide whether or not to sell and at what price; there was no appeal from them except by their own leave” (Burn 1848, 70).

41. K. T. Hoppen (1999, 61) rightly reads the Gregory Clause as a social experiment that belies the government's stated commitment to nonintervention: “That it was also a piece of (heartless) social engineering and might, therefore, convincingly be portrayed as outright interventionism does not, however, seem to have struck an administration otherwise so publicly anxious to declare its adherence to the principles of laissez-faire.” This example of “outright intervention” also seems to have escaped many contemporary historians of the famine.

42. Hugh Dorian's comments suggest that the law very often stands between the destitute and the provisions that might keep them live, a process Amartya Sen (1981, 166) terms “legality with a vengeance.” Indeed, so-called nonentitlement transfers (stealing, looting, brigandage, etc.) are important ways of reclaiming a “right to food” that the state or more powerful social groups have forcefully denied. Nonentitlement transfers were significant during the Great Famine, as statistics on “famine crime” readily indicate (see Lowe 1994). To do more justice to this argument would require a separate article.

43. For an exemplary discussion on the destruction of rundale and clachan farming life see Anderson (1995, 447–69) and Whelan (1995, 19–33).

44. Travel writers frequently espoused the same logic. Writing on the eve of the famine, for example, James Johnson (1844, 298) declared emigration a “temporary PLACEBO” and “a safety valve to allow the redundant population to flow through.”

45. Ever since Malthus first claimed that famine is a necessary “positive check” for overpopulation, debate on Ireland's population and its influence on the outcome of the famine has loomed large in Irish historical scholarship. Indeed, the weight of the Malthusian perspective led Joel Mokyr (1983, 30) to proclaim “Irish history is demographic history.” Earlier studies tended to affirm the Malthusian logic that Ireland was seriously “overpopulated,” and that a population cull through famine was unavoidable. However, Malthusianism has always had its fair share of critics. Susan George (cited in Mitchell 2002, 212) cautions that whenever you hear the word “overpopulation” you should reach, “if not for your revolver, at least for your calculator.” As Timothy Mitchell (2002, 212) elaborates, the problem is that we cannot be sure as to what norm the term over is supposed to relate. Mokyr's own landmark study takes this injunction seriously. After detailed quantitative analysis Mokyr (1983, 51) concludes, “The burden of proof has now been shifted to those who still consider the history of Ireland in the nineteenth century to be a classical case of Malthusian disaster.”

46. Englishman John Ashworth came to Ireland in 1850 in a bid to buy land after the selling of encumbered estates. His account is therefore deeply interesting, although I do not have space to deal with it here (Ashworth 1850).

47. The figures are based on Kennedy et al. (1999, 162ff). The authors wisely point out three important caveats regarding the figures. First, before the Great Famine, many of the small plots had been measured in Irish acres, whereas from 1847 sizes were recorded in statute acres (one Irish acre being equal to 1.619835 statute acres). Second, the earlier assessments excluded so-called wastelands, which was not the case after 1847. Third, the figures for 1845 refer to the number of persons holding land, whereas the figures for 1847 and 1851 refer to the number of holdings. These facts make exact computations extremely difficult.

48. Interestingly, Liz Young (1996) has compared government policy in Ireland with the clearances in the Scottish Highlands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This same comparison was made much earlier in the pages of The New York Daily Tribune by Karl Marx. On the colonial-capitalist logic of expropriation, Marx wrote: “The process of clearing estates which, in Scotland, we have just now described, was carried out in England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Thomas Morus already complains of it in the beginning of the 16th century. It was performed in Scotland in the beginning of the 19th, and in Ireland it is now in full progress” (Marx and Engels 1971, 53).

49. Indeed, it is extremely doubtful that very many famines fit a genocidal model. For further discussion on the legality of famine and questions of juridical responsibility, see Marcus's (2003, 246–47) typology of “faminogenic behaviour.”