Political Economy and Colonial Ireland

Through the first half of the nineteenth 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 neutralising class antagonisms, and, above all, the political objective of tranquillising' 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.