Cole Greene
British colonial activity in Ireland led to the oppression of the Irish population, who were forced to remain at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. This created widespread poverty in Ireland, and was both a result of and a problem that perpetuated racism and religious intolerance against Irish Catholics. This begs the question, to what extent did Great Britain control Ireland from 1700-1750 socially? In this time period, Britain created an oppressive social hierarchy, exasperated in particular by the Penal laws. According to Alpha History, “The passing of the Penal Laws … discriminated against Catholics in religion, education and politics”, which in turn created a British disdain of the Irish.
Starting the 18th century, Great Britain’s conquest of Ireland created a dramatic shift in Irish lives. In 1690, Protestant forces triumphed over supporters of Catholic King James II in the Williamite War in Ireland, marking the beginning of “Protestant Ascendancy” (Alpha History). Described in the documentary “History of Modern Ireland (1500-2000)”, “Catholic land ownership fell significantly. Catholics could not vote or hold public office, they could not run schools, they could not enter legal professions, and they could not bear arms.” This introduces a long era of British rule over Irish through the Penal Laws. Irish Catholics were encouraged to denounce Catholicism and convert to Protestantism in exchange for their rights; they could either follow their faith and lose virtually all their rights, or succumb to British ideals and retain these rights.
The Penal Laws played a significant role in the social oppression of Irish Catholics by removing their rights, thus making their position in society inferior. “By the 4th clause … if the child … pretends to be a Protestant, it is to be taken from its own father, and put into the hands of a Protestant relation … The 6th clause renders Papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments” (Parnell). These are but a few clauses enforced as the Penal Laws. The fourth clause strips parents of their own children if they “pretend to be a Protestant”, with religion enough reason to tear families apart. Additionally, the 6th clause provides proof to how Irish people were kept into a “lower status” than English people: without the power to purchase any manors, Irish were forced to rent their homes, and many were driven to homelessness because of unreasonable pricing from British landowners. Their inability to own property and its results were weaponized by British to paint Irish people as incapable. Irish opposition to these unjust laws amounted in next to nothing: “They, however, appealed in vain to the English Cabinet” (Parnell). Powerless to have these laws repealed, they, as a result, suffered, as shown by a letter from Hugh Boulter to the Duke of Newcastle about the state of Ireland, shocked by the widespread famine and death in Ireland (Parnell).
Under the rule of Penal Laws, Catholic communities faced dramatic change, destroying entire networks and fostering hostility. From “Catholics under the Penal Laws”, “In Louth, where as late as the 1710s the three largest estates were catholic, the catholic interest receded subsequently” (Cullen). Louth, a predominantly Catholic area in Ireland, was wiped out under Penal Laws, all in the span of a few decades. Another city suffered equally, if not more: Ulster. “It had no surviving catholic landed interest … catholics sank to a Minority position … The absence of a landed class was reflected in the general poverty of Ulster catholics.” (Cullen). Penal Laws created a shortage in Irish Catholic representation; they became a minority, and their class lowered because the abject poverty they lived in. Not only were they poor financially, but also poor in representation in legislation and religion, with British Penal Laws creating barriers to Irish Catholic opportunity. Karen Harvey’s The Bellews of Mount Bellew furthers this perspective, providing insight into the impact of penal laws on one particular Catholic family, the Bellews. British rule encouraged conversion to Protestantism, with Catholics denied economic equality. This motif is repeated throughout the novel, one example being the detailing of Protestant English landlords’ leases: if the Catholic leaser gained more than a 1/3 of rent price in profit, the land could be confiscated (Harvey). William Lecky’s A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century describes the resulting rising anger of Irish people eventually manifesting in the United Irishmen movement later in the 18th century. “The loyalty displayed by the militia and the Catholic peasantry when the French lay in Bantry Bay, made a great impression on all classes of politicians” (Lecky). Irish Catholic discontent because of British rule, primarily the Penal laws, festered into a desire for foreign-rescue, in this case, from France.
Not only were those of Irish Catholic descent discriminated against by the Penal Laws, the Irish were also viewed as inferior and primitive. Hayton’s “From Barbarian to Burlesque: English Images of the Irish” discusses how the stereotyping of Irish to be “wild” and “beast-like” was weaponized by the British to justify imperialistic practices. Hayton writes, “there remains a strong sense of racial, rather than national or religious, differentiation.” Irish people were thought of by English as something entirely other due to their race. The British viewed the Irish with contempt not only due to racial stereotypes, but also due to poverty. They believed that “With poverty went ignorance and, in this line of thinking, with ignorance went stupidity. A stage Irishman could be introduced as ‘a true half-witted bog-trotter’”(Hayton). Despite British rule creating the abject poverty that Irish people lived in, British blamed Irish poverty on their intellect. In a private letter from 1662, Irish are described to be “scarce one removed from savages, if not in the same form of brutality. Their houses are like hog-sties . . . and they themselves swine-like in all things but shape”(Hayton). This letter utilises animalistic diction, likening Irish to pigs, making them sub-human. This reveals how the Irish were thought of by the British: subhuman, animal-like, wild, dim-witted, and slovenly. Irish people were stereotyped to be this way because of their poverty, ironically poverty that the British helped create, and these beliefs eventually merged with race. British Protestant description of Catholicism reveals another lens regarding the stigma around Catholic Irish: “phraseology used by Sir Richard Cocks, an English Whig M.P. and vociferous anti-Catholic polemicist of the 1720s: ‘a ridiculous, strange and detestable religion’, indeed, not so much a religion at all, to some Protestants, as a political system, sustaining itself by persecution and by duping the gullible with mumbo-jumbo”(Hayton). The religion of Irish Catholics itself is viewed to be “ridiculous”, “stupid”, something only pitiable people would believe. The disdain that Protestant English people had for Catholicism leaked into their views of Irish people. They believed that Catholicism was “mumbo-jumbo”; therefore they believed that Irish Catholics were gullible and stupid for being Catholic. This typecasting of Irish Catholics just because they were Catholic may have started the racial profiling of Irish people, or this may have stemmed from a wide variety of factors; nevertheless Irish Catholics and Irish in general were viewed as “beastly”, “subhuman”, and “stupid”, a stigma that created a social dynamic in Ireland where Irish were inferior to British, providing an excuse for British colonization of Ireland.
Many issues arose from the creation of a social dynamic oppressive towards Irish Catholics; one might wonder, could these have been resolved if England sought a different means of ruling Ireland? Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal allows us to explore this inquiry. In A Modest Proposal, Swift describes his plan to have the children in Ireland become, rather than a burden, “useful” to society, by selling these children as commodities. This satirical work hides Swift’s true solution to this issue in the subtext: by allowing the Irish to gain back their basic rights, allowing them to become educated, own land, trade, etc, this perpetual cycle of poverty rampant in Ireland would end. Instead of having oppressive rule and tenants “eat away” at Irish lives, they could make changes to their laws in order to improve the quality of life of Irish people. Despite what we may hypothesise could have been, the truth of the matter is that Britain, from 1700-1750, did in fact oppress Irish people through Penal Laws, establishing an idea of Irish inferiority, and creating a social hierarchy with the British at the top, and the Irish at the bottom.
Works Cited
Alpha History. “Anglo-Irish Relations 1690-1914.” Alpha History, 19 Sept. 2017, alphahistory.com/northernireland/anglo-irish-relations-1690-1914/.
Cullen, Louis. “Catholics under the Penal Laws.” Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an Dá Chultúr, vol. 1, 1986, pp. 23–36. JSTOR, hXp://www.jstor.org/stable/30070812. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
Fire of Learning. “History of Modern Ireland (1500-2000) | Documentary.” YouTube, 2018, youtu.be/vFoxstHK-Kg?si=WMepLdq–LQtNiCs.
Harvey, Karen Jeanne. The Bellews of Mount Bellew: A Catholic Gentry Family in the Age of the Penal Laws. University Microfilms International, 1987.
Hayton, David. “From Barbarian to Burlesque: English Images of the Irish c.1660-1750.” Irish Economic and Social History, vol. 15, 1988, pp. 5–31. JSTOR, hXp://www.jstor.org/stable/24337345. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole. A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. Longmans, Green, 1913.
Parnell, Henry. A History of the Penal Laws Against the Irish Catholics. J. Harding, 1808.
Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 1997
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