Ireland's Great Famine and Popular Politics by Enda Delaney Breandán Mac Suibhne

Author:Enda Delaney, Breandán Mac Suibhne [Enda Delaney, Breandán Mac Suibhne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032098197
Google: 3X1mzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2021-06-30T16:12:01+00:00

5 The Great Famine, Land and the Making of the Graziers

David S. Jones

Graziers were extensive commercial farmers who reared large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep on large and sometimes multiple holdings, often comprising well over 100 acres. Some graziers, mainly in the western counties, concentrated on rearing young cattle (stores) as well as sheep, and then sold the cattle after six–eighteen months to another type of grazier, mainly found in north Leinster, who specialized in fattening them for six–twelve months in preparation for slaughter or export to England. Store graziers themselves also exported directly to the English market. Graziers existed well before the Famine. Arthur Young referred on his travels in the later part of the eighteenth century to them and the large herds of cattle they reared. This was echoed in various travelogues and surveys of the early nineteenth century. Despite the switch to tillage during the Napoleonic Wars, graziers became thereafter an increasingly significant element in Irish agriculture.1 This trend was greatly accelerated by the Famine.

Coincident with the expansion of grazing, the first half of the nineteenth century saw the strengthening of certain sections of the commercial and professional classes in cities and towns. Their occupations included banking, accounting, insurance, legal services, estate management, land surveying, construction, retailing, supply distribution and freight forwarding. Also important were small-scale craft-based manufacturing and agricultural processing such as the production of leather goods and flour milling. Such was their wealth that a number from these classes, following the Famine, acquired ownership of estates which were encumbered.

This essay examines how the Famine increased the availability of land for commercial farming and provided opportunities for the graziers to expand their enterprises or establish new ones, thereby becoming a central part of the economy and society of rural Ireland. These opportunities will be attributed to a shift to a more hardheaded and commercially oriented approach to the management of estates, involving both existing estate owners who retained their land and those in the business and professional classes who acquired ownership of estates after the Famine.

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