State and People in Ireland, 1820-45

The quarter century after 1820 saw the establishment of some of the most fundamental state interventions in the lives of ordinary people in Ireland. They included a primary education system, a national police force, a network of local courts and a system of poor relief. These projects were underpinned by a simultaneous development, the centralisation of knowledge and information about Irish society. The first full population census was taken in 1821, the country was mapped by the Ordnance Survey in the 1820s and 1830s, and a series of state reports examined a comprehensive range of issues concerning economic, social and religious life.

This course examines this question by taking the more important state reports of this period as a starting point. For seminar discussion and for the written project, students will read the reports and analyse them both as official discourse about Ireland and as blueprints for policy initiatives.

Introductory Reading:
Theodore M Porter, ?Genres and objects of social inquiry, from the enlightenment to 1890? in Theodore Porter and Dorothy Ross (eds), The Cambridge History of Science Vol. 7. The Modern Social Sciences (2002), p.13-32; Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, Ireland Before the Famine (1972), Ch.3, ?The state and the people?; T.P. O'Neill, British Parliamentary papers : a monograph on blue books (1968)