Economic developments within Ireland from the opening of the second millennium to the early fourteenth century are discussed within the context of the European commercial revolution, which, across the same period, promoted exchange at all levels before succumbing to a prolonged and deepening recession. The reversal of trends from expansion to contraction began earlier and was more pronounced in Ireland than in Europe's core commercial regions, partly because of the higher transaction costs consequent upon its peripheral geographical location but more particularly due to its susceptibility to surplus extraction by outsiders: the Papacy, English Crown, and overseas merchants, financiers and shippers. The systemic under-investment and indebtedness consequent upon these unequal relationships conspired to depress domestic demand and reinforce an over-dependence upon primary production. When compounded, within the areas subject to English rule, by weakening central and local government, this created a heightened vulnerability to food shortages, to which a resort to violence by both the Irish and the degenerate English became an ever more standard response. A vicious circle was thereby set in train which entrapped the English Crown's once-prosperous Irish lordship in a self-perpetuating state of impoverishment and under-development.
Joel Mokyr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in December 2025 for his insights into the links between institutions, technological change and economic progress. The research that underpinned his findings contrasts strongly with his early career work. The young Mokyr was, above all, a deductive scholar; his forte was in using abstract models in order to test hypotheses about economic development and underdevelopment. The scholarship of the older Mokyr, by contrast, is highly inductive in approach. Nonetheless, the lessons learned early in his career form part of the accumulated knowledge that fed his later work, and deserve to be better known. This paper offers a critical summary of Mokyr's early research, dating mainly from the 1970s and 1980s, which is interesting and important in its own right.
This article provides the first comprehensive study of the early development of telephony in Ireland. It begins by exploring the technology's promotion, highlighting that this drew on a much older tradition of public displays of electricity often for educational and recreational purposes. The article builds on this overview of electrical display to discuss early telephone users and the establishment of the Telephone Company of Ireland in 1882 to expand telephone provision in the three southern Irish provinces of Leinster, Connaught and Munster. In doing so, it demonstrates that like telephone development elsewhere the company initially focused on businesses but was quick to realise the importance of residential customers. In tracing the history of the company, the article seeks to explore the difficulties it faced in securing sufficient investment to promote this revolutionary technology and expand the nascent telephone network. It shows that ultimately the failure to do so lead to its purchase by the British-based National Telephone Company in 1893.
This article offers the first systematic historical and sociological examination of the Polish diaspora in post-war Ireland, focusing on the period during which the Irish government continued to recognise the Polish government-in-exile in London (until 1957). It identifies and analyses Polish citizens who consciously chose political exile, most of whom came from intellectual and aristocratic circles. Drawing on quantitative data and biographical evidence, the study reconstructs their social and professional backgrounds and situates them within the broader context of Ireland's post-war migration policy toward refugees from Central and Eastern Europe. The findings suggest that while Ireland demonstrated a limited openness to post-war Polish migration, this tolerance was largely confined to members of the higher social strata. Applicants from working-class backgrounds faced considerable administrative barriers, including frequent refusals of entry visas. The article further reveals that the Polish community in Ireland remained small and socially reserved, displaying minimal political or civic engagement. Exceptions were found among Polish students who contributed to academic and cultural life in Irish institutions. Overall, the diaspora tended to view its presence on the island as temporary, leading most members, after several years, to continue their migration elsewhere
This article reveals the multifaceted roles played by Sarah and Ann Allen in the retailing business of their father, William Allen, who was a specialist retailer in maps and printed images at Dame Street, Dublin from 1779 to 1819. Although the shop was inherited by Allen's sons, Sarah and Ann were important contributors to the family business. The procurement of goods for customers on buying trips abroad, correspondence with customers and the production of copied prints were just some of the various roles they undertook. Examining the case study of the Allen family highlights the overlap in domestic and commercial spaces of the early nineteenth-century Dublin print shop. This article also explores how their ability to cultivate relationships with wealthy female clientele meant that the Allen sisters were integral to their father's business in the early nineteenth century.
This essay addresses the question of why Ireland's sheep and wool diminished in economic importance during an era in which they seemed to count so much for other states. From 1780 to 1800, the Irish Government and Parliament enjoyed greater autonomy to shape what Julian Hoppit describes as a 'political economy of wool' but used it to discount sheep and wool. After the Union, there was a belated effort by Irish political elites to promote sheep and wool in Ireland's improvement, but it proved a spectacular failure. Integrating political economy and economic history, the essay shows the importance of wool in Ireland's political dynamics and the profound impact of these politics on the economic history of Irish sheep and wool.
