The Slow Failure

by Daly, Mary E.

• ISBN13: 9780299212902
• ISBN10: 0299212904
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-23
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

Today Ireland's population is rising, immigration outpaces emigration, most families have two or at most three children, and full-time farmers are in steady decline. But the opposite was true for more than a century, from the great famine of the 1840s until the 1960s. Between 1922 and 1966most of the first fifty years after independencethe population of Ireland was falling, in the 1950s as rapidly as in the 1880s. Mary Daly's The Slow Failure examines not just the reasons for the decline, but the responses to it by politicians, academics, journalists, churchmen, and others who publicly agonized over their nation's "slow failure." Eager to reverse population decline but fearful that economic development would undermine Irish national identity, they fashioned statistical evidence to support ultimately fruitless policies to encourage large, rural farm families. Focusing on both Irish government and society, Daly places Ireland's population history in the mainstream history of independent Ireland. Daly's research reveals how pastoral visions of an ideal Ireland made it virtually impossible to reverse the fall in population. Promoting large families, for example, contributed to late marriages, actually slowing population growth further. The crucial issue of emigration failed to attract serious government attention except during World War II; successive Irish governments refused to provide welfare services for emigrants, leaving that role to the Catholic Church. Daly takes these and other elements of an often-sad story, weaving them into essential reading for understanding modern Irish history

Author Biography

Mary E. Daly is professor of history and dean of the Faculty of Arts, University College Dublin. Her many books include A Social and Economic History of Ireland since 1800; The Famine in Ireland; Industrial Development and Irish National Identity: 1922–39; and Women and Work in Ireland.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
List of Abbreviations	xiii
1 The Pathology of Irish Demographic History	3	(18)
2 Saving Rural Ireland: 1920-1960	21	(54)
3 Marriages, Births, and Fertility: The Irish Family	75	(63)
4 The Irish State and Its Emigrants: 1922-1954	138	(45)
5 The Vanishing Irish: 1954-1961	183	(39)
6 1961-1971: "A Worthy Homeland for the Irish People"?	222	(34)
7 "A Ticket to London Is a Ticket to Hell": Emigrants, Emigrant Welfare, and Images of Ireland	256	(73)
Statistical Appendix	329	(2)
Notes	331	(64)
Bibliography	395	(22)
Index	417