The Problem of Victorian Ireland

It would be a mistake to think that Ireland had no ‘Victorian’ era, properly speaking. This would be to lapse into the common trap of thinking that the Irish experience is entirely summed up by recounting a tale of ruralism, poverty, emigration and opposition to the British state. An understanding of the varied Irish experience in the mid-century wards against the ‘ruin, decay, rags and misery’ school of history. It is the contention of some recent work, notably by Gray and Comerford, that Ireland should be placed within the context of the mid-Victorian period of stability, economic growth and sociocultural transformation. An obvious point of departure is Queen Victoria's four visits to Ireland – the first in 1849, the second in 1853, the third in 1861 and the final one in 1900. In all, she spent five weeks in the country during a 63-year reign. Her visits were, on the whole, magnificently successful and lend at least surface credibility to the notion of a Victorian Ireland. More meaningfully, to talk about mid-Victorian Ireland is to situate the country very much within the framework of contemporaneous developments in Britain. A boom period from the 1850s to 1875 saw general levels of prosperity inch up and the quality of life enhanced by a multitude of converging developments in transportation, technology, domestic appliances, food stuffs and leisure. This story cannot, however, be unproblematically mapped onto Ireland.