HISTORY: Improving Ireland? Projectors, Prophets and Profiteers 1641-1786 by Toby Barnard, Four Courts Press, 192pp, £55Toby Barnard's writings on the would-be improvers of Ireland cement his reputation as the most skilled essayist of Irish history today
IRISH PROTESTANTS have frequently been faulted, not least by critics from within their own community, with having failed to advance Protestantism in Ireland during those centuries when they enjoyed a monopoly of power. This, in turn, has led to the mocking accusation that Protestants have had such little confidence in their own beliefs that they permitted the majority of the country's population "to go to Hell their own way".
However, when any of their number did attempt to advance Protestantism through missionary effort, they were charged by Catholic rivals with engaging in proselytism - always a pejorative term when used by Irish Catholics of Protestant action - or were accused by pragmatic state officials with provoking unnecessary social disturbance. Faced with this dilemma, conscientious Protestants, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, lived up to God's expectation of them by investing in "improvement"; a sure formula for bringing the population at large to a more civil condition and possibly to "true religion".
The improvements discussed by Toby Barnard in this book are as follows: the design of elegant mansions with landscaped gardens; the creation of estate villages; the introduction of crops, notably flax, with industrial and trading potential; the better exploitation of fishing and mineral resources; the promotion of advanced crop cultivation and animal husbandry; the enhancement of commerce; and the establishment of charter schools where the youth of the country might be introduced to work discipline, manufacturing skills, and the truths of the Bible.
These schemes were almost all derived from English models of an earlier vintage that were considered relevant for Ireland once peace was restored following the disturbances of the 1640s and the 1690s.
MOST OF THE advocates of improvement in Ireland were Protestant landowners and their agents, parish rectors, and genteel ladies of means, together with the printers, who hoped to make money from publishing the nostrums of their betters. Many of these individuals believed that the secrets of nature had been concealed from humanity as a consequence of Adam's sin and that people would not recover lost wisdom until they had offered repentance, or possibly not until the Second Coming approached. Those who fostered such ideas were providing proof of their righteousness by becoming advocates of improvement.
However, Toby Barnard realises that Catholics also believed that human understanding had been darkened by the Fall, and he identifies four Irish Catholics - the lawyer Patrick Darcy, an unnamed Plunkett from Co Meath, Thomas Browne (Viscount Kenmare), and Charles O'Conor of Belagare - who also wrote in favour of improvement, even if not with the apocalyptic fervour of their Protestant counterparts. The efforts of all were furthered by a sequence of learned societies, notably the Royal Society of London, the Dublin Philosophical Society, the Dublin Society (later the Royal Dublin Society) and the Physico-Historical Society. The promotion of improvement also became part of the "patriot" agenda of the 18th century, not least because dedication to the cause saved the natural leaders of society from luxurious indulgence, which was a sure path to perdition in the next life and degeneracy in this.
Toby Barnard reconstructs the story of improvement in Ireland in seven independent but interlinked essays, each a gem in itself. The book is necessarily episodic because it draws upon the experiences and writings of a carefully chosen few, notably William Petty; Richard Lawrence; John Perceval, second earl of Egmont; and Robert Ffrench of Monivea. This approach means that there are some absentees from his account, most strikingly George Rawdon and the ladies of his household in Moira, who were among the few improvers of their generation whose endeavours were recognised by the scientific public outside Ireland.
Interestingly, Barnard identifies ideological differences that emerged between the pessimists and optimists among the improvers. The former despaired of the intractable character of the Catholic Irish and concluded that the improvement of Ireland required the introduction of more foreign Protestants, while the latter argued from archaeological and literary evidence that the first step to an improved Ireland would be the recovery of a lost golden age, when the population of Ireland had been civil and had even embraced a form of Christianity that approximated reformed religion.
HIS PURSUIT OF this dispute brings Prof Barnard to the longest essay of the book, "Improving Ireland's Past". This essay - hopefully a book in embryo - treats of the debates that were tossed about among English-language authors of the 18th century concerning the history of Ireland. Much in the essay is original, all of it is entertaining, but some elements - notably his delineation of the undignified race between two publishers to be the first to market with an English-language edition of Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn - are but tenuously relevant to the theme of improvement. This, as well as some irritating repetition, is the inevitable consequence of stringing together in unrevised form a sequence of related essays written for various audiences at different times. However, by way of compensation, we do learn a great deal, from different perspectives, concerning the various and varying agendas of Ireland's improvers, and the essays provide witness that Toby Barnard is the most accomplished essayist writing on Irish history today.
Nicholas Canny is director of the Moore Institute at NUI Galway and is president of the Royal Irish Academy. He is currently working on the natural history of the West Indies.