A Contribution to a Critique of the Idealisation of Irish Agricultural Development (1847–1882)
Eamonn Slater, PhD (Trinity College Dublin, November 1988)
This page introduces Dr Eamonn Slater’s doctoral thesis, a 610-page study that applies Marx’s materialist framework to the development of Irish agriculture from the post-Famine period through the Land Question era (roughly 1847–1882). It is not a “history of farming techniques” in the narrow sense. It’s a structural analysis of how Irish rural society worked, how it was explained (and often mis-explained) by dominant theories, and what those explanations hide about power, rent, land, labour, and colonial conditions.
A full scanned PDF of the thesis is available to download via Google Drive. Note: the file is large (about 68MB) and scanned from the original typescript, so it can be slower to open on mobile and may not be fully searchable/copyable without OCR.
Download: Google Drive link
What this thesis is trying to do (in plain terms)
Most accounts of nineteenth-century Irish agricultural “development” tell a story of progress: modernisation, improvement, rationalisation, and a gradual shift towards capitalist farming. Slater’s thesis challenges that tidy narrative. He argues that the story is repeatedly idealised — presented as if it followed a natural economic logic — while the underlying social relations (especially around land and rent) are treated as secondary details.
Instead, the thesis insists on a different starting point:
- Use Marx’s method from Capital to analyse agriculture as part of a mode of production (a structured set of social relations, not just a market story).
- Identify the real historical categories operating in Ireland, rather than importing categories that fit England or an abstract “free market”.
- Test the dominant explanatory frameworks used in Irish debates and scholarship, and show where they break down.
From that critical survey, Slater argues two central categories keep reappearing and organising rural life:
- Rent (and the social mechanisms that enforce it)
- Rundale (a communal/collective farming system with its own internal logic)
These aren’t treated as side-notes. They become the keys to identifying two pre-capitalist modes of production within nineteenth-century Irish society:
- an Irish feudal mode of production, organised through what Slater calls the rental process, and
- a form of primitive communism, present within the rundale system, structured by tensions between communality and individualism.
The thesis then traces how rundale becomes subsumed under the feudal mode — not simply “replaced by modern farming”, but reorganised through legal, political, and economic pressures until customary rights and communal land relations are broken.
Who this is for (and what you’ll get from reading it)
This thesis is most useful if you care about any of the following:
- Irish agrarian history beyond the usual “improvement” storyline
- The Land Question, landlordism, and the political economy of rent
- Marxist historical sociology and mode-of-production analysis
- The social history of tenancy, labour, rural class relations, and customary rights
- Rundale, communal landholding, and debates about “the Hidden Ireland”
- Ireland’s place in wider discussions of colonialism, modernity, and ecology (especially where land and nature are treated as part of social relations, not scenery)
Students and researchers will find the strongest value in the thesis’s chapter structure: it first dismantles weak explanatory frameworks, then builds a coherent alternative. Readers working in sociology, history, geography, political economy, environmental humanities, or ecological studies of Ireland will recognise why this work continues to matter: it forces you to ask what kind of society Ireland was, and what kinds of “development” were materially possible under landlord power and rent extraction.
What’s inside: chapter-by-chapter guide
Chapter One — Introduction: The Materialistic Key
Sets up the core method: a materialist, structural approach derived from Marx. The point is not to “add Marxist vocabulary” to existing history, but to use Marx’s way of thinking to avoid idealisation and to identify the real organising relations in Irish rural life.
Chapter Two — Irish ‘Classical’ Political Economy and the Irish Economy (1847–1855)
A critical reading of how classical political economy was applied to Ireland after the Famine period. Slater examines Hancock’s analysis of “legal impediments”, then tests the limits of Hancock’s overall framework. The payoff: the thesis shows how early political-economic accounts struggled because their categories didn’t match Ireland’s actual social relations.
Chapter Three — The Evolution of Statistical and Sociological Analyses of Irish Society (1855–1865)
Tracks the shift towards statistical and social inquiry (including Pim’s statistical analysis), and the growth of “value judgements” disguised as neutral measurement. You’ll see how prosperity debates and moralising social science often replace analysis of structure with claims about character, behaviour, or “backwardness”.
Chapter Four — The Internationalisation of Theories on the Land Question (1865–1882)
Moves into wider intellectual currents shaping the Land Question. It engages with economic history (Cliffe Leslie), critiques that work, and then brings in Cairnes and J.S. Mill on “moral regeneration”. It also covers legal historicism and the rehabilitation of customary rights — including how rundale re-enters debate — before concluding on what these frameworks can and cannot explain.
Chapter Five — Breaking the Hegemony of Vulgar Theoretical Frameworks
This chapter is the thesis “turning point”. Slater argues you cannot explain Ireland by leaning on thin, imported theory. He insists on locating the specific historical categories of nineteenth-century Irish social formation, identifying social forms of production, and exposing the methodological failures of “vulgar” theorisation. Rent and rundale emerge as the dominant categories that actually organise the material.
Chapter Six — The Irish Feudal Mode of Production: Rental Value and the Rental Process
Introduces the argument that Ireland contains a feudal mode of production structured through the rental process (rent not as a simple price, but as a social relation enforced through coercion and power). It revisits prior theories of Irish rent, explains why extra-economic coercion matters, and analyses leases for lives, subletting, and middlemen as part of the system — not as local quirks.
Chapter Seven — The Rental Process
Deepens the analysis of how the rental process shapes production and blocks “normal” capitalist valorisation. Topics include the consequences of non-valorisation in production, confiscation of tenants’ fluid capital by landlords’ fixed capital (with attention to the soil condition), “compensation” for improvements, and the structure of monopoly rent through absolute and relative rental value. If you want the thesis’s conceptual engine, this is one of the key chapters.
Chapter Eight — The Production Process of the Irish Feudal Mode of Production
Applies the model to concrete agricultural organisation: spade husbandry, labour arrangements (family, meitheal, cottier), transitions towards plough husbandry, wage labour, and pasture/livestock systems. The goal is to show how everyday production is conditioned by rent relations rather than treated as an independent technical evolution.
Chapter Nine — The Reproduction Process of the Irish Feudal Mode of Production
Shifts from “how work is done” to “how the whole system reproduces itself” over time: uneven development, regional specialisation, population movements as linked to conditions of reproduction, class reproduction (direct producers and landlord class), and the financial costs of reproduction across the tenantry. It culminates in a general law of rental value production within this mode.
Chapter Ten — The Rundale System: Primitive Communism in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Reconstructs rundale as a real social form rather than a romantic leftover. It covers earlier theories of communality in Gaelic society, Marx on primitive communism, and the central contradiction between communality and individualism. It analyses rundale’s social form, technical organisation, development, reproduction, and a general law governing this system of production.
Chapter Eleven — The Subsumption of the Rundale System under the Irish Feudal Mode of Production
Shows how rundale is not simply “outcompeted” but reorganised and broken through legal separation from communal lands and deeper restructuring of conditions of production. It addresses technical and physical reorganisation, “real subsumption” of the rundale direct producer, and includes a detailed case study: Lord Arran’s estate in Co. Donegal, examining effects on production time, financial reproduction, and social reproduction. The concluding section marks the end of customary rights.
The thesis closes with a List of Tables, Notes and References, and a Selected Bibliography for deeper research.
How to read it without getting lost
If you want the argument fast:
- Read the Summary (below) and Chapter One for the method.
- Skim Chapters Two–Four to see what’s being criticised.
- Read Chapters Five–Seven carefully (this is the backbone).
- Use Chapters Eight–Eleven as the applied analysis and evidence trail.
If you’re mainly interested in rundale, go straight to Chapters Ten and Eleven, then backfill Chapter Five for the conceptual setup.
Summary of the thesis (author’s overview)
This thesis applies Marx’s materialist framework to Irish agricultural development between 1847 and 1882, using a structural mode-of-production analysis to avoid idealisation. It surveys and critiques major theoretical frameworks applied to the Irish case (classical political economy, applied economics, statistical analysis, social science, ameliorism, economic history, and legal historicism). From that critique, it identifies rent and rundale as the dominant categories of the nineteenth-century Irish social formation, indicating the presence of two pre-capitalist modes of production: an Irish feudal mode of production and primitive communism. The Irish feudal mode is organised through the rental process, conceptualised as rental value with the specific social forms of absolute and relative rental value, shaping both production and reproduction. Primitive communism is located within the rundale system, structured by the contradiction between communality and individualism, determining both its production and reproduction. Finally, the thesis explains how rundale is subsumed under the Irish feudal mode of production.
Download and file notes
- Format: scanned PDF (original typescript)
- Length: ~610 pages
- Size: ~68MB
- Practical note: best downloaded on Wi-Fi; on mobile it may be slow to open. Because it’s scanned, some pages may not be fully searchable or easy to copy text from unless you run OCR.
Download: Google Drive link
About the author
Dr Eamonn Slater is Professor Emeritus and was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Maynooth University. His work is widely associated with the sociology of modernity and ecological studies in the Irish context, particularly where society–nature relations, land, and colonialism intersect.