How Ireland’s Soil Was Colonised: A Forgotten Insight from Karl Marx
When we think of colonialism in Ireland, our minds often turn to land grabs, religious persecution, famine, and forced emigration. But in a largely forgotten footnote in Capital, Karl Marx suggested something deeper — that not just the people of Ireland were colonised, but even the soil beneath their feet.
In his thought-provoking academic paper, “Marx on the Colonization of Irish Soil,” Eamonn Slater of Maynooth University explores this overlooked insight with remarkable clarity. Drawing on Marx’s speeches, unpublished notes, letters to Engels, and chapters from Capital, Slater shows how Ireland’s ecological degradation — especially soil exhaustion — was not a natural consequence of overfarming, but a direct outcome of British colonial policy and a brutally extractive rent system.
This blog post gives you a summary of that paper — its key ideas and arguments — in plain English. If you want to dive deeper, you can read the full paper here or download it as a PDF.
The Central Argument: Soil as a Victim of Colonialism
Marx famously argued that capitalism created a “metabolic rift” — a breakdown in the natural cycle of nutrients between the soil and the people who lived off it. In industrial England, this meant soil nutrients were depleted from the countryside and dumped (via sewage) in cities like London, leading to both rural exhaustion and urban pollution.
But what makes Ireland unique, Slater argues, is that this ecological rift didn’t emerge from capitalism alone — it was shaped and intensified by colonialism.
In Marx’s view, British rule in Ireland created a situation where the people who worked the land had no power to protect or sustain it. Through a process called rackrenting, landlords (many of them absentee) extracted crushing rents from peasants, leaving them with no means or incentives to invest in soil health. When the potato blight hit in 1846, it struck a population already driven to the ecological brink — and so began the Great Famine.
Two Phases of Colonialism: Before and After the Famine
Slater outlines how Marx identified two distinct colonial regimes in 19th-century Ireland:
- 1801–1846: Rackrenting under the Act of Union
After the 1801 Union between Great Britain and Ireland, Ireland’s limited industries were deliberately undercut by British policy. With little employment outside agriculture, land became the only option for survival. This gave landlords total control. Tenants competed for plots of land “at any rent,” while middlemen drove prices higher still. Farmers were forced to produce cereal crops for export to Britain (especially under the Corn Laws), while subsisting on potatoes themselves. Crucially, the soil was overworked and underfed. Tenants couldn’t afford long-term improvements like drainage or fertilisation — and had no guarantee they wouldn’t be evicted if they tried. - 1846–1867: The Era of Estate Clearances
The Famine decimated the Irish peasantry. Over a million died, and millions more emigrated. This led to a new colonial policy: “clearing the estate of Ireland.” Landlords, backed by British law and policy, removed small tenants en masse to consolidate farms into large pastures for cattle. These pastures were profitable — but at a cost. With no more peasants to dig, manure, and rotate crops, soil exhaustion increased. Agricultural yields dropped drastically, even as landlords grew richer. This contradiction — falling productivity but rising profits — was made possible by rising meat prices in England, not by any sustainable farming at home.
Who Were the Cottiers — and Why Were They So Important?
Much of the paper focuses on a forgotten class in Irish rural life: the cottiers. These were landless labourers who rented tiny plots (often just a quarter acre) from farmers under a system known as conacre. In exchange, they worked for the farmer and paid rent, often in labour rather than money. Their “wage” was the ability to grow potatoes for their family on that plot.
What’s remarkable is the role these cottiers played in restoring soil fertility. Through backbreaking labour, they collected seaweed, manure, sand, turf mould, and even burnt sod to fertilise their potato beds. Using spades (as they had no ploughs or animals), they dug ridges and furrows, often reaching deep into the subsoil or breaking through iron pans — compacted layers beneath the soil — to release fresh minerals.
Marx called this a form of “extra-economic” labour: unpaid, largely invisible, but essential for keeping the land fertile. Without the cottiers, the soil itself began to die.
The Famine: A Social and Ecological Catastrophe
Marx claimed the potato blight wasn’t just a natural disaster — it was made possible by soil exhaustion, which was itself a product of colonial rackrenting and ecological neglect. As the most nutrient-hungry crop, potatoes required a lot of care and replenishment. When soil fertility collapsed, so did the resistance of crops to disease.
After the blight, as the cottier class disappeared and the land was converted to pasture, no one was left to restore the soil. Grain and vegetable production fell dramatically. Yields per acre dropped across all major crops. Yet rents and profits rose — a cruel irony made possible by Irish exports feeding the English market while the Irish starved or emigrated.
What Makes This Insight So Relevant Today?
Slater’s paper shows us that colonialism doesn’t just damage economies and societies — it also damages ecologies. In Marx’s analysis, the oppression of a people is mirrored in the exhaustion of their land. The logic of extraction — whether through rent or resource — turns both people and nature into commodities to be used up.
This kind of thinking is extremely relevant in today’s world, where land is still being stripped for profit, soil is still being depleted, and global inequalities often mirror environmental degradation. It reminds us that environmental justice cannot be separated from social justice — and that sustainability must reckon with history.
Want to Read More?
If you found this summary intriguing, you’ll want to read the full paper by Eamonn Slater. It dives deep into:
- Marx’s own notes and speeches on Ireland (including a remarkable 1867 lecture)
- The role of the cottier class in ecological resistance
- The ridge system of potato cultivation and its ecological effects
- The transformation of Ireland’s agroecosystem after the Famine
- And how Marx’s ideas still resonate in today’s debates around land, class, and the environment
👉 Click here to read the full paper online
📄 Or download the PDF version here