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A New Plea for the Separation of Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Noel G. Butlin
Noel G. Butlin
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

The most recent representation of “British” economic development over the century from 1855, as given in Kuznets’ Modern Economic Growth, does not suggest much vitality in this important economy. This representation is not new. Since it became fashionable to villify the “Britain” of the 1950's and 1960's as the laggard country of Europe, attempts have been made to justify or rationalize recent British performance by claiming that recent slow growth rates have been long established. The justification is based merely on the fable of the tortoise and the hare: slow but steady growth in Britain versus the erratic path of foreigners. Kuznets’ picture of Britain over the past century would, however, suggest a country in which population growth competed only with France for lowest place among developed countries; omitting Netherlands from his list because of its limited period, Kuznets showed that the decade average rate of increase of British gross product, at 21.1 percent, was third lowest and only slightly above that of France with its special population experience; and British increase in product per head, at 14.1 percent decade average, ranked only above that of Australia, with its very low rate of growth at 8 percent. No race was being won here; rather the judgment on the recent past, from the perspective of a century of growth, is that Britain has always had it so bad. The question is whether this perspective is open to reasonable doubt.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1968 , pp. 274 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1968

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References

1 Kuznets, Simon, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure and Spread (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar

2 Including Phyllis Deane and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth 1688–1951, Trends and Structure (London: Cambridge University Press, 1962)Google Scholar;Kaser, M. C., “The Share of England and Wales in the National Income of the United Kingdom, 1861–1958” in Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 27, No. 4, 11 1964, pp. 311–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Larkin, Emmett, “Economic Growth, Capital Investment and the Roman Catholic Church in Nineteenth Century Ireland,” in American Historical Review, LXXH (04 1967), 879.Google Scholar In the latter two, estimates were made only as approximations for special purposes, not as part of a larger investigation of economic development.

3 Comparable estimates for 1924 are given in Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, Phyllis, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 366.Google Scholar Compare Kiernan, T. J., “The National Income of the Irish Free State in 1926,” in The Economic Journal, XLIII (03 1933), 74 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Compare Kuznets, Modern Economic Growth, pp. 64–5 (U.K. gross product and population), pp. 73 and 76 (Great Britain labor inputs and capital/output ratios), p. 88 (Great Britain subdivision of product to 1924), p. 168 (U.K. national income distribution), p. 236 (U.K. product use). It should be stressed that Kuznets is not necessarily unjustified in this combination particularly since he is careful to avoid relying at all closely on the figures. The chief problem arises with labor inputs and the proportion of trade in national product. The inconsistencies need to be noted lest they be used in circumstances requiring a higher order of accuracy.

5 Bellerby, J. R., “The Distribution of Manpower in Agriculture and Industry, 1851–1951” in The Farm Economist, IX (1958-1961), pp. 1–11.Google Scholar

6 British Historical Statistics, pp. 60–1.

7 Presumably the relative importance of the agricultural workforce declined more if the initial date is set at 1846. The whole calculation of agriculture is badly obscured by the variable entries for the “wives assisting in industry” group and for general laborers. Booth, Charles, “Occupations of the People of the United Kingdom 1801–81,” Journal of the Statistical Society, Vol. XLIX, 1886, pp. 314–435 (London 1886)Google Scholar.

8 Prest, A. R., “National Income of the United Kingdom 1870–1946,” Economic Journal, LVIII (03 1948), 31–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Jefferys, J. B. and Walters, D., “National Income and Expenditure of the United Kingdom” in Income and Wealth, Series V (1956)Google Scholar;Feinstein, Charles, “Income and Investment in the United Kingdom, 1856–1914.” Economic Journal LXXI (06 1961), 367–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Stamp, J. C., British Incomes and Property (London: P. S. King and Son, 1920)Google Scholar remains the most valuable source on all these problems.

10 The U. K. figure is from Feinstein, “Income and Investment.” Both Stamp and Bowley, A. L.(Trices and Wages in the United Kingdom, 1914–1920 [Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921]Google Scholar) believed that Ireland was growing faster than Great Britain in this decade. The figure is inserted merely to dispose of the scale of adjustment due to slow growth after 1900.

11 “National Income of the Irish Free State.”

12 Stamp's comments on Giffen leave little confidence in his figures. Mulhall's estimates in his Dictionary of Statistics leave one, as is common with his calculations, uncertain as to the true date to which they applied. For O'Mahony, D. see The Irish Economy, An Introductory Description (Cork: Cork University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

13 Kaser, in his “The Share of England and Wales,” implicitly builds into his esti-mates an Irish income per head in 1861 of 38.4 percent that of Great Britain, falling to 33.9 percent in 1911.

14 Recent comment on some of these changes is given in Larkin, “Economic Growth, Capital Investment and the Roman Catholic Church”; , Bellerby, “National and Agricultural Income, 1851” Economic Journal, LXIX (03 1959), 95–104Google Scholar and also in Agriculture and Industry Relative Incomes (in association with Allen, G. R., and others, Bellerby, , ed. [London: Macmillan, 1956])Google Scholar.

15 Leo Drescher “The Development of Agricultural Production in Great Britain and Ireland from the early Nineteenth Century,” with a comment by Fletcher, T. W. in The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, XXIII (05 1955), 153–83Google Scholar.

16 It is not irrelevant in this general context to note that Fletcher suggests a possible netting of Drescher's Irish index by using the intermediate products: production ratio shown for the United Kingdom as a whole in the Census of Production of 1907. In 1907, the relatively wealthy Great Britain society dominated and the distinction between animal and human foods in Great Britain would not be immediately applicable to the poorer Irish society. The point acquires much greater force as comment on extrapolating the U.K. ratio of 1907 back to 1851 in Ireland, with lower income per head and a less developed livestock industry as a consumer of the then-existing agricultural output. It would follow that final arable products grew more slowly than Fletcher implies.

17 A very profound effect, indeed, would be required either with declining costs as outputs contracted or with a “mix” effect, on a very large scale, raising output per head by the contraction in relative importance of the segments of manufacturing and services with relatively low productivity.

18 Compare Bellerby, “National and Agricultural Income 1851.”Google Scholar