Irish Migration, 1750–1800

Ireland’s dramatic population growth took off in these decades, but migration was not the main factor driving it. Paradoxically, the increase took place in spite of net emigration. The immigration flows from Britain and Europe were so reduced that the Protestant community was scarcely able to sustain itself, with southern landowners in search of new Protestant tenants instead looking north to Ulster. The main internal migration flow from the countryside to Ireland’s towns and cities was less strong than elsewhere in north-west Europe and less crisis-driven in character than it had been before 1750. However, the population was far from static, especially in the turbulent 1790s. Fundamental changes in the emigration flow got underway in the aftermath of the Seven Years War (1756–63) and before the American War of Independence (1775–82), arguably making the former rather than the latter the major division of the century. After 1763, the importance of Britain and North America as emigrant destinations increased as that of Europe declined. The ‘modern’ practice of prior payment for transatlantic passage started to replace the ‘early modern’ practice of indentured servitude, especially in Ulster, and increasingly emigrants responded to the strengthening force of opportunities in the new world rather than to problems in the old. Transition to a pattern of emigration which was ‘modern’ was underway, although it would be a further generation until the phenomenon could be properly described as mass emigration.

Development economics · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Emigration · Geography · Immigration · Independence (probability theory) · Internal migration · Irish · Political science · Population · Protestantism · Sociology · Demography · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Irish and British Studies · Law