Abstract
As the dust settles on the Decade of Centenary commemorations, attention will turn to the shaping of an agenda for a new generation of historians. The focus of commemorations has largely revolved around revolutionary events and moments of conflict, but one strand of enquiry that deserves fuller examination is how the work of state-building was often a mundane, slow-burning affair. Mícheál Ó Fathartaigh's book shows how the impetus for this work possessed a rural character. With its focus on the Irish Agricultural Advisory Services, Developing Rural Ireland writes an important strand of rural expertise back into the history of Irish state-building. The work undertaken by agricultural instructors attached to County Committees of Agriculture at the start of the twentieth century grew into the semi-state body for training and advisory services, Teagasc, by the end. Throughout the century covered in these pages, a monumental history of political, socioeconomic, and technological change is told through the interventions of men and women employed to assist farmers adapt to changing circumstances.
Rural Ireland provided policymakers with a conundrum at the end of the nineteenth century. On the one hand, agriculture was the main sector of the economy (outside the industrialised north-east) that offered opportunities for future economic development and growth. On the other, the countryside faced an existential crisis, characterised by widespread emigration and economic competition from farmers overseas. The countryside represented both a site of potential modernity and irreversible decline. However, rural Ireland has long been a site of dynamic change and this book shows how the agricultural advisors shaped this process.
The opening chapters highlight how an innovative agricultural instruction service resulted from the work of Horace Plunkett. Plunkett looked beyond the issue of who should own the land to another pressing question: how should people use the land? He recognised farmers needed some level of state aid to place Irish agriculture on a surer footing and bring about a flourishing countryside. Therefore, he set about building a political consensus between nationalists and unionists, which led to the establishment of the Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in 1900. Serving as its first vice-president (essentially minister for agriculture), Plunkett introduced the agricultural instructor to the countryside, someone who would serve as ‘the guide, philosopher and friend of the existing farmers’ (cited in Ian Miller, Reforming Food in Post-Famine Ireland: Medicine, Science, and Improvement, 1845–1922 (Manchester, 2014), p. 141). This book shows that the original vision to create an advisory service to help farmers transition to rapidly changing social and economic circumstances remained a core aspect of the work throughout the twentieth century.
The work of agricultural advisors both at national and local level is presented in exceptional detail. County case-studies tell the developmental story in macro- and micro-forms. Often, development is shown to be a project of co-production between the individual expertise of an agricultural advisor and local agencies that exist in communities. Crucially, for the first half of the century, the advisory service was funded and directed by County Committees for Agriculture. The local approach highlights the ways in which the different priorities of a county council had a direct impact on the quality of an agricultural service. Ó Fathartaigh's use of the local case study sheds important light on the unevenness of rural development.
The book represents an important addition to the wider economic history of Ireland as Ó Fathartaigh shows that interventions by the advisory services were helping bring about a more dynamic farming sector before the publication of T.K. Whitaker's Economic Development in 1958. The 1940s and 1950s saw rural Ireland experience mass emigration, and the number of holdings fell below 300,000 for the first time by the 1960s. However, agriculture also experienced productivity growth in the same period. This placed Ireland within a process taking place across Europe and was in line with the Treaty of Rome that agreed to use increased productivity ‘as the way in which improvements in living standards were to be achieved’ (p. 238). The contributions of advisors, then, helped pave the way towards Ireland's eventual European membership in 1973.
New demands placed on agricultural advisors after European membership coincided with an oil and cattle crisis, which created a turbulent economic situation for farmers. At the same time, farmers had to adapt to new economic imperatives to qualify for Common Agricultural Policy supports. While rural Ireland benefitted hugely from membership in the long term, Ó Fathartaigh argues this was because agricultural instructors understood their role was not just to respond to local demands or national policy goals – they were now agents of European modernisation. For example, advisors promoted the European Farm Modernisation Scheme, and in the process decided which farms benefitted from higher levels of European investment. Advisors acted as ‘kingmakers’, according to Ó Fathartaigh, exacerbating inequalities between larger and smaller farms and increasing the latter's precarity.
The fact that this volume is funded by the current advisory service, Teagasc, is evident reading these pages. On the plus side, this makes the book a valuable store of information and detail. The author has been granted access to a wealth of archival material and has interviewed advisors past and present. This allows Ó Fathartaigh to highlight the manifold ways in which the service shaped Irish political economy. However, it can also mean that controversial issues are elided, or decisions taken are accepted unproblematically.
From early on it is clear the book is a history of one form of sustainability, namely ‘the sustainability of farm enterprise’, which emerged as the ‘overarching objective’ of the first generation of itinerant agricultural instructors (p. 35). The book does an excellent job of showing how agricultural advisors helped farmers access income supports, imbibe new technologies, and maintain economic viability throughout the twentieth century. However, understanding how such interventions impacted other forms of sustainability receives a brisk treatment. Greater focus on how advisors actively shaped the rural environment would have been welcomed. Indeed, the book concludes with a recognition of the topic's salience, claiming advisors had approached their work with an awareness of the environmental dimension, whether through promoting tree replanting or establishing kitchen and ornamental gardens. It would have added an interesting and important component if this theme had been taken up throughout.
In the end, Developing Rural Ireland marks an important contribution that unpacks the quotidian layers of work that underpinned the Irish developmental project. The fact that the development model pursued is presented uncritically at times, means this is also a work that should suggest plenty of avenues for future research on the history of the Irish countryside.