Industrialization and Poverty in Ireland and the Netherlands

Abstract

ing for the moment from large internal variations within each, were in the level of development of the agricultural sector and the survival of certain remnants of the golden age in the Netherlands, which had no counterpart in Ireland. Dutch agricultural sector was severely hit by the potato famine, and although the rural and urban poor, who depended on potatoes, could obtain little help from the modern sector, the bulk of the agricultural sector was sufficiently wealthy to allow the economy to recover rapidly and in the i85os to start a slow but ultimately successful ascent toward industrial prosperity. As noted, the Dutch economy could still count on a colonial empire, a maritime sector, and a substantial class of rentiers-all in one way or another a heritage of a glorious past. None of these relics introduced much of a dynamic element into the Dutch economy. famine in the late I84os in the Netherlands was therefore 41 Scottish relief aid was organized by Sir Edward Pine Coffin who, despite his name, prevented mass starvation. Malcolm Gray, The Highland Potato Famine of the I840's, Economic History Review, VII (I955), 366. Other factors not directly attributable to the level of economic development were also at work in Scotland, such as landlord attitudes toward tenants, which were very different than in Ireland. Flinn, Scottish Population History,