The Economic War and the Pamphlet War

Abstract

In 1932, the Irish Free State became embroiled in an Economic War, when the newly elected de Valera government intentionally defaulted on annuities owed by Irish farmers to the British government under the terms of the 1891 – 1909 Land Acts. This ‘post-colonial wrangle’, as the economic historian Cormac O Grada termed it, was one of the seminal elements of 1930s Irish politics; the debates and actions around the annuities issue helped to redefine the Treatyite divisions of 1920s Ireland into the economic divisions of a populist Fianna Fail versus a conservative and quasi-fascist Fine Gael in the 1930s. This chapter studies the various pamphlets published in the 1920s and 1930s in which these politico-economic issues were debated, from the socialist writings of Peadar O’Donnell to works produced by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael ideologues.