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Life
| 1932- [Louis Michael Cullen; occas. Louis M.; usu. L. M.]; b. New Ross; his paternal family were builders, his mother’s farmers at Poulrane, nr. Kilmore; lived some years nr. Castlepollard, an [Anglo-Irish] estate town; ed. CBS, and afterwards at UCG, under Sheila Kennedy; also Paris (Sorbonne) and the London School of Economics, where he wrote his PhD, “Anglo-Irish Trade 1600-1800” (1959; pub. 1968); first worked in Diplomatic Service; appt. Assoc. Lect., Modern History, TCD 1963-72; |
| inaugurated a revolution in several works reviewing national historiography from an economic standpoint; issued Life in Ireland (1968), a century-by-century economic survey; issued with The Formation of the Irish Economy (1969), a collection of essays by E. E. R. Green, Goldstrom, and others; wrote An Economic History of Ireland Since 1600 (1972); gave the TCD O’Donnell Lecture, 1985 [‘Catholics under the Penal Laws’], challenged Daniel Corkery’s view of Irish cultural nationality with ‘The Hidden Ireland: Reassesment of a Concept’, in Studia Hibernica (1969), later published in pamphlet form (1988). |
| appt. Prof. of Modern History, TCD, 1972- ; has worked with the Irish Manuscript Commission; wrote The Brandy Trade under the Ancien Régime: Regional Specialisation in the Charente (1998), arguing that regional specialisation attracted foreign negociants such as Martell and Hennessy; Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Centre for Japanese Culture, Kyoto; wrote A History of Japan 1582-1941 (2003); lives in Blackrock, Co. Dublin. DIW FDA |
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Bibliographical details
The Formation of the Irish Economy, ed. L. M. Cullen [Thomas Davis Lectures] (Cork: Mercier Press/RTE 1969), 127pp. CONTENTS: Cullen, The Irish Economy in the 18th Century; W. H. Crawford., The Rise of the Linen Industry; M[aureen] Wall, Catholics in Economic Life; J. Lee, Capital in the Irish Economy; M. Drake, Population Growth and the Irish Economy; J. Lee, The Railways in the Irish Economy; E. R. R. Green, Industrial Decline in the 19th Century; by J. M. Goldstrom, The Industrialisation of the North-East; L. M. Cullen, Irish Economic History: Fact and Myth [extract].
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Criticism
See also Kevin Whelan, ‘Watching the Detective’ [interview] , in History Ireland, 2.2 (Summer 1994), pp.10-12; David Dickson & Cormac Ó Gráda, eds., Refiguring Ireland: Essays in Honour of L. M. Cullen (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2003), 392pp. [see contents].
Bibliographical details
David Dickson & Cormac Ó Gráda, eds., Refiguring Ireland: Essays in Honour of L. M. Cullen (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2003), 392pp., ill. [2pp. of pls., maps’; 24 cm]. CONTENTS: T.C.Smout [St. Andrews], ‘Energy rich, energy poor: Scotland, Ireland and Iceland’; T. M. Devine [Aberdeen], ‘Irish and Scottish development revisited’; L.A. Clarkson [QUB], Did Ireland starve?’; Bruce M. S. Campbell [QUB], ‘Economic progress in the canal age’; S.J. Connolly [QUB], ‘Tupac Amaru and Captain Right: a comparative perspective on eighteenth-century Ireland’; James Kelly [St Patrick’s College], Transportation from Ireland to North America, 1703-1789’; J-P. Poussou [Sorbonne], ‘Louis Cullen: De l’histoire des communautés marchandes irlandaises en France, celle des eaux-de-vie et de l’histoire économique de la France au xviiie [18th] siècle’; Thomas M. Truxes [Trinity College, Conn.], ‘New York City’s Irish merchants and trade with the enemy during the Seven Years War, C. J. Woods [Dictionary of Irish Biography], ‘The social composition of the Catholic Convention, 1792-1793’; Ann C. Kavanaugh [Concordia College, Minn.], ‘Henrietta Battier: poet and radical, 1751-1813’; A. P. W. Malcomson [PRONI], ‘A house divided: The Loftus family, earls and marquesses of Ely, c. 1600-c. 1900’; Mair ad Dunlevy [National Museum of Ireland] and and Cormac Ó Gráda [UCD], ‘A bowling match at Castlemary, County Cork’; David Fitzpatrick [TCD], ‘Harry Boland’s American Revolution, 1919-1921’; Liam Kennedy [QUB], ‘The cost of living in Ireland, 1698-1998’; Peter M. Solar [Vrije Universiteit Brussel], ‘Irish trade in the nineteenth century’; Andy Bielenberg [NUI Cork], ‘The Irish distilling industry under the Union’; Cormac Ó Gráda [UCD], ‘Moral hazard and quasi-central banking: Should the Munster Bank have been saved? Kevin H. O Rourke [TCD], ‘Ireland and the bigger picture’; M. E. Daly [UCD], ‘The modernization of rural Ireland, c. 1920-c. 1960’; Kieran A. Kennedy [ESRI, Dublin], ‘The roots of contemporary Irish economic development’; “Bibliography of leaves M. Cullen”, pp.[386]-92.
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Quotations
‘Catholics under the Penal Laws’, in Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986): ‘The penal laws have loomed large in historiography, their adverse results detailed graphically in the pages of Lecky and in many other accounts. Yet they are little studied either as a corpus of legislation or in their impact. As a body of laws, their motivation and results alike are more complex than often suggested, as this paper attempts to show. In a wider political framework, the tradition of service outside Ireland had a larger career orientation than usually allowed for, an this explains why loyalities could be readily transferred from Europe to the British empire. In a still broader perspective, catholic triumphalism, when Emancipation was finally wrung from the British in 1829, acquired, understandably enough, a vested interest in exaggerating the magnitude of the catholic achievement of survival and the background of legal and political discrimination.’ (p.36 [end].) [See further under Maureen Wall, infra.]
‘Irish Economic History: Fact and Myth’, in The Formation of the Irish Economy (1969): ‘Irish economic development is more independent of non-economic factors than has been generally believed. Thus, the image of Grattan’s parliament might burn brightly in the imagination of generations of nationalists, and of earlier historians of Ireland, but its economic achievements were meagre. Or the Union might have been a major legislative measure but its economic impact was minor by comparison with the other economic processes of the early nineteenth century. The key fact was the onset of modern industrialisation in some favoured regions of the British Isles. This resulted in massive price reductions through the application of new technologies and new forms of business organisation. The decline of handicraft production in the face of this competition was inevitable: this happened in rural England, and rural Europe more generally, not just in Ireland. The protectionism of Grattan’s parliament would have been powerless to avert this fate.’ (?p.9.) Note Cullen goes on to argue that in any case there had been relatively little industrial decline in Ireland, outside of textiles, during the first half of the nineteenth century - ‘a thesis still being explored by historians’, according to the lost source of the above.’)
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