‘Articles of Practical Banking Written by Practical Bankers’

Declan Curran

Irish Economic and Social History, 2016, vol. 43, issue 1, 21-49

Abstract: This article analyses the reportage of the banking publication Bankers’ Magazine over the duration of the Great Irish Famine (1845–50). It explores attitudes to famine incidence and relief prevalent among Irish and British banking officials, as expounded in the trade publication representing their views. These professionals, employed in branch networks across both Irish and British society, were not political elites or ideologues, but rather saw themselves as ‘practical bankers’. This analysis shows that the Bankers’ Magazine reportage of the famine espoused, albeit in a measured rhetoric, the prevailing economic mindset based on self-reliance and the free market mechanism, while repeatedly acknowledging Irish famine-era suffering and reconciling itself to the expediency of ‘unproductive’ government-funded famine relief efforts. This analysis also shows the Bankers’ Magazine ’s famine reportage to have largely been subsumed by its campaign against the Bank Charter Act. More generally, the article argues that the Irish banking system offers a useful, though underutilised, lens through which to view famine-era socio-economic institutional workings and public opinion.

Keywords: political economy; Irish famine; Bankers’ Magazine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0332489316661626 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ieshis:v:43:y:2016:i:1:p:21-49

DOI: 10.1177/0332489316661626

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Irish Economic and Social History
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().