On Tuesday,  May 21, 2024, at 11h00, Chris Colvin (Queen’s University Belfast) will present in the seminar of the Social History of Finance group in History Department (Room SJ 214).

Mind Your Language: The Decline of the Irish in the Nineteenth Century

Matching complete individual-level data from the 1901 population census to highly disaggregated GIS data, we trace the rapid retreat of the Irish-speaking frontier westwards over the nineteenth century. We find that intergenerational language transmission played a key role and occurred across multiple geographical strata. While Irish-speaking within households mattered, we show that Irish-speaking among the previous generation in a person’s district was just as important for language retention. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of education. However, the individual-level relationship between English literacy and Irish-speaking in post-Famine birth cohorts is primarily driven by differences in pre-Famine literacy at the district level. Since pre-Famine literacy rates predate the establishment of Ireland’s national schooling system, this suggests that education’s influence on Irish speaking was driven by economic incentives rather than the activities within the nascent school system. Finally, we highlight several smaller additional economic, cultural, and social forces.

If you want to join the seminar, please send an email to milan.dupont@uantwerpen.be.  We hope to see many of you!