Agricultural History Review, Volume 53 Part 2 (2005), p. 259

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Irish chemical industry was relatively insignificant in a United Kingdom context, except for the Irish fertilizer sector which accounted for about 9.5 per cent of UK fertilizer output and about 10 per cent of employment in the UK fertilizer industry (at a time when Ireland had about 10 per cent of UK population). This study of the fertilizer sector casts much new light on one of the many Irish industries we know relatively little about from an historical perspective and it is therefore a welcome addition to the historiography. It again demonstrates that despite the fact that Ireland was the least industrially developed region in the United Kingdom during the industrial revolution, it had some significant industries and companies in particular niches. Indeed, by the end of thenineteenth century the Irish fertilizer company, W.& H.M.Goulding, had become the largest fertilizer company in these islands.

This study illustrates the importance of agriculture for the Irish industrial sector: agricultural demand provides the background to the growth of the fertilizer sector historically. The authors trace efforts to raise Irish soil fertility prior to the production of artificial manures, when sea sand, lime and marl, dung, seaweed, excrement, offal, and powdered bones amongst other organic materials were used to good effect. This section is the most speculative part of the book. For example the authors imply that arable farming (and thus it is assumed manuring also) featured little in Gaelic agriculture in the centuries leading up to the plantations. However, the archaeological evidence suggests that Irish milling technology in the early medieval period was quite advanced by European standards and the number of sites were relatively numerous, which implies that there was more arable farming in the Gaelic economy than has generally been assumed (see C.Rynne in A.Bielenberg ed., Irish flour milling: a history 600–2000 (Dublin, 2003)). Moreover, in many parts of the country newcomers/planters turned land over to pasture and away from arable farming. Essentially the historical jury is still out on whether other aspects of the Gaelic agrarian economy (such as the use of manure) were also somewhat more advanced than suggested by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial commentators, who are cited here uncritically by the authors.

In a chapter on science and the emergence of the industry, our attention is drawn to the important contribution of an Irishman, Dr John Murray (1787–1871) to the discovery of superphosphates. Murray retained an abiding interest in agriculture and chemically-prepared manures despite his medical career. The authors have carefully pieced together the genesis of the Irish industry largely from qualitative sources. The lack of full official trade statistics (including trade with Great Britain, which accounts for the bulk of Irish trade) between 1822 and 1904 has reduced any inferences the authors could make about important imported materials during a critical period in the development of the Irish industry, but they use this import material to good effect after 1904 when full trade returns were again available. The import data published annually by the Belfast and Cork Harbour Commissioners during the second half of the nineteenth century could have been used to good effect to ascertain changes in raw material inputs, and the scale of competition from British companies. The Irish foreign trade data in the British Parliamentary Papers might also have provided additional evidence on imports of raw materials. Moreover, given Goulding’s importance in both an Irish and United Kingdom context, more attention and space could have been given to the development of this company prior to 1921.

The strongest section of the book deals with the history of the industry from the 1920s onwards, when the statistical evidence improves both north and south of the border. The modern period accounts for the lion’s share (196 pages) of the written text (306 pages). The working experience of one of the authors within the industry for over forty years no doubt contributed to 260 the agricultural aninformed knowledge of the more recent period. Theindustry experienced limited structural change in the interwar years, its salient feature being Goulding’s rising share of the market both north and south of the border. Irish farmers at this point consumed relatively low levels of fertilizers by European standards (the greater emphasis on livestock farming seems to have been the main factor here, as fertilizer was less commonly used in connection with pasture until after the Second World War). The contrast between the north, where consumption rose during the Second World War, and the south, where it declined dramatically is a striking indication of the divergence of the two economies in this period.

From the 1950s, fertilizer consumption among farmers in Ireland rose steadily across the island as fertilizer usage became a common feature of grassland management, even more so in the decades after 1973 when Ireland became part of the EEC and grassland farming expanded further. The authors have produced an excellent account of the response of the Irish industry to these new and improved conditions. Curiously, while the Irish chemical industry has grown dramatically in the last decades (driven largely by multinational investment) and now makes an important contribution to Irish GDP, Cooper and Davis have forensically charted and illuminated the demise of the Irish fertilizer sector in the same period. It seems that the lack of foresight, consultation and planning within the sector and the failure to form a public/private partnership, using available knowledge and fixed assets as well as much needed new investment, resulted ultimately in the collapse of an important industry in which Ireland had traditionally been able to compete.