Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 246

Prices are the lifeblood of economic history. They tell us so much about economic well being, about decision-making and about comparative wealth across time and across space. And these are only a few of the uses and tests to which we put prices. If they are as important as I suggest, then it is necessary to have confidence in the prices that are used, in their origins, their robustness, and their fitness for purpose. Not all economies are involved in all aspects of economic life. Comparative advantage may dictate emphasis on one, or a few, or a range of activities rather than others, and over time comparative advantage adjusts to external competition and circumstance, and to internal growth and development. For Ireland, agriculture was the lifeblood of its economy. The centrality of the 1840s Famine adds more weight to that position. It is not that economic and agricultural historians of Ireland have had want of a good range of prices, but perhaps what has been lacking has been a range of prices in which everyone can be utterly confident. Time will tell whether the data brought together in this important project will serve the next generation of historians, but for the time being it is a massive step forward.

This project has seemingly been rapidly put together in three years. It has a much longer history in the concerns of its two authors who acknowledge everything I have said so far, and more besides, in their opening chapter. In an extended fashion, that chapter sets out the raison d’être of the centrality of prices generally and for agricultural prices in Ireland in particular. The authors detail the historiography of price history as pioneered by first Thomas and then Richard Barrington (not familially related), of the importance of regional animal, butter, and grain markets, of the government returns as set out in parliamentary papers. This chapter is heavy on admiration for the pioneers, but also critical of their ready adoption of prices without sensitivity to their origins and their meanings. There was a cavalier attitude to the ages of animals, and perhaps by some also to the quality of both animals and grain products, as well as to the regional variations related to those products. There is a tendency to be overcritical perhaps. After all, by definition, pioneers show us the way and inspire us to improve.

If the historiography is important in declaring an admiration for the pioneers, it is also an inspiration to do better, but chapter two perhaps brings us plummeting back to earth. It is about weights and measures, a problem that all agricultural and regional historians have to confront, whatever the location, whatever the time. The authors ilustrate this problem with an account of the regional weights and measures for potatoes and other products. How heavy was a barrel or a bushel? Was it the same in Kilkenny in 1802 as it was in Dublin the previous year? Or the same in Galway in 1824 as it was in Armagh in 1804? If it is a problem for potatoes, one of the least traded products, what about those products that dominated the market place?

In chapter three we have the backbone of the book, the discussion of prices and the way they were reported in newspapers. We have therefore consistent data sources but which are treated regionally: for the south they rely on Cork, Kilkenny and Waterford, but predominantly Cork for the eighteenth and Waterford for the nineteenth centuries; and for the north they are based on Belfast and Londonderry. Unaccountably, and unfortunately, Dublin newspapers did not report prices regularly for certain products before 1810. The authors get their retaliation in first because they recognize the obvious question that splicing series from different places implies a good degree of market integration. That remains an untested assumption, but what is certain is that the comparative analyses in this chapter (and the underlying data in the appendices) will serve important functions in their own right for the inward gaze centred on Ireland, but so also outwardly in comparisons with Europe and further afield.

Chapter four covers similar ground to chapter three but specifically on beef and cattle, embracing Dublin prices as well as other regional sources. In chapter five the authors attempt to bring together the different commodities in the construction of an agricultural price index. The weighting problems involved in such a construction are well known, not only for Ireland but generally, and in this chapter the authors try a number of different schemes based on supposed product shares for a number of different base years. There may be nuances in year-to-year variations, but the long-run picture is more or less identical regardless of the date of the weights chosen, and also regardless of the broad geography of the north relative to the south. There are hints, though, that the devil might be in the detail, and so perhaps others will exploit the new product series in times to come. The scripted part of the book is completed with a short conclusion. It is followed by three appendixes on sources, and finally the book is rounded off by tables of the raw prices. These tables consume perhaps one-third of the whole book. In summary, then, this is will surely be the standard source for future new work for years to come, and for revisions of old positions on Irish economic development before 1914.