Digital Archive
William and E. Coyne, Belfast, to his brother, Henry Coyne, Pleasant Valley, Duchess County, New York, 17 March 1816
Luaigh an doiciméad seo Amharcóir IIIF
Bailiúchán Coyne Letter
Title William and E. Coyne, Belfast, to his brother, Henry Coyne, Pleasant Valley, Duchess County, New York, 17 March 1816
Description Coyne's letter describes social misery and class conflict, especially in the cotton industry, in Belfast and east Ulster during the postwar economic depression. Economic hardships, rooted in structural changes in Irish industry and agriculture, and exacerbated in 1816-17 by awful weather and poor harvests, generated increased emigration by poor urban and rural weavers, as well as by members of a distressed middle class (for the latter, see the McHenry-Moore Collection). Also, official suppression of lower-class protests, either by urban workers in trades unions or by the rural poor in secret agrarian societies (generically, "Whiteboys"), also stimulated mass migration. Social discipline came in many forms, however, and Coyne's letter also describes efforts by Belfast's elite to provide various charities to Belfast's workers and paupers, such as a new saving's bank designed to encourage thrift and sobriety among the former. In addition, Coyne's letter recounts wages and prices. Interestingly, the violent incident that Coyne describes was confined to Belfast's Protestants. It was based on class conflict, between Protestant cotton weavers and their Protestant employermanufacturers, not on sectarian or political conflict between Protestants and Catholics, as would later be common. Not until Ulster's Protestant elite had suppressed intra-communal, class conflict could they impose social, cultural, and political authority over the Protestant poor. In the process, they created an idealized "Ulster Protestant community," ranged in opposition to the Catholic "other," and united in loyalty to the British Crown and in defense of a bourgeoisdefined "Protestant Way of Life," against alleged "Catholic/Nationalist aggression." In future decades, the diminishing number of Ulster Protestants, especially Presbyterians, who dared question or reject this "Unionist" socio-political paradigm, were especially prone to emigration. In short, the Ulster Protestant elite's resolution of the intra-communal class conflicts, which Coyne depicted, was an essential prerequisite for the formation of the all-class Unionist bloc that came to dominate Belfast and Ulster politics. This development is described and analyzed in Kerby Miller's chapter 8, of his Ireland, Irish-America, and Transatlantic Migration (Dublin: Field Day, 2008), a copy of which is included in the Collection.
Date 17/03/1816
Date Issued 27/03/2023
Cineál Acmhainne Text
Archival Record Id p155/6/1
Publisher University of Galway
Extent 12pp
Topic Coyne Letter
Geographic Belfast,Antrim (county),Ireland,Pleasant Valley,Duchess (county),New York (state),United States
Temporal Nineteenth century,Eighteen tens
Genre Transcript,Reproduction
Note Description and transcript text by Professor Kerby Miller.
Creator / Author Name William Coyne