Legislating for Economic Development: Irish Fisheries as a Case Study in the Limitations of ‘Improvement’

Abstract

The idea of ‘improvement’ so popular in eighteenth-century Europe was protean, holding human betterment as a central tenet without delineating what form this should take. It was thus able to maintain internal coherence while changing external shape in order to embrace changes in fashion and to accommodate such trends and tendencies as sociability, politeness, progress, civility and sensibility.¹ By the latter part of the century, it had become an essential element in the European Enlightenment.² Improvement did not just enjoy cultural currency at an attitudinal and behavioural level, it also assumed material form in promoting and encouraging economic development, specifically agricultural and land improvement. In England and Scotland this was visible in the rise of improving boards and societies; urban renewal and cultural renaissance; the growth in the range, accessibility and volume of print; and the development of economic infrastructure through the construction of new networks of turnpike roads and canals.³ Although members of the landed élite were enthusiastic devotees of ‘improvement’, such developments were often directed by the urban ‘middling’ and professional classes, who were particularly adept at using the machinery of local government and parliamentary legislation, alongside the activities of voluntary bodies, to impose their own agenda for social and economic regulation and reform.⁴