An historical geography of social class in early nineteenth-century Dun Laoghaire

Abstract

The remit of this study is to explore the relationship between class and place through a local case study. The geographical region under consideration in this thesis is the south-east of Co. Dublin, centred on the town of Dun Laoghaire, known as Kingstown between 1821 and 1920 and Dunleary before 1821. The time period covered stretches from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The aim of the research is to investigate the interaction between structure, human agency and place through a description of the geography of the working class communities that emerged in this locality as a result of a unique imperial project: the construction of Kingstown Harbour. This research is conducted through a constant search for the ‘hidden voice’ in the sources, to unearth fragments of that geography. The methodology used in this study is broadly based on the theoretical tradition of critical Marxism, though not to the exclusion of insights offered by other schools of geographical and historical thought. The understanding of class articulated in these pages is that of a relational and fluid concept, ever-changing in time and space but nonetheless a crucial reality in peoples lives. Class is seen, not as a set of abstract boxes into which people are counted but a thing that happens in people’s lives. The study is also informed by the ongoing exploration of the relationship between class and place by various critical geographers. The importance of this task of asserting the significance of class in historical geography, is given added urgency by the partial erasure of the concept from the discipline during recent years, arising from the ‘cultural turn’ and the relative neglect of the study of working class communities by Irish historical geographers.