Three centuries ago, in the 1720s, Ireland was a decade or two into an economic transformation, from a relative backwater to an integral part of the world economy.  As of 1700, Ireland made up about 1.5 per cent of Europe’s population – almost two million in a continent with almost 130 million people. By 1820, its share of the continent’s population had doubled to over three per cent, with over seven million people living in Ireland out of a European total of 230 million.  One of the foundations of that success is infamous – Ireland switched from grains to the…

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