The Industrial Resources of Ireland

Published in 1844, this survey of the natural resources of Ireland and their potential was overtaken by the Famine.

Robert Kane (Author)

9781108026857, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 February 2011

464 pages, 4 maps
21.6 x 14 x 2.6 cm, 0.59 kg

Sir Robert Kane (1809–1890) was a noted Irish chemist, becoming a professor at the age of twenty-two. His work on compounds of ammonia were considered internationally important. His 1,200-page textbook, Elements of Chemistry (1841) was considered 'the best extant in the English language' and was widely used in England and America. The Industrial Resources of Ireland, published in 1844 and reissued in 1845, had originated in a series of lectures to the Royal Dublin Society, and contains a mass of factual detail on the energy, mineral, agricultural, capital and labour resources of the country. Kane believed that Ireland did not lack natural resources so much as the knowledge of how to exploit them, and technical education was necessary. The book outlines an ambitious plan to harness the raw materials which Ireland possessed, or was believed to possess. However, the outbreak of the Famine overtook his schemes.

Preface to the first edition
Preface to the second edition
1. Importance of fuel in the industrial arts
2. Necessity for determining the influence which the cost of fuel exercises on the cost of power, and the means of economizing it
3. Of the water power of Ireland
4. Importance of iron in the arts
5. Geological structure of Ireland
6. Gold mines of Wicklow, their situation and produce
7. Of the agricultural history of Ireland
8. Agricultural industry continued
9. Importance of means of internal communication to the industry and morality of a people
10. Circumstances of Ireland regarding certain staple articles of industry
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ]