Science, sociability and the improvement of Ireland: the Galway Mechanics' Institute, 1826–51

Abstract

Irish mechanics' institutes have received little attention from historians of science, but their history presents intriguing questions. Whereas industrialization, Protestant dissent and the politics of liberal social reformers have been identified as crucial for the development of mechanics' institutes in Britain, their influence in Ireland was regionally limited. Nonetheless, many unindustrialized, provincial, largely Catholic Irish towns had mechanics' institutes in the first half of the nineteenth century. This paper investigates the history of the two mechanics' institutes of Galway, founded in 1826 and 1840, and analyses how local and national contexts affected the establishment, function and development of a provincial Irish mechanics' institute. Situating these institutes within the changing social and political constellations of early and mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, it shows how Catholic emancipation, the temperance movement and different strands of Irish nationalism affected approaches to the uses of science and science education in Ireland.