Off the Map: Informational Capacity and Local Development in Colonial Ireland
Abstract: How do changes in the state’s informational capacities shape the security of property rights and subsequent development outcomes? In the context of colonial Ireland, the granular parish maps of the Down Survey underpinned de jure property rights from their compilation in the mid-17th century for nearly two centuries. We leverage the partial destruction of a set of these maps in a 1711 fire to assess the consequences of losing state-sanctioned map coverage for local economic outcomes. Our research design compares outcomes between localities in the same parish based on whether a given locality fell in the portion of its parish map lost to fire, which we demonstrate to be orthogonal to pre-fire characteristics. Drawing on a novel plot-level digitization of Griffith’s Valuation (1847-64) (n=1.5 million), we find lower subsequent land values in those localities exposed to fire damage. These effects are particularly strong among localities previously owned by the dominant Protestant minority, while we find some evidence of increased valuation in localities previously owned by the marginalized Catholic majority. Drawing on a range of novel archival data sources on land disputes, transfers and expropriation, and investment, we argue that these differences reflect the relative value of de jure property rights across groups in stratified contexts. The results reveal the importance of informational capacity for both the levels and distribution of economic development in society.
Gabriel Koehler-Derrick is an an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Division of Social Sciences at NYU Abu Dhabi
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