Modest+Proposal+by+Jonathan+Swift

Some background we discussed first,

Swift Autobiography
 * Anglo-Irishman, label for people who live in Ireland but think of themselves as more English than Irish
 * Moved back and forth from Ireland to England, never totally at home in either country. First started when his nurse kidnapped him and took him to England
 * Poor, but rich uncles who paid for his education
 * Eventually ordained in the Church of Ireland, a branch of the Church of England

Historically
 * Swift's Ireland was a country that had been effectively controlled by England for nearly 500 years.
 * The Stuarts had established a Protestant governing aristocracy amid the country's relatively poor Catholic population.
 * Denied union with England in 1707 (when Scotland was granted it), Ireland continued to suffer under English trade restrictions and found the authority of its own Parliament in Dublin severely limited.
 * Basically, Ireland was like England’s younger, weaker brother that England picked on all the time. Debilitating commercial and political injustices.
 * Swift, though born a member of Ireland 's colonial ruling class, came to be known as one of the greatest of Irish patriots.
 * The tract did not shock or outrage contemporary readers as Swift must have intended; its economics was taken as a great joke, its more incisive critiques ignored.

For three years before published in 1729, Irish harvests had been left virtually nothing after the farmers sold crops to pay the rent demanded by English landlords. Beggers were everywhere.

This sheet is our homework [|Swift HWQ.doc]