3 - Erin’s Acres: The Returned Yank, Property Disputes and the Rise and Fall of the Irish Economy

Summary

Yet here I was lording it over them, not like the English or the old landlords but a bit like one of their own, a returned Yank or something, like them but not enough.

Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry (1999)

I never treated anyone any different when I came back and I never lorded it over nobody. I’m the same as them but I’m different because I went away and that's the way they see it.

Paul Lynch, The Black Snow (2014)

In June 1969, the Irish Times reported that an American company, Erin Acres Ltd., based in Aurora, Illinois, had just mounted a campaign advertising three-quarter acre plots of Irish land available for sale by mail order to Irish Americans for $750. The newspaper described the ‘standard mailing unit’ that had gone out to tens of thousands of Irish Americans as including ‘a letter of contract (application for reservation of land), the 15-page four-colour brochure, and a business reply envelope.’ Recipients of the brochure were encouraged to ‘purchase and enjoy their part of the auld sod in beautiful Ireland today.’ The following day, the Land Commission issued a statement in response to the story, confirming that it had been approached by Erin Acres about acquiring land in Ireland but had ‘not to date consented to the vesting of any property in Ireland in the company.’4 Moreover, it emphasised that ‘the purchase of land in Ireland by non-qualified persons – including non-citizens and companies – is controlled by them under Section 45 of the Land Act 1965.’ This real-life controversy indicates the extent to which the figure of the Returned Yank – abstracted, here, as the company Erin's Acres – functions as a flashpoint in disputes over land acquisition, ownership, distribution and development in Ireland, during and beyond the lifetime of the post-Independence Land Commission (1923–1987, when it drew up its final report; it was dissolved definitively in 1992). This chapter explores the degree to which the Returned Yank is mobilised to reflect on the shift from autarky to dependent development, particularly as this relates to mythologies surrounding land and property. Sean Lemass's adoption of T. K. Whitaker's White Paper, Economic Development (1958), relied on encouraging inward investment to Ireland.