Agricultural co-operative societies were widely discussed across late nineteenth-century Europe as a potential solution to the problems of agricultural depression, land reform and rural poverty. In Finland, the agronomist Hannes Gebhard drew inspiration from examples across Europe in founding the Pellervo Society, to promote rural cooperation, in 1899. He noted that Ireland’s ‘tragic history’, its struggle for national self-determination and the introduction of co-operative dairies to tackle rural poverty, seemed to offer a useful example for Finnish reformers. This article explores the exchanges between Irish and Finnish co-operators around the turn of the century, and examines the ways in which the parallels between the two countries were constructed and presented by those involved in these exchanges. I will also consider the reasons for the divergence in the development of cooperation, so that even before the First World War it was Finland, not Ireland, that had begun to be regarded as ‘a model co-operative country’.

中文翻译：

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“模范合作国家”：二十世纪之交的爱尔兰-芬兰交往

作为解决农业萧条、土地改革和农村贫困问题的潜在解决方案，农业合作社在 19 世纪后期的欧洲被广泛讨论。在芬兰，农艺师 Hannes Gebhard 从欧洲各地的例子中汲取灵感，于 1899 年创立了 Pellervo Society，以促进农村合作。他指出爱尔兰的“悲惨历史”、其为民族自决而进行的斗争以及合作社的引入解决农村贫困问题的奶牛场似乎为芬兰改革者提供了一个有用的例子。本文探讨了世纪之交爱尔兰和芬兰合作者之间的交流，并研究了参与这些交流的人构建和呈现两国相似之处的方式。