Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667. His father died before he was born, leaving the family with relatively modest means. Nevertheless, as a member of the Anglo-Irish ruling class, Swift received the best education Ireland could offer. 

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. Swift, though born a member of Ireland's colonial ruling class, came to be known as one of the greatest of Irish patriots. He, however, considered himself more English than Irish, and his loyalty to Ireland was often ambivalent in spite of his staunch support for certain Irish causes. The complicated nature of his own relationship with England may have left him particularly sympathetic to the injustices and exploitation Ireland suffered at the hand of its more powerful neighbor. 

Particularly in the 1720s, Swift became vehemently engaged in Irish politics. He reacted to the effects of English commercial and political injustices in pamphlets, essays, and satirical works, including the popular Gulliver's Travels. 

'A Modest Proposal', published in 1729 in response to worsening conditions in Ireland, is perhaps the severest and most scathing of all Swift's pamphlets. The issue that Jonathan Swift is addressing in 'A Modest Proposal' is the ever-growing problem of poverty, starvation, sanitation, overpopulation, and enslavement of the Irish people and the fact that nobody, including the Irish themselves, is willing to do anything to fix the problem.