bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Irish Free State passport and the question of citizenship, 1921–4
Authors: O’Grady Joseph P.
Published: August 2016

The issue of citizenship played a major role in the negotiations that led to the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921; but that point was overshadowed by the tendency of those who negotiated the treaty (and the authors who have written about it) to see the issue of ‘common citizenship’ as only one point under the heading of allegiance to the crown and membership of the British Empire. That it was a central issue is clear, however, for at one point in the 1921 negotiations Lloyd George asked, ‘to put it bluntly will you be British subjects or foreigners? You must be either one or the other.’ Arthur Griffith, the leader of the Irish delegation, answered: ‘in our proposal we have agreed to “reciprocity of civic rights”. We should be Irish and you would be British and each would have equal rights as citizens in the country of the other.’ That exchange caused the British to ask the Irish for a direct answer to the question, would they ‘acknowledge this common citizenship?’. The Irish, however, only responded with the words, ‘Ireland would undertake such obligations as are compatible with the status of a free partner’ in ‘the community of nations known as the British Commonwealth’. Those words did not satisfy the English negotiators, but in the end the Irish accepted an agreement in which the words ‘common citizenship’ appeared in the oath to the king which all members of Dáil Éireann would have to take. That satisfied the British demands on allegiance to the crown.
The New Model Army and the problems of siege warfare, 1648–51
Authors: Burke James
Published: August 2016

The destruction of the Royalist field armies at Naseby and Langport in 1645 did not end the English Civil War. Althought the king had suffered irreversible military defeats, Parliament was unable to govern effectively while politically important towns and fortresses remained in enemy hands. To ensure political stability Parliament’s army was forced to besiege and reduce a large number of strongholds in England, Ireland and Scotland, a task that was not finally completed until the surrender of Galway in 1652. In particular the war in Ireland was to test the army’s siege-making capacity more severely than any previous campaign. To complete the political conquest of Britain and Ireland the army and its generals were compelled increasingly to practise an aspect of warfare that had been traditionally neglected by English soldiers. In contrast, siege warfare was an area in which their continental counterparts had excelled.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European wars produced few set-piece battles. Conflicts were more frequently resolved by the assault and defence of fortified cities and towns. Consequently the art of siege warfare evolved rapidly. England’s political and military insularity during this period detached the country from advances in siege technology that had transformed the conduct of European warfare. No major siege had been undertaken by an English army since Henry VIII had invested Boulogne in 1544, and as there had been no siege of English towns or fortresses since medieval times, there had been little innovation in defensive fortifications. What improvements did occur were sporadic and unco-ordinated. In the sixteenth century a great fortress was built at Berwick-on-Tweed to counter Scottish infiltration and a number of coastal towns in the south-east were refortified against the threat of Spanish invasion. However, by the outbreak of civil war in 1642, even these were obsolete by contemporary continental standards.
‘Paying no heed to public clamor’: Irish republican solipsism in the 1930s
Authors: English Richard
Published: August 2016

To be frank, it is apparent that an agreement between your forces and the forces of the I.R.A. is a national necessity. They can do the things you will not care to do or cannot do in the face of public criticism, while the I.R.A. pay no heed to public clamor so long as they feel they are doing a national duty.

Joseph McGarrity to Eamon de Valera, 2 Oct. 1933

This article will concentrate on two Irish republican projects from the 1930s: Cumann Poblachta na h-Éireann and the I.R.A.’s British bombing campaign. It will, in each case, focus on one leading individual: Cumann Poblachta’s Seán MacBride and, for the bombing campaign, the I.R.A.’s Seán Russell. Drawing on much material which has not previously been discussed in the literature, it will examine the self-sustaining republican mentality which characterised both projects and both individuals. It will be argued that republicanism in the 1930s is best understood in terms of the concept of solipsism, defined as the view that self is ‘the only thing really existent’. The argument is that republicans acted as though their own political views, beliefs and culture were the only really existent ones and that those of others could, as a consequence, be ignored. Republicans could — in the words of leading Irish-American republican, Joseph McGarrity — ‘pay no heed to public clamor’ as long as they felt that they were ‘doing a national duty’. As such, they were in possession of a self-sustaining but, it will be argued, ultimately self-defeating mentality.
William the Conqueror and Ireland
Authors: Hudson Benjamin
Published: August 2016

The eulogy on King William I of England in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle includes the interesting assertion that William would have conquered Ireland without weapons had he lived another year or two. Some commentators, such as Sir Frank Stenton, considered it to be merely a testimony to the victorious reputation of the Conqueror. Others have suggested that the chronicler had erred with regard to direction, and Denis Bethell speculated that there was slightly more reason to believe William was contemplating an expedition to Galicia during the last years of his life. Marjorie Chibnall pointed out, however, that there must have been some reason for such a statement. A possible explanation does appear when examining the relations between England and Ireland during the reign of William, and a suggestion can be made that political affairs in Ireland influenced, to some extent, the planning of the Conqueror. There are reasons for believing that, in order to diminish the peril from the west, William deliberately promoted good relations with one particular Irish prince — Toirrdelbach ua Briain, king of Munster and claimant to the high-kingship of Ireland.
The flight of the earls, 1607
Authors: McCavitt John
Published: August 2016

The ‘flight of the earls’ is considered one of the most intriguing events in Irish history. Traditionally, historians explaining this event have been divided into two schools of thought. Some have depicted the earls as offended innocents, forced into exile by unwarrantable pressure from Lord Deputy Chichester’s administration. Others have accepted the conspiracy theory, agreeing with the Dublin government’s contemporary view that the earls fled because they feared that their treasonable machinations had been uncovered. Since 1971, however, historical interpretation of the affair has been dominated by an article written by Nicholas Canny.

Departing from the previous lines of explanation, Canny focused on the intentions of the earl of Tyrconnell and Cuchonnacht Maguire to leave Ireland in 1607 as the key to understanding the flight. Anxious to leave the country because they were in acute financial difficulties, they were determined to seek profitable service with Archduke Albert, governor of the Spanish Netherlands. The ‘premature’ arrival of the ship that was sent to encompass Tyrconnell’s passage discomfited Tyrone, then preparing to go to court, causing him to ‘panic’ and take flight.
‘Irish and English interests’: national conflict within the Church of Ireland episcopate in the reign of George I
Authors: McNally Patrick
Published: August 2016

The reign of George I has long been regarded by historians as an important period in the development in Ireland of what some have called ‘colonial nationalism’. This period witnessed, after all, two long-drawn-out conflicts between the political establishments of Ireland and Britain—the Sherlock v. Annesley case (leading to the Declaratory Act of 1720) and the infamous Wood’s Halfpence dispute of 1723–5. This reign has traditionally been regarded as a ‘difficult’ transitional phase in Anglo-Irish relations which was followed by the superficially uneventful era of government by ‘undertakers’ after the early 1730s, before the ‘national’ question erupted again during the money bill dispute of the 1750s. This article will examine the nature of the anti-English feeling which undoubtedly existed at this time among certain sections of the Irish Protestant community. It will be argued that conflict within the episcopate of the Church of Ireland had a significant role in fomenting much of the ‘national’ tension between the so-called Irish and English interests at this time. It will be suggested, moreover, that disputes over the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage made a major contribution to the development of this conflict.
The Fenian rising in Dublin, March 1867
Authors: Takagami Shin-ichi
Published: August 2016

The story of the Fenian rising in 1867 may be regarded as starting with the expulsion of James Stephens from the headship of one of the two factions of American Fenians in December 1866. Stephens tried to postpone a rising planned to take place before 1 January 1867. At that time there was vocal dissatisfaction within the rank and file at the lack of action. The Dublin organisation itself was divided on the question. According to the report of Superintendent Ryan of the Dublin Metropolitan Police in January 1867:

The minor members of the conspiracy made open profession of doubts regarding the sincerity of James Stephens and some went so far as to say they would abandon the movement altogether, but the more prominent members ... made all sorts of apologies for the inability of Stephens to fulfil his promise.

Thomas J. Kelly, a former captain in the Federal army now bearing a title of colonel in Fenian terminology, and who had been in Ireland in early 1866, could now count on considerable support in Ireland. A bigger problem he faced was that of bringing the Fenians in Britain under his leadership as soon as he returned from America. Those Americans already in England (largely men who had fled from Ireland after the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act (29 Vict., c. 4) in February 1866), as well as many of the Irish Fenians there, already entertained doubts about the future purpose of an organisation guided by a remote leadership in America. As a result, the American officers and the Fenians in England decided to launch a rising without waiting for future American help, and for this purpose they formed a Directory in England not later than early February but more probably in January 1867.
Chicanery and candour: the Irish Free State and the Geneva Protocol, 1924–5
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: August 2016

The foreign policy of the Irish Free State under the Cumann na nGaedheal administrations of 1922–32 was a far more complex issue than has generally been realised. Policy had a greater scope than simply Anglo-Irish relations. It had two basic foundations. Through the 1921 treaty, the state reluctantly joined the British Commonwealth. Then, with great deliberation, the Free State joined the League of Nations, being admitted on 10 September 1923. By developing an active multidimensional foreign policy using these structures, the new state sought to show its ‘international’ and European credentials. The Irish Free State was to carve out a small niche for itself in the post-Versailles world order. An analysis of the Free State’s response to the Geneva Protocol of 1924 provides a case study of this multifaceted foreign policy in action.

As the foundations of Irish foreign policy in the 1920s, the League and the Commonwealth were played off against each other. A prominent stance at the League indicated that although the Free State was a dominion, it was not tied to the imperial line and could act independently to secure its own interests. The Free State’s position as a radical dominion was emphasised through League membership as the state used its independence at the League in the 1920s to develop the concept of the Commonwealth as a looser international grouping of equals. This approach to foreign policy served to benefit both core aspects of the state’s foreign relations. Generally these two core aspects of foreign policy complemented each other.
Regional industrial structure and labour force decline in Ireland between 1841 and 1851
Authors: Geary Frank
Published: August 2016

The censuses of 1841 and 1851 provide the earliest detailed and consistent data on the occupations pursued by the people of Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century. This paper presents a series, constructed from this data, on occupations classified by industry for the years 1841 and 1851. Its purpose is to establish the industrial distribution of the labour force for each of the four provinces, to describe the changes in industrial employment by province during the famine decade, and to make a contribution to debate on the origins of employment decline.

I

In its return of occupations, the census of 1841 differed from the censuses of 1821 and 1831 in three ways: in method of estimation, in compilation, and in system of classification. As regards estimation, the 1841 commissioners issued a ‘Form of family return’ to be completed by the head of the family, rather than, as in 1821 and 1831, having the details entered by the enumerator from viva voce inquiry. This has its limitations in that it depends on the accuracy of the householders’ returns, but it is preferable to relying on the accuracy of enumerators’ returns. As regards compilation, the 1841 census returned the occupations of all persons active in the labour force by age and gender; the 1821 census returned all persons active; the 1831 census returned males upwards of twenty years of age in agriculture, industry and services (except servants), all male servants and female servants (age unspecified). As regards the system of classification, the 1821 occupation returns were made under three, and the 1831 under eleven general headings with no return of the numbers engaged in the component occupations of these headings (but see note 1); the 1841 census provided a return of the numbers of males and females engaged in each of 471 occupations classified as belonging to one of nine classes: ministering to food; clothing; lodging; furniture; machinery, etc.; health; charity; justice; education; religion; unclassified.
New light on Richard Hadsor, I: Richard Hadsor and the authorship of ‘Advertisements for Ireland’, 1622/3
Authors: Treadwell Victor
Published: August 2016

Unlike some members of his profession, Richard Hadsor (c. 1570–1635), a Middle Temple lawyer born in Ireland, has not been caught in the spotlight which historians have aimed at the dramatic political confrontations in England and Ireland during the early seventeenth century. Nor, since he was not a recusant, has he attracted the attention of Irish historians of the legal profession. Although canvassed for both, he never attained a seat in a parliament or a place on the English or Irish judiciary. He had no part in the ‘inflation of honours’ as either a broker or a recipient. Although he spent the whole of his professional life in London, nothing is known of his English social circle — apart from a single reference in his will to Sir lohn Bramston, a fellow Templar — or the value of his private practice, and only a little (which is, however, suggestive) of his clientèle. He wrote nothing for publication. He had no legitimate offspring and, therefore, none of the successful lawyer’s usual inclination to create a substantial patrimony. In consequence, it is hardly surprising that he does not figure in the standard works of biography or even in a commemoration of nearly one thousand Middle Templars straddling several centuries. Nevertheless, in his own time Richard Hadsor was no nonentity, and he deserves to be rescued from an entirely posthumous obscurity by something more generous than a scholarly footnote. His career as a devoted royal servant spanned a period in which the Old English were being relentlessly excluded from high office in Ireland, yet as crown counsel for Irish affairs he succeeded in establishing a distinctive niche in the Whitehall bureaucracy.
Wood’s Halfpence, Carteret, and the government of Ireland, 1723–6
Authors: McNally Patrick
Published: August 2016

The Wood’s Halfpence affair has long been recognised as one of the most serious disputes to have occurred between the Irish and British political establishments during the eighteenth century. There is no doubt that the conflict — caused by Irish resentment over the patent granted to William Wood to coin copper halfpence for Ireland — was one of the most serious ruptures in Anglo-Irish relations between the Williamite war and the ‘patriot’ campaign of the 1750s. The simple fact is that in 1723–4 the British administration was unable to implement its policy in Ireland. The Irish parliamentary managers declined to co-operate in the implementation of Wood’s patent, the Irish privy council failed to offer advice about how the conflict might be resolved, and the Irish lords justices refused to obey the positive orders of the British government.

In the past historians have argued that, shocked by the demonstrable unreliability of its Irish servants during this episode, the British government adopted a systematic policy of appointing English officials to the highest offices of Irish state and church. The appointment of Hugh Boulter as primate of the Church of Ireland in 1724 and of Richard West as lord chancellor in 1725 seemed to support such an interpretation.
A political minefield: southern loyalists, the Irish Grants Committee and the British government, 1922–31
Authors: Brennan Niamh
Published: August 2016

All classes of the loyalist community ... [are] victims.

Irish Grants Committee report, 3 Nov. 1930

I

‘A considerable number [of refugees] have left on a plea of compulsion without any justification whatever for that plea,’ declared the secretary to the Provisional Government in 1922, referring to the departure from the twenty-six-county area of disbanded members of the R.I.C., British ex-servicemen and civilians believed to have been loyal to the British régime in Ireland. Such a claim was greeted with scant belief in Britain in the spring of 1922 as perhaps as many as 20,000 people, some with their entire families, arrived on British shores and were given refugee status by the British government through its Irish Distress Committee, founded to aid Irish loyalist victims of the Civil War. The committee first sat in May 1922 under the chairmanship of Sir Samuel Hoare, a Conservative, and its function was to give loans of money to refugees from Ireland until they either found work in Britain or decided it was safe to return home. At first it had a budget of £10,000, which was fairly meagre, even by the standards of the early 1920s, considering that it dealt with 3,349 applicants in its first six months. Relief was available to claimants through loans and grants. Even at that early stage when the Civil War was far from over, the Irish Distress Committee realised that its work ‘only touches the fringe of the bigger question of compensation’, though perhaps it did not realise just how big that question was to be in the aftermath of Irish independence.
The narrow road: Harry Midgley and Catholic schools in Northern Ireland
Authors: McGrath Michael
Published: August 2016

The Ministry of Education was, and remains, the most important government department for the Catholic church in Northern Ireland. As Cormack, Gallagher and Osborne note,

The Department of Education in Northern Ireland occupies a distinctive place in terms of the general relationships between the government and the Catholic community. Throughout the period since the creation of Northern Ireland, the most significant social institution over which the Catholic community has exercised control, principally through the Catholic church, has been the Catholic education system.

The devolved government appeared to recognise Catholic educational interests by usually appointing as Minister of Education one of the more liberal figures within the Ulster Unionist Party such as Lord Londonderry, Lord Charlemont and Samuel Hall-Thompson. However, in the first week of 1950 Sir Basil Brooke ‘surprised everyone, and appalled Catholics’ by appointing Harry Midgley, an avowed opponent of the Catholic clergy and autonomous Catholic schools, as Northern Ireland’s sixth Minister of Education.
The career and correspondence of Thomas Allan, c. 1725-1798
Authors: Johnston Edith M.
Published: August 2016

From 1700 to 1767 it was customary for the lord lieutenant of Ireland to reside in the country only during the period when the Irish parliament was actually in session. Before the amendment of Poynings’ law in 1782 the parliamentary session had lasted approximately six to eight months in every second year. On its prorogation the viceroy had returned to Great Britain for the intervening eighteen months, placing the government of Ireland in the hands of three prominent Irish politicians known as the lords justices. For some years before 1767 the British government had been considering the appointment of a permanently resident lord lieutenant in order to instil stability into the Irish political administration and to remove the necessity for the appointment of Irish politicians as lords justices.

In 1767 the Pitt-Grafton administration appointed George, Viscount Townshend, lord lieutenant of Ireland. On his arrival the new viceroy found that the government of the kingdom was in the hands of the great borough proprietors, many of whom were connected with the influential whig families in Great Britain. These Irish politicians were accustomed to carry through, or undertake, the king’s business in parliament in return for a generous share of administrative patronage, which they used to increase their political power and family prestige. This patronage was mainly connected with the control of the revenue board of which John Ponsonby, speaker of the Irish house of commons, brother of the earl of Bessborough and closely connected with the duke of Devonshire, was the first commissioner.
Contemporary sources for Essex’s lieutenancy in Ireland, 1599
Authors: Henry L.W.
Published: August 2016

On the intelligence side, the Irish wars in this period were little different from any of the large-scale enterprises overseas of the 1590s. The expedition to Ireland of 1599, as in the case of the Cadiz expedition of 1596 and its successor to the Islands in 1597, is preluded by a crop of ‘projects’ and ‘espialls’ in the state papers, and the preparations traceable there have the distinctive marks of a special service. Among the many eye-witness accounts of oversea operations in the 1590s, however, which take the form of private journals, as distinct from dispatches to the queen or the privy council, Sir John Harington’s journal of Essex’s command in Ireland stands by itself in importance, though its position appears to be challenged by the contemporaneous Treatice of Ireland, by John Dymmok, who like Harington served under Essex there. It was pointed out long ago that these two works, so far as they cover the same events, agree almost word for word with each other. The question of authenticity is not helped by the fact that Harington’s journal has shared the fate of all his letters and papers in that neither the original nor any contemporary copy of it are to be found. Internal evidence, however, shows that the borrower was Dymmok, perhaps acting with the indifference in these matters that was characteristic of the period, though more commonly found among the chroniclers. The wonder perhaps is that Dymmok has allowed himself to repeat a number of Harington’s misplaced verbal ‘conceits’, for the existing differences tell strongly in favour of Dymmok as witness. Where the differences are not due to copyists’ errors Dymmok has invariably improved the sense, and the matter-of-fact ending to his relation of the Munster journey is in noteworthy contrast to an unfair gloss in the corresponding passage in Harington.
An agenda for women’s history in Ireland, 1500–1900: Part I: 1500–1800
Authors: MacCurtain Margaret , O’Dowd Mary
Published: August 2016

In the last twenty years women’s history has emerged as a major field of scholarly inquiry. An extensive literature has accumulated on the history of women in western Europe and North America, and the contribution which women have made to many different aspects of western society has been rediscovered. New areas of study have been developed as the gender differences in men’s and women’s lives have been recognised and researched. The expanding secondary literature has also led to a lively debate about the purpose, methodology and theory of women’s history. A central focus of discussion has been the relationship between women’s history and mainstream history. Initially research on the history of women tended to work within the parameters of traditional history: to be fitted into its ‘empty spaces’. But dissatisfaction with the male-centred and patriarchal nature of the predominant historical discourse has led women historians to seek out new methodologies and to argue that consideration of history from the perspective of women, as well as of men, is a major challenge to the whole nature of historical inquiry. As Gerda Lerner, a pioneer of women’s history in the United States, put it, women’s history

challenges the traditional assumption that man is the measure of all that is significant, and that the activities pursued by men are by definition significant, while those pursued by women are subordinate in importance. It challenges the notion that civilization is that which men have created, defended, and advanced while women had babies and serviced families and to which they, occasionally and in a marginal way, ‘contributed’.
Irish peasant women in revolt: the Land League years
Authors: TeBrake Janet K.
Published: August 2016

Between 1879 and 1882 a mass agrarian movement, led by the Irish National Land League, became a strong, all-encompassing force in Irish life for a brief but crucial period. This movement, one of the largest agrarian movements to take place in nineteenth-century Europe, has been treated as a nationalist movement, with emphasis of study placed on the role, contributions and aims of the league’s national leaders. These men, seeking their own varieties of self-government, saw the land movement as means to a political end. To them the land agitation provided a stepping-stone to national independence. It was the Irish peasantry, however, motivated primarily by economic considerations, that provided the driving force behind the movement, and at this level Irish peasant women made major contributions to the agrarian revolt. In this study the Land League movement is viewed as an agrarian protest movement; its purpose is to examine in particular the roles played by the Irish peasant women during the Land League period.

These contributions have not been adequately recognised in historical literature. Recently the role of the Irish peasant has been duly acknowledged, but in these discussions a male image usually appears. When the Irish women’s role in the land movement is examined, it is done so in the context of the organisation known as the Ladies’ Land League. These studies concentrate on the activities of the upper- and middle-class urban leaders, particularly the Parnell sisters. But to dwell only on the Ladies’ Land League as the focus of women’s participation in the Land League movement is far too narrow, for it obscures the fact that hundreds of peasant women were fighting the Land War on a daily basis long before the formation of the women’s organisation. The papers of some of the local branches of the Land League provide evidence which shows that Irish rural women participated in the Land War from its beginning. Although the archival sources of the Land League period are biased towards men, enough material regarding the peasant women’s activities, admittedly limited and somewhat sparse, does exist to allow a strong argument to be put forward that peasant women performed effectively in the Land War.
The Irish court of wards under James I
Authors: Treadwell Victor
Published: August 2016

The work of J. Murstfield and H. E. Sell hns directed the attention of historians to the importance of the English court of wards and liveries, both as an instrument of fiscal policy and as a welfare organisation for the children and widows of the king's tenants. In the Public Record Office, Lonclon, a great mass of material remains to throw light on every aspect of the court's activity. More recently Dr H. F. Kearney has published a uselul and suggestive paper on the Irish court of wards which was principally concerned with the reign of Charles I. A more detailed appraisal of the earlier period is not easy since the records of the Irish court of wards have, like those of other departments of state, suffered wholesale loss or destruction. It seems unlikely that the wards papers were ever placed in public archives: they apparently never reached the old Public Record Office in Dublin to be consumed in the holocaust of 1922. Consequently, the student has to work from public and private papers scattered throughout these islands in libraries, record ofices and private collections.
Dublin in 1685
Authors: Simms J.G.
Published: August 2016

A critical year for Dublin was 1685. It was the year that Charles II died and James II came to the throne. The twenty-five years of Charles II’s reign had brought stability, prosperity and expansion within a predominantly protestant framework. The death of Charles, the accession of his catholic brother James, and the recall of the great duke of Ormond appeared to mark the end of an era. It was a year of anxiety for protestants and of fluctuating hopes for catholics. It was a time of transition that was to be followed by the uninhibitedly partisan policy of Tyrconnell, by the Jacobite war, and by the protestant liberation after william’s victory at the Boyne.
The southern Irish unionists, the Irish question, and British politics, 1906–14
Authors: Buckland P.J.
Published: August 2016

The period 1906–14 is often regarded as one of continual disagreement and turmoil in British politics. This may be true; but it is important to understand why. In fact, British politics between 1906 and 1914 were marked by a strong desire to avoid extremes. Developments on the fringe of politics, socialism, syndicalism and suffragism, made a deep impression upon the moderate elements of both major parties and their desire to contain such signs of disturbance was epitomised in the constitutional conference held in 1910. Yet the Irish question frustrated attempts at moderation, embittered politics and hindered the development of a more representative, democratic and social stage in the United Kingdom.
The provision of capital for early Irish railways, 1830–53
Authors: Lee Joseph P.
Published: August 2016

Lack of information about capital investment constitutes a serious gap in our knowledge of the nineteenth-century Irish economy. It is impossible to decide, for instance, how much truth there is in the almost axiomatic assertion that lack of capital was a major obstacle to Irish economic development until such elementary questions as the identity and motives of investors, the actual amount and timing of investment, and the channels of capital supply are examined. This paper considers some of these problems in connection with railways, the largest consumers of fixed capital in the midnineteenth century.
America and the Irish problem, 1899–1921
Authors: Ward Alan J.
Published: August 2016

The United States census of 1910 revealed that there were four and a half million people in the United States who had beenborn in Ireland, or who had at least one Irish-born parent. The figures did not reveal that many other Americans identified themselves with Ireland, the country of their grandparents, or even of their great-grandparents, and it was not unusual for Irish-American leaders at that time to claim the support of fifteen or twenty million fellow Irish-Americans. A great many of these had, indeed, managed to retain a sense of Irish identity and this was in part because they, or their forebears, had largely settled together in Irish ghettos in large cities. In addition they had been forced inwards to their Irish community for support when persecuted by the ‘ Know-nothings ’ and other nativist groups in the nineteenth century. This Irish subculture in which they lived was cultivated by three groups of fellow Irish-Americans who had an interest in promoting an Irish-American community, the better to control and command the Irish-Americans themselves; the Roman Catholic Church, which was very much an Irish Catholic Church in America, the Irish political bosses, interested in political power rather than Ireland, who had risen to power in the Democratic party by their ability to control the Irish vote, and a third group which utilized the audience they both nurtured, the Irish nationalists. The skill with which these nationalists mobilized Irish-Americans in support of Ireland’s claim to independence added an important dimension to the British government’s Irish problem for it became a problem for successive American governments too. As long as Ireland remained tied to England there were in America men and women prepared to emulate John Mitchel who had declared, when he first landed in New York in November 1853, that he intended to make use of the freedom guaranteed him in America to stimulate the movement for Irish independence. It is the object of this paper to review, albeit briefly and incompletely, the significance of the activities of these Irish-American nationalists in the struggle for Irish freedom and in the development of Anglo-American relations during the period from the Boer war, which began in October 1899, to the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921.
The life of St Patrick : a new approach
Authors: Raifeartaigh T.Ó
Published: August 2016

The runaway British slave who called himself Patricius tells us in this Confession that on making land after his escape from Ireland the and the ship’s crew had to journey for twenty-eight days before coming across any other human beings. Bury (Life of St Patrick, London, 1905) offered the explanation that they must have found themselves in a part of Gaul which had just been devastated by the Vandals, who burst into the west in the first days of 407. The idea was tempting. The date 407, combined with 431 (the year which is known from Prosper’s contemporary chronicle to have been that in which Pope Celestine sent Palladius as ‘first bishop’ to the Irish Christians), not only gave a fairly firm chronological anchorage to Patrick’s career, but also forged for him an early link with the continent, whence, according to his seventh-century Irish biographers, Muirchú and Tírechán, he ultimately returned to Ireland as successor to Palladius.
Fenian documents in the State Paper Office
Authors: Giolla Choille Breandán Mac
Published: August 2016

The state papers in the State Paper Office, Dublin Castle, are the documents which were received or created in the office of the chief secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland and in a small number of related offices or departments. The departments or related offices were: the convict department, with records for 1778–1924; the privy council department, with records for 1800–1922; the chief crown solicitor’s department, with records for 1848–1922; the police and crime department, with records for 1848–1920; and the general prisons board, with records for 1836–1928.
The opposition to the ecclesiastical legislation in the Irish reformation parliament
Authors: Bradshaw Brendan
Published: August 2016

Arecent writer has drawn attention to the reluctance of historians to undertake a study in depth of individual Tudor parliaments in Ireland. He attributes this reluctance to the sparseness of the source material. Nevertheless the task must be undertaken if the history of Tudor Ireland is to be understood. The present essay is confined not only to a particular parliament, the reformation parliament of Henry VIII, but to a particular aspect of the parliament, namely its reaction to the ecclesiastical legislation which formally established the breach with Rome.
Saint Patrick’s twenty-eight days’ journey
Authors: Ó Raifeartaigh T.
Published: August 2016

The sole piece of ‘straight’ narrative, that is, of incident following closely upon incident, which Patrick has left us is the account of his experiences on the way home from Ireland (chapters 18-23 of the Confession). Briefly, on making land he and the ship’s crew pushed inland through a barren and apparently uninhabited region, where they came near to starvation. Such was their plight that the captain called on Patrick to justify his claim that the Christian god was all-powerful, for it was doubtful, he said, whether they should ever see another human face. Just then, however, they came upon a herd of pigs, on which they regaled themselves. Up to the fourteenth day thereafter food was available to them in abundance, including a find of tree honey, and, in implicit contrast to their previous situation, they had also fire and siccitas, that is, dry weather (or perhaps shelter).
Froude, Lecky and ‘the humblest Irishman’
Authors: Wyatt Anne
Published: August 2016

The usual route to the discovery of Froude’s English in Ireland in the eighteenth century, first published between 1872 and 1874, and Lecky’s History of Ireland in the eighteenth century, which first appeared as a separate work in 1892, lies through the bibliographies of more recent historians. Today, eighty to a hundred years after their appearance on the scene of history, politics and rature, these works are still authorities for the period they cover. They are monumental works: monuments to the skill, industry, personality and opinions of their authors and, in varying degrees, to their scholarship.
Daniel O’Connell and American anti-slavery
Authors: Riach Douglas C.
Published: August 2016

In August 1875, at the O’Connell centenary celebrations in Boston, three famous American abolitionists recalled the importance of O’Connell’s role in the American anti-slavery movement. John Greenleaf Whittier saw no reason to change the high opinion of O’Connell’s anti-slavery services that he had formed many years earlier; William Lloyd Garrison commented on the aid and inspiration he had always received from O’Connell; and Wendell Phillips noted how the Irishman’s actions as an agitator had influenced the abolitionists’ own concept of moral reform. Parallel celebrations in Dublin also mentioned this aspect of O’Connell’s career, but perhaps it is fitting that his anti-slavery commitment should receive greatest stress in Boston, which was not only an important Irish-American centre, but also the city with the closest links with British anti-slavery.
Richard II and the submissions of Gaelic Ireland
Authors: Johnston Dorothy
Published: August 2016

The obscurity surrounding Richard’s involvement in his Irish lordship has made it difficult to understand royal policy for Ireland in the 1390s, despite the availability in print of many original sources recording the successes of his first Irish expedition. These documents reveal how Richard in 1394-5 succeeded in winning more wide-spread submissions from Gaelic Ireland than any of his predecessors had done, and that this was the deliberate aim of royal policy cannot seriously be doubted. Historical neglect of this material as evidence on royal policy has resulted from reservations about the political value of Gaelic submission, which, it has been assumed, was the inevitable by-product of any royal visit and a poor alternative to military conquest. This dismissive attitude towards Gaelic submissions to the crown, judged by what they effected rather than what they sought to establish.
The Methodist Crusade in Ireland 1795-1845
Authors: Hempton D. N.
Published: August 2016

Desmond Bowen’s recently published ‘Study of Protestant-Catholic relations between the Act of Union and Disestablishment’ has been a well received investigation of the polarisation between evangelical anglicanism and an increasingly ‘Roman’ catholicism. In his view the historically fragmented religio-political culture of pre-nineteenth century Ireland was, after 1822, the perfect battleground for two imperialistic ecclesiastical systems: ‘When protestant proselytising was openly encouraged in parts of the country after 1822 and the movement for emancipation gained momentum, the castigation of religious leaders who urged conciliation instead of confrontation increased.’
The crisis in Ireland and the disintegration of Queen Anne’s last ministry
Authors: Hayton David
Published: August 2016

During the winter of 1713-14 the tory ministry in England began to disintegrate. Despite a massive tory victory at the 1713 election, the new parliament which met in the following spring did not furnish the court with a reliable majority in either house. The tory party had fallen into complete disarray Queen Anne’s deteriorating health was the root cause, giving rise to panic among tories. It was clear that there was little hope for them at Hanover, where Prince George, angry at thepeaceofutrecht, wascommitted to thewhigs. Some tories actively considered declaring for the Pretender Others, more afraid of a Jacobite restoration than the accession of a whiggish but protestant king, identified themselves as Hanoverians and voted against the ministry in parliament. The vast majority, whether Jacobite or Hanoverian, were agreed on the necessity of taking some decisive measures to crush the whigs and entrench themselves in power against the fateful day when the queen should die. More than ever they were impatient of the leadership of Lord Treasurer Oxford, the former Robert Harley, the essence of whose political management seemed to be duplicity and procrastination.
Patriotism as pastime: the appeal of fenianism in the mid-1860s
Authors: Comerford R.V.
Published: August 2016

There is general acceptance in recent writings that fenianism in its heyday — which is to say the middle 1860s — was espoused predominantly by members of lower-ranking social and occupational groups. It is not difficult to assemble supporting references and texts from well-placed contemporary observers. T.D.Sullivan writing privately to Thomas D’Arcy McGee in 1862 described the active but still anonymous organisation subsequently known as the ‘I.R.B.’ or the ‘feninas’ as drawing the bulk of its membership from among ‘shopkeepers’ assistants in our cities and chief towns who have a little smattering — often a very little indeed — of education’, and from ‘the very poorest and most ignorant people’ By 1865 the term ‘fenianism’ was in extensive use and the thing itself was receiving widespread attention. Writing his diary for 26 June that year, W J. O’Neill Daunt expressed the opinion that in his part of County Cork those implicated in fenian activities were ‘country lads’ and ‘town shop-boys’ At the same time, the mounting pile of constabulary reports from around the country provided more and more references to the infection of specific categories by fenianism: in one area, shopboys, artisans, servants and reduced farmers; in another, ‘young men of the labouring class and also mechanics or tradesmen such as tailors, nailors, shoemakers’; elsewhere, subordinate employees on the railway Less specifically, an alarmed detective visiting the Thurles area reported that the ‘lower orders’ thereabouts were fenians virtually to a man.
John O’Connor Power, Charles Stewart Parnell and the centralisation of popular politics in Ireland
Authors: Jordan Donald
Published: August 2016

In historical treatment, as was the case in life, John O’Connor Power has been overshadowed by Charles Stewart Parnell, his political nemesis who campaigned successfully to destroy Power’s influence. However during the decade 1874–84, Power was the most enigmatic, controversial and divisive figure in Irish politics. His fellow parliamentarian T P. O’Connor called him ‘one of the few [Irish M.P.s] who stood out from the ruck of Irish placehunters’, whose ‘profound knowledge, his temper ..his profound contempt for ignorance and, as he thought, at the same time the insanity of Parnell made him a source of division’ O’Connor described him as having ‘a powerful but very ugly face, the ugliness accentuated by the marks of a severe attack in childhood of smallpox’ Tim Healy remembered him as ‘reeking of the common clay’ and remarked that ‘Parnell’s aristocratic sensitiveness recoiled’ in Power’s presence.
The Irish unionist party and the devolution crisis of 1904-5
Authors: Lyons F.S.L.
Published: August 2016

The passing of the land act of 1903 had been in large part due to the success of the conference held in Ireland during the previous winter between representatives of Irish unionists and nationalists. The chairman of the conference, Lord Dunraven, had been one of the most prominent of the unionist advocates of a conciliatory policy and, after the initial work of the conference had been accomplished, he was reluctant to abandon the instrument for good which had been fashioned during the preceding six months. Supporting him at the conference had been a group of other unionist landlords with views similar to his own; they became known as the Land Committee, and they were to form the nucleus of a new organisation which Lord Dunraven had already in mind. This group was independent of party ties, for, if it contained no nationalist members, it was also frowned upon by the official unionist body, the Landowners' Convention.
Richard Whately and political economy in school books, 1833-80
Authors: Goldstrom J.M.
Published: August 2016

Throughout the nineteenth century, books, pamphlets and periodicals offered widely-ranging advice to the working class. One theme, appearing about 1820, was political economy: ‘Next to religion’, a royal commission reported, ‘the knowledge most important to a labouring man is that of the causes which regulate the amount of his wages, the hours of his work, the regularity of his employment, and the prices of what he consumes’. And Richard Whately, former Drummond Professor of political economy at Oxford, now archbishop of Dublin, urged similarly the need to teach political economy to the poor : ‘The lower orders’, he said, ‘would not … be, as now, liable to the misleading of every designing demagogue … If they were well grounded in the outlines of the science, it would go further towards rendering them provident, than any other scheme that could be devised.’
Faction and the origins of the Desmond rebellion of 1579
Authors: Brady Ciaran
Published: August 2016

Alone amongst the major rebellions of the sixteenth century the Desmond rebellion of 1579 seems to have retained its romantic fascination untarnished. While the rebellions of 1534 and 1569 and the major uprising in Ulster at the end of the century have each been subjected to critical historical analysis, the uprising of the last Desmond earl seems to contain a mysterious element which has somehow deflected all attempts at detached assessment, and which continues to attract popular historians, like Richard Berleth, in search of a good Gothic tale at the close of the feudal age. The dramatic appeal of the Desmond rebellion, I suspect, lies in the aura of inevitability which appears to surround it. As Macbeth was doomed to be overthrown, as Othello was doomed to kill that which, he loved most, as Hamlet was doomed to do nothing, so it seems Desmond was doomed to destroy himself in rebellion.