Irish History Research Articles

Paradigma e excepcionalidade no evento racial do Atlântico Verde

This article aims to reflect on how the ambiguous, anomalous, and complex processes of Irish history expose the dynamics of antiblackness as paradigmatic for the concept of “Human” and the exceptionality of the Irish experience. Based on the theoretical framework of black radical thought (SILVA, 2019; WILDERSON III, 2010, 2020) and Irish historiography (KENNY, 2006; O’NEILL; LLOYD, 2010; OHLMEYER, 2023), I will explore the Irish presence in the Atlantic, considering the ambiguity and complexity of the Irish as victims and agents of colonial projects in the Americas and Africa, as well as Frederick Douglass’s visit to Ireland in the nineteenth century. Following the term “racial event” proposed by Denise Ferreira da Silva (2019), I argue that the Green Atlantic demonstrates (1) the exceptionality of the Irish case for the experience of whiteness, (2) the ruses of the analogy between the black and Irish experiences and (3) the paradigmatic position of antiblackness for the project of forming Irish identity and its inscription in the “human family”.

From Kingdom to Colony: Framing the English Conquest of Ireland

Abstract This article offers a new way of framing the English conquest of Ireland by focusing on the development of a kingdom of Ireland both before and after the invasion of 1169. It thus spans the historiographical divides that tend to partition Irish history at the point of the English invasion, and which also frequently disaggregate the study of British and Irish history. By exploring the complexity of Irish political society and culture before 1169, one can see how King Henry II sought to use its structures to facilitate his annexation of ‘the kingdom of Ireland’ in 1171–2. This included the Church, which offered Henry’s dynasty the ideological support and legitimacy it had once provided for Gaelic kings of Ireland. Paying attention to the numerous references to the ‘kingdom of Ireland’ in the records of the English government also highlights the processes by which Henry’s son John and his successors sought to Anglicise this kingdom by imposing England’s laws, institutions and political culture upon it. Crucially, ultimate control of these structures remained with the administration in England, so in this way Ireland was transformed from a kingdom to a colony. Recognising this liminal period in the development of Anglo-Ireland provides context for the emerging colonial community in Ireland, as well as strategies of resistance and compromise employed by the Gaelic Irish under English rule.

Divergence in smoking and drinking trends: Results from age-period-cohort analytical approach

BackgroundSmoking has dropped substantially over time while alcohol consumption has increased. Understanding how smoking and drinking relate to age, time-period or birth cohorts may improve public health measures. MethodThe cross-sectional Continuous Household Survey in Northern Ireland provided bi-annual, household-level data on smoking and drinking from 1985 to 2015. An age-period-cohort approach was employed using 10-year age groups and 9 birth cohorts. A descriptive analysis of smoking and drinking by birth cohort was performed and supplemented by a joinpoint analysis. An Intrinsic Estimator model was used to examine behaviour patterns defined separately by age, time-period, and cohort. ResultsAge effects showed that smoking and drinking peaked during adolescence and young adulthood (relative risk (RR) of age 25–34 vs. all ages: RR smoking = 1.59, RR drinking = 1.61, p < 0.001), followed by a progressive subsequent decline with age. Distinct secular trends were observed whereby smoking decreased over time but non-abstinence rates in relation to alcohol consumption increased substantially from 1985 to 2015. Cohort effects in smoking and drinking suggested that Generation X (born around 1961–1980) appeared to have a slightly higher likelihood of smoking and drinking but this converged with other cohorts over time. ConclusionThe absence of similar policy efforts for alcohol as given to smoking may explain the divergence in secular trends of smoking and drinking. Targeting interventions towards adolescents and young adults may offer the best chance of reducing smoking and drinking prevalence. Cohort effects suggest the need for further research about the relationship between drinking and Northern Ireland's political history.

Objet petits pois: peas, domestics, and modernity in “Two Gallants”

ABSTRACT Corley and Lenehan con a gold coin off a servant girl in James Joyce’s “Two Gallants” – but how they do so is left unclear. Lenehan’s consumption of a plate of peas midway through the story meanwhile appears relatively unmysterious. This article argues however that Lenehan’s peas are a key narrative motif: firstly, crystallising the antagonisms that consciously underlie Joyce’s emergent modernist style, but also (by way of the evolving connotation of peas through Irish history) actively historicising the social conditions that underlie this aesthetic. Ultimately, it is via the peas’ relationship with near-absent figure of the “slavey” herself that we see how Joyce’s dialectical aesthetic serves to interrogate the socio-historical position of Corley and Lenehan’s Ireland.

Irish Immigrants in Colonial Port Cities of Cuba: Havana, Santiago, and Cienfuegos

Abstract The port city of Havana, central to the Spanish colonial fleet system since the late sixteenth century, remained an important nexus for nineteenth-century Atlantic trade networks of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and the slave trade. Positioning Irish immigrants in this global hub allows us to examine their presence in Cuba and their participation in global circuits of commodities, trade, and labor. Drawing on local colonial sources, we evaluate the opportunities and experiences of Irish immigrants as social actors in the multi-ethnic urban spaces of Havana and other strategically located port cities of Santiago and Cienfuegos. The Irish who converged on Cuba rarely came directly from Ireland. Hence, we explore three migration trajectories mediated through the British West Indies, the Spanish metropole, and globally connected cities of North America. The most prominent were high-ranking military men who arrived in Cuba in the eighteenth century through Iberian-Irish connections; a smaller number of propertied Irish who migrated from the West Indies; and lastly, distinct flows of largely anonymous nineteenth-century immigrants who came through emerging Atlantic networks of colonial labour via the United States. This study explores the entangled histories of Irish, African, and European diasporas in the social and political worlds of three Spanish Caribbean port cities. Through an analysis of how Irish immigrants negotiated processes of class, religion, race, and gender in colonial Cuba, we highlight their participation in key economic and social dynamics of white colonization strategies, plantation slavery, and the Atlantic slave trade.

John Bale, Imperial Monarchy, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Ireland

Abstract The episcopal mission of Englishman John Bale to Ireland in 1553 provides historians with a unique window into the interconnected British and Irish histories of the early English Reformation. Scholarship on Bale has long explored his life and theology in all European theatres of the Reformation in which he was involved. Yet, key features of his mission and theology remain underappreciated. Building on recent work that has contextualized Bale’s Irish mission and ecclesiology within the imperial outlook of the Edwardian regime and Reformation, the article examines Bale’s mission against the worlds of English evangelical and continental Protestant political theology he inhabited, and the mingling of Henrician and Edwardian ‘reformist’ energies in Ireland with which it intersected and clashed. It argues that, under conditions of English colonial rule and empire in Ireland, Bale expressed a political theology that, imperial by circumstance and implication, turned his spiritual vocation modelled on Christ into a receptacle for divine and princely sovereignty that set rival conceptions of royal authority, idolatry, and Anglo-Irish constitutional relations against each other. Evangelical political theology thus acquired different hues on either side of the Irish Sea, with important implications for how we understand the early English Reformation across England and Ireland.

History of Irish Church at the turn of 19&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century and &lt;i&gt;The Antiquities of Ireland&lt;/i&gt; by Edward Ledwich

The article examines the book "The Antiquities of Ireland" by Edward Ledwich, published in two editions — in 1790 and 1804. The work, which was very popular at the time, is now almost forgotten, but nevertheless, the figure of Ledwich still arouses the interest of specialists in Irish historiography and the history of thought. The main topic of the work is the analysis of the history of the Irish Church in Ledwich’s book and Ledwich’s use of Irish historical sources proper.

Scoring the Nation

This article analyses how transnational co-productions render Irish history audio-visually by comparing the soundtracks of Some Mother’s Son (1996) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). The puzzle is whether history films can enhance immersive perceptual experiences of place by using local music, while catering to the audiovisual skills and expectations of global audiences. The study compares Bill Whelan’s and George Fenton’s respective soundtracks. On the one hand, Whelan’s avowedly Irish soundtrack performed by the Irish Film Orchestra with virtuosos from the Riverdance Orchestra crowds the images and prescribes audience feelings. On the other, Fenton lightly melds classical film orchestration with Irish melody and instrumentation and The Wind that Shakes the Barley blends diegetic singing with its more spacious soundtrack. The conclusion is that combining local instruments and diegetic song with limited cinematic orchestration succeeds better than neo-traditional instrumentation in screening Irish history.

Style over substance? The Blueshirts and transnational fascist culture

ABSTRACT The central debate over the Blueshirt movement has centred on whether the movement can be classified as fascist. The two most significant accounts of Blueshirtism, by Maurice Manning (1971) and Mike Cronin (1997) have largely avoided explicit comparisons between the Blueshirts and other European fascist movements. While John Newsinger (2001) has argued that the Blueshirts may be usefully compared to the British Blackshirts, and Fearghal McGarry (2005) has highlighted aspects of Eoin O’Duffy’s engagement with Italian Fascist ideas and practices, there is still more work to be done in exploring transnational links and possible comparisons between the Blueshirts and continental European fascist movements. This article argues that by interrogating the political culture of Blueshirtism, we can better understand its place within the spectrum of European fascisms. This article considers both the “high” and “low” aspects of Blueshirt culture. It examines the links between the Blueshirts and European fascist movements by analysing both political thought and political uniforms. By applying a transnational lens, we can thus gain a more holistic understanding of one of the most controversial political movements in modern Irish history.

Reading W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney in a Postcolonial Context: Exploring Landscape and Identity

This article critically examines Ireland's postcolonial position, with a specific focus on the poetic works of influential Irish writers William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney. The exploration begins by delving into Ireland's historical and cultural context as a colonized nation, shedding light on the profound impact of English domination and the complexities of Irish history. Furthermore, the article draws parallels between the Irish experience and anticolonial movements in Third World countries, emphasising on the similar struggles in resisting colonization. The central argument posits that, having endured colonialism, both Yeats and Heaney actively contribute to the postcolonial discourse by employing themes of landscape and identity as distinct forms of resistance. Yeats, driven by a personal interest in mythology, mythologizes resistance against the colonizer through the revival of heroic deeds in his poetry. Conversely, Heaney engages in a subversion of the “us vs them” dichotomy, responding to the Empire through his works. The imagery of earth, depicted in his poetry, symbolises the connection between physical landscape to Irish identity. By situating Yeats’ and Heaney’s poetry within a postcolonial framework, this article seeks to acknowledge their collective contribution as a form of "writing back to the Empire," thereby enriching the discourse surrounding Irish postcolonialism.

“Ireland for the Irish”

This article argues that the political campaigning on Twitter of two far-right parties during the 2020 Irish General Election worked to disseminate far-right populist tendencies through their discursive use of conservative geopolitical imaginaries of Ireland. The material harvested for this study consists of 631 original tweets posted by the official Twitter accounts of The National Party and the Irish Freedom Party during the period of January 14 – February 8 2020. Using thematic analysis, this article argues that much of the Twitter content of these two parties centred around three central themes: anti-establishment, anti-immigration, and evoking Irish history. Uniquely, permeating all four themes of the political parties’ accounts are discourses of “patriotism” which configure much of their social media rhetoric as part of an “Ireland for the Irish” geopolitical imaginary. From this analysis, we argue that the National Party and Irish Freedom Party not only disseminated their nationally-specific far-right agendas in their tweets during the 2020 General Election, but that they did so through using geopolitical imaginaries and rhetoric that are reminiscent of far-right populist movements more broadly across Europe and the US in order to rationalise their movement and legitimise their conservative geopolitical imaginaries of Ireland.

Forging the medieval amidst loss: The Public Record Office of Ireland and Ireland’s medieval history

In the aftermath of the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) in June 1922 during the opening battle of the Irish Civil War, and with it seven centuries of records, historians and archivists have had to be creative in their search for sources for medieval Irish history. In response to this loss, they have forged a distinctive historiographical tradition using records now in English collections, as well as antiquarian transcripts and publications. Beginning with the work of Edmund Curtis in the 1920s, this tradition has sought to list, identify, and edit for publication replacement sources for records lost with the PROI for an Irish and international audience. More recently, scholars have made these collections digitally and publicly accessible worldwide with the CIRCLE and Beyond 2022 Projects at Trinity College Dublin. This article looks at how the lost records and a century of recovery efforts have shaped understandings of Ireland’s medieval past and its colonial relationship with England.

Unlawful Carnal Knowledge in the Irish Free State, 1924–1935

Abstract Despite a growing body of research on sexual violence in Irish history, and on recently reported historic sexual offences, few studies have focused on sex offenders who were prosecuted and convicted contemporaneously in the early decades of the Irish Free State. This article examines hitherto restricted archival files on sixty-five offenders who were convicted of unlawful carnal knowledge under the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, and, in doing so, constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of convicted sex offenders during the formative years of the independent Irish state. The findings reveal the modus operandi of these perpetrators and that the majority of the victims were exploited by someone who was known to them. The article also challenges the view that there was little recognition of child sexual abuse as a societal problem in the early years of the state and demonstrates that there was an awareness of predatory individuals within Irish communities during this period.

Review article: Writing in Japanese on Irish history

Even under sakoku (policy of national self-isolation), Japan observed the outside world. The result of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 was to create or reinforce close engagement with the world by writers, artists, officials and diplomats alike. While the first foreign language of most Japanese was to be English, some were more conversant with French or Italian (and in many cases, as late as the 1930s, with German). There has also been a handful variously able to read, write or speak a minoritised language like Irish; or an immensely challenging language like Finnish.

“Taking Comedy Seriously”: Humour in Lisa McGee’s Girls and Dolls

Laughter in the midst of tragedy can be one of life’s most disturbing, cathartic and enlightening experiences, a maxim experienced in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, one of the most painful periods of Irish history. Northern Irish playwrights were acutely aware of this when dealing with violence in their plays and so, however grim the events they depicted, the comic element was very much present. After the Good Friday Agreement, along with the change in the political situation in Northern Ireland, there was a generational change in the theatre. What seems to characterise this new wave is the ironic distance taken towards the sectarian divide and the consequences of the conflict on Northern Irish society, which is revealed above all in their use of humour. Lisa McGee, one of the most important representatives of the new generation thanks to the popularity of her television series Derry Girls, had already shown her maturity in her 2006 play Girls and Dolls, performed by Tinderbox the same year. McGee mixes the tragic and the comic to present the terrible consequences of childhood trauma alongside the violence of the late Troubles, while raising questions about guilt, the meaning of friendship and the subtle ways in which violence affects us. This article aims to analyse the different uses of humour employed by McGee to deal with tragic episodes and their theatrical effect, drawing on the existing research on humour in literature and McGee’s own observations given in an interview with the author on 3 March 2023.

Soundscapes of a Century: The Art and Transmission of Irish Broadcasting’s 100-Year Milestone

Abstract This article examines two renditions of an artwork titled 100, which celebrate a historic radio transmission in 1916 during the Irish war for independence. The centenary artwork delves into the concept of radio transmission as an artistic expression rather than solely a practical function. The work explores the intersection of radio transmission with installation art, as well as its connections to sound art and sound design. Engaging with diverse theoretical frameworks, the article interrogates the boundaries of radio and its relationship with other media expressions. It also seeks to understand important historical works and events within radio, with a focus on exploring the roots of radio and its history in Ireland.

Law and Religion: Convergence and Divergence on the Island of Ireland

ABSTRACT: Religion has played a huge role in the history of Ireland and Northern Ireland. There has been little comparative analysis, however, of the legal elements of this topic. This paper maps legal developments relating to religion to consider convergence and divergence since partition. It focuses on three distinct areas of engagement between law and religion: freedom of religion, religious discrimination, and ethical–moral claims with a religious dimension, such as abortion and contraception. The paper concludes that law's engagement with religion has differed markedly in some respects across the two jurisdictions, while remaining remarkably similar in others. While legal change since partition has sometimes been either an outcome or a reflection of underlying political, economic and social forces, at other times the law itself has been a major factor in social change. The paper concludes by considering forces that might drive further convergence or divergence on the island of Ireland.

History of Bonaparte’s Egyptian Campaign in Modern Historiography

In this article, the author presents a comprehensive analysis of the most recent foreign publications on the history of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, published over the past five years. He begins by providing a concise overview of the historiography of this topic, outlining the key areas of development over the past decades and identifying the works that have become classics in each field. Furthermore, he highlights the increasing prominence of anti-colonial discourse, largely influenced by the concepts articulated in Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, within the historiography of the Egyptian campaign since the early twenty-first century. The classic representation of these concepts in the historiography of this topic is a monograph by the American orientalist J. Cole. The impact of this discourse on the content of recent works is evident, particularly in the selection of topics by their authors. Consequently, the French military historian A. Pigeard was compelled to disguise his somewhat unconventional interest in the military aspects of the Egyptian campaign by discussing scientific topics that were not characteristic of his previous works. The Irish historian J. Clarke selected the topic of war crimes perpetrated by the French against the Egyptians for his research. Furthermore, the most significant works related to the history of the expedition that have appeared over the past period — the monograph of the English historian T. Sarafatti — can be characterised by the author’s desire to refute Said about the motivation of the French Orientalists who created the Description of Egypt. Concurrently, a notable recent trend in the historiography of the Egyptian campaign has been the inclusion of brief excursions into this topic by specialists from related fields of historical science. While this does contribute to a certain revival, it does not facilitate the emergence of fundamental research comparable in depth to the classical works of previous years.

The Partition of Ireland: Past and Present

The debates about the Irish unity initiated in the country the interest in its imperial history, about its place and meaning in colonial empire and about the methods and tools of British policy. The article deals with the interaction of past and present in Irish history, the influence of revolution 1916—1923 and related to it partition of Ireland on Brexit problem. It is considered in detail on the documentary basis the main stages of creation two Irish states — the Irish Free State dominion and Northern Ireland as autonomous entity in the United Kingdom. The special attention is paid to the ratification of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 in British and Irish parliaments.

Geographies of Pawnbroking in pre-Famine Ireland

While pawnbroking had a long history in Ireland it was not until the second decade of the nineteenth century that pawnshop numbers increased dramatically and the geography of pawnbroking shifted radically. This paper provides a detailed account of this changing geography. It outlines where the money that funded the expansion of pawnbroking originated. Unlike other businesses, pawnbrokers paid significant bonds to enter the trade and were legally required to provide three substantial independent sureties. To quickly recoup these initial costs and become profitable, pawnshops opened only in settlements where a significant demand for short-term credit existed. The ongoing decline of Ireland’s textile industries, the post-Napoleonic price collapses for agricultural commodities after 1815, the collapse of private banks in 1820 and a significant potato famine in the summer of 1822 combined as catalysts that caused a rapid expansion of pawnbroking between 1817 and 1824. As living standards deteriorated, pawnbrokers migrated into new settlements exploiting new poverties and the growing need for credit. This paper tracks the diffusion of pawnshops between 1787 and 1824 to provide new understandings of the geographies of deteriorating living standards, impoverishment and increased levels of economic precarity in the immediate post-Napoleonic period.