Left Ireland Research Articles

James Clarence Mangan's Oriental Translations and the Question of Origins

HE WORK of the nineteenth-century Irish poet James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) has mainly been read in two ways. The first concerns his relationship with the Young Ireland movement, whose seminal formulations in the 1840s largely founded Irish nationalism. Mangan, who wrote much reputedly nationalist verse for nationalist journals in these years, has often been regarded as the one poetic genius of the movement, infused with the spirit of the nation and representing in his life the figure of a suffering Ireland. The actual implications for Young Ireland's ethically demanding ideology of the wayward and emotionally wretched life of this alcoholic and probably opium-addicted writer, and of his refusal ever to express full commitment to the nationalist cause, are generally obscured in accounts which see Mangan in this light. The second view is sustained by Mangan's having written between the epoch of British high Romanticism and the emergence of a distinct literary movement in Ireland with Yeats and, later, Joyce. As a Catholic writer who never left Ireland, and indeed scarcely ever left Dublin, Mangan is envisaged as the forerunner of a native Anglo-Irish tradition. Consequently, his writing has been read in terms of its failure to meet the standards of either of the poles between which it is located, as a falling-off from the Romanticism it seeks to continue, or as a misfired attempt to forge an Irish idiom. Clearly, both views can overlap. In either case, however, attention is rarely given to the specific nature of Mangan's writing in the context supplied by the historical conjuncture in which he wrote.1

Canada, Ireland and the Commonwealth: the declaration of the Irish republic, 1948-9

The relationship of Ireland to the Commonwealth during the period of its membership was a tortuous one. Forced to accept dominion status under threat of the renewal of Anglo-Irish hostilities, Ireland was not an enthusiastic member of the club as were the older dominions. The Constitutional Amendment (No. 27) Bill, enacted on 11 December 1936, removed all references to the crown and governor general from the constitution while the Executive Authority (External Relations) Bill, enacted the next day, recognised the crown only for purposes of diplomatic representation and international agreements. These two measures, commonly referred to as the External Relations Act, left Ireland a more or less undeclared republic with ambiguous links to the Commonwealth. Wartime neutrality differentiated Ireland even further from the other dominions, aroused British anger and brought the question of Ireland's constitutional status into even greater prominence. Ireland was, the Canadian high commissioner in Dublin considered in 1944, a more or less unknown quantity' The Canadian government, though it would have preferred a different choice, respected Ireland's neutrality and resented British actions, taken without prior consultation, that might have contrived to drive Ireland from the Commonwealth. The end of the war removed a major cause of grievance but left Ireland's nosition unresolved.

The establishment of poor–law unions in Ireland, 1838–43

The historiography of poor-law administration in Ireland ever since Nicholls’s ‘official’ history in the mid-nineteenth century has suffered from a certain selectivity on the part of commentators. As a source of first-hand information Nicholls’s book is of little value. The relatively well-researched account of pre-poor-law relief mechanisms which forms the early part of the book is followed by a disappointing series of extracts from published annual reports, almost devoid of personal comment or reminiscence. The explanation for this lies (if anywhere) in the date of the book’s publication (1856) and the fact that Nicholls had left Ireland under a cloud in 1842. The brief ‘life’ of Nicholls published as an introduction to a later edition of his English poor law is far more revealing.

An Unequal Duel: Union Recruiting in Ireland, 1863-1864

AN UNEQUAL DUEL: Union Recruiting in Ireland, 1863-1864 Charles P. Cullop A dramatic and intriguing yet largely unheralded episode in the Confederate-Union struggle arose over the apparently innocent issue of Irish emigration to the North. The Federal government encouraged this trans-Atlantic movement not only to relieve labor shortages but to replenish the ranks of the Union army, which by 1863 had been seriously depleted by casualties and desertions. The Confederacy, for various reasons unable to match northern attractions, made a determined counterattack to block the flow of newcomers. While numerous military and labor recruits came from elsewhere in Europe, most notably from the German States, from the beginning the Emerald Isle offered the greatest prospect to Union recruiters. Indeed, for many years Ireland's primary exportable resource had been her manpower, despite its small nineteenth-century population of some eight million.1 Largely to escape the potato blight, nearly one million Irish came to the United States between 1850 and 1860, about one-third of all immigrants to this country during that period.2 The highwater mark was 1851 when 221,000 came, but the tide receded by 1855 when only about fifty thousand immigrated. This general level was maintained until 1858 when it dropped to thirty-five thousand and then finally to about twenty-four thousand in the years 1861 and 1862.3 But increasingly poorer crops during those years once again caused the Irish to look toward the United States, despite the dangers and uncertainties of the war. According to the London Times, during 1861 and 1862 the losses to Irish farmers in oats, wheat, and potatoes amounted to twenty-six million pounds, or the equivalent of two 1 Thomas Z. Lee, Secretary General, The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society (Providence, R.I.), IX, 114. 2 Ibid., 114. 3 United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to the Present (Washington, D.C., 1960), p. 57. Hereafter cited as Historical Statistics. 101 102CIVIL WAR HISTORY years' average rental to landlords.4 The Liverpool Daily Post declared that cereals production from 1861 to 1862 dropped nearly seventyfive thousand acres, with the greatest loss in wheat, which alone amounted to nearly forty-four thousand acres.5 As a consequence, Poor Law expenditures increased by sixty-two thousand pounds, or 12 per cent, and the number of Irish recipients by seventy-three thousand, or 22 per cent, from 1861 to 1862.' The crime rate also moved upward.7 Accordingly, emigration increased sharply in 1863. Official United States immigration statistics for that year included fifty-six thousand Irish and in 1864 the number increased to sixty-four thousand, the highest total for any single year after 1854 and more than had come to the United States in any year before 1847.8 Contemporary newspaper accounts strongly support the official statistics. The London Times, on April 6, 1863, expressed the belief that a "tide of immigration has set in." It quoted the Cork Examiner's report that "the number of persons who have left Kerry for the United States during the last fortnight exceeded all who have emigrated the last two years." The Liverpool Daily Post reported that in March, 1863, twenty-three passenger vessels carrying nearly nine thousand Irish had left Liverpool enroute to the United States and that emigration of all nationalities from that port had increased by about eighteen thousand during the first quarter of 1863, as compared with the corresponding period in 1862.9 The same paper quoted the New York Times as reporting that forty thousand immigrants had arrived in New York by June, 1863, or about three times the number that had disembarked there in the same period in 1862. Moreover, the Times stated that the "greater part of those who have arrived this year are from Ireland ." Statistics showing monthly totals of Irish emigration during the first seven months of 1863 reveal that during that time over eighty thousand people left Ireland, most of them for the United States.10 American consular reports from Ireland provide additional evidence of renewed Irish emigration. In April, 1863, Henry B. Hammond wrote to Secretary of State William H...

CHEMISTRY IN IRELAND

AN interesting booklet has recently been published which shows us that, despite great handicaps several branches of science were cultivated in Ireland during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries*. Among them, chemistry was closely linked with medicine, whether studied in institutions or less formally in hedge–schools or as a hereditary interest. Thus, the illustrious Robert Boyle entered chemistry through medicine; and it was during his lifetime that the institutional development of chemistry in Ireland began with the foundation in 1683 of the Dublin Philosophical Society. Richard Kirwan, when he left Ireland for France in the middle of the following century, had received his early education, including a good grounding in chemistry, from a well–known master of a hedge–school at Bally–ragget, named Patsull. A century later, Cornelius O'Sullivan—“the founder of the modern science of biochemistry”—won a scholarship from his humble school in Bandon which paved the way for him to study chemistry under A. W. Hofmann in London, and later to specialize in the chemistry of brewing. These are three Irish chemists who rose to eminence at different periods and became fellows of the Royal Society; and there are many others of note in the list of sixty–three names forming the index to the booklet now under notice.

The Irish Background of Goldsmith's Social and Political Thought

It is plain to the attentive reader of Goldsmith that he was not only in the habit of repeating favorite phrases, but also that he returned again and again to a few favorite ideas. Many, if not most, of these ideas, I maintain, were, if not already formed before he left Ireland, at least predetermined by the traits of character and of mind that he developed there.

Weather as a Factor in the Proposed Lindbergh Memorial Race

Weather as a Factor in the Proposed Lindbergh Memorial Race

New Light on the Evidence for Swift's Marriage

Since 1893, when Churton Collins published his biography of Swift, the question as to whether or not Swift was married to Stella has been practically closed. Collins disposed of the matter in the following definitive fashion:The evidence on which Monck-Berkeley chiefly relied was not that of Mrs. Hearne. “I was,” he says, “informed by the relict of Bishop Berkeley that her husband had assured her of the truth of Swift's marriage, as the Bishop of Clogher who had performed the ceremony had himself communicated the circumstance to him.” If this could be depended upon, it would, of course, settle the question; but unfortunately for Monck-Berkeley, and for Monck-Berkeley's adherents, it can be conclusively proved that no such communication could have taken place. In 1715, a year before the supposed marriage was solemnized, Berkeley was in Italy, where he remained till 1721. Between 1716 and 1717 it is certain that the Bishop of Clogher never left Ireland, and at the end of 1717 he died.1