Rule In Ireland Research Articles

The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben

Reviewed by: The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben Kevin Hargaden (bio) Crawford Gribben, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 352 pages. 'The dominance of Christianity in Ireland was never complete and has never been uncontested' (p. 2). So begins Crawford Gribben's superb account of the history of the Irish Church. Over the course of five immensely readable chapters, Gribben takes the reader across 1600 years and demonstrates that the rise of the Church was never as stratospheric as is popularly held, both within and without the Church, and he offers solid ground to place its precipitous fall in context. This is an excellent book, which will be of value to those interested in history, Christianity, or Irish culture. In the opening chapter, Gribben tells a story familiar in rough outline to many – the conversion of Ireland in the fifth century – but with much finer detail than many of us have to hand. Patrick and Palladius, the two main figures in that early stage of conversion, are explored at length. In his introduction and then continuing in this chapter, Gribben elegantly outruns popular theories about the pre-Christian religion of the Celts. What we do know for certain is limited, but this evidence does not match the widely accepted narrative that Christianity came with a persecuting zeal against the pagan beliefs that were prevalent on the island. The conversion process advanced by assimilation rather than annihilation. 'Christians co-opted traditional legends', 'sanctified festivals' and even turned some Celtic deities 'into saints' (pp. 35–36). He also disposes of the idea that can be found in some contemporary spirituality traditions that the Irish Church understood itself as an alternative to the centralised Roman orthodoxy. In the seventh century, Columbanus could write, to Pope Boniface, that the Irish Church were disciples of Peter and Paul who 'accept nothing outside the evangelical and apostolic teaching' (p. 56). The mission appeared complete: 'Christianity had converted the Irish' suggests Gribben, 'But Christianity might also have created the Irish' (p. 56). In chapter two, Gribben charts how a religious insurgency matured into the most stable institution on the island. A noteworthy strength of the book is how Gribben demonstrates that while Ireland is definitionally peripheral from the European continent, it was never isolated (p. 16). In one fascinating aside he mentions how the partial skeleton of a barbary ape was discovered [End Page 454] at the Emain Macha site in Armagh, dating from a century before Christ (p. 24). If nothing else, this suggests that Irish people were embedded within a wider consciousness long before they joined the European Economic Area and became poster-children for economic globalization! That outward-looking stance was embraced by the Irish missionaries who moved from their local monastic strongholds into Britain and then deep into the continent. The arrival of Scandinavian pirates we now know as Vikings drew 'Ireland into extensive international networks' and, in time, 'together in the structures of a common faith' (p.69). Through Gregorian reform, the arrival of the Normans, the rise of the mendicant orders and the tumult that followed the partial solidification of English rule in Ireland, the Church stayed strong. As Churches across Europe were about to become engines of acrimony with the Reformation, in Ireland it 'existed as a genuinely incorporating body' for the different communities that shared the island (pp. 86–87). The book is about the rise and fall of Christian Ireland, not Catholic Ireland. And chapter three is a fascinating account of how we came to have our three historic Christian identities: Protestant and Dissenter along with Catholic. More is said about why the Reformation never truly took hold in Ireland, but Gribben's suggestion that a key factor was the commitment of the 'Old English families in the Pale' to stay faithful to Rome is compelling (p. 91). A striking insight in this chapter – at least to this reviewer who is a leader in a Presbyterian congregation marked by its busyness – is how dreadfully lax the early Irish Protestants were. 'The small number of committedly Protestant clergy were sometimes left with nothing to do' (p. 99). As haphazard...

Repeal, Revolution, Abolitionism: The Formation of Irish American Identity, 1840–45

Repeal, Revolution, Abolitionism:The Formation of Irish American Identity, 1840–45 Robert O'Sullivan (bio) For James Hoban of Washington, DC, a speaker at the National Repeal Convention for the Friends of Ireland in Philadelphia, Daniel O'Connell's campaign to repeal the British-Irish union of 1801 was the preeminent cause of the nineteenth century. It was also the most deserving of American humanitarian assistance in his judgment. Hoban clearly indicated that "our sympathies may be with Ireland as they were with Greece, with South America, and with the suffering Poles." Hoban expressed the hope that Ireland could become the object of the "heart throbbing which made America send a voice of encouragement to Greece [and] to South America when they were struggling to snap the bonds" that had so long confined their limbs.1 For Irish Americans in the 1840s this comparative framework was integral to the manner in which they advocated for Repeal. Comparisons with and references to the nation-building in Spanish America, Greece, and Poland were a common and even crucial component of Repeal speeches. Irish American Repealers depicted their movement as part and parcel of the global developments that had followed the post-Napoleonic Vienna settlement of 1815.2 Between 1808, with Napoleon's conquest of Spain, and the late 1820s the Spanish Empire in Latin America collapsed in the [End Page 141] face of the revolution led by the "liberator" Simón Bolívar that resulted in the emergence of numerous republics across the continent.3 From 1821 to 1829 Greece waged a protracted war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, with its independent borders finalized in 1832.4 And from 1830 to 1831 Polish nationalists initiated a failed revolution against Russian Tsardom.5 Organs of the American popular press also dedicated extensive coverage to the collapse of Spanish imperialism in Latin America. They found resonances with the story of their own republic and believed themselves to be a central inspiration for Bolívar and his followers.6 Likewise, the Greek and Polish causes gripped the popular imagination, largely though extensive coverage of these causes in these same newspapers.7 From 1840 to 1845, when O'Connell's campaign became a transatlantic phenomenon, Irish American Catholics took advantage of American interest in and remembrance of these causes. American Repealers directly compared their own movement with these momentous global events. These comparisons constituted an inventive rhetorical strategy for pressuring non-Catholic Americans into supporting Repeal. Irish Catholic Repealers sought to connect Repeal with a coherent transnational narrative of oppressed revolutionaries pushing toward national self-government and to situate Repeal at the apex of these post-Napoleonic popular-nationalist movements. Repeal speeches across the United States repeatedly drew on romanticized depictions of the virtuous revolutionary causes of Greece, Poland, and Spanish America. In holding up these heroized and celebrated visions of recent world history, Repealers could explicitly compare [End Page 142] their own cause with the others and could argue that they were worthy of association with romantic heroes like Bolivar, and that Repeal was a key feature of this new age. Repealers drew on these examples to expose the hypocrisy of Americans who had donated liberally to previous humanitarian causes, but who were too timid to do the same when it involved challenging British imperial power in Ireland and elsewhere. Repealers derided the foolishness of those who accepted the logic of British liberals who spoke of a progressive, civilizing imperialism, but who did nothing for those eight millions in the most destitute component of the Union; and they exposed the baseless paranoia of those who played into Britain's hands by raising the alarm that Repeal constituted a foreign, popish conspiracy to entrench papal rule in Ireland, strengthen global Catholicism, and undermine an Anglo-Saxon Protestant vanguard. Irish Americans, it was said, could "discern through these contemptible vaporings the power of British influence, even on the free soil of America."8 Repealers attempted to exploit emerging currents of American national identification as the global center of a new humanitarianism that would expand American values, republicanism, and antimonarchical ideals into the heartlands of the European imperial world.9 According to Repeal rhetoric...

An Irish Nationalist Perspective on Eastern Europe: William Smith O’Brien’s Travel Journals, 1861-1864

An Irish Nationalist Perspective on Eastern Europe: William Smith O’Brien’s Travel Journals, 1861-1864
 The travel journals of Irish nationalist politician William Smith O’Brien, challenge the claim by Lar-ry Wolff of a general western European condescension towards eastern Europe from the eighteenth century onwards. Hostility towards British rule in Ireland led Smith O’Brien to celebrate and identify with the Hungarians and Poles in their struggles against their imperial rulers during his travels in the 1860s. He concluded, however, that the Irish suffered more under Britain than these nations under either Austria or Russia.

Anna Liddiard’s Mount Leinster: an ecocritical reading

ABSTRACT Jane Susana Anna Liddiard was an Irish poet of the long eighteenth century whose life and work have received little scholarly attention. Her poetry, descriptive in nature, engages with a variety of subjects, including the landscape, abstract themes, and her affection for Ireland. Mount Leinster; or The Prospect: a poem, descriptive of Irish Scenery, though of disputed authorship, is perhaps Liddiard’s best work. Anonymously published in London, in the year of her death in 1819, the poem opens a panoramic view to the immediate landscape of Mount Leinster, providing a detailed account of drainage, tillage, and potato farming among other rural-agricultural practices, which unfolds into a strong criticism of British rule in Ireland. Written in the fashion of John Denham’s “Cooper’s Hill,” Mount Leinster is a georgic-topographical poem that celebrates the Virgilian concept of labor improbus while criticising British imperialism and absentee landlordism for draining the land of its riches and impeding peace and justice in Ireland. This article is an attempt at shedding some light, however dim, on the figure of Anna Liddiard as an Irish poet and on her Mount Leinster as a vehicle of expression where the environment, literature, and social justice concerns meet in a poem.

The literary expression of national trauma in Irish and Ukrainian literatures

The most tragic and traumatic experiences in the respective histories of Ireland and Ukraine were their Great Famines. This paper discusses literary techniques used for the expression of national trauma in Irish and Ukrainian famine fictions. It examines the representations of An Gorta Mór and the Holodomor in The Silent People by Walter Macken, The Hungry Land by Michael Mullen, Maria: A Chronicle of a Life by Ulas Samchuk and Sweet Snow by Alexander J. Motyl, and demonstrates that the rhetoric of a national character occupies a prominent position in the novels. Exploring images of the Self and the Other within the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, expressed from the perspective of the latter, the paper argues that national character stereotypes function to highlight the detrimental effects of British rule in Ireland and Soviet rule in Ukraine. Imagology and trauma studies underpin the paper’s theoretical framework. The paper is part of the doctoral thesis An Imagological Study of the Depiction of the Irish and Ukrainian Great Famines in the novels by Samchuk, Macken, Motyl and Mullen, supervised by Dr. Brigitte Le Juez and Dr. Áine McGillicuddy, defended in December 2018 at Dublin City University.

Irish Nationalists in Boston: Catholicism and Conflict, 1900–1928 by Damien Murray

Reviewed by: Irish Nationalists in Boston: Catholicism and Conflict, 1900–1928 by Damien Murray Mathieu W. Billings Irish Nationalists in Boston: Catholicism and Conflict, 1900–1928, by Damien Murray (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018, 284 p., hardcover, $75) One of the most important developments in the scholarship of Irish America over the past few decades has been for historians to emphasize how events in Ireland shaped the experiences of immigrant communities in the United States. Following the work of Kerby Miller, Kevin Kenny, and others, scholars have continued to expand upon this trend. Damien Murray's splendid monograph, Irish Nationalists in Boston: Catholicism and Conflict, 1900–1928, elevates this theme to new heights. Murray argues that between 1900 and 1928, the independence struggle in Ireland helped transform what politics and ethnicity meant to the Boston Irish—shifting from a spirit of cooperation with liberal Protestant elites to the unabashedly Catholic domination of local institutions. As he puts it, "The growing animosity between the Irish and Yankees, along with the advocacy of government policies inspired by the principles of Catholic social justice, demonstrated that the evolution of Irish ethnicity during this period was as much the product of international developments as it was of local inter- and intra-ethnic [End Page 149] divisions." During the prewar years, John Redmond's campaign for Home Rule in Ireland found support among Boston's Irish middle and upper classes. That began to change following the Easter Rising and America's entry into World War I, events that challenged the authority of the city's Irish elite. Following the war, intra-Irish fissures might have intensified as a result of Roxbury's May Day riot and the Boston police strike of 1919. Nevertheless, the onset of the Anglo-Irish War, followed by Éamon de Valera's wildly popular fundraising campaign for the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic (AARIR) in Boston, smoothed over their divisions. The city's Catholic leaders, such as the "staunch Romanist" cardinal William H. O'Connell, threw their support to de Valera and promoted Vatican policies, especially regarding the dignity of working people. With the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the conclusion of the Irish Civil War that followed, politicians such as Mayor James Michael Curley, like most of the Boston Irish, turned their attention toward the "tribal twenties." More unified than ever, they no longer sought nor required the support of their former Yankee allies. Over the long term, Murray concludes, the Boston Irish secured a victory for liberalism and multiculturalism—paving the way for "a political philosophy that advocated government support of the needy and the rights of members of different ethnic groups," of which President John F. Kennedy was a legacy. The efforts of the Catholic Church in Boston are essential to Murray's argument. The Boston prelate waged a campaign against socialism during the prewar years. With three-quarters of the city's Irish population being American-born and eager to show their allegiance to the United States in 1917, Cardinal O'Connell's message was particularly effective. Yet the city's Catholic leaders also sympathized with the plight of the working classes. Cardinal O'Connell, editors of the Boston Pilot, and faculty at Boston College openly defended the rights of workers. "By the late summer 1919," Murray contends, "local expressions of support for Irish revolutionary separatism and Irish ethnicity in Boston were being shaped by Catholic Church teachings that condemned socialism while advocating government reforms that improved the living and working conditions of the working class." Their influence did not stop there. The church condemned the bigotry of nativist organizations such as the American Protective Association and the Loyalty Coalition. It refuted xenophobic claims that the United States was an "Anglo-Saxon" nation. Alongside Irish nationalist organizations such as the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) and the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the church opposed the Immigration Act of 1924. It emboldened the politics of Mayor Curley, who refused to grant the Ku Klux Klan permission to hold meetings in Boston. "Catholic Americanism and ethnic nationalism," as the author puts it, helped "propagate an inclusive vision...

Ireland, Modernism, and Imperialism in Standish O’Grady’s The Queen of the World

Abstract Standish O’Grady’s narratives of Irish mythology have been regarded as the inaugural works of the Irish literary revival, with considerable dispute among scholars as to the nature of O’Grady’s influence. In 1900, O’Grady published a futuristic fantasy entitled The Queen of the World under the pseudonym Luke Netterville. This work has been largely neglected in studies of the Irish revival and its relations to the modernist movement of the early twentieth century. The following essay examines the modernist aspects of O’Grady’s novel in relation to contrary tendencies towards imperialism and rebellion that it exhibits. In the process, I discuss the fantastic, gothic, and racial aspects of The Queen of the World, particularly as they reflect the complex nature of O’Grady’s political thought and influence from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. This includes discussion of the novel’s affinities with Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race as well as Irish gothic works by Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker. I address the Chinese dimension of the novel in terms of Orientalism and the British Empire, while also considering it in the context of O’Grady’s influence on Patrick Pearse, leader of the 1916 rebellion against British rule in Ireland.

‘I Must Be Buried at Straide’ Michael Davitt’s Final Request

‘I Must Be Buried at Straide’: Michael Davitt’s Final Request John Dunleavy Should I die in Ireland I would wish to be buried at Straide Co. Mayo without any funeral demonstration. If I die in America I must be buried in my mother’s grave at Manayunk, near Philadelphia and on no account brought back to Ireland. If in any other country (outside of Great Britain) to be buried in the nearest graveyard to where I may die, with the simplest possible ceremony. Should I die in Great Britain I must be buried at Straide. Michael Davitt made his will in 1904, some two years before his death. He had clear views as to where he should be buried. He was to die in Dublin in 1906 after a short illness, and he was buried at Straide, in the west of Ireland, where he had been born sixty years previously. Not surprisingly, in view of his public career, his Requiem Mass and the funeral journey across Ireland on 2 June 1906, took on the appearance of a semi-public demonstration. There were delegates from the numerous organisations with which he had been associated, leading members of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the United Irish League, and – a reflection on the universal affection for the Land League’s founder – representatives of several colonial governments.1 He found a last resting place at Straide, his grave being marked with a Celtic cross suitably inscribed in Irish and English. Significant as Davitt’s contribution to the Irish cause might have been, his biographer concedes that by 1906 he had become a marginal figure in his own country and had been so for almost a generation. The months of what have been termed ‘the Land War’ were the high-water mark of his distinct contribution to the long struggle for Irish freedom. The institution of landlordism, in particular, which he regarded as the most detested symbol of British rule in Ireland, and which he hoped to see replaced by public ownership of land, was in retreat by 1906 but not in the way he would have wished. Instead of being a country of large estates, due to a series of land acts enacted by the Westminster parliament, Ireland was on the road to becoming a society consisting of countless small, ownerJohn Dunleavy Studies • volume 107 • number 428 474 occupiers. The established political parties were already feeling the effects of new forces at work in Ireland, such as the cultural nationalism promoted by the likes of the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association, and even Sinn Féin, though the latter was still dismissed by some as little more than the ‘green Hungarian policy’.2 It is because of these new elements at work in Ireland, elements which would ultimately succeed in wresting power from the British and securing self-government, that Davitt and his generation of nationalists have been sadly neglected. It was some years before Davitt found a biographer. Shortly after his death, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington began compiling a study of Davitt, a man he greatly admired, resulting in a life published soon afterwards. Michael M O’Hara, a journalist, published Chief and Tribune: Parnell and Davitt some years later. Both these writers relied heavily on printed sources, though their books are still worthy of perusal. It was not until as recently as 1981 that the long-awaited study by the late Professor T W Moody, of Trinity College appeared in print. This is based on primary sources, both in manuscript and in print. In the absence of a work of this nature, it is not surprising that Davitt and his generation have been marginalised by writers and teachers for so long. The appearance of Moody’s work has stimulated a later generation of students to research Davitt’s public life, resulting in articles and books and encouraging discussion through the media and in schools and conferences. The multitude of events that took place during the course of the centenary year of 2006 need not be listed here.3 The present writer was first drawn to Davitt many years ago, when living in the Lancashire town of Haslingden. A series of...

Henry II and the ideological foundations of Angevin rule in Ireland

AbstractThe English invasion of Ireland is of central importance to the interconnected histories of Britain and Ireland. Yet there is still disagreement over the agency of its ultimate sponsor, King Henry II. This article argues that from the very beginning of his reign as king of England, Henry utilised a rising tide of intolerance among Europe’s clerical elite for those holding non-standard beliefs and customs to secure reluctant papal approval for an invasion of Ireland. Once that invasion finally got underway a decade and a half later, members of his court portrayed Henry’s firm rule as the necessary precursor to the reform of Irish religion and culture. This propaganda sought its justification in the intellectual and cultural flourishing of the twelfth-century renaissance, which provided European commentators with newly-revived models of logic and classification. In was also carried out amidst Crusade-inspired justifications for the violent subjugation or killing of religious non-conformists. The essential point, however, is that these clerical descriptions did not necessarily reflect contemporary secular opinion. When works written for secular audiences in the vernacular are analysed, they present a much more nuanced image of Ireland and the Irish. Gone are the references to civilising or reforming missions, and the clear sense of cultural superiority. What remains, however, is the fundamental belief that strong, centralised order is required for the successful running of society. This is what the English invaders told themselves, and this is what informed the first generation of settlement in Angevin Ireland.

Staging the Easter Rising: Plays by W.B. Yeats, Sean O’Casey and Colm Tóibín

Despite the fact that the 1916 Easter Rising has given rise to many critical inquiries and occasioned heated debate among nationalist and revisionist historians, this historical event has been revered almost as a creation story for the Republic of Ireland. This paper will examine three plays that revisit the Rising and feature the generally neglected participation of women in the events. By illustrating women’s quandaries and antagonisms, the plays either reflect on the causes and effects of remote English rule in Ireland or delineate the immediate impact of the Easter Rising on different social strata. Their alternative perspectives often feature the conflicting consequences of the Rising and illuminate ignored yet credible facets that may serve to rebut the received interpretations. Although there is a relatively long time span during which these works were produced, the social contexts in which the playwrights lived and worked give rise to diverse portrayals of the same political turmoil. More significantly, these plays initiate a debate on the Easter Rising yet produce healing effects by restaging historical traumas. The three plays are Yeats’s less discussed play The Dreaming of the Bones (1919), Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (1926), and Colm Toibin’s Beauty in a Broken Plac e (2004).

The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting: The Strategy for Unity in Henry IV, Part I

The starting point of this study is Renan’s idea that forgetting is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation and the basis of national identity is not memory but amnesia. This study investigates the above issue focusing on the way how the monarch tries to control historical memory to answer traumatic loss and establish national unity in Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, Part I. At the time when England was suffering from the memory of civil war and the history of bloodshed on which Henry’s crown was founded, Percy’s rebellion reminds King of repaying his debt to the rebels. Therefore, in Henry IV, Part 1, remembering the past is dangerous since it encourages the rebellion and historical memory becomes a threat to the cause of unity. This drama depicts the monarch who needs to suppress memories of the past in order to maintain his own power and consolidate the nationhood. In addition, the rebel alliance in Henry IV, Part I is connected to the Welsh resistance and reminds the audience of the coalition of families against the English rule in Ireland. Finally, through domesticating the Welsh rebel leader and marginalizing women, King Henry IV, Part I reflects the wish fulfillment of suppressing rebellion in Ireland.

Austerity and consociational government in Northern Ireland

This article examines the institutional crisis of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2015 as a case study on the impact of austerity on multiculturalism in Ireland. I make a case for viewing the Assembly as a multicultural institution through pointing to the historical role of community relations policy, which was directed at reconciling “sectarian” Irish nationalists and Ulster unionists. It did so through shifting from an understanding of the conflict as one based on the struggle for Irish national self-determination to one based on conflicting identities. I argue that Sinn Féin’s embracing of multiculturalism is a product of its accommodation to British rule in Ireland. Sinn Féin has made a virtue out of its political volte-face by becoming the strongest advocate of ethnic Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland. The ethnic power politics of Sinn Féin has found its unionist equivalent in the political manoeuvrings of the Democratic Unionist Party. Austerity measures imposed by the Westminster government have created problems for the parties in the power-sharing Assembly, problems that threaten the collapse of the Assembly. It is because of, rather than in spite of, the multicultural mechanisms embedded in the Assembly that the institution has got to crisis point. This is an institutional crisis, not a crisis of multiculturalism.

Religion, anti-slavery, and identity: Irish Presbyterians, the United States, and transatlantic evangelicalism, c.1820–1914

Abstract Scholars have devoted much attention to the causes and consequences of Presbyterian emigration from Ulster to the thirteen colonies before 1776. This article moves beyond the eighteenth century to examine the continued religious links between Presbyterians in Ireland and the United States in the nineteenth century. It begins with an examination of the influence of evangelicalism on both sides of the Atlantic and how this promoted unity in denominational identity, missionary activity to convert Catholics, and revivalist religion during the first half of the century. Though Irish Presbyterians had great affection for their American co-religionists, they were not uncritical, and significant tensions did develop over slavery. The article then examines the religious character of Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Scots identity in the late nineteenth century, which was articulated in response to the alleged demoralising influence of large-scale Irish immigration during and after the Famine of the 1840s, the so-called Romanisation of Catholicism, and the threat of Home Rule in Ireland. The importance of identity politics should not obscure religious developments, and the article ends with a consideration of the origins and character of fundamentalism, perhaps one of the most important cultural connections between Protestants in Northern Ireland and the United States in the twentieth century.

Tour Guides and the mediation of difficult memories: the case of Dublin Castle, Ireland

This research seeks to furthering understandings of how Tour Guides interpret memories at heritage sites when the memories at issue are difficult yet subtle and not always apparent to tourists. Specifically, it explores how Dublin Castle, formerly the seat of British rule in Ireland, is captured in narratives presented to tourists that often include Britons. Representing the site is made challenging because some visitors have little knowledge of the site's history, while others are well informed and hold strong political views. The findings show that Guides select largely depoliticized narratives, strongly influenced by their personal interests and experiences. Some hint at underlying tensions that only tourists alert to the complexities of the site might capture. Dominant narratives can be challenged by tourists with an interest in, or allegiance to, particular historical or political beliefs, leading to emotional engagements. Some tourists, unaware of the complexities of the site, can encounter a more multi-layered and complex experience than perhaps envisaged. The study affirms the co-production evident in Tour Guiding narratives and points to the need for further research into how the variously empowered agencies of both the Guide and the tourist produce a constant shifting and re-working of memory.

Irish clergy and the diocesan church in the ‘four obedient shires’ of Ireland,c.1400–c.1540

In 1435 the Irish council complained to Henry VI that there is not left in the nether parts of the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, that join together, out of the subjection of the said enemies and rebels scarcely thirty miles in length and twenty miles in breadth, thereas a man may surely ride or go in the said counties to answer to the king’s writs and to his commandments.The letter was accompanied by a request that the king render payment due to the lord lieutenant Thomas Stanley for his service in Ireland, and also suggested that the king should travel to the colony to help fight off its enemies. Accordingly, the perilous state of English Ireland was almost certainly exaggerated to strengthen the arguments for financial and military support from the crown. Nevertheless this letter demonstrates that in the minds of the settler elite, which staffed the Irish council, the four counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare were the bastion of English rule in Ireland, beset, the council would have us believe, by enemies on all sides. This picture of the ‘four counties’ as the political, and to a certain extent the cultural, stronghold of Englishness in Ireland can be found in other contemporary sources, as the region was perceived as both distinct and distinctly English.

Irish Americans and the Treaty: The View from the Irish Free State

Irish Americans and the Treaty:The View from the Irish Free State Troy D. Davis Historians writing about the Irish-American response to the Irish Civil War of 1922–23 have emphasized the sense of confusion and dismay felt abroad after the outbreak of fighting between supporters of the Free State created by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and its opponents, who continued to insist on the establishment of an Irish republic. As Francis Carroll has said, the civil war was "a source of disillusionment to many Irish-Americans who had dreamed of a happy and prosperous Ireland freed from Britain’s grip."1 Elsewhere, Michael Hopkinson has noted that, "The Treaty and Civil War periods caused a vast fall in the membership and importance of exile nationalist organisations in the United States, and also in the relevance of the Irish question in American politics."2 Though many Irish Americans lost interest in Irish affairs following the Treaty split and the subsequent civil war, that does not mean that leaders in Ireland lost interest in the Irish Americans. Anti-Treaty republicans, for example—both "politicians," like Eamon de Valéra, and "militarists," like IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch—continued to place great importance on gaining the political and financial support of Irish-American activists. And those republicans succeeded in getting such support from a small but committed group of diehards in the United States, most notably those Irish Americans associated with Joseph McGarrity, whose reorganized Clan-na-Gael financed an ill-conceived and unsuccessful gunrunning scheme designed to provide the IRA with artillery from Germany for use against the Free State army.3 But what of the pro-Treaty side in the Treaty debate and Civil War? To what extent did the Provisional Government and, later, the Free State government attempt to garner Irish-American support for their cause? How much importance did the Free State place on maintaining such support? Did pro-Treaty officials [End Page 84] see Irish-American help as essential to success in their fight against the republicans? To answer those questions, it is helpful to review briefly the nasty divisions that had already developed among Irish-American activists before the Treaty split—i.e., during the Anglo-Irish War, when Irish separatists themselves were still more or less united and striving to end British rule in Ireland. Those divisions became public and very intense during de Valéra’s well-known publicity and fund-raising tour of the United States, which lasted from June 1919 to December 1920. De Valéra arrived in the States to find Irish-American supporters of Sinn Féin and the IRA feuding among themselves over how best to use Irish-American funds in support of the putative Irish republic. On one side, John Devoy and Judge Daniel Cohalan, leaders of the Clan-na-Gael and of the more public Friends of Irish Freedom organization (FOIF), wanted to use the funds primarily for American political purposes—specifically, to fight against President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to bring the United States into the League of Nations. They argued that the League was a pro-British entity that would require the United States government to support Britain in its efforts to defeat the republic. On the other side, Joseph McGarrity—who had the backing of such Irish republican representatives in America as Harry Boland—wanted the money to be used to help the republic more directly by financing the republican campaign in Ireland. De Valéra ended up siding with the McGarrity faction, as one might expect, given his obvious desire to get as much help as possible for republican activities in Ireland. But de Valéra went much further than that. He essentially took the position that, as president of the Irish republic, he was solely answerable to the Irish people and had the right to expect Irish-American organizations, whose raison d’être was to help establish the republic, to defer to his judgment. In essence, de Valéra seemed to see himself as not only the leader of Irish republican forces in Ireland but as leader of the "Irish race" everywhere, including the United States. Cohalan and...

A Campaign without End?: ‘Dissident’ Republican Violence in Northern Ireland

The greatest threat to stability in Northern Ireland comes from dissident republicans opposed to the peace process. But are these rejectionists a dying gasp or another phase of a centuries-old struggle against British rule in Ireland? Jon Tonge investigates.

Jane Ohlmeyer. Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century.

This is a self-consciously important book by an author whose explicit intention is to write on a grand scale: a social, cultural, economic, and political history of the Irish nobility in the seventeenth century (in effect a “short” seventeenth century, from 1603 to 1689), all placed within the context of the evolution of strategies of government. Jane Ohlmeyer not only provides a missing Irish dimension to the study of noble elites in early modern Europe but also contributes significantly to the historiography of English rule in Ireland, echoing and at the same time subtly challenging Nicholas Canny's Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (2001). While Canny focused on the violence of conquest and plantation, and its underpinning ideology, Ohlmeyer examines the role of the aristocracy—native and planter, Old English and New English—as both subjects and agents of the anglicization process. It is a bold enterprise: a study of an entire social class that simultaneously attempts a major reinterpretation of the narrative of seventeenth-century Irish history.

Donaldson v United Kingdom: No Right for Prisoners to Wear Easter Lilies

In the recent case of Donaldson v United Kingdom the European Court denied a claim from an imprisoned Irish Republican that HMP Maghaberry prison violated Article 102 and Article 143 of the European Convention on Human Rights when it asked him to remove an Easter lily from his clothing. The Easter lily has long been regarded as a symbol commemorating Irish Republican combatants who died during or were executed after the 1916 Easter Rising, a rebellion against the British Government’s rule in Ireland. In this case, the applicant, who is currently serving a 12-year sentence at Roe House, a segregated wing of HMP Maghaberry for Republican prisoners, affixed an Easter lily to his outer clothing on Easter Sunday in March 2008. A prison officer asked him to remove the Easter lily and when he refused he was charged with disobeying a lawful order under the Prison and Young Offenders Centre Rules (Northern Ireland) 1995, which prohibits prisoners from wearing emblems outside their cells. In HMP Maghaberry an exception was made with respect to the wearing of a shamrock on St Patrick’s Day and the wearing of poppies on Remembrance Sunday as these emblems were deemed to be ‘non-political and non-sectarian’

Judicial oversight of policing: investigations, evidence and the exclusionary rule

Police procedures and practices in the investigation of crime are shaped by many things. One particularly important constituent part of the development of investigative procedures and practices is the approach of the courts to the admissibility at trial of evidence obtained in a certain manner. While a judge can only address the specifics of whatever cases are brought before him, the judiciary as a whole have a significant role to play in terms of police accountability and governance through their development and application of any exclusionary rules of criminal evidence. This article examines the judicial oversight of policing by way of the exclusion of improperly obtained evidence at trial. Its central focus is on the development and operation of the exclusionary rule in Ireland, though relevant law in other jurisdictions, including England and Wales, the United States, Canada and New Zealand, is also considered. Particular attention is paid to the recent Irish Supreme Court decision of DPP v Cash, and its ramifications for judicial oversight of policing.