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This shocking new study documents the history of the Great Famine in County Leitrim with unprecedented depth, making use of records that haven't been used in any previous study. The records reveal astounding details concerning the shape and longevity of the catastrophe. With this expansive coverage, author Gerard MacAtasney seeks to reveal the extent to which both environmental conditions and the British authorities played a part in altering the life of County Leitrim forever, by way of death, disease, and forced emigration. In 1841, the population of Leitrim was 155,000; 10 years later, it had declined by 40,000. MacAtasney's absorbing study gives substance to these figures with astonishing revelations concerning the character of the famine in Leitrim. These revelations are as comprehensive as they are compelling, given that MacAtasney's findings are contained within the most detailed account of the famine at a local level yet to be written.
The story of Easter 1916 from the perspective of those who made it, focusing on the experiences of rank and file revolutionaries. Fearghal McGarry makes use of a unique source that has only recently seen the light of day - a collection of over 1,700 eye-witness statements detailing the political activities of members of Sinn Féin and militant groups such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood. This collection represents one of the richest and mostcomprehensive oral history archives devoted to any modern revolution, providing new insights on almost every aspect of this seminal period.
In Unhappy the Land Liam Kennedy poses fundamental questions about the social and political history of Ireland and challenges cherished notions of a uniquely painful past. Images of tragedy and victimhood are deeply embedded in the national consciousness, yet when the Irish experience is viewed in the larger European context a different perspective emerges. The author’s dissection of some pivotal episodes in Irish history serves to explode commonplace assumptions about oppression, victimhood and a fate said to be comparable ‘only to that of the Jews’. Was the catastrophe of the Great Famine really an Irish Holocaust? Was the Ulster Covenant anything other than a battle-cry for ethnic c...
This book explores the benefits and challenges of transnational history for the study of modern Ireland. In recent years the word "transnational" has become more and more conspicuous in history writing across the globe, with scholars seeking to move beyond national and local frameworks when investigating the past. Yet transnational approaches remain rare in Irish historical scholarship. This book argues that the broader contexts and scales associated with transnational history are ideally suited to open up new questions on many themes of critical importance to Ireland’s past and present. They also provide an important means of challenging ideas of Irish exceptionalism. The chapters include...
Belfast Charitable Society was established in 1752 with the purpose of raising funds to build a poorhouse and hospital for the poor of Belfast; twenty years later, the foundation stone of the Poorhouse was laid. From here the Society would go on to assume increasing responsibility for a range of matters relating to health, welfare and public order, and its members would play a key part in the civic life of Belfast. It continues to provide vital social services to this day and its Poorhouse, now Clifton House, is still one of the finest buildings in the city. During the century following the establishment of the Society, Belfast was transformed from a relatively small mercantile town into a m...
Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast from c.1830 to 1890. Using extensive primary material, the book draws a rich portrait of Belfast's middle-class society, covering themes of civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelicalism, recreation, marriage and family life.
A memoir of growing up on Detroit's East Side in the 1930s and 1940s combined with an often hilarious biographical portrait of Shine's mother, Mae. In Life with Mae, the late Neal Shine combines an engaging memoir of his family life in prewar Detroit with a biography of his mother, Mae, whose vibrant spirit and fierce affection left an indelible mark on her three sons and their friends and neighbors. Mae was born in 1909 in the small town of Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland, where her father ran the depot that distributed Guiness Stout. Going into service as a housekeeper at fourteen, Mae quickly saw that the only future she had in Ireland was as a servant. By the time she was eighteen, she had s...
Examines the historiography of the Irish Famine and its relevance now, in the context of the longer-term relationship between England and Ireland.
In the late eighteenth century, an influx of Protestant settlers to the mainly Catholic parish of Forkhill on the Ulster borderlands provoked clashes between natives and newcomers. None was more horrific than the brutal attack on a Protestant schoolmaster and his family in the winter of 1791. The conflict was immediately cast in sectarian terms, leading to more than 200 years of ill-will. But was it a misdiagnosis? Forkhill Protestants and Forkhill Catholics explores the social history of the parish between 1787 and 1858. In a wide-ranging analysis, Kyla Madden demonstrates that there was a greater degree of cooperation and exchange between Catholics and Protestants than the historical record has acknowledged. Madden contends that since some of our widely held assumptions about the patterns of Irish history dissolve under scrutiny at the local level, they should be more cautiously applied on a larger scale.
A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain presents 33 essaysby expert scholars on all the major aspects of the political,social, economic and cultural history of Britain during the lateGeorgian and Victorian eras. Truly British, rather than English, in scope. Pays attention to the experiences of women as well as ofmen. Illustrated with maps and charts. Includes guides to further reading.