By the time of the Treaty negotiations, the partition of Ireland was therefore an established fact and no longer up for negotiation. Thus the Unionists, under James Craig, did not even take part in the Treaty talks. The Sinn Fein delegation insisted that they could not accept a settlement that made partition permanent, but the only element of the northern situation to be seriously discussed was the future of counties Fermanagh and Tyrone, both of which had Catholic majorities. The Irish wanted a county by county referendum on inclusion into the northern or southern states.

What they got in the end was that Northern Ireland as a whole was given the option of uniting with the southern state after a year. There would also be a Border Commission set up to arbitrate on how the border could be changed to reflect the wishes of the local population. It was the hope of Irish delegation that Northern Ireland’s viability would eventually be undermined by the defection of much of its Catholic-populated western and southern territory to the southern state. Nevertheless, the Treaty confirmed the partition of Ireland in the short term.

Today in Irish History, 6 December 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty is Signed.

There is a common assumption that Irish artists of the late 19th century transcended the harsh realities of political and economic life either by emigrating and assimilating or by staying put but avoiding subjects that might mirror or create discontent. Mulvany’s The Battle of Aughrim�, however, places visual art at the centre of an emergent nationalism traditionally perceived as the preserve of poets and playwrights, journalists and politicians.

Mulvany chose a propitious moment for the action of the painting, the momentary victory by Jacobite forces over the Williamite army at Urraghry on July 12th, 1691, before their subsequent calamitous defeat on the Hill of Aughrim, in Co Galway. By showing the weakest link in the Jacobite position Mulvany illustrates the bravery of the Irish as they took on the superior forces of William. But when the Jacobite commander Lieut Gen St Ruth was decapitated by a cannonball, near victory became a rout. In a striking prefiguration, the painting depicts a Williamite soldier, in the centre of the picture, staggering backwards as his head is severed from his neck.

The myth of Aughrim is largely built on the randomness of the defeat – the decapitation of St Ruth – as one stray cannonball consigns Ireland to another 200 years of subjugation. As if to emphasise this, the decapitation of the British soldier in the painting signals, in its one-on-one combat, the valour of the Irish by comparison with the contingency of the British victory. From near triumph to resounding defeat, the story of Aughrim was subsequently reclaimed in Irish cultural memory as an enduring symbol of entitlement, a site for future resurgence.

via The great Irish painting that turned up on eBay – The Irish Times – Sat, Oct 02, 2010.

He was introduced to the bard by a fellow marine en route to France with the American Expeditionary Force; by the time he fought for the heavyweight championship he had plowed his way through the collected works of Shakespeare, and could recite Hamlet in its entirety. Invited to Yale to lecture on Shakespeare, he did so creditably, and without notes.

Tunney’s intellectual bent was not universally admired. Will Rogers (no relation to Roy), wrote in his folksy newspaper column, “Let’s have prizefighters with harder wallops and less Shakespeare”, and Paul Gallico, the Columbia-educated sports editor of the New York Daily News�, made light of Tunney’s chances in his 1926 challenge to Jack Dempsey, opining: “I think Tunney has hurt his own game with his cultural nonsense.

via Unlikely tale of the playwright and the pugilist – The Irish Times – Thu, Sep 23, 2010.

While it is undoubtedly the case that the Scottish cotton industry had shrunk dramatically by 1914, there was, in fact, quite a lot left, highly specialised though it was. Notable among surviving firms were the great Paisley thread manufacturing firms, which as Cooke points out, had become multi-national, much as had the major jute enterprises in Dundee which also managed to survive in an increasingly globalised sector. New Lanark was extensively modernised as late as the 1950s, remaining a significant employer locally, and managed to keep going until 1968. The Stanley complex, built around the original mill, survived even longer, outliving many of the major Lancashire firms. It is thus incongruous that the enterprises that survived longest were the very ones that had pioneered the factory system while later enterprises succumbed long beforehand.

It sounds rather excellent and I may well go ahead an buy it but that £60 price tag is a little rich.
Eoin

In the summer of 1832 a group of 57 Irish immigrants came to the area west of Philadelphia to work on the construction of the railway line. Within six weeks the men, mainly from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry, were all dead and anonymously buried in a mass grave outside the town of Malvern.

For some time it was thought that the mass grave was due to an outbreak of a dangerous disease such as cholera and this was simply a way of dealing with infection. However, the new evidence paints a different picture. While the two skulls found more recently show signs of violence and a bullet hole the previous skulls unearthed also showed trauma.

via Mass murder now suspected of Irishmen at Duffy’s Cut – SEE VIDEO | Irish News | IrishCentral.

UPDATE: There’s a video of the Documentary:

Contributed by Turlough O'Riordan I'm sure some of you, even the eighteenth-century experts among you and those who have read our 'about' page, will have asked the question at some stage: just who was this Pue character anyway? We asked Turlough O'Riordan of the Dictionary of Irish Biography to explain… Richard Pue, the publisher of the noted eponymous eighteenth-century Dublin newsletter, founded 'Dick's Coffee House' in Skinner Row in Dublin, … Read More

via Pue's Occurrences

The dedication to “my grandson Roc Bartlett McDonnell (b.2008) in the hope that his Ireland will be both peaceful and prosperous” – a wish we all aspire to – and the opening line of text – “May I begin in the year AD 431?” – suggest that a closer examination may be indeed worthwhile.

I was definitely not disappointed with the possible caveat that the book should carry with it a health warning in that it is so informative, so engrossing, so refreshing, so probing, and so accessible to the normal punter that it may change all personal preconceptions of what it means to be Irish.

via Quick Link | Yet another history of Ireland – Galway Advertiser – August 05, 2010..

Having dealt with Peter while working at Mercier, I have to say I found him very professional and exceptionally courteous.  While I didn’t always agree with his perspective and felt he had serious questions to answer on a number of points, I nonetheless thought he also raised some valid and searching questions about our history that warranted answering.

One less questioning voice in Irish History.

The problem of his ‘revisionist’ interpretation of the War of Independence in Cork still rouses amateur historians to fury. Ireland being a small country, many of his critics are related to the men whose motivation Hart criticised. Sometimes, I think his critics protest too much� – just or not, the War of Independence was a nasty and unpleasant terrorist war in which men on both sides were shot down in night and died in the cold wet ditches.� Hart’s interpretation may have swung too far, but there are still many people in Ireland who are not comfortable admitting how our state was born. Dealing with our past – and in the case of Northern Ireland, our recent past – is part of the contribution we can make to understanding and resolving conflict in the world.

via Peter Hart « Mike Cosgrave.

One of Barry’s most horrific battles, in May 1781, showed his courage and ability to inspire others – even while wounded.

The bloody action with two British ships in the Atlantic nearly ended in defeat. Without wind, Barry’s already damaged and undermanned frigate, the Alliance, was an easy target for the more mobile enemy vessels, HMS Atalanta and HMS Trepassey. They raked the stranded Alliance with continuous fire, at one point wounding Barry in the shoulder with a heavy piece of iron grapeshot.

He was taken below for emergency surgery as the situation worsened. But when asked if the colors should be struck and the ship surrendered, he “became a wounded lion,” McGrath wrote. ” ‘No!,’ he roared. ‘If the ship can’t be fought without me, I will be carried to the deck.’

via An American hero time forgot | Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/18/2010.

I greatly appreciated two aspects of the book. First was the historiographical analysis of how Genghis Khan has been perceived through time by historians, many of whom are descendants of the people conquered by Genghis Khan and his offspring. It is this that has lead to a wholly negative view of the Mongols. Weatherford argues that we in the West have the French philosopher Montesquieu to thank for our cultural recollection of the Mongols as “barbarians at the gate”. When examining history as far back as Genghis, it is important to amend the Churchillian maxim that “history is written by the victors”. History is written by the survivors.

The second aspect of the book I appreciated was Jack Weatherford’s hands-on approach to history. Although he mostly relied on The Secret History of the Mongols for details of the Great Khan’s life, he took it upon himself to go to the locales in Mongolia and along the Silk Road that were important to the development of Genghis and his ancestors. In the introduction Weatherford states: “Books can lie, but places never do.” Anyone who has ever been on a battlefield tour, I am sure would confirm that.

via ComingAnarchy.com » Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.