Those who still see a future for Irish Catholicism argue that in a materialist and individualistic age it can minister to ‘a deep spiritual hunger’. But there is little evidence that Catholics see church teachings as a means of living…
The notion that large numbers of Irish immigrants were once slaves has been mobilised by the American alt-right to deflect from historical and contemporary racism while simultaneously promoting a white nationalist agenda based on claims of white victimhood.
By late 1846 there were 1,207 inmates in Tralee workhouse and families were being turned away, even though they met the admission criteria. In 1847 the famine worsened, yet the wealthy continued to celebrate festive occasions like the Tralee races…
Many young Irishmen went to sea on British vessels in the 1930s. After the outbreak of war some were captured by the Germans, imprisoned and often harshly treated. Though eventually efforts were made to help them, for a long time…
A new study presents a largely sympathetic history of the Provisional Republican Movement as it has gradually moved away from violence and increased its electoral base. It also gives space – and sympathy – to the views of the dissidents,…
There are many factors that made the Irish state that came into being in 1922 different from other nation states, not least that it was born out of colonial conflict, that its coloniser dominated the world capitalist system, that its…
A novel set in Ireland and in various of the theatres of the Second World war is based on the historical story of an Irish family of the minor gentry, who, like well over 100,000 other Irish citizens, took part…
One will have a very impoverished and distorted view of the history of ‘the long eighteenth century’ if one relies on official documents, ignoring the poetry, songs and compositions of ordinary people, chiefly in the Irish language, which was often…
Whether as journalist, actress, propagandist or orator, Helena Molony played a very significant part in socialist, national and women’s struggles in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet for all her tireless activity, personally she could be extremely self-effacing.
Utopian imaginings were alive and well in eighteenth century Ireland and could be found not just in pamphlets but in vision poems and travellers’ tales, speeches, manifestos and proclamations and the practical improving projects of philanthropic societies like the Dublin…