Despite the unprecedented interest shown by historians in Ireland and empire in recent years, comparatively little research has focused on Northern Ireland’s connections to the British Empire-Commonwealth in the post-partition decades. This article utilises some new sources to throw light on both the centrifugal and centripetal aspects of the imperial relationship. The discussion begins with the imperial significance of visits to Northern Ireland by statesmen such as William Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand, to his native Ulster in 1923, and that of Gordon Coates, also Prime Minister of New Zealand, three years later. At the end of the period, the visit of Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker to both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland can add to our knowledge about the changing relationship between Northern Ireland and the Commonwealth.

One dispute in Irish history which has not been given the attention it deserves is that which involved Britain, Ireland and Portugal during the years 1780-87 Authors of outline Irish histories, Lecky, Murray, George O’Brien and McDowell only mention the dispute briefly in their respective narratives, though it is clear they understood its importance to some degree at least. Maurice O’Connell, who has produced the only specialist study for the period in question, makes no reference to the dispute at all. This dispute has indeed been more substantially treated by the British historian, John Ehrman, within the general context of an analysis of the British government’s commercial negotiations from 1783 to 1793. However, the perspective he draws relates purely to Britain and Portugal, which, in itself, narrows the true significance of an episode which was important in that it completely undermined the benefits Ireland hoped to accrue from the free-trade legislation of 1779-80, and also because it raised a number of interesting questions relative to Ireland’s constitutional status vis-à-vis of Great Britain.

In 1825 there was published in Liverpool a pamphlet of 59 pages entitled The present state of Ireland, with a plan for improving the position of the people. Its author was James Cropper, a quaker merchant of that city and senior partner of the firm Cropper, Benson and Co. As a young man he had been apprenticed to the firm of Rathbone, Benson and Co., living and working in the small circle of liberal radicals in the city, of whom the Rathbones, the Binns and the Roscoes were perhaps the most famous. In 1799 he had set up business on his own account, and later joined in partnership with another quaker, Thomas Benson, son of Rathbone's partner, as Cropper, Benson and Co. The firm engaged in a wide variety of commission trading, but increasingly specialized in cotton imports from the United States of America, acting also as the Liverpool agent for the Black Ball line of packets which from 1818 provided the first regular passenger sailings between New York and Liverpool. As an ‘ American ’ merchant in Liverpool, Cropper helped to form the American chamber of commerce in the port, serving as treasurer and later as president. Besides his trading activities Cropper was a founder-director of the Liverpool-Manchester Railyway and he also invested heavily in the New York State canal system.

There is now an extensive literature on agrarian protest and unrest in Ireland from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, ranging from studies of secret societies to large-scale organisations such as the Land League. There has not, however, been any detailed published account of the dynamics and character of a most extensive and significant Irish agitation, the United Irish League, which was launched in January 1898. A study of this body is important, not only in its own terms, but for the light it throws on the nature of Irish agrarian agitation generally, especially as there exist more extant records than for earlier examples. By early 1900 this organisation had spread across most of Ireland, and it was to have major implications for the future course of Irish nationalism. Its methods were partly a consequence of a cumulative experience from the past, focused particularly on its immediate predecessors, the Land League of 1879–82, the subsequent Irish National League, and the Plan of Campaign in the latter half of the 1880s. Its political and agrarian purposes were to an unusual degree clearly articulated, thereby enabling a more precise analysis of the way in which particular methods of protest were related to objectives.

Arthur O’Connor, or more correctly Conner, is now little remembered, but from 1795 to 1798 no leader of the United Irishmen had more prestige and influence than he. In England he was the darling of the Foxite whigs. In France he played a part in procuring the expedition to Bantry Bay. In Ireland he inspired and organised rebellion. He suffered nearly five years imprisonment, narrowly escaped the gallows and spent the last fifty years of his life in exile. There he was made a général de division by Napoleon, was intimate with Lafayette, Volney, and the idéologues, and married the daughter of Condorcet and niece of Grouchy. He lived through the last days of the consulate, and all of the first empire, the restoration, the hundred days, the second restoration, the July monarchy and the second republic to die tranquilly at the dawn of the second empire. An obituary notice in The Nation sang his praises.

This paper has been prompted by two recent articles in Irish Historical Studies. Both are by distinguished historians from outside Ireland — Professor Michael Richter from Germany (to which he has recently returned) and Dr Steven G. Ellis from England — who have spent many years teaching in the history departments of University College, Dublin, and University College, Galway, respectively. Their different backgrounds and experiences enable them to bring fresh perspectives to bear upon the history of medieval Ireland and have led them to question some traditional assumptions about the Irish past. Here I should confess that coming as I do from Northern Ireland I am something of an outsider myself, and my own origin and background must inevitably influence my interpretation of the past.

Professor Richter took the opportunity granted by a review of an important collection of essays to challenge ‘the unquestioned assumption that the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland marked a turning point in Irish history’. Arguing that the event should be seen in a wider context, both geographical and chronological, he suggested that a close parallel to the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland is provided by the German expansion into western Slav territories and that a comparison with the Scandinavian impact in the three centuries prior to 1169 would help to get the importance of the English in medieval Ireland into perspective.

Since the publication of Rev. Professor Aubrey Gwynn’s study of the later history of the Book of Kells the name of the donor of the book to Trinity College has come to light. He was Henry Jones (1605-82), eldest son of Lewis Jones, bishop of Killaloe, and was successively bishop of Clogher (1645), scoutmaster general to Cromwell’s army, and bishop of Meath (1661). In 1646 he was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Dublin, a position he seems to have continued to hold under the commonwealth. He was already known as a benefactor of Trinity College Library. The two handsome oak staircases from the old library which now lead to the Long Room gallery were traditionally associated with him. He was remembered as the donor of the Book of Durrow but it was strangely forgotten that he had also given Trinity the Book of Kells, which is in our eyes so much more striking a volume because so much more lavishly illuminated. Perhaps it was the silver shrine in which Durrow was still preserved that touched the imagination of his contemporaries.

The term ‘Confederation of Kilkenny’ is not of ancient lineage. It dates from the nineteenth century and, as Professor J. C. Beckett has pointed out, seems to have originated in the title of a book by Father C. P. Meehan first published in 1846. Those members of the confederacy which ruled the major portion of the country between the rising of 1641 and the advent of Cromwell officially designated themselves as ‘the Confederate Catholics of Ireland’. Their own description of themselves has been chosen to head this essay not because the pedigree of the term ‘Confederation of Kilkenny’ is insufficiently old or respectable, but simply because their official title accurately describes what the essay is about. It is not concerned with the general history of the Confederate movement, nor with its prolonged diplomatic activities; still less does it deal with the ebb and flow of its military fortunes; nor even with the governmental structures of the Confederation. Of course I am relying on all these for background information and illustration, and, in particular, use has been made of the fact that I have been able to determine the number, and to identify almost the entire personnel, of the Confederation’s successive Supreme Councils. The history of the Confederation, political, diplomatic, constitutional and military, has been taken for granted. I want, then, to look at the people who individually bound themselves together by oath to form the confederacy; more particularly, to look at those who were members of the General Assemblies—constituting, in effect, the Confederate parliament; and more particularly still, to look at the members of the Supreme Councils, which virtually constituted the Confederate governments. This essay, therefore, is concerned with persons—with ‘the Confederate Catholics of Ireland’. It will briefly discuss their family origins, their educational and cultural background, their professions or occupations, and finally their political outlook.

The historiography of the Munster plantation has not been extensive; in the ninety-five years since Robert Dunlop published the first proper study of the greatest of all the Tudor settlements in Ireland, only D. B. Quinn has treated the subject in any detail. In the absence therefore, of any full-scale study of the plantation, it is fair to say that it has usually been characterised as the process of driving the native Irish off their lands and settling them with English colonists. In this scenario, the administrations, both in England and Ireland, are seen as backing the settlers judicially and extra-judicially, and the natives come off distinctly the worst; as Quinn puts it, the native population greatly resented the ‘presence and domination of the planters who were felt to twist the law in favour of a minority’. Yet, a study of the extant evidence does not support this simple stereotyping; rather, both the privy council (to which many of the native land claims were directed) and the government commission of 1592 were quite willing to consider cases against the undertakers and their tenants and to rule in favour of the native claimant. For instance, Hugh Cuffe, who had originally been granted a seignory of 12,000 acres in Cork, lost most of it to appeals by Ellen Fitzedmund Gibbon and James MacShane to the privy council in 1591, and had to make do with a new grant of a mere 1,953 acres in the same area.

History has an attraction for the amateur as well as for the professional, and though the attraction may be of a similar kind, the amateur is rarely given access to primary sources. Yet it is from these that history is written and fundamentally experienced. Giraldus Gambrensis (1146-1223) wrote about Ireland and his native Wales in the late twelfth century in such a fashion that his works can be read with pleasure, profit and, if correctly presented, understanding by both amateur and professional. Most of his works have been available to professional historians for a century in the edition published in the Rolls Series; the rest of his works have been edited since then. Yet surprisingly, rather little use was made of them until very recently. Only over the past decade has the work of this colourful and controversial individual attracted more than passing attention.

The current number of the Friends of the Library of Trinity College contains matter that is of interest to all who have seen or who hope to see the Book of Kells. Mr R. O. Dougan, who has recently been appointed deputy librarian, gives an account of the methods used by the English experts who have recently rebound the book in four parts. The decision to break so famous a book into four separate parts, corresponding with the four Gospels, was undoubtedly drastic, and has come as a shock to many lovers of ancient manuscripts. But Mr Dougan explains here at length the reasons which have compelled the College authorities to take this step; and his account of the methods used by Mr Roger Powell in the process of restoration and rebinding is impressive as a witness to the care which has been taken to safeguard this national treasure for future generations. Tourists who visit the library will perhaps be disappointed : for the old custom of constantly exhibiting some of the finer pages will be discontinued. Each page of each volume will now be exhibited in turn, and the great illuminated pages will be less frequently exposed to the tourist's gaze. On the other hand, this means that no more than a fourth part of the book will be in the exhibition case at any one time; and serious students will always have an opportunity of examining all four parts at their leisure.

In the general election of January 1906, R. G. Glendinning, a taciturn baptist linen manufacturer of Belfast, won the North Antrim parliamentary seat. The significance of this event was his success in an overwhelmingly protestant constituency at the expense of the highly articulate and intelligent unionist sitting member, William Moore, the principal architect of the Ulster Unionist Council and the leader of the unionist campaign to expose the devolutionary dangers of ‘Macdonnellism’. Furthermore Glendinning had campaigned as a ‘liberal unionist’, but had been condemned as a home ruler by his opponent and indeed upon arrival in the house of commons took his seat on the liberal government benches. Some years later, in 1913, despite the heightened political temperature, it was still possible for a meeting on 24 October in Ballymoney town hall attended by some four or five hundred protestants to denounce ‘the lawless policy of Carsonism’, and for this same meeting to be addressed by such noted nationalists as Captain Jack White, Sir Roger Casement and Mrs Alice Stopford Green. Their audience was invited to sign an anti-covenant devised by White and closely modelled on, though directly opposed to, the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant. As late as 1925 an independent protestant candidate, George Henderson, representing the Unbought Tenants Association, secured one of the seven County Antrim seats in the Northern Ireland parliament, thus preventing the election of an official unionist, R. D. Megaw. Then there is the interesting phenomenon of the Independent Orange Order which in the years before 1914 had established itself more firmly in north Antrim than anywhere else. The area also threw up in this period a number of prominent individuals who became active in non-unionist politics, of whom the Reverend J. B. Armour, the Reverend D. D. Boyle, John Pinkerton and Samuel Craig McElroy are perhaps the best known. Finally Bally money and the Route was the epicentre of the Ulster tenant-right movement in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.

This article examines the treatment of physical drill as a curricular subject in primary schools in the Irish Free State in the period from 1922 to 1937. In particular, it assesses the reasons why its status as an obligatory subject was reduced in the mid 1920s. It will show that the availability of facilities, resources and teaching staff with suitable qualifications were all considerations, while some teachers were not physically capable of teaching the subject in the early years of the Irish Free State. In addition, a strong emphasis on the Irish language and the view that a reduced curriculum was more beneficial to learning meant that some subjects, including physical drill, were deemed optional. However, the decision to reduce the subject's status had not been supported by everyone and it was mainly the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation which was behind the move. Following its reduction from an obligatory subject to an optional one as a result of a decision taken at the Second National Programme Conference in 1926, a lack of a clear policy on the subject became evident. By the early 1930s, the subject was receiving more attention from the Irish government, which made some efforts made to integrate the Czechoslovakian Sokol system into Irish schools. In examining conflicting views on how to implement the Sokol system, and the work of Lieutenant Joseph Tichy, the man recruited to develop it within the Irish army, this article also identifies the reasons why this method of physical training was not a success in Irish schools.

This article reflects on some developments in women's history based on the 1992 ‘An agenda for women's history in Ireland, 1500–1900’, particularly responding to the section authored by Maria Luddy, incorporating work grounded in the nineteenth century up to the first half of the twentieth. Specifically, it considers developments in Irish women's social history over the past thirty years on the period from the 1850s to 1950s. The focus is on themes of poverty and migration, crime, and sexuality, which were touched on in the ‘Agenda’ and identified as areas for future research. Analysis on these subjects allows for an insight into lived realities for ‘ordinary’ women. These are areas which reveal the growth and development of historical research and its impact on public narratives and policy. Taking its cue from the ‘Agenda’, this article also identifies other fruitful research topics that could be further explored in future scholarship.

In his vivid account of Easter Week 1916, The insurrection in Dublin, the writer James Stephens observed: ‘The finest part of our city has been blown to smithereens, and burned into ashes. Soldiers amongst us who have served abroad say that the ruin of this quarter is more complete than anything they have seen at Ypres, than anything they have seen anywhere in France or Flanders.’ In a letter to his sister, Henry Beater, company secretary of Arnotts, also likened the smouldering ruins of Sackville Street and the adjoining thoroughfares to a scene from the war:

At the time of the Norman invasion the Irish church under its primate, Gilla Mac Liag or Gelasius, had welcomed the advent of Henry II and accepted his claim to be an ecclesiastical reformer. As a result the invaders, while ensuring that English or French clerics controlled the church in the areas they themselves had colonised, did not interfere with the primacy of all Ireland at Armagh. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the coarbship of Patrick was held in turn by ten primates of native Irish stock, a German, an Italian and only one Anglo-Norman, Luke Netterville, freely elected in 1217.

The tide of Irish immigration to the United States, which reached its crest during and following the famine years of the eighteen-forties, was second only to that of the Germans in the nineteenth century. Consequently, the Irish immigrants who arrived by the hundreds of thousands and the succeeding generations of Irish-Americans became one of the most important national groups in the American population, at the same time maintaining a keen interest in their native land.