The historiography of poor-law administration in Ireland ever since Nicholls’s ‘official’ history in the mid-nineteenth century has suffered from a certain selectivity on the part of commentators. As a source of first-hand information Nicholls’s book is of little value. The relatively well-researched account of pre-poor-law relief mechanisms which forms the early part of the book is followed by a disappointing series of extracts from published annual reports, almost devoid of personal comment or reminiscence. The explanation for this lies (if anywhere) in the date of the book’s publication (1856) and the fact that Nicholls had left Ireland under a cloud in 1842. The brief ‘life’ of Nicholls published as an introduction to a later edition of his English poor law is far more revealing.

This article offers some reflections on the processes of nation-making and state formation as they affected the oldest ethnic and cultural grouping in the British Isles, that of the Gaedhil, roughly in the period 1450–1650, and examines the ways in which these processes have been portrayed by historians. At the present day the Gaelic language remains the normal medium of communication in small areas of western Ireland and western Scotland; and in respect of political developments in both Scotland and Ireland, Gaelic customs and culture have exercised a much more substantial influence. Despite these similarities, there remain significant differences between British and Irish historians in the ways in which the Gaelic contribution to nation-making and state formation have been presented.

A basic distinction advanced by historians both of Ireland and Scotland has been one between the Gaelic peoples inhabiting Ireland and those resident in Scotland. It can be argued that this may reflect the relative importance of the Gaelic contribution to the making of two separate kingdoms, and ultimately two separate states; but it also means that the wider process of interaction and assimilation between Gaedhil and Gaill is split into separate Irish and Scottish experiences. In theory, these two Gaelic experiences should provide material for a comparative study of a particularly illuminating kind, but in practice other historiographical influences have generally militated against this kind of comparative history. One such is the more marginal position of Gaelic studies within Scottish historiography than is the case in Ireland. Considering that half of Scotland was still Gaelic-speaking in 1700, for instance, it is remarkable how few Scottish historians seem able to make use of Gaelic sources. Another is the practice of establishing separate departments of history in the universities for the teaching of national history. This has meant, for instance, that students are usually taught that portion of the Gaedhil/Gaill interaction process which relates to the ‘nation’ by specialist teachers of national history. Yet, since these national surveys reflect modern nations and modern national boundaries, students are trained to study Irishmen and Scots in the making rather than to consider how the inhabitants of late medieval Gaeldom might have viewed developments in the wider Gaelic world. Arguably, behind these approaches lies the influence of the modern nation-state. Scotland and Northern Ireland remain part of a multi-national British state which is dominated by England.

Contemporary studies of the Tudor conquest of Ireland identify numerous interest-groups whose different political strategies produced a complex course of events. This paper examines the reactions of an influential segment of the Gaelic learned class, the traditional lawyers (brehons), to the threat of conquest. It offers evidence that some important brehon families supported administrative reforms within the Gaelic lordships, in accord with crown demands, and that they used native jural traditions to support legal change.

As participants in the struggles of this period, the brehons have been viewed by scholars as part of the traditional cultural élite, which included poets and historians. Their indistinct appearance in the historical record partly accounts for such treatment. Brehons are scarcely mentioned in the Irish annals, while English sources tend to depict them as ultramontanists, practising ‘secret and hidden rites’, not as administrators with policies. Unlike the bardic poets, the brehons failed to leave behind a body of work that reflected their personal opinions; their literary monument, the corpus of Irish law-tracts, presents formidable barriers to interpretation, even as jural material, let alone as testimony to social history. These difficulties arise from the brehons’ deliberate attempts to preserve an appearance of antiquity and changelessness in the jural tradition. So successful were they in this, that many scholars believe that the later brehon schools copied the old law-tracts solely for their antiquarian interest and that the tracts had little relevance to contemporary affairs.

The title of this essay draws on a quotation from an article reflecting on the 1919–22 ‘crisis of empire’ written by the late J. A. (Jack) Gallagher (one half of Robinson and Gallagher, the finest double act in British imperial historiography). The complete sentence from which the title is derived reads as follows: ‘But for us the road to Asia lies through the swing doors of the Grafton Hotel in Dublin, one of the cover headquarters of the revolutionary Irish Government’. From time to time, alas, even Gallagher (like Homer) nodded, and it has to be said that his typically arresting image of the route to Asia is somewhat occluded by the fact that there is not, and never has been, a Grafton Hotel in Dublin. (He was evidently thinking of the Gresham Hotel.) Yet the underlying point of his image is sound.

‘We are now’, wrote James Anthony Froude, as he approached the topic of the outbreak of the civil war in Ulster in October 1641, ‘ upon the edge of the gravest event in Irish history, the turning-point on which all later controversies between England and Ireland hinge ’. Froude may have exaggerated, but few would quarrel with Lecky's comment on the same issue that ‘ hardly any page of history has been more misrepresented ’. It is well known that the reason for the controversy surrounding the events in Ulster in 1641 is that they have been linked with a charge against the Irish of perpetrating a ‘ general massacre ’ of British protestants at the outbreak of the war in which tens, even hundreds, of thousands of protestants were killed. The allegation of a ‘ general massacre ’ has, in turn, been used as a moral justification for subsequent English policy in Ireland.

The nature of Ireland's place within the British Empire continues to attract significant public and scholarly attention. While historians of Ireland have long accepted the complexity of Ireland's imperial past as both colonised and coloniser, the broader public debate has grown more heated in recent months, buffeted by Brexit, the Decade of Centenaries and global events. At the same time, the imperatives of social movements such as Black Lives Matter and Decolonising the Curriculum have asked us to reflect on the assumptions, hierarchies and norms underpinning the structures of society, including the production of knowledge and the higher education system. This round table brings together scholars from diverse disciplinary and methodological backgrounds to examine the prospects, possibilities and challenges of what decolonising Irish history might mean for our field. It sets these discussions within broader frameworks, considering both the relationship of Irish historical writing to postcolonial theory and the developments in the latter field in the last twenty years. It also reflects on the sociology of our discipline and makes suggestions for future research agendas.

In November 1899 The Times published a letter from a correspondent in Enniskillen recalling the army’s recruiting parades when he was a boy:

Only weeks before the Boer War had broken out, and the question of seducing ‘stalwart peasant lads’ to ‘take the shilling’ was becoming one of acute political concern in Ireland. For the Boer War was ‘nearly as crucial an event for Irish nationalism as the death of Parnell’. The sight of England engaged in a major colonial war and, in the early months, being ‘worsted in the game’ stimulated national sentiment: ‘the feeling against the British government was brought out in a remarkable manner, owing to the difficulties of the South African War’. Yet there were thousands of Irishmen in Britain’s army in South Africa.

The years 1885–6 were years of political confusion in Great Britain and Ireland. No less than four governments were in office from the spring of 1885 to the summer of 1886. Gladstone's government, beset by ministerial quarrels, fell on 9 June 1885, and was succeeded by the caretaker government of Lord Salisbury. The general election of December prolonged this political instability. The liberals were returned but with a majority of only two over the other parties. Salisbury remained in power until 27 January 1886 when he was defeated in the house. Gladstone, already a convert to some form of home rule for Ireland, formed a cabinet and drew up two bills, the Government of Ireland Bill and the Land Purchase (Ireland) Bill. The former was introduced on 8 April and exactly two months later was defeated owing to the desertion of ninety-three liberal members. In the subsequent general election the conservatives and liberal unionists routed the Gladstonian forces.

In the history of Europe political revolutions are commonplace; cultural and social revolutions are somewhat less abundant; but revolutions in the ownership of property are exceedingly rare. Even the French revolution, the prototype of profound social upheaval, is today regarded by many—particularly the followers of the late Professor Cobban—as a revolution which failed to transform the proprietary class. And in England, the believers in a great seventeenth-century social revolution have either evaded or artfully rationalised the considerable evidence that the land-owning families of 1660 were essentially the land-owning families of 1640. Despite enormous fiscal pressures, the Long Parliament and its successors never embarked upon a serious effort to expropriate or extirpate those it defeated. ‘It is their reformation, not their ruin, is desired’, wrote the author of Burton’s Diary, and the recent work of Mrs Joan Thirsk, the most exactingstudent of the royalist land sales during the interregnum, tends to confirm the verdict.

The story of late Tudor Ireland is, in part, a story of language. The political and military developments that brought New English and native Irish into a closer and increasingly violent proximity also brought two languages into confrontation. The issue of language difference became caught up in the wider conflict: the Irish language joined glibs, brehons and pastoral nomadism as yet another element in the Elizabethans’ dystopic assessment of Gaelic Ireland; in turn, the promotion of English — and the linguistic colonisation which that entailed — assumed its place in their agenda of conquest. Leaving aside larger questions of policy and ideology, language itself — and the experience of language difference — was part of the texture of that encounter. Yet the question of precisely how exchanges across the language frontier were managed has been largely ignored. The misunderstandings between Elizabethan newcomers and the Gaelic Irish were, at their simplest level, literal.

On 17 September 1496 Gerald, eighth earl of Kildare (the ‘Great Earl’), landed at Howth, County Dublin, after a lengthy and troubled voyage from England. One of the earl’s fellow travellers gave thanks to God for his safe arrival. If Kildare did likewise, his gratitude probably sprang less from his delivery from the natural elements than from his survival of a hostile political climate at court. Since the battle of Bosworth in 1485 not one but two Yorkist pretenders had found support in Ireland. The first of them — Lambert Simnel — was crowned in May 1487 as ‘King Edward VI’ in Christ Church cathedral, Dublin, after which a parliament was held in his name. Kildare was chief governor of Ireland during both conspiracies. More recently he had faced allegations of treason during the expedition of Sir Edward Poynings (1494-5). Despite this dubious record of loyalty to the newly established Tudor dynasty, on 6 August 1496 Henry VII appointed the Great Earl lord deputy of Ireland.

O’Connell’s conflict with the trade unions in 1837–8 is well-known, but the reasons behind it, stretching back over seven years, are not. Though Connolly and Ryan mention the O’Connell-artisan relationship, the artisan-O’Connell nexus has not been considered previously. It is more than a mere verbal inversion, for if he had his attitudes to them they too had their say about him. Until the publication of ‘Irish trade unions and politics, 1830–50’ by Rachel O’Higgins, the activities of the Irish artisans in politics was something of a dark spot. Now that it has been lightened the time may be opportune to record and examine the unquiet liaison between the artisans of Dublin and O’Connell.

‘ . . . I am as fast bound to Ireland as Ulysses was to his mast’: so Gladstone wrote near the close of his long career to the marquess of Ripon, one of the few liberal peers of high rank and great wealth who remained faithful to him when the party split over home rule in 1886. The remark, and the type of politician to whom it was addressed, are both significant. [Gladstone’s obsession, as many writers have termed it, with the Irish question came increasingly to dominate his political life during its latter, and much more important, half. The statement is often made that this ‘obsession’ held up the reform of British institutions for a generation or more, and in particular the social reforms of which an industrial and urban nation by then stood in grave need. This paper seeks to question the validity of that historical commonplace, for the following reasons.

On 14 February 1669 Charles II informed the committee of foreign affairs that he intended to remove the duke of Ormond from the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland. This announcement ended eighteen months of intrigue, speculation and rumour, and Orinond’s second period in office as viceroy. It seemed to contemporaries that the fickle king had again yielded to the pressure and importunities of his ambitious and politically ascendant courtiers. On hearing the news of Ormond’s dismissal Pepys commented that it showed ‘the power of Buckingham and the poor spirit of the king’. Few of Pepys’s contemporaries would have quarrelled with that judgment and few historians have seriously questioned it since.

The Irish record commission of 1810-30 is of interest as being the first determined effort on the part of government to deal in a thorough manner with the problem of the Irish public records, giving due consideration to the requirements of historical scholars as well as of lawyers and litigants. Attention had previously been directed on several occasions to the deterioration of the records owing to the lack of proper storage, and to the difficulty of Consulting them owing to the almost entire absence of guides and indexes, and efforts had been made by various individuals to remedy this State of affairs, but the interest of government had been spasmodic, and the recommendations of the several committees of inquiry appointed during the eighteenth Century had remained unimplemented.

The Desmond rebellion was one of the most brutal military conflicts to have taken place in Ireland in the sixteenth century. Initiated by James FitzMaurice Fitzgerald, cousin of Gerald, fifteenth earl of Desmond, in July 1579 in order to restore the Catholic faith in Ireland, the rebellion quickly developed from the landing of a small expeditionary force of approximately sixty men into a bloody contest which engulfed Munster for four and a half years. The rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful, but such was the ferocity of the conflict that it had a profound and devastating impact on Munster. The social and economic consequences were immense, for it exacted a huge economic cost on the province, both in terms of physical destruction and lost economic activity, and produced a very substantial depopulation of the province. The result was the overthrow and destruction of the traditional social order in Munster, an act that paved the way for the subsequent Munster plantation.

Most studies of Anglo-Irish relations in the middle ages understandably concentrate on the activity of the English in Ireland, and unintentionally but inevitably this can leave the impression that the movement of people was all one way. But this was not so, and one group who travelled in the opposite direction were some of the merchants and seamen involved in the Anglo-Irish trade of the period. Irish merchants and seamen travelled widely and could be found in Iceland, Lisbon, Bordeaux, Brittany and Flanders, but probably their most regular trade remained with their closest neighbour and political overlord: England. They visited most western and southern English ports, but inevitably were found most frequently in the west, especially at Chester and Bristol. The majority of them stayed for a few days or weeks, as long as their business demanded. Others settled permanently in England, or, perhaps more accurately, re-settled in England, for those who came to England both as settlers and visitors were mainly the Anglo-Irish of the English towns in Ireland and not the Gaelic Irish. This makes it difficult to estimate accurately the numbers of both visitors and settlers, because the status of the Anglo-Irish was legally that of denizen, and record-keepers normally had no reason to identify them separately. They may, therefore, be hard to distinguish from native Englishmen of similar name outside the short periods when governments (central or urban) temporarily sought to restrict their activities. However, the general context within which they worked is quite clear, and this article considers three main aspects of that context: first, the pattern of the trade which attracted Irish merchants to England; second, the role of the Irish merchants and seamen in the trade; and third, examples of individual careers of merchants and seamen who settled in England.

The assessment of the contribution of Garrett Hugh FitzGerald to the search for an antidote to potato blight, as put forward by Mr T. P. O’Neill in his article on the scientific investigation of the potato failure of 1845—6, needs to be revised, if only to do justice to Robert Kane.

FitzGerald wrote to a local newspaper on 9 March 1846, suggesting, as a result of experiments he had made in search of a cure for potato blight, that seed potatoes should be steeped before planting in a solution of bluestone (copper sulphate). In February and March of the same year he wrote two letters on the subject to the chief secretary for Ireland. These letters were forwarded for consideration to the relief commission, of which Robert Kane was the scientific member.