Newsletter

HISTORICAL HEDONISM

Arnold Toynbee is not a historian who is much read nowadays. His attempts to explain the industrial revolution or to create historical laws and generate a meta-narrative based on grand sweeps of generalisation have fallen out of favour. It may also be that the sixteen volumes of his magnum opus, The Study of History, defeat even the most dedicated of readers in the age of the sound bite. Toynbee did, however, know a great deal about his subject and was prepared to justify it in pithy terms. 'Addiction to history' he wrote 'needs no justification beyond itself. If the historian, under fire from philistines, is driven back into his last ditch, his ultimate and impregnable line of defence is that history is fun, and that fun is its own reward'. Fun is not a word much heard in the groves of academe today. Perhaps this is because, apparently unlike 'quality', it cannot be accurately measured by razing a sizeable area of rain forest to supply paper for administrative purposes. In that world whatever else anything may be it cannot be fun. Despite his neglect Toynbee's insight is correct. History, economic and social or otherwise, whatever else it may achieve should be fun to do.

What then for the historical hedonist is the best party in town? There are certainly plenty of options to choose from. Social and cultural history, for instance, are now attractive because of the importation of powerful mind-altering substances from the worlds of cultural and literary theory and anthropology. Economic history has lost some of its lustre, and institutional support, as the intoxicants of the 1960s, a combination of cliometrics and sociology, have lost their potency. However, I would suggest that there is one group of people who seem to be having a lot more fun recently or, put another way, are doing a lot more history. Surprisingly, perhaps, this is not a new party nor is it confined to the hallowed halls of learning. The party is, of course, that organised by local historians.

Like all invitations to historical parties that for the local historians party comes emblazoned with the words caveat emptor. If you find yourself being bored by a long monologue on the land war in Longford, the Famine in Fermanagh, or O'Connell in Offaly you have come to the wrong party. Down the road a rather different conversation is taking place. The realities of local worlds, taken on their own terms rather than as examples of national trends, are being atomised with sometimes spectacular results. The study of local history in Ireland is rapidly moving away from the rather stuffy histories of how national figures once slept in a local house or harangued the local peasantry in a language many could not understand. Social relationships, or how people in the past got on with or fell out with each other in particular places, have now become the cause of much fun. The restricted geographical range of such history permits it to be a clearing ground where a whole range of otherwise fragmented historical specialisms and sub-specialisms can become happy bedfellows. Folklore and economics are regarded as equals. In short, the creation of as complete a picture as we can have of past societies becomes possible.

What is most impressive is the diversity of such studies and the high standard to which they have been produced. For example, Maynooth Studies in Local History, a series of pamphlets which began publication in 1995, has now swelled to forty volumes which deal with the experiences of many different types of communities raging from the small medieval town of Dalkey to the nineteenth-century industrial village of Portlaw. Parishes, religious houses (such as Kilmainham), large towns (such as Drogheda) and the more traditional world of estates have all attracted the attention of local historians. More recently another sort of local study, that of the community which lived and worked around Christ Church cathedral in Dublin, has resulted not only in a magisterial history of one place but also the publication of some of the more significant texts on which that study was based. Local journals have expanded to such an extent that even the bibliographers for Irish Social and Economic History cannot keep up.

Why has all this happened? One is tempted to turn sociological and talk of the need for local identities in an age of globalisation but the story is more complex than that. Technological changes in publishing have made it possible to produce high quality local histories at reasonable prices. High unemployment rates in the 1980s and early 1990s generated FAS and other employment schemes, which directed their attention to parish history, which in turn awakened local enthusiasms. Archives are more easily accessible than ever before and guides are available to help the beginner. Indeed so prevalent has the social activity of what Raymond Refaussé described in a previous editorial in this Newsletter as 'archiving' become, that some archival resources are now stretched to near collapse. There are also excellent models available to help beginners structure their work.

It is equally important to realise what have not been factors in this explosion in local historical activity. There are no university departments of Irish local history, there is no chair of local history in any Irish university and there are no university posts specifically described as being dedicated to local history. Moreover the whole endeavour has proceeded without what most universities regard as a sine qua non of research - a large grant and preferably an institute or centre with large scale funding.

I want to suggest that the boom of interest in local history is no more than a vindication of Toynbee's position that researching and writing history is ultimately about having fun. What has fuelled this activity is sheer enthusiasm and delight in historical study for its own sake. If, as some previous editorials in this Newsletter have suggested, economic and social history is becoming a middle-aged occupation and failing to attract young blood, that perhaps says more about the attitude of professional historians in Ireland to what they do than about anything else. Have fun.

Raymond Gillespie

African Studies Association of Ireland

The establishment of an African Studies Association of Ireland and the election of a provisional committee was agreed at a meeting held at Trinity College, Dublin in May 2000. Present at the meeting were colleagues working in African Studies at several Universities and Colleges across Ireland. The aim of the Association is to promote the study of Africa in Ireland, particularly in Higher Education, through conferences, lectures and such like. The intention is to define African Studies in a broad and multidisciplinary way to include social scientists, environmental scientists, educationalists, linguists, lawyers, historians, health and veterinary specialists and others.

For further information contact:

Dr David Dickson, Dept. of Modern History

Trinity College, Dublin 2.

NEWS OF CONFERENCES

Economic and Social History Society of Ireland

Annual Conference, 2000

`Writing Irish Urban History’

NUI Galway, 17-18 November

The annual conference of the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland was held in University College Galway and was ably organised by Dr Niall O Cíosáin. The sessions were held in the elegant new millennium building in the college. The theme of the conference, `Writing Irish Urban History’, brought together a stimulating mixture of historians, geographers, archivists and town planners. The guest speaker, Peter Borsay, of the University of Wales, presented the K.H. Connell Memorial Lecture on `The Town in the British Isles in the Eighteenth Century’. Other papers addressed a wide range of issues and sources relating to the histories of Dublin (Howard Clarke, UCD, Jacinta Prunty, NUI Maynooth, and Lisa Godson, RCA/DIT), Belfast (Ian Montgomery and Robert Corbett, Belfast), Cork (Maura Cronin, MIC Limerick), Limerick (Gearóid O Tuathaigh, NUI Galway, Tom Hayes, Limerick), Galway (Kieran Hoare, Galway and John Cunningham, NUI, Galway) and Waterford (Donal Moore).The conference was concluded by Mark McCarthy (NUI Galway) who surveyed `The current state of urban history in Ireland’.

Social History Society Conference

University of Ulster

Cultures and Subcultures: rethinking histories of cultures

Despite the penetrating cold and the institutional drabness of an HE tower

block in Belfast's city centre, the 25th annual conference of the Social History Society managed to create (with some assistance from the nearby Crown Bar) an atmosphere of warmth and convivality in which a wide range of first-rate papers were delivered. This was the first time the Society had held its conference in Ireland. Hosted by the University of Ulster (Sean

O'Connell of Jordanstown) the theme of the conference was 'Cultures and Subcultures: rethinking histories of cultures'.

With over 50 speakers from 5 different countries, the conference covered a lot of ground. Culture, it seems clear, is nothing if not adaptable and many of the papers illustrated the point that the construction of cultural (or sub-cultural) identity - be it elite, popular or on the margins of society - is a complex and multi-faceted process, replete with

contradictions and incapable of easy answers.

Although a number of papers examined the desire of elite cultures, like the Victorian Church of England (Robert Lee), the town hall film censor (Sian Lewis) and the Football Association (Dilwyn Porter), to control the more popular and disruptive elements within their respective fields, another group of papers focused on the ways in which the working classes developed their own cultures, often in opposition to the elites around them. Focusing on the early twentieth century, Andrew Davies (Glasgow street gangs), Claire Langhammer and Kathy Milcoy (female leisure culture) and Tim Shakesheff

(poaching in Herefordshire) all pointed to the multiplicity of cultures and the ability of rival cultures to co-exist, despite occasional clashes.

As many of the papers pointed out, however, a simple rivalry between elite and popular culture is no longer an adequate model of interpretation. To that end, a number of people highlighted the emergence of a middle-class culture. Andrew Blake examined the role of Radio Times in shaping peoples' listening habits in the 1950s. Deborah Ryan looked at the Daily Mail's Ideal Home Exhibition in the 1930s and the impact it had on the formation of middle-class tastes. Sean O'Connell considered Men Only magazine and the role it played in shaping 1930s notions of masculinity and consumerism.

Irish cultures and sub-cultures also got a look in. Unsurprisingly, war and religion were well represented. Keith Jeffery and Anne Dolan talked about the complexities of and the tensions created by the desire for commemoration, particularly when the country concerned has been governed by a foreign power and has subsequently undergone a civil war. Janice Holmes talked about the protestant sub-culture, which revolves around Ulster's gospel halls and a panel of speakers, including Katrina Goldstone and Pol O Dochartaigh, uncovered new dimensions to Ireland's Jewish community. Guy Beiner, on oral culture and 1798, and Mary Daly, in a wide-ranging paper on changing leisure patterns in the 1950s Irish countryside, proved that Irish social history is moving into previously uncharted territory. The history

of cultures and subcultures, as demonstrated at this conference, is no longer being interpreted in terms of simple dualities. Instead, sub/culture is now being interpreted as a complex network of multiple and intersecting identities, at times challenging, at times co-existing but always reflecting the rich variety of peoples' lives.

Janice Holmes

Irish In Europe Conference

NUI Maynooth

The second Irish in Europe Conference, organised by Dr Thomas O’Connor (NUIM), was held at NUI Maynooth on 25 November 2000 and was a very successful event. Speakers from France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium and Ireland addressed a wide variety of aspects of the Irish diaspora experience. Micheál MacCraith and Jan Paez presented papers of Irish links with Prague. Sébastian Janan focused on the experience of the Keating family in Poitiers while Mel Fearon spoke about French awareness of Irish national sentiment in the late eighteenth century. Pat O’Connell, Karin Schüller, Ciaran O’Scea and Samuel Fannin each presented papers on Irish links with Iberia, respectively discussing Irish collegial life in ancien régime Lisbon, immigrant networks in Spain, the implications of the fallout from the battle of Kinsale for Irish migration to Castile and the formation of an early-modern Irish community at Cadiz. Irish ties with the Spanish Netherlands were the subject of two papers by Jeroen Nilis and Hector McDonnell. The conference was very well attended and each of the papers generated lively discussion. The Conference also marked the publication of Thomas O’Connor (ed.), The Irish in Europe, 1580-1815 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), the proceedings from the first Conference held at NUIM in 1999. The proceedings from the second Conference are due for publication in 2002.

Marian Lyons

37^th International Conference on the

History of Medicine

This conference was held in the very sunny sourroundings of the Moody Gardens, Galveston, Texas, 10-15 September 2000. It was held under the auspices of the International Society for the History of Medicine and was organised by Chester R. Burns of the University of Texas Medical Branch, which has impressive collections of medical archives. Papers ranged from an examination of health care systems in the US and Canada (a Canadian was defined as an unarmed American with health care!) to visual presentations on Gods, Quacks, Heroes and Holograms: Changing Images of Healers in Western Literature and Popular Culture. One of the most fascinating papers was strikingly entitled `Let the Children Die’. It discussed the position of foster children in Finland in the early modern period. The next conference will be held in Istanbul. The Congress President is Prof Nil San, e-mail: nilasari@istanbul.edu.tr and the Congress Secretary is Dr Yesim Isil Ulman, yesimul@yahoo.com. Their website is: www.nerobio.ucla.edu/ishm/ishm2002.htm

Margaret O hOgartaigh

Representing the Shoah for the 21^st Century

Trinity College Dublin

An exciting conference entitled Representing the Shoah for the 21st Century took place in Trinity College Dublin, 13/14 March 2001. Academics, social commentators, filmmakers, writers and artists travelled from all over Europe, the United States, Israel and Britain to debate the vexed question of how the Shoah is represented in public discourse, film, literature and historiography. Memory of the Shoah is a prominent feature in the cultural legacy of the 20th century. The conference debated in an animated fashion the ethical implications of representations and re-memorisations in an age in which, on the one hand, there is a proliferation of discourses about the Shoah, and on the other, arguments are raised concerning a 'holocaust industry' and the dangers of banalisation. Papers about the meanings and interpretations of the Shoah from a perspective of the beginning of the 21^st century referred to a multiplicity of media, from the written word through various art forms. Sessions discussed personal testimony, literature, theatre, film, television, music, historiography, museums and education.

Several presentations were given by practicing writers and artists, who talked about their work openly and generously with the audience. One of the many highlights of a fascinating conference was the presence of two distinguished keynote speakers, the acclaimed Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld and eminent sociologist Professor Zygmunt Bauman, Professor Emeritus, Leeds and Warsaw. Appelfeld's address about childhood survivors, based on his experience as a nine year old in hiding during the war, was extremely moving. Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, Krackow spoke about Re-presenting the Shoah in Poland and Poland in the Shoah. Philip Spencer, Kingston University tackled the complexities of The Shoah and Marxism. The session on the Shoah and the creative process united two generations personally touched by the Shoah, the Israeli writer Nava Semel, a daughter of survivors, and Janina Bauman, who was confined in the Warsaw Ghetto at the age of 13. In the session on coming to terms with the Holocaust, Dublin composer Melanie Brown discussed the music she composed inspired by the children of Terezin. Amongst a packed schedule, other sessions dealt with the issues of film and theatre representations of the Shoah, language, memory and silence. The conference was organised by Dr Ronit Lentin of the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies programme, Dep-artment of Sociology, Trinity, in conjunction with Dr Catherine Heszer of the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religion and Culture, Trinity College. Support was also given by the Goethe Institute and the Embassy of Israel, Dublin. Conference proceedings will be forthcoming.

Katrina Goldstone

Victoria’s Ireland? Irishness and Britishness, 1837-1901

20-22 April, 2001

Venue: University of Southampton.

The Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland’s annual conference took the opportunity of the centenary of Queen Victoria’s death to reassess the place of Victoria and Victorianism in Irish history and culture. It was very well organised by Dr Peter Gray of the University of Southampton and the plenary lecture was presented by James H. Murphy (All Hallows College, Dublin) whose paper was entitled: `“We left our dear Osborne”: Ireland and the creation of Queen Victoria’. The other papers were arranged under broad headings which included: Irish Victoriana (Patrick Maume, QUB and Brian Griffin, Bath Spa University College); The Irish Fin de Siècle (Jessica de Mellow, University College Chichester and Nicholas Allen, TCD); Irishness, Britishness and Localism (Maura Cronin, UL and James McConnel, University of Durham): Ireland’s Victoria? (Tom Hayes, UL and Honor O Brolcháin, Dublin); Integrationism and its Opponents (Gary Peatling, Aberystwyth and Carmel Quinlan, UCC); Ireland and the Victorian World Order (Jennifer Ridden, Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, Mark Theodorson, Birkbeck, Pantaleimon Hionidis, LSE and Carla King, St Patrick’s College Drumcondra); British and Irish Literary Identities (Cora Kaplan, Southampton and Matt Campbell, Sheffield).

The conference also saw the launch of Larry Geary (ed.), Rebellion and Remembrance in Ireland and conference participants were taken on a tour of Osborne House and grounds.

Carla King

Second William Thompson Weekend School, held at the Firkin Crane Centre, Cork, 4-6 May 2001

The annual William Thompson Weekend School (named after the Cork-born early pioneer of co-operativism, socialism, and feminism) was held in Cork City on the weekend of 4-6 May. This year’s conference title, ‘Making the Links’, was especially apt in view of the wide range of papers delivered by academics, trade unionists, community and political activists. During the course of the weekend sessions addressed issues such radical activity in early twentieth-century Ireland; class and the ‘celtic tiger’; feminism and community activism; globalisation; and new social movements.

Those papers of particular interest to social historians included the opening Friday night paper by Sheila Rowbotham (University of Manchester), which dealt with the history of women’s ‘livelihood protests’ from the French revolution to the present-day. Rowbotham’s survey, listened to by a large and attentive audience, drew a distinction between the ‘bourgeois feminism’ that dominated during much of the twentieth-century and women’s movements of the past which focused strongly on socio-economic and livelihood issues. Her own position, argued in her many publications, was for a socialist-feminism that embraces a clear class-based perspective.

On Saturday morning a session themed ‘Radical Irish Lives’ heard papers from Rosemary Cullen-Owens (UCD) on ‘Louie Bennett: pacifist and internationalist, 1915-30’; Donal Ó Drisceoil (UCC) on ‘Peadar O’Donnell: republicanism, communism, and the pursuit of socialism in Ireland’; and John Horgan (DCU) on ‘Noel Browne: a refugee from the camp of success?’ Cullen-Owens provided a lucid biographical paper in which she was highly critical of the disinterest shown by Irish historiography towards Bennett who was undoubtedly one of the most important female public figures of the twentieth-century. Interestingly, comments on Bennett from the audience revolved almost entirely around the issue of her neglect, with her gender and pacifism posited as crucial to understanding this undervaluation. Ó Drisceoil’s paper, witty and erudite, placed O’Donnell firmly within the context of Irish republicanism and international communism, and (although describing him as ‘the greatest member the communist party never had’) he mentioned that there was some evidence to suggest that he had been a paid-up member of the first Irish communist party despite later denials. John Horgan’s paper provided a provocative view of Browne in which he stressed Browne’s difficult personality and lack of understanding of cabinet procedure during his period in government. A lively discussion followed all three papers.

Sunday afternoon saw an extremely interesting paper from the radical American historian, Peter Linebaugh (University of Toledo), titled ‘The Red-crested Bird and Black Duck: Historical materialism, indigenous people and the failed republic’ in which he addressed the treatment of the indigenous peoples of the United States in the late-eighteenth century and highlighted links and solidarity between these groups and Irish and English radicals. Linebaugh explored the realities and myths of transatlantic resistance to an early form of capitalist ‘globalisation’ in a stimulating discussion that was surely one of the highlights of the weekend.

Fintan Lane

25th Irish Conference of Historians

NUI Galway

The theme of this Conference, ‘explaining change in cultural history’, attracted a wide range of academics with specialisms in history, anthropology, literary criticism and communications who collectively presented very stimulating and varied engagements with this subject. Speakers from overseas included Anne Rigney (Free University, Amsterdam), Martin Burke (Lehman College, CUNY), Günther Lottes (Potsdam), Reingard Esser (University of the West of England, Bristol), Rab Houston (University of St Andrews), Luke Gibbons (Notre Dame), Patrick Joyce (University of Manchester) and Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago). Speakers from universities in Ireland included Janice Holmes (UU, Coleraine), Donnchadh Ó Corráin (UCC), Sean O’Connell (UU, Jordanstown) and Michael Cronin (DCU). Papers addressed such diverse issues as scarcity and recycling in cultural change, the transition from court culture to national culture, sanctity and depravity in the Irish Church in the medieval era, cultural and moral obstacles to the development of consumer society, Subaltern Studies and Post Colonial histories. One of the highlights of the Conference proceedings was a stimulating and highly entertaining paper delivered by the internationally renowned American anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins (University of Chicago), on the subject of culture and agency in history. Each of the sessions was characterised by lively debate on issues arising. During the course of the conference, Professor Tom Bartlett launched Nicholas Canny’s Making Ireland British and Dr John Logan launched Pádraig Lenihan’s Confederate Catholics at war and Hiram Morgan (ed.), Historical Studies, XXIV: Information, media and power through the ages, the proceedings of the previous Conference. The Conference organiser, Dr Niall Ó Ciosáin, is to be congratulated on his excellent organisation of the event, and all in attendance were agreed that both academically and socially the Conference was a real success.

Marian Lyons

FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES

Economic and Social History Society of Ireland Annual Conference

The conference will be held on 23-24 November at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. The theme will be 'People on the Move'.

Fifteenth Irish Conference of Medievalists

28-29 June 2001

National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Contact: Dr Catherine Swift, c/o Dept of Modern History, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Co Kildare

Institute of Historical Research

School of Advanced Study

The Sea

University of London, 4-6 July 2001

Programmes and registration forms from: The Conference Secretary

Institute of Historical Research

Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. Tel: 020-7862-8740;

Fax: 020-7862-8745; email: ihrsec@sas.ac.uk

Women's History Association of Ireland

2001 CONFERENCE

Writing Women's History:

hagiography, biography and autobiography

7/ 8 September 2001

University of Ulster Coleraine

This conference will explore how Irish women in the past have written about themselves, and how we as historians now write about them.

Themes and Issues:

· the construction of autobiographies and women’s self-representation

· the changing nature of autobiography and biography

· the relationship which exists between biographer and subject

· the political biography: purpose, problems

· official v. unofficial biographies - how they differ

· the theory of biography

The conference will be held in the Senior Common Room, University of Ulster,

Coleraine, with its panoramic views over the River Bann. The Provost of the University, Professor Peter Roebuck, will host the opening reception, after

which Dr. Amanda Foreman, the author of the acclaimed Georgiana, Duchess of

Devonshire, will deliver a lecture. Other speakers will include: Elva Johnston, Margaret Ward, Justine McCarthy and Lorna Siggins.

For more information contact Dr. Janice Holmes, Department of History,

University of Ulster, Coleraine, Co. Derry, BT52 1SA

(028) 7032 4647; fax: (028) 7032 4952 e-mail: je.holmes@ulst.ac.uk

http://www.womenshistoryireland.ie/page4.html

Women’s Committee of the Economic History Society

12^th Annual Workshop

Women and Disasters

Saturday 17^th November 2001

10.00 am - 4.30 p.m., Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London.

The workshop will consider disasters of all kinds: natural, episodic, endemic, man-made, institutional, life cycle, ideological and philosophical. The day will thus be very varied but should also bring out common themes in the formation, of, implications of, and reactions to disasters, socially, culturally and economically.

Sessions will include wars and famines, missing women, slavery, mining disasters, death and bereavement, and a round table on the feminist critique of orthodox economics and the impact of orthodox economies on the economic history of women.

Speakers include: Julie Nelson, Catherine Merridale, Marilyn Thomson, Stephen Klasen, Richard Sheldon, Martin Johnes. Organisers: Jane Humphries & Pat Hudson.

For further details and a registration form please enquire to:

Pat Hudson

HISAR

Cardiff University

CF1 3XU

e-mail: hudsonp@cardiff.ac.uk

Battle of Kinsale: commemorating 400 years 1601-2001

Jan 2-6, 2002: Kinsale Winter School

There will be a range of international speakers.

Further details available from Kinsale UDC, Kinsale, Co. Cork.

www.kinsale2001.com

The Irish Revival Reappraised

Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland

28-30 June 2002

All Hallows College, Dublin

Call for Papers

The Irish revival had its roots in the 1880s and flourished until the 1920s. As recent studies have suggested there was no single revival but a welter of movements, some reactionary, others revolutionary, with differing views on literature, language, culture, economics and politics.

Taking a long view of the Irish nineteenth century which extends to the early 120s, this tenth conference of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland welcomes contributions from a wide variety of disciplines and especially interdisciplinary approaches to a reappraisal of the Irish revival. While not neglecting the great figures or key texts of the age, special emphasis will be placed on the social, economic and political contexts, such as journalism, the arts, politics, education, religion and business, which informed the intelligentsia of the period, and contributed to the emergence of movements as diverse as the Gaelic League, the Anglo-Irish literary renaissance, the co-operative movement and Sinn Féin.

Conference organisers: James H. Murphy and Elizabeth Ann Taylor FitzSimon

Please submit proposals for papers (c. 200 words) by 10 December 2001.

The conference will feature the work of both established and emerging scholars.

All correspondence and enquiries to:

Dr E.A. Taylor-FitzSimon,

Dept of English, All Hallows College, Grace Park Rd., Drumcondra, Dublin 9.

Tel: 01-8373745; Fax: 01-83776 42

email: tayfitz@indigo.ie.

The Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives edited by Bernadette Cunningham and Máire Kennedy. Dublin: Economic and Social History Society of Ireland and Rare Books Group of the Library Association of Ireland, 1999. 224 pp, illust., appendix. ISBN 0-947897-33-X. Price: £15 (IR/Stg) plus postage.

The proceedings of the very successful one-day conference held in the Dublin Writers’ Museum on 28 November 1997 have been published jointly by

the Society and the Rare Books Group of the Library Association of Ireland.

There are essays by Raymond Gillespie, Elizabethanne Boran, Toby

Barnard, John Killen, Máire Kennedy, Marie-Louise Legg, Rolf Loeber and

Magda Stouthammer-Loeber, and John Logan. The book is illustrated.

On sale at a price of £15 (plus £3 postage within EU, £5 postage rest of world). Cheques should be made payable to: `The experience of reading’ and orders should be posted to Berrnadette Cunningham, The Library, Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson St, Dublin 2, Ireland, e-mail: B.Cunningham@ria.ie

The Economic and Social History Society of Ireland’s website may be found at:

www.eh.net/eshsi

Four Courts

RECENT BOOKS FROM PUBLISHERS’ BLURBS

History of Local Government in the County of Louth from Earliest Times to the Present Time by Harold O’Sullivan. Institute of Public Administration, 2000. ISBN: 1-902448-31-6 IR£19.99 pbk.

This book deals in some depth with the way in which the local authorities responded to the challenges presented by the blighted inheritance of the Colonial Past. These included the elimination of abysmal slum housing and insanitary conditions, chronic unemployment, inadequate educational, health and welfare services, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and an undeveloped road network. Setbacks did arise from time to time: from world economic circumstances, from the period of War Emergency and from the self-inflicted wounds of the financial mismanagement of the 1980. Nonetheless, the local authorities of County Lough can claim to have given their communities some service in the achievement of the improved physical and economic environment which now exists.

From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, by Katherine Simms. Studies in Celtic History, Volume 7. The Boydell Press, 1987, 2000. ISBN 0-85115-784-X. IR£14.99

The Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, unlike the campaign in England one hundred years earlier, did not achieve a complete conquest. Native Irish chieftains were thus able to recover much of their power and status over the succeeding four hundred years and it is their experiences which are the subject of this study.

The inevitable changes in the composition of Irish society are closely followed, focusing principally on the disappearance of the title rí (king) and the gradual death of the institution of kingship, and the effect of the ubiquitous presence of mercenary soldiers, and changes in the process of election and inauguration of the kings and their counsellors. The developing role of officials and vassals, changes in the army, and the raising of revenue are also described and documented. The evolving and fascinating story of the transformation of Ireland’s Gaelic lordships between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, a unique society of which little was previously known before Katharine Simms made this careful study, is built up from many sources: Irish chronicles, bardic poetry, genealogies, brehon charters and rentals, family-tracts and sagas, as well as the more familiar evidence of the Anglo-Norman administration, the Church and Tudor state papers.

Reading Revolutions. The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England by Kevin Sharpe. Yale University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-300-0812-9. £25 stg. (hardback only).

This fascinating book – the first comprehensive study of reading and politics in early modern England – examines how texts of that period were produced and disseminated and how readers interpreted and were influenced by them. Based on the voluminous reading notes of one gentleman, Sir William Drake, the books shows how readers formed radical social values and political ideas as they experienced civil war, revolution, republic and restoration.

By analysing the strategies of Drake’s reading practices, as well as those of several key contemporaries (including Jonson, Milton and Clarendon), Kevin Sharpe demonstrates how reading and rereading classical and humanist works of Tacitus, Machiavelli, Guiccardini and Bacon, became the advocate of dissimulation, intrigue and realpolitik. Authority, Sharpe argues, was experienced, reviewed and criticised not only in the public forum but in the study, on the page and in the imagination, of early modern readers.

The World of Geoffrey Keating. History, Myth and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Ireland by Bernadette Cunningham. Four Courts Press, 2000. ISBN 1-85182-533-9. IR£35.

Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn was among the most popular and influential histories ever written. It offered a sense of Ireland, of Irishness, and of Catholicism that had wide appeal. The work has long been valued for its mastery of the Irish language and its attractive literary style, yet its significance as history has been ignored. This innovative new book evaluates Keating’s role as both historian and theologian. It provides an imaginative interdisciplinary analysis of the entire range of Keating’s writing and of the social circumstances and intellectual influences that moulded his world. His theological works, Eochair-sgiath an Aifrinn and Trí bior-ghaoithe an bháis, help clarify the context within which his history was written in a world where religion was not distinct from secular life. Historians and theologians, like all writers, reflect the beliefs and values of the world in which they live, and this pioneering study illuminates the interconnections between religion and history in early modern Ireland. The world of scribes, translators, publishers and readers of Keating’s works are part of this historiographical assessment of how ideas were transmitted to later generations. Geoffrey Keating’s intellectual legacy in influencing perceptions of Irishness has been profound, not least as the populariser of the myth of a special relationship between Catholicism and Irishness. This is an important, original study of the cultural, social and intellectual world of Ireland’s most influential seventeenth-century writer.

Women and Paid Work in Ireland, 1500-1930, edited by Bernadette Whelan. Four Courts, 2000. ISBN 1-85182-5215 hardback only. IR£30.

This book seeks to further unravel the working experiences of Irish women in the period from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. Based on largely hitherto unseen material and covering topics such as business, education, medicine, nursing, prison and childcare, it provides new information about women’s involvement in these areas and about their working lives.

Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650-1729) and the Constitution in Church and State by Philip O’Regan. Four Courts Press, 2000. ISBN 1-85182-464-2, IR£35 (hardback only).

Following his conversion to Anglicanism in his youth, King became one of the most prominent ecclesiastical and political figures of his day. While his political role has been well documented, this book seeks to re-establish his primary concern: how to secure the role of the Church of Ireland as both arbiter and enforcer of moral and social good in Ireland.

To this end King fashioned a scheme – his `Constitution in Church and State’ – in which the church, monarch and parliament would work together to achieve this goal. And it was to the achievement of this that he devoted the bulk of his time and energies.

When considered in this light, his championing of the rights and independence of the Irish Parliament can be properly understood. King was less a `patriot’ in the line of Molyneux, Swift and Grattan, and more an inheritor of Ussher’s grand vision of the Church of Ireland as a `free, national church’ which not only infused society with the gospel, but acted as a bulwark against the secularising tendencies of the English parliament and its allies.

Drawing on his voluminous private archive, this book demonstrates that King’s vision for the kingdom of Ireland was subordinate to, and informed by, his vision for the Church of Ireland.

Crowds in Ireland c.1720-1920 edited by Peter Jupp and Eoin Magennis. Macmillan Press, 2000. ISBN 0-333-78990-3, £47.50 stg. (hardback only).

Crowds in Ireland c. 1720-1920 is the first book to examine a neglected but important feature of Irish political and cultural history. Taking Mark Harrison’s classic study, Crowds and History, as their inspiration and model, nine historians examine the extraordinary variety and vitality of all kinds of Irish crowds – including those assembling for fairs, pilgrimages, military reviews, commemorative parades, elections, political speeches and sporting events. In their introduction, the editors provide the first general history of the subject in this critical period in Irish history and show how crowds were as much the adjuncts to political causes as their inspiration. This is followed by eight detailed studies of various types of crowds, the majority of which are written by new scholars.

The American Irish: A History by Kevin Kenny. Longman, Pearson Education, 2000. ISBN 0-582-27817-1, £17.99 stg., paperback.

The story of the Irish in North America reverberates through the modern period.

As many as 7 million Irish men, women and children have crossed the Atlantic for North America since 1700. Almost 5 million of them went to the US between 1820 and 1920 alone. This vast movement of people was of great historical significance on both sides of the Atlantic: it played a fundamental role in the shaping of modern Ireland, and it determined in many respects the economic, political and cultural development of the United States, where 45 million people today claim some degree of Irish ancestry.

The American Irish: A History offers an extended analysis of the conditions in Ireland that led to mass migration and examines the Irish immigrant experience in the United States in terms of patterns of settlement, labour, race, gender, politics and nationalism. The first concise, general history of the subject in a generation, it covers the entire period from 1700-2000 and it is augmented by full illustration and textual aids.

STUDIES IN IRISH ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY

The Economic and Social History Society’s pamphlet series provides useful introductions to a range of topics in the field. The studies available to date are:

1. David Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration, 1801-1921

2. W.E. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Ireland, 1848-1904

3. S.J. Connolly, Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

4. David Johnson, The Interwar Economy in Ireland

5. Líam Kennedy, The Modern Industrialisation of Ireland

6. Raymond Gillespie, The Transformation of the Irish Economy, 1550-1700

7. Mary E. Daly, Women and Work in Ireland

The studies can be ordered from the publishers, Dundalgan Press at IR£6 each using the form below.

--------------------------------------------------

To Dundalgan Press, Francis Street, Dundalk, Co Louth:

please send me ___ copies of Studies in Irish Economic History, no.___, Title______________________________

To (name):_________________________

Address:___________________________

__________________________________

_____________________________________

I enclose Cheque/Postal Order for _________

2001-2002 AWARD

IRISH-AMERICAN RESEARCH TRAVEL FELLOWSHIP

At its Colorado Springs meeting in April 2002, ASECS will announce the winner of its Irish-American research travel fellowship, in the amount of $1500. Applications are solicited.

Application deadline: November 2001

Eligibility: All members of ASECS’ Irish sister organisation, the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, who are resident in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland.

Purpose: To support documentary research on Ireland in the period between the Treaty of Limerick (1691) and the Act of Union (1800), by enabling Irish-based scholars to travel to North America for further research or to present their findings at the ASECS annual meeting or that of one of its related societies. (In alternate years, the award will go to American-based scholars seeking to travel to Ireland.)

Restrictions: None by age, sex, race, religion or academic rank. None by academic discipline or sub-period of specialisation within 18^th-century Ireland. The fellowship is restricted to documentary scholars, whose research centres on primary sources from the eighteenth century (printed matter, manuscripts, buildings, works of art, or other artifacts), rather than on the secondary literature already extant.

Application forms are available from

the Executive Secretary, Prof. Byron R. Wells, at ASECS, PO Box 7867, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC27109

Tel: (336) 727 4694

Fax: (336) 727 4697

E-mail: asecs@wfu.edu

http://direct.press.jhu.edu/associations/asecs

The Irish Brandy Houses of Eighteenth-Century France by L. M. Cullen. The Lilliput Press, 2000. ISBN 1-901866-40-8. IR£29.95

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, particularly in the 1760s, Ireland became the focal point of the international brandy trade. This pioneering study based on exhaustive research in French archives, tells the story of the Irish families – Hennessy, Saule and Jennings, Galwey, Delamain, and others – who played a leading role in brandy distilling in the Charente region of France. Family connections and intermarriage, trading problems, marketing and finance, the role of smugglers and the effects of the French Revolution are detailed by Professor Cullen, against the background of a burgeoning French economy and the expansion of world demand for brandy during a time of urbanisation and grain surplus.

The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750-1900 by Mary Peckham Magray. Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-511299-7. Price 33.50

Mary Peckham Magray argues that the Irish Catholic cultural revolution in the nineteenth century was effected not only by male élites, as previous scholarship has claimed, but also by the most overlooked and under-estimated women in Ireland: the nuns. Once thought to be merely passive servants of the male clerical hierarchy, women’s religious orders were in fact at the very centre of the creation of a devout Catholic culture in Ireland. Often educated, articulate, and evangelical, nuns were much more socially engaged and personally ambitious than traditional stereotypical views have held.

Equiano and Anti-Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Belfast by Nini Rodgers. Belfast Society Publications no. 1 and Ulster Historical Foundation, 2000. ISBN 0-9539604-0-4. £5 stg. (paperback only)

The celebrated freed slave, Olaudah Equiano, visited Ireland in 1791-2 and was welcomed `particularly in Belfast’. Long-standing radical rhetoric about the political `slavery’ of Ireland was now, and in the context of the `Rights of Man’, applied specifically to oppressed peoples, whether black or Catholic.

And yet Belfast’s commercial and industrial advance, a major trigger of radical self-assertion, was intimately linked to trade and connections with the slave economies of the West Indies.

A Distant Shore. Irish Migration and New Zealand Settlement, edited by Lyndon Fraser New Zealand, University of Otago Press, 2000. ISBN 1-877133-97-3. No price given.

A distant shore tells the dramatic story of Irish migration to New Zealand in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In a series of essays written by leading scholars in the field, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives and experiences of these newcomers as they left post-Famine Ireland and made their way to a destination `half the world from home’. It uses many sources, including letters from migrants to their families in Ireland, and also look at the history of Irish organisations in New Zealand, both Catholic and Protestant.

The Outer Edge of Ulster. A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal by Hugh Dorian. Edited by Breandán MacSuibhne and David Dickson. Lilliput Press, 2000. ISBN 1-901866-14-9, IR£25

Hugh Dorian (1834-1914), a writing-clerk, watches the `Donegal prisoners’ arrive at Derry gaol under a military escort. Indignant at their treatment – in print as much as in prison – he writes a `true historical narrative’ of the transformation of his home community in the nineteenth century. That community, though never named by Dorian, is the Fánaid peninsula on the Atlantic coast of north Donegal. Dorian describes the ordinary and the everyday – births, deaths and marriages, hedge-schools and schoolmasters, the poitín industry and donkey races, local systems of land holding, the social position of craftsmen and musicians, and the personal and sectarian hatreds that shaped his childhood. And then he describes the extraordinary and the incomprehensible -–the Great Famine and the `mournful silence’, the sense of communal bereavement, that followed in its wake. The lasting image is of people who had sat late into the small hours debating politics in the years before the blight congregating now in silence, lacking words for their experience.

This book examines the clearances and sees how some families fared in Canada. It also focuses on the infamous Grosse Ile near Quebec, and relates in detail the fate of some families in St Andrews, New Brunswick.

Ireland and the Great War by Keith Jeffery. Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 0521-77323-7, £16.95 stg.

This book explores the impact, both immediate and in its longer historical perspective, of the First World War upon Ireland across the broadest range of experience – nationalist, unionist, Catholic, Protestant – and in civilian social, economic and cultural terms, as well as purely military.

Underscoring the work is a belief that the Great War is the single most central experience in twentieth-century Ireland and that the events of the war years, whether at home in Dublin during the Easter Rising or at the European battlefront, constitute a `seamless robe’ of Irish experience. The book also explores cultural responses to the war and its commemoration since 1918, up to the dedication of the Irish `Peace Tower’ in Belgium in November 1998. It argues that identifying and exploring the Irish Great War experience can contribute to the contemporary Irish peace process.

Women of the House. Women’s Household Work in Ireland, 1922-1961, by Caitriona Clear. Irish Academic Press, ISBN 0-7165-27147. IR£39.50 hardback; ISBN 0-7165-2717-0. IR£18.50 paperback.

The picture often painted of Irish women who were not in the paid workforce in the first four decades of Irish independence, was one of narrow, optionless lives, ceaseless drudgery, and severe subordination.

This study blends official records and personal testimonies of all kinds from these years, to show us that this was not necessarily so. Focusing on the kind of women who would not as a rule have employed household help – lower-middle class and working-class women; those on medium to small farms, this study shows that the setting, nature and meaning of household work changes gradually from one decade to the next.

Researching Armagh Ancestors. A practical guide for the family and local historian. Ulster Historical Foundation, 2000. ISBN 0-901905-89-5. £9.95 stg. paperback.

Armagh, the smallest county in Northern Ireland, has a rich, colourful and even tempestuous history. War, famine and emigration over the last four centuries have all contributed to forming the distinctive character of its people.

Newsletter

Economic and Social History Society of Ireland

No. 12 Summer 2001

NEWS OF CONFERENCES

Annual Conference, 2000

RECENT BOOKS FROM PUBLISHERS’ BLURBS

Reminder re membership subscriptions

ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTION RATES 2001

ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTION RATES 2002