This article investigates the antiquarian response to the opportunity for Irish Catholic relief during the Anglo–American crisis and views Sylvester O’Halloran’s General history as an innovative attempt to initiate Irish Catholic participation in the British empire predicated on a historic and current fittingness. The London publication of the General history indicated that this work was directed at an audience outside of, as well as within, Ireland. An investigation of the subscription-list confirms that that audience consisted of members of Britain’s political élite and successful émigré Irishmen in the service of European Catholic powers. The narrative analysis, when compared with its principal sources, Keating’s seventeenth-century Foras feasa ar Éirinn and the twelfth-century Lebor gabála Érenn, shows that O’Halloran altered his source materials to construct an historical picture of a Milesian maritime empire. O’Halloran’s argument for Catholic inclusion in the British empire was twofold. He altered his source material to suggest an ancient parity with the contemporary British empire to demonstrate an Irish historical fittingness for an imperial role, while his subscription-list confirmed a current aptitude. This argument was directed at and partly endorsed by another section of the subscription-list, London’s political élite.

Scholars have devoted much attention to the causes and consequences of Presbyterian emigration from Ulster to the thirteen colonies before 1776. This article moves beyond the eighteenth century to examine the continued religious links between Presbyterians in Ireland and the United States in the nineteenth century. It begins with an examination of the influence of evangelicalism on both sides of the Atlantic and how this promoted unity in denominational identity, missionary activity to convert Catholics, and revivalist religion during the first half of the century. Though Irish Presbyterians had great affection for their American co-religionists, they were not uncritical, and significant tensions did develop over slavery. The article then examines the religious character of Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Scots identity in the late nineteenth century, which was articulated in response to the alleged demoralising influence of large-scale Irish immigration during and after the Famine of the 1840s, the so-called Romanisation of Catholicism, and the threat of Home Rule in Ireland. The importance of identity politics should not obscure religious developments, and the article ends with a consideration of the origins and character of fundamentalism, perhaps one of the most important cultural connections between Protestants in Northern Ireland and the United States in the twentieth century.

In 1878, a meeting organised in Dublin by those in favour of repealing the contentious Contagious Diseases Acts ended in chaos and disruption. The acts themselves empowered police and doctors to forcibly detain and examine women (within specified geographical locations) suspected of being infected with venereal disease. The campaign to abolish the acts appeared to lack the widespread support that it had gathered in England, particularly in medical circles, and the disorderliness of the Dublin meeting seemed to confirm this. The Irish medical press, specifically the weekly Dublin Medical Press and Circular (D.M.P.C.) mirrored The Lancet’s vilification of those who sought to abolish the acts. This article examines the D.M.P.C.’s campaign to extend the acts in Ireland and explores its influence within the context of the debate surrounding these controversial acts. Despite prolific representation of leading English medics among those who opposed the acts, the D.M.P.C. did not offer any outspoken testimony for the repeal of the C.D.A.s by an important figure in the Irish medical profession. This article examines the reasons for such a muted response by Irish doctors to the draconian legislation that directly involved the profession.

During the Second World War tens of thousands of volunteers from the island of Ireland served in the British armed forces. This article will examine the effect of an Irish background on the volunteers’ experience of the British forces. It will explore the ways in which the military authorities facilitated and encouraged the development of a pluralist Irish identity. In doing so the article will demonstrate how the volunteers’ ideas of Irishness were influenced by British perceptions and it will assess to what extent volunteers from North and South really shared a common Irish identity. The article will also place the Irish experience of the British forces in the context of a multinational army incorporating personnel from, among others, Scotland, Wales, the dominions and Poland.

Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom’s only self-governing region, recorded year-on- year the worst statistics on health and poverty. However, it was far from certain that the Unionist government in Belfast would enact the kind of sweeping post-war reform that occurred in England and Wales. The raft of legislation governing health and social care introduced in 1948 was, therefore, the product of conditions and circumstances peculiar to Northern Ireland. The government in Belfast needed to overcome the conservative instincts of Ulster Unionism as well as suspicions regarding Clement Attlee’s Labour administration. Although the process was somewhat blighted by sectarianism, the government of Sir Basil Brooke enacted what amounted to a revolution in health and social care provision.

Established in 1949 in the face of Fianna Fáil hostility, and greeted with suspicion by both the department of Industry and Commerce and the department of Finance, the Industrial Development Authority within ten years had carved out a powerful position for itself within the bureaucracy. By the early 1950s, while Seán Lemass was still wedded to the concept of import-substituting industrialisation, the I.D.A. was formulating its vision for ‘industrialisation by invitation’ and lobbying internally for the introduction of export profits tax relief. The adoption of this measure in 1956 initiated the low corporation-tax regime that remains in place to this day. Though frequently conflated, the reorientation of industrial policy in the 1950s and the dismantling of tariff barriers in the 1960s were quite separate initiatives. That the establishment of the I.D.A. and the adoption of export profits tax relief were opposed by the department of Finance and enacted by inter-party governments clearly distinguishes them from the later trade-liberalisation initiative associated with the partnership of T. K. Whitaker and Lemass. The present paper explores the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the I.D.A. and traces its evolution and expanding influence over the first ten years of its existence.

This article examines a petition drawn up by Robert Ayleway, an official within the Irish fiscal-military state in 1692, in connection with charges of corruption and incompetence during the Williamite Wars (1689–91). Ayleway’s petition, and his wider career, demonstrate that he was part of a process of English and Irish state formation that had begun well before 1688, driven by informal patronage networks as much as by formal bureaucratic developments, creating an entrenched interest group of officials that nevertheless came into conflict after 1689 with new officers, many of them foreign, who came to Ireland in William III’s train. Both sides suspected the loyalty of the other, but the petition reveals that Ayleway saw himself, with some justice, as a competent and loyal official who had used his private means to serve the public in a way that had also advanced his own private interests, suggesting something of the ethos of officials within the new Irish (and English) fiscal-military state.