From 1740–1922, as many as seven million people emigrated from Ireland to North America. Arguably, if there are any patterns in modern Irish history, a cultural analysis of this vast flow may help to reveal them. For while the Irish question is usually defined in Anglo/Irish terms (those of conflict) it has more universal import as the adjustment of Irish identity and culture, both personal and national, to the demands of the modern industrialising world. Emigration afforded one such response; Irish nationalism another; Irish American nationalism linked the two. More humans were directly and articulately involved in the migratory response than in the nationalist, both cumulatively over time and in the degree of freely active personal involvement. If scholars such as Robert Kennedy, Cormac Ó Gráda and others have studied emigration in terms of Ireland’s economic modernization, we would suggest that it may be studied culturally as a revealing cross-section of Ireland’s attendant psychic modernisation.

As a step towards a fuller understanding of the food situation in Ireland on the eve of and during the great famine it is necessary to analyse the exports and imports of grain and grain products in those years.

There are a number of major obstacles to doing this. To begin with the available statistics on the Irish grain trade are neither orderly nor complete. The most extensive of the relevant series covers each calendar year during the period 1839–48. Monthly figures are available only for the year 1846 and apply to exports only. Other official returns refer to isolated periods of varying length.

The late Peter Hart's tentative yet provocative application of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ to the Irish revolution, especially as practised in Co. Cork, continues to arouse widespread indignation and incredulity. Two associated issues have dominated the debate: the influence of sectarian hatred on the conduct of the I.R.A., and the extent to which Protestants were actually forced out of their homes by intimidation or fear. Though a few historians have endorsed Hart's claim that a substantial number of Protestants were murdered or expelled because of their religion, most argue that such attacks were primarily motivated by political or economic rather than sectarian motives. Similar points have been made, from the revolutionary epoch onwards, by liberal Protestants as well as republican sympathisers, whose rejection of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ hypothesis has sometimes degenerated into vicious ad hominem attacks on Hart and his allies. The issue of motivation is notoriously resistant to historical analysis: all motives are mixed, some are deliberately concealed, and others are unconscious. Little would be gained by making yet another attempt to disentangle the often contradictory hopes, fears, resentments, and rationalisations underlying republican conduct in the revolutionary years.

The idea of an ‘Irish empire’ has had enduring appeal. It was a rare source of pride promoted by politicians and churchmen during depressed periods in independent Ireland, particularly the 1950s, and the phrase provided an evocative title for at least one popular – and notably sanguine – version of the Irish diaspora's story as late as the turn of this century. In such contexts ‘Irish empire’ can appear simply a wry play on a far more commonly used and, if recent scholarship is to be taken into account, by no means unrelated term, ‘British empire’. Yet as many historians of the Irish abroad, the Irish Catholic Church, and Irish culture more generally have noted, the existence of a peculiarly Irish ‘spiritual empire’ was widely spoken of even as the island's ports were daily choked with emigrants. Nevertheless, the pervasiveness and persistence of the concept, invariably involving the perception of a special, God-given emigrants' ‘mission’ to spread the Catholic religion in whatever part of the world they settled, warrant a more searching analysis than historians in the above-mentioned categories have hitherto devoted to it.

The Easter rising inaugurated a period of violence in Irish history, but its immediate consequence was to spark off a political rather than a military upheaval. The most important development in the next few years was the emergence of a united and organized separatist party which was capable of winning and holding the loyalties of most Irishmen; between 1916 and 1919 the achievements of the Sinn Fein party outweighed in importance those of the Irish Volunteers. This article will examine how the different Sinn Fein elements combined to form a single party, and how they overcame problems which nearly undermined its unity.

For some time before the Volunteers resorted to their protest in arms the nationalist party of John Redmond had been in a state of crisis, and its roots had begun to wither even though few traces of decay were yet visible above ground. Its supporters were dismayed by Carson's successful defiance of the Asquith government and by the postponement of home rule until after the end of the war. The party's extremist rivals were growing in strength and influence, encouraged by Griffith's propaganda and by the formation of the Volunteers. The nationalists had become vulnerable to an onslaught from outside their ranks or to erosion from within. Yet until after the turning-point of May 1916 Redmond still retained the grudging and unenthusiastic support of the great majority of the population.

D. A. Binchy stated that ‘the idea of a town, with a corporate personality distinct from that of the ruler, was quite foreign to the Gaelic mind until the Scandinavians set up their “cities” in Dublin, Limerick, Waterford and elsewhere’. Numerous scholars have disagreed with Binchy’s assessment and have claimed instead that Irish monasteries were evolving, whether before Viking settlement in Ireland or somehow as a response to that presence, into what have been variously called ‘protourban’ sites, ‘pre-urban nuclei’, ‘centres of … industrial activity and local trade’, or simply ‘monastic towns’. The term ‘monastic town’ has been in use for many years, and is now part of the standard vocabulary in discussions of early medieval Ireland. From scholarly works to popular publications for tourist consumption, the Irish monastic town has been a known and accepted entity. Armagh, Downpatrick, Kildare and Clonmacnoise are the most commonly cited examples, and Charles Doherty has argued that these monasteries were beginning to function as urban centres by the ninth century. Many scholars would agree that by the tenth and eleventh centuries, possibly in response to Scandinavian urban settlement in Ireland, certain Irish monasteries were urban centres themselves. Brian Graham has raised a number of objections to the concept of the monastic town in Ireland, but his work has remained unacknowledged; others have recently called for a critical reassessment of the theory, but none has as yet been forthcoming.

When the earl of Pembroke met Henry II at Newnham in Gloucestershire in 1171, in the words of Gerald of Wales he surrendered Dublin (significantly called regni caput), the adjacent cantreds, the maritime towns and castles to the king. ‘As for the rest of the land he had conquered, he and his heirs were to acknowledge that it was held of the king and his heirs.’ Already Mac Murchada had given King Henry ‘the bond of submission and oath of fealty’. Later Mac Carthaig did homage as well as fealty, gave hostages and an annual tribute and ‘voluntarily submitted to the authority of the king of England’, while other Irish submitted and swore fealty. Most significantly, according to Gerald, Ó Conchobair of Connacht Obtained the king’s peace, became dependent for the tenure of his kingdom on the king as overlord, and bound himself in alliance with the king by the strongest ties of fealty and submission’. All in Ireland became the king’s subjects, and Henry’s lordship was accepted by all. It was later confirmed by the pope and publicly proclaimed by his legate, Cardinal Vivian, at a synod in Dublin. From 1171, then, until 1541, when an Irish parliament declared Henry VIII to be king of Ireland, Anglo-Irish relations were governed by one simple fact: the king of England was ipso facto lord of Ireland. Throughout that period the royal style never changed. In all charters and formal letters issuing from his chancery he was Rex Anglie, Dominus Hibernie etc.

It was Gerald of Wales too who first voiced the new reality which faced Ireland after 1171. When he composed a dedication to King John of a new edition of his Expugnatio Hibernica, sometime around 1209, he reminded him that he should not neglect Ireland and wrote that ‘the Irish kingdom was made subject to the English crown, as if through a perpetual indenture and an indissoluble chain’.

This article examines the establishment and development of Na Fianna Éireann, or the Irish National Boy Scouts, in the period 1909–16. It also assesses the contributions of the organisation’s two founders, Countess Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson, in the early years of its existence. Bureau of Military History witness statements, a key source for the history of the Fianna, indicate that a degree of controversy surrounds the relative importance of the pair in the foundation and control of the Fianna movement.

At the beginning of 2001 the First Minister of Northern Ireland, David Trimble, found himself confronted with more than his fair share of intractable diffculties: having narrowly survived an internal vote of the Ulster Unionist Party on whether to continue in government, Trimble surveyed an unpromising political landscape dominated by the rise of the rival Democratic Unionist Party and the I.R.A.’s continued refusal to decommission all its weapons. Despite all this, in late January 2001 Trimble devoted considerable time to attacking the B.B.C. for having made the Rebel Heart drama series. Claiming to be loosely based on real events, the programmes implied that the Belfast police had killed six members of the McMahon household on 24 March 1922.

This article examines the importance of physical culture systems for Irishmen seeking to enter the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C), and those already operating within it, in the period 1900 to 1914. R.I.C. entrance requirements encouraged some men to alter their bodies physically to meet standardised body measurements for police officers. Simultaneously, a growing body of literature urged men to reflect upon their stature and, if found deficient, to undertake courses of physical culture. This situation, it is argued, led to a valorisation of muscularity and strength as foundational to an officer's physical presence and strength of character. To further demonstrate the relationship between physical culture and the R.I.C., the article also examines efforts by members within the force to associate strong bodies with broader masculine identities related to courage, integrity and bravery. The article begins with a brief discussion of the R.I.C., before examining the historiography of Irish masculinity and police masculinities more generally. Next, the article examines the importance of physical culture for those seeking entry into the constabulary, with reference to the Irish Times’s physical culture column, before finally examining the efforts by existing members to strengthen the R.I.C.’s relationship with physical culture. In both instances, involving aspirant and actual members of the R.I.C., the article argues that conceptions of masculinity in the constabulary echoed broader social messages and came to equate strong physiques with wider assumptions about police integrity and character.

In 1584, Richard Stanihurst, who was by then living in the Spanish Netherlands in self-imposed exile, wrote that the people of that country were ‘exceedingly amazed when they converse with a native of Ireland who professes to knowing no Irish’. That observation seemed to epitomise the position of natives of the English colony in Ireland in the sixteenth century, who found themselves facing the universal problems of colonists. Their racial origins were misunderstood by foreigners, and they were treated patronisingly in their mother-country. Some years earlier, he had referred to how the dialect of travelling Palesmen was mocked by native Englishmen who ‘judge them, upon their first repair there, to learn their English in three or four days, as though they had bought at Chester a groat's worth of English, and so packed up the rest to be carried after them to London’.

Arecent writer has drawn attention to the reluctance of historians to undertake a study in depth of individual Tudor parliaments in Ireland. He attributes this reluctance to the sparseness of the source material. Nevertheless the task must be undertaken if the history of Tudor Ireland is to be understood. The present essay is confined not only to a particular parliament, the reformation parliament of Henry VIII, but to a particular aspect of the parliament, namely its reaction to the ecclesiastical legislation which formally established the breach with Rome.

For Ulster Protestants, riven by division since the fall of Terence O’Neill as prime minister of Northern Ireland in 1969, the recent troubles have seen their future steadily being conceded by default. Where there was certainty, there is now confusion; where there was once leadership, there are now only leaders. Not surprisingly, there have been wistful glances back to the mythical heroes of the past, in particular to Sir Edward Carson, who had steered them through the home rule crisis of 1912–14 to the promised land of Northern Ireland. Carson not only mobilised all Ulster Protestants, but also organised a largely successful rebellion and in time squared the circle to become one of the few rebels in English history to go on to be a law lord. Moreover, he was also a British leader, being four times in office, twice in the cabinet, and for twenty years one of the dominating figures in Tory politics. It is this duality that made Carson’s position exceptional in Anglo-Irish relations and contributed to the immense authority he periodically enjoyed. Indeed, in Ulster before the Great War his sway assumed near-charismatic proportions. Viewed as a case study in leadership, therefore, his career was, in terms of British politics, unique.

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.

The general election of 1922 was the first election to be held in the independent Irish state, the first held under the PR electoral system, and the first to be contested by the parties which, in modified forms, were to dominate subsequent Irish politics. The 1918 election, at which Sinn Féin had routed the Irish parliamentary party, had been the last of the old order. The 1922 election was the first of the new order — the two wings of Sinn Féin were challenged by Labour and other interests, as was to be the pattern for the next fifty years at least. In that light, this paper represents an attempt to start the scarcely-begun task of closely analysing modern Irish elections. Furthermore, the 1922 election merits attention because of the unusual circumstances under which it was held, foremost among which was the ‘pact’ between Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera.

The history of sex and sexuality is underdeveloped in Irish historical studies, particularly for the period before the late-nineteenth century. While much has been written on rates of illegitimacy in Ireland, and its regional diversity, little research has been conducted on how ordinary women and men viewed sex and sexuality. Moreover, we still know little about the roles that sex played in the rituals of courtship and marriage. Drawing on a sample of Presbyterian church records, this article offers some new insights into these areas. It argues that sexual intercourse and other forms of sexual activity formed part of the normal courtship rituals for many young Presbyterian couples in Ulster. Courting couples participated in non-penetrative sexual practices, such as petting, groping and bundling. Furthermore, while sexual intercourse did not have a place in the formal route to marriage, many couples engaged in it regardless.

The results of the religious inquiry in the Irish census of 1861 (which showed that the established church commanded the allegiance of only one-eighth of the population) were used extensively in the debate on church disestablishment, and the results of successive religious inquiries have been since used for a variety of purposes. This paper considers the origins of the inquiry, the controversy surrounding its first inclusion in the census, and the importance of church disestablishment in that controversy.

The censuses of 1841 and 1851 provide the earliest detailed and consistent data on the occupations pursued by the people of Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century. This paper presents a series, constructed from this data, on occupations classified by industry for the years 1841 and 1851. Its purpose is to establish the industrial distribution of the labour force for each of the four provinces, to describe the changes in industrial employment by province during the famine decade, and to make a contribution to debate on the origins of employment decline.

I

In its return of occupations, the census of 1841 differed from the censuses of 1821 and 1831 in three ways: in method of estimation, in compilation, and in system of classification. As regards estimation, the 1841 commissioners issued a ‘Form of family return’ to be completed by the head of the family, rather than, as in 1821 and 1831, having the details entered by the enumerator from viva voce inquiry. This has its limitations in that it depends on the accuracy of the householders’ returns, but it is preferable to relying on the accuracy of enumerators’ returns. As regards compilation, the 1841 census returned the occupations of all persons active in the labour force by age and gender; the 1821 census returned all persons active; the 1831 census returned males upwards of twenty years of age in agriculture, industry and services (except servants), all male servants and female servants (age unspecified). As regards the system of classification, the 1821 occupation returns were made under three, and the 1831 under eleven general headings with no return of the numbers engaged in the component occupations of these headings (but see note 1); the 1841 census provided a return of the numbers of males and females engaged in each of 471 occupations classified as belonging to one of nine classes: ministering to food; clothing; lodging; furniture; machinery, etc.; health; charity; justice; education; religion; unclassified.

The manufacturing sector of the 1920s Irish Free State was substantially more complex in structure than occasional references to a ‘beer and biscuits’ economy suggest. There were nine factories employing 500 workers or more in 1929, while the larger firms in sectors such as bacon curing, flour milling and fertilisers each operated more than a single factory. This article identifies the largest manufacturing firms and establishments of the era, as well as the largest within each industrial sector. Twenty-two firms had workforces of a minimum of around 400. Three of the five largest were foreign subsidiaries, the most significant of which – the Ford Motor Company – employed, at one stage, more than twice as many workers as Guinness. Of the larger indigenous companies, the majority were Protestant-owned, though Catholic-owned firms dominated in certain industrial segments.