In May 1974 the Ulster Workers' Council (U.W.C.), comprising loyalist trade unionists, paramilitaries and politicians, mounted a general strike backed by widespread intimidation. Their target was the Sunningdale Agreement, which produced a power-sharing executive for Northern Ireland and proposed a crossborder institution with the Republic of Ireland. After a fortnight the U.W.C. successfully brought Northern Ireland to a halt and the Executive collapsed, leading to the restoration of direct rule from Westminster. Three years later the United Unionist Action Council (U.U.A.C.) adopted the same strategy, demanding a return to devolution with majority rule and the repression of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (P.I.R.A.). This second strike was defeated. Many contemporary politicians were critical of the Labour government's failure to put down the U.W.C. strike. William Whitelaw, formerly secretary of state for Northern Ireland in Edward Heath's Conservative administration and the minister responsible for the bulk of the negotiations prior to Sunningdale, believed that the prime minister, Harold Wilson, and the new secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, did not have the same attachment to the political settlement and were less willing to support the Northern Ireland Executive in its hour of need. Paddy Devlin of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (S.D.L.P.) argued that the unwillingness to arrest those involved, ‘more than any other single action by the authorities ... caused thousands of law-abiding people who had earlier given support to the executive to switch loyalties’.

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.

It has long been accepted that memory plays a prominent role in the construction of Irish identities and yet historians of Ireland were relatively late in addressing the vogue for memory studies that emerged in the 1980s. Its arrival as a core theme in Irish historical studies was announced in 2001 with the publication of History and memory in modern Ireland, edited by Ian McBride, whose seminal introduction essay – the essential starting point for all subsequent explorations – issued the promise that ‘a social and cultural history of remembering would unravel the various strands of commemorative tradition which have formed our consciousness of the past’. The volume originated in one of the many academic conferences held in the bicentennial year of the 1798 rebellion, which was part of a decade of commemorations that listed among its highlights the tercentenary of the battle of the Boyne, the sesquicentenary of the Great Famine, and the bicentenaries of the United Irishmen, the Act of Union, and Robert Emmet’s rising. The following years produced a boom of studies on Irish memory, which has anticipated another decade of commemorations. Eyes are now set on the centenaries of the Great War, the Irish Revolution and Partition, all of which will undoubtedly generate further publications on memory. It is therefore timely to take stock of this burgeoning field and consider its future prospects.

This article contributes to the the mapping of the ‘pathways of transmission’ of the Northern Ireland ‘problem’ by drawing attention to three problematic aspects of John Whyte’s appraisal of the pre-1969 historiography, in Interpreting Northern Ireland (1990): that the work of T. W. Moody and J. C. Beckett and their fellow historians before 1969 was ‘lightweight’ and ‘bland’; that they effectively ignored Ulster’s history of sectarian rioting until Andrew Boyd’s book Holy war in Belfast (1969) brought it ‘back into the consciousness of historians’; and that the ‘external conflict paradigm’ was ‘dominant’ in their discourse. These are examined in sections II–V. The content of the pre-1969 historiography is examined in section I and a preliminary reappraisal is offered in section VI.

A seventeenth-century manuscript miscellany, which once belonged to Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, contains a short treatise on the origins of government by Sir George Radcliffe. Radcliffe was legal assistant to Sir Thomas Wentworth, lord deputy of Ireland (from January 1640 earl of Strafford and lord lieutenant). The treatise insisted on the divine origin of all human political power and implied that the best form of government was absolute monarchy, in which the monarch was free of all human law and subject to divine restraint alone. It will be suggested below that the composition of this treatise can be dated to the summer of 1639. This introduction will offer an outline of Radcliffe’s education and political career, explain the genesis of his treatise on government, point out some pertinent aspects of its argument, and finally assess the document’s significance.

At first glance the low yield of books produced by the Dublin printing presses for circulation in early Stuart Ireland could lead to two hasty conclusions: first, that Irish society was unreceptive towards reading; and second, that the printing presses had to contend with a very small (literate) target audience. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years Raymond Gillespie has done much to dispel these suppositions. His appraisal of English port books, printing press accounts from the continent and library borrowing lists plainly demonstrates the appetite of an interested reading public in Ireland. The value of analysing book loaning lists was further underlined by William O'Sullivan when he partially revealed the borrowing records belonging to the historian and antiquarian, Sir James Ware. In so doing, he drew attention to the potential of a deeper exploration of Irish cultural and intellectual life.

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.

All power belongeth unto God: psalm 62. 11. whatsoever power any creatures have, they have it by communication from God: whether it be naturall power, or might, the principle of motion, and of action and passion, given to all creatures by the Law of their creation, and conserved since by Gods providence, and concurrence with them in the execution thereof: or else it be morall power, authoritie or dominion; which is exercised only amongst reasonable creatures; and seemes to be described in those words of God to Cain: Genesis 4. comment 7. Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

The centenaries of events around the Irish Revolution are inevitably bringing forth a spate of new publications. What is remarkable about the existing historiography on this period is that detailed studies of various aspects, particularly regional studies, are plentiful but that there are very few synthetic works. The two books under review here are therefore very welcome additions written by two eminently qualified historians. The works indeed do not disappoint: both go much further than simply putting together the fruits of existing works but rely on a substantial amount of original research. The relatively recent opening up of the archives of the Bureau of Military History, which inevitably means the bringing to light of new facts and insights, made this easier for Charles Townshend, who deals with the Irish side, than for Ronan Fanning, who analyses the British government's attitude to the Irish revolution.

The following digest lists accessions to repositories in Great Britain and Ireland during 2013 relating to Irish history and reported to the National Archives: Historical Manuscripts Commission (T.N.A. H.M.C.). This information is also published on the internet via T.N.A.’s website (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) and is added to the computerised indexes of the National Register of Archives (N.R.A.) which are available for consultation at the National Archives, Kew, Richmond, TW9 4DU. Alternatively, searchers may access the indexes to the N.R.A. and certain linked on-line catalogues via the website. Limited and specific enquiries can be dealt with by post, or email ([email protected]).

This book is a landmark publication in the field of Early Irish History. Working from the fact that Ireland, in the period c.AD 400 to c.AD 1000, produced a massive body of literature, in a wide variety of genres and in two languages, Irish and Latin, that was far more extensive than in any other country in Europe, the author offers a context for the ‘communities of learning’ that produced such literature. Previous writers have struggled to explain how a society situated at the very edge of the known world could have done such a thing. Not the least of Elva Johnston’s achievements is to force a rethink of such underlying perceptions. Rather than viewing Ireland as an isolated and backward intellectual desert, for her ‘it is useful to see the island as a frontier-zone, comparable to other Roman frontiers’ (p. 11), and to see the evolution of Irish literacy and literate elites against the backdrop of Roman Frontier Studies. Though Ireland never suffered the traumatic consequences of barbarian invasion and the fall of Empire, Johnston argues nevertheless that there was much more than trading and raiding, or colonizing and slaving involved; she would see a much more profound influence at work: ‘the culture of early Christian Ireland is incomprehensible outside of the Late Antique context’ (p. 25).