Women’s contribution to philanthropy in the nineteenth century has been well recognised by religious and social historians of the last decade, and in this scholarly work Maria Luddy provides a comprehensive survey of the Irish experience. Her study is informed by the contributions of other scholars—the pioneering work of Frank Prochaska (Women and Philanthropy in … Read more
Irish Convict Lives, a sequel to Exiles from Erin, aims to explore the personal aspects of the Irish convict experience in Australia. The eight essays present pictures of a small sample of the men and women who received sentences of transportation and who responded to their new involuntary environment in different ways. Men like Andrew … Read more
‘Power’, as Mao Zse-tung observed, ‘comes from the barrel of a gun’. His aphorism is true in the most literal sense of early modern Europe where the introduction of gunpowder and artillery precipitated a military revolution, which so overthrew traditional medieval security arrangements as to beget an entirely new military system, whose organisational needs triggered … Read more
Ralahine, Prosperous, Kingwilliamstown, Dolly’s Brae, Ceim an Fhia, Carrickshock: small, insignificant places, yet places with strong resonances in Irish history. Is Ballykilcline, an obscure Roscommon townland containing fewer than five hundred souls on the eve of the Famine, now about to join them? Probably not, for a few reasons. Part of the problem is that … Read more
Tom Crean was born in 1877 in Annascaul, County Kerry. At the age oftwenty he ran away from home and by 1901 he was serving as naval seamanin the New Zealand squadron of the Royal Navy. It was from here that hejoined Scott’s ship Discovery on its way to Antarctica. By 1914 he wasback in … Read more