It was the Stuarts who introduced the Irish to the slave trade. Charles II returned to the throne in 1660 at a time when it was becoming clear that sugar plantations were as valuable as gold-mines. The Royal Africa Company (RAC) was established to supply slaves to the British West Indies in order to extend … Read more
In the late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman marriage market, the teenage Isabel de Clare was a very desirable prize. Under Anglo-Norman feudal law, the marriage of her parents, Strongbow and Aoife, and the related succession agreement between Strongbow and Isabel’s maternal grandfather, Diarmait Mac Murchada, united the holdings of the two families. But when Strongbow died in 1176 there … Read more
Susan Flavin and Evan T. Jones (eds) (Four Courts Press, E65) ISBN 9781846821820 This 1,094-page tome reproduces the details of the cargoes of ships plying between Ireland and the Continent in and out of Bristol for 100 years. Two factors make the work remarkable: the first is that the records survive and the second … Read more
Rapairí Scun Scan Productions Six-part series, Nov.–Dec. 2009, TG4 by John Gibney Rapairí set itself the task of examining the lives of six ‘outlaws’ active in Ireland from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth. From a government persective the Irish seemed a rebellious people, and the focus on the lives of individuals who cared … Read more
Francis Hutchinson was no ordinary clergyman. Posterity chiefly remembers him for his condemnation of witchcraft trials in his famous book An historical essay concerning witchcraft . . . (1718). He was one of the first members of the Dublin Society for the Improvement of Husbandry and Other Useful Arts, however, and wrote extensively on social … Read more