Given their activism in the revolutionary period, now widely acknowledged by historians, why were Irish women and their organizations on the margins of deliberations on the Treaty? Why were Irish women under 30 denied the vote in the June 1922 general election? To what extent were they the victims of gendered violence (by either side) … Read more
In this centenary year of its publication, the History Ireland Hedge School considers James Joyce’s Ulysses, set in Dublin on a single day, 16 June 1904. What was the history of the book? What is the history in the book? Join Tommy Graham in discussion with Sylvie Kleinman, Felix Larkin, Katherine McSharry and Dan Mulhall. The Hedge School series of podcasts is … Read more
Over the course of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, nearly 300 ‘Big Houses’ (those belonging to aristocrats with in excess of 2,000 acres), 20% of a total of c. 1,500, were burned to the ground. Why? AuthorTerence Dooley, Professor of History at Maynooth University and Director of the Centre for the Study of … Read more
The Anglo-Irish Treaty sparked turmoil within the IRA. Some accepted it and joined the ranks of the Provisional Government’s new ‘National Army’; some remained neutral; the majority opposed it, but with the added twist that on the eve of the Civil War there were two anti-Treaty factions of the IRA, not one. Two Army Conventions, … Read more
While an uneasy peace prevailed in the South following the Truce of July 1921, in Northern Ireland communal violence continued to rage, exemplified most notoriously on 24 March 1922 by the killings of a ‘respectable’ Catholic family, the McMahons, by an RIC ‘murder gang’. Was this a ‘one-off’ by a ‘rogue’ element or part of … Read more