‘Better a state without public records than public records without a state’? — state formation, archives and commemoration

So said Winston Churchill in reference to the Irish Free State on hearing news of the destruction of the Public Records Office in the Four Courts in June 1922 at the outbreak of the Civil War. But in many respects, this also applies to Northern Ireland whose Public Records Office Northern Ireland (PRONI) didn’t open … Read more

Nenagh and North Tipperary during the revolutionary decade

Having considered the ‘global’ impact of the Irish revolution in the last podcast (Dev in America), this Hedge School zooms in on the ‘local’—the market town of Nenagh and the surrounding North Tipperary area during the revolutionary decade—but also sets events in the wider national context.  Listen to Tommy Graham, editor of History Ireland, in discussion with Gerard … Read more

IRELAND, EMPIRE AND THE SEA

The great voyages of discovery (Columbus, de Gama, etc.) shifted the centre of gravity of European maritime trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Over the same period the conquest of Ireland was completed. By the eighteenth century, Ireland, for centuries on the periphery of Europe, found itself at the centre of this newly formed … Read more