The American Civil War (1861–5) brought freedom to four million slaves. Reconstruction was the attempt to politically, socially and economically rebuild and reform the South. By the early 1870s, biracial democratically elected governments were functioning throughout the South. Citizenship and suffrage had been granted to African-Americans under the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) and the Fifteenth Amendment … Read more
This historical exhibition, prepared by the Polish Embassy in Dublin, examines Wacław Tadeusz Dobrzyński’s central role in establishing diplomatic relations and friendship between the young states of Ireland and Poland in the twentieth century. It will be presented in the following venues in the coming months: 3–28 July 2017: Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse … Read more
The second leg of the first ever soccer match between Poland and Ireland, which took place in Dublin on 15 November 1938, was attended by the president of Ireland, Douglas Hyde, and Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. The result was a 3–1 win for Ireland. As a result of his attendance, President Hyde was removed as … Read more
As many readers of this magazine are surely aware, Seán O’Callaghan’s To Hell or Barbados (2000) revived public interest in the colonial connection to Cromwell’s curse. Nursing nationalist outrage about the conquest, O’Callaghan calculated that 50,000 Irish were sold in the colonies, a number that grossly inflates the estimates of modern scholars, which run from … Read more
Olivia Elder (1735–80) was the daughter of Revd John Elder (1692–1779), one of the earliest and most prominent of the New Light Presbyterians, minister to the congregation at Aghadowey and author of two of the tracts establishing the New Light Presbyterians. Olivia never married but acted as her father’s housekeeper. For most of her adult … Read more