History Ireland—Ireland's History Magazine

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Cover Story
Platform:The elephant and partition: Ireland and India

Platform:The elephant and partition: Ireland and India



Introducing this special issue, Kate O’Malley looks at the myriad of connections between the two countries over the past two centuries.

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Featured Articles
Integration: ‘Seeing a vision in a pool of ink’: ‘The Mir’ of India in Ireland
Integration: ‘Seeing a vision in a pool of ink’: ‘The Mir’ of India in Ireland

Vivian Ibrahim outlines the career of Mir Aulad Ali (1832–98), appointed Trinity College’s first Professor of Arabic and Hindustani in 1861, a colourful character who became a well-established figure in Dublin, showing how an early migrant from Northern India was accepted and indeed welcomed into social and political life in Ireland.

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Zoology:Trevelyan’s rhinoceros and other gifts from India to Dublin Zoo
Zoology:Trevelyan’s rhinoceros and other gifts from India to Dublin Zoo

In the nineteenth century, Dublin Zoo struggled to acquire elephants, tigers, rhinoceros, bears and other popular animals from India. Although they were available from dealers, the zoo seldom generated enough income to purchase them and had to rely instead on the benevolence of well-placed friends and supporters in India. Catherine de Courcy explains how one of them, Sir Charles Trevelyan, donated a young rhinoceros.

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Literature: Mythologising a ‘mystic’:W.B. Yeats on the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore
Literature: Mythologising a ‘mystic’:W.B. Yeats on the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore

If Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last year on the grounds of anticipated performance, Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 on the basis, more or less, of a single collection of poems—Gitanjali: Song Offerings. But, asks Malcolm Sen, was it awarded for the right reason?

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Repression: The Amritsar massacre, 1919: the Irish connection
Repression: The Amritsar massacre, 1919: the Irish connection

Pierce A. Grace gives an account of one of the most shocking and cold-blooded massacres in history and of the Irish connections of those responsible.

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Commemoration:Nationalism, empire and memory: the Connaught Rangers mutiny, June 1920
Commemoration:Nationalism, empire and memory: the Connaught Rangers mutiny, June 1920

The Connaught Rangers enjoyed a distinguished history as a British Army regiment from their formation in 1793 until their disbandment in 1922. The Connaughts served the British Empire in places ranging from the Caribbean to Africa to India. Yet, as Michael Silvestri relates, for many Irish people, the Connaught Rangers’ greatest feat was not the battle honours they won for queen and empire but a protest they staged in India in the summer of 1920.

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Sport: Ranji—the cricketing maharajah of Connemara
Sport: Ranji—the cricketing maharajah of Connemara

Anne Chambers tells the story of the Jam Saheb of Nawanager, who made Ballinahinch Castle, near Clifton, his second home between 1924 and 1932.

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Politics: Learning the tricks of the imperial secession trade: Irish and Indian nationalism in the ’30s and ’40s
Politics: Learning the tricks of the imperial secession trade: Irish and Indian nationalism in the ’30s and ’40s

Kate O’Malley explains how the coming to power of de Valera in 1932 heightened Indian interest in Irish politics and made Ireland a regular destination for Indian political activists.

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Demographic crisis: Revisiting the Bengal famine of 1943–4
Demographic crisis: Revisiting the Bengal famine of 1943–4

Cormac Ó Gráda, one of Ireland’s foremost theorists on famine, examines India’s last major food-related demographic crisis and how it influenced our understanding of what causes famines more generally.

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Partition: The 1947 partition of India: Irish parallels
Partition: The 1947 partition of India: Irish parallels

In March 1942 the South African prime minister, J.C. Smuts, warned Churchill against using ‘Irish tactics of partition’ in India; Churchill himself referred to Pakistan as ‘a sort of Ulster in the North [of India]’. His secretary of state, L.S. Amery, referred to the breakup of India ‘on Ulster and Éire lines’. Deirdre McMahon explores the parallels in the partition experience of two former British colonies.

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Education: Muslim students in 1950s Dublin
Education: Muslim students in 1950s Dublin

Adil Hussain Khan traces the genesis of Ireland’s Muslim community.

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Artefacts: Irish VCs and the Indian Mutiny
Artefacts: Irish VCs and the Indian Mutiny

Lar Joye cites some of the many Irishmen awarded the Victoria Cross, including Sergeant Patrick Mahoney, who won it during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

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Development: ‘Across the gaping earth blasted by hatred’: Concern in Bangladesh
Development: ‘Across the gaping earth blasted by hatred’: Concern in Bangladesh

Kevin O’Sullivan outlines how Africa Concern, expelled from Nigeria in January 1970 following the end of the Biafran war, moved its operations elsewhere, including to Bangladesh, and in the process became the template for the evolution of the modern Irish NGO (non-governmental organisation).

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Food:‘Where’s the Taj Mahal?’: Indian restaurants in Dublin since 1908
Food:‘Where’s the Taj Mahal?’: Indian restaurants in Dublin since 1908

The answer, as any listener to Larry Gogan’s ‘Just a minute, the 60-second quiz’ will know, is (or was) beside Dublin’s Dental Hospital in Lincoln Place. Michael Kennedy traces the history of the capital’s Indian restaurants over the past century.

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Gems of Architecture:Dromana Gate, Co. Waterford
Gems of Architecture:Dromana Gate, Co. Waterford

Damian Murphy describes a folly-like gatelodge in the Hindu Gothic style.

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