Nick Maxwell This September marks the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War—or the ‘Emergency’, as it was officially described here with heroic understatement—and in this issue John Gibney and Michael Kennedy outline the genesis of independent Ireland’s policy of neutrality (pp 48–51). That inevitably raises the question of whether it was the correct, … Read more
Daniel Davitt was, like so many of the Irish Volunteer Army, an ordinary working man. At the time of the Easter Rising he was 30 and living in the tenements of Russell Street, Dublin, with his wife, Elizabeth and two small children, Vincent and Eileen. The family were poor but proud, just about surviving on … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Irish Church Act (1869), which disestablished the Church of Ireland. As the State church, the Church of Ireland was an arm of the government at local level. Its basic administrative unit was the civil parish. All the people of the State were required to … Read more
A master-class in trolling from an eighteenth-century bishop. By Clare Moriarty George Berkeley is Ireland’s best-known historical philosopher, whose fame rests on being the chief advocate of a pretty peculiar metaphysical position: immaterialism, the view that no mind-independent material objects exist. Historians of mathematics know him as a petulant critic of early calculus. In his … Read more
Exploring medieval Ireland’s economy via papal taxation records. By Chris Chevallier There are multiple obstacles hindering the study of the Irish medieval economy. Regionalism and political divisions spatially limited the effective administrative reach of the colonial government. Shifting alliances, conflict and a frontier in constant flux exacerbated this issue. Concerning existing records, colonial financial … Read more