Nick Maxwell The real history of Irish slavery on Barbados highlights how much worse slavery was for Africans in the Americas, reminding us that the curse of Cromwell has haunted more than just Irish history. By John Donoghue History and nationalism have long been locked in a troubled relationship. While nationalists base their appeals on history, their … 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
A newly discovered manuscript throws a vivid, uncensored and revealing light on an Ulster Presbyterian community and an otherwise obscure eighteenth-century cultural world. By Andrew Carpenter Although several women living in the southern provinces of eighteenth-century Ireland published poetry in English, remarkably little of the verse written by women from Ulster during this period has … 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
By Lar Joye The ‘Brown Bess’ musket was the one used by the British Army from 1720 to 1850. There is no agreement on the origin of the name—maybe from the colour, perhaps a corruption of the German word for gun (buche) or simply a soldier’s nickname. It was not a very effective weapon, firing … Read more