Nick Maxwell Fenians, freedmen, and Southern whites: race and nationality in the era of Reconstruction Mitchell Snay (Louisiana State University Press, $40) ISBN 9780807132739What do Southern Klansmen, their politically aroused former slaves and American-based Irish nationalists have in common? Not a lot, it turns out. Mitchell Snay aspires in this ambitious comparative study to tease out a … Read more
Sir,—I thoroughly enjoyed Philip Orr’s article on Ballymena during the Home Rule crisis (HI 20.6, Nov./Dec. 2012). I have lived in the town for 40 years and taught history here for 30. A pupil once lent me a postcard (reproduced in my Nationalist and Unionist: Ireland before the Treaty [Blackie & Son, 1989]) sent in … Read more
Sir,—In your editorial (HI 20.6, Nov./Dec. 2012) on the Cameron–Salmond agreement at Edinburgh to clarify in advance the legal aspects of a referendum on Scottish independence, you state that Ireland at the time of the 1912–14 Home Rule crisis was ‘not so lucky’, in that a ‘sizeable section of the British establishment’ refused to recognise … Read more
Irish Republicanism in Scotland, 1858–1916: Fenians in exile Máirtín S. Ó Catháin (Irish Academic Press, €24.95/£19.95 pb) ISBN 97807165 28586 During the heady days of 1867 and 1868, the Dublin rising, the Manchester Martyrs, the Clerkenwell prison bomb, the abortive raid on Chester Castle and many smaller episodes ensured that Fenianism generated endless column inches … Read more
January 1 1973 Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC) along with Denmark and the United Kingdom. 5 1953 Twenty-seven people were killed when a BEA Viking aircraft crash-landed just short of the runway at Nutt’s Corner (Belfast) airport. 5 1973 Gerald Boland (87), revolutionary and founder member of Fianna Fáil who served in a … Read more