Nick Maxwell Instituted in 1856 to reward members of the British army and navy for ‘single acts of valour’, the Victoria Cross has been awarded to over 200 Irishmen, born both here and overseas, representing about 16% of the 1,356 medals awarded. The dates of the awards to Irish soldiers span 90 years, from the Crimean War … Read more
Two summers ago in Derry, a portrait of the eighteenth-century earl-bishop Frederick Hervey was stolen from St Columb’s Cathedral and placed on a bonfire in the Bogside, to be consumed along with Rangers football paraphernalia and other artefacts of Protestant culture and identity. As the BBC news correspondent pointed out at the time, Hervey was … Read more
Over the past ten years, as a result of increased immigration from various parts of the world, Ireland has become a more visibly multicultural society. These migration patterns are not random. The establishment of the Irish Muslim community, for example, is partly rooted in Ireland’s shared colonial history with India and South Africa under the … Read more
The twelve-volume series of official British documents, The transfer of power in India 1942–7, published between 1967 and 1982 is full of references to Ireland, many of them dire warnings about the awful example that Ireland offered to the British government as Indian independence approached. The editor-in-chief, Irishman Nicholas Mansergh, Professor of Commonwealth History at … Read more
The Great Bengal Famine of 1943–4 resulted in the deaths from starvation and famine-related diseases of over two million people. In pre-partition Bengal it reawakened dim collective memories of Chhiatt?rer monn?ntór, the massive but poorly documented famine that had produced devastation in 1770. In India and Bangladesh both famines are seen as colonial famines: the … Read more