Nick Maxwell Sir Charles Trevelyan, notorious in Irish folk memory for the harsh way he coordinated famine relief in 1845–7, visited Dublin Zoo in the early 1860s, prior to his departure for Calcutta. He had been governor of Madras in 1859 but was recalled in 1860; in 1862 he was sent to India again, this time as finance minister. … Read more
Mir Aulad remains a bit of an enigma, especially as his name and origins are subject to speculation. Sometimes spelt phonetically, ‘Meer Owlad Allee’ was from Oudh (now known as Audah), which had been one of the provinces of the Mughal Empire in India. Whilst this area was effectively a vassal of the British East … Read more
On 26 January 1950, Éamon de Valera was asked to be guest of honour at a reception in Birmingham to celebrate the declaration of India as a republic. At first glance it seemed an unusual choice. The organisers were asked why they had not chosen a fellow Indian. Their response was unequivocal: ‘We and the … Read more
In his review of T. Ryle Dwyer’s Behind the Green Curtain (HI 18.2,March/April 2010), Eoin Dillon states that the book ‘allows present-dayneutrality to be presented as contingent, a pragmatic response ratherthan a fixed principle of Southern foreign policy’. In 1939 the FiannaFáil government quoted the Hague Convention of 1907 to support Irishneutrality. It defines in … Read more