Nick Maxwell The focus of the Bantry Bay Summer School, held at St Goban’s College 1-5 July under the genial auspices of Jenny McCarthy, John A. Murphy and Sean Ó Coileáin was the fate of over fifty ships and 15,000 seasoned French troops which almost landed two centuries ago, one of the great might-have-beens in Irish history. … Read more
‘Barony’ was the Irish term for the former administrative subdivisions of the county, corresponding to the English ‘hundred’ or ‘wapentake’ and, like the county, was part of the Anglo-Norman administrative system. In Meath and Louth the term seems to have been employed from the beginning. In the south of Ireland, however, the term ‘cantred’ (from … Read more
‘The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.’ British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s speech to the South African houses of parliament … Read more
Little did the Russians realise when they sold Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million that it would become one of history’s greatest bargains. Even many Americans were doubtful about its worth and ridiculed William H. Seward, the Secretary of State who had pushed for its purchase, by calling the new acquisition … Read more
I myself am not Irish, even though my name can be rendered Terence O. Ranger. (An American MA student, asked to assess my work on African history, argued that with a name like that I was inevitably sympathetic to African nationalism. Alas, my forebears are Kentish Jutes.) When I went to Africa in 1957 to … Read more