18th–19th – Century History

‘Cuba, the Ireland of the West’: the Irish Daily Independent and Irish nationalist responses to the Spanish–American War

During the Cuban revolt of 1895–8, culminating in the Spanish–American War, the Parnellite party and their newspaper, the Irish Daily Independent, identified wholeheartedly with the Cubans, advocated American intervention and gave sustained support to the American war effort. This derived from the personal connections of some individuals associated with the Independent (including a wealthy American … Read more

‘Hang up half a dozen bankers’:attitudes to bankers in mid-eighteenth-century Ireland

The late 1720s and early 1730s were a period of economic despair in Ireland, as trade stagnated and a succession of poor harvests brought famine and disease. Against this background, anger at bankers and a general distrust of the ‘monied’ section in society became recurring themes in a vigorous pamphlet literature, which considered the causes … Read more

Pamphleteering in mid-eighteenth-century Ireland

The pamphlet was the most important vehicle for public debate in mid-eighteenth-century Ireland. Pamphlets published in the period between the mid-1720s and the Lucas affair of 1749 were notable for the prominence given to economic issues. The British connection, which had been central to pamphlet debate in Ireland in the early part of the eighteenth … Read more

‘Where the murderin’ cannons roar . . .’: The American Civil War

The American Civil War was the first great conflict of the industrial age and developed many of the technological, economic and political features that were to transform later warfare. Superior military leadership enabled the weaker Confederacy to keep the Union forces at bay for four years, but ultimately Napoleon’s aphorism that ‘God is on the … Read more