Colonial counterinsurgency was generally practised at some distance from democratic oversight in London or Paris, usually against non-whites, and was serviced by compliant and self-censoring journalists. Yet such coercion against anti-colonialist resistance movements had proven consistently ineffective in halting British and French imperial decline. A British journalist once said that for some in the British … Read more
Laurence Kettle was born in 1878, a son of Andrew Kettle, the Parnellite politician and one of the founders of the Land League. He was a brother of Tom Kettle, the nationalist and poet who was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He was a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in … Read more
The end of year review is a staple of the newspaper industry. While History Ireland isn’t a newspaper, there seemed no reason not to attempt something similar. Given the nature of the magazine, the obvious thing to do was to glance back to the past. So we thought: why not look at what was in … Read more
Farmleigh is hosting quite a few festive events in the run-up to Christmas. But if anyone is planning a festive visit, they might also have a look at the exhibition on Sean O’Casey currently on display in Farmleigh House itself. O’Casey was born on Dublin’s Dorset St in 1880, into a Church of Ireland family … Read more
We recently devoted a good deal of attention to the Irish involvement in the First World War, and one rather obvious reason why ostentatious commemoration of the Irish war provokes unease and hostility relates to the questionable nature of British policy in Ireland, and the role of British security forces. This is nothing new: when … Read more