A chara —I am writing to highlight some discrepancies in Sinead ní Shuinéar’s article, ‘Apocrypha to canon: inventing Irish Traveller history’, in the last (Winter 2004) issue. Ní Shuinéar points to the lack of research in the area of the history of Irish Travellers but is evidently unaware of recent developments in the field. With … Read more
Sir—David Fitzpatrick’s article in the Summer 2002 issue (HI 10.2), ‘De Valera’s Performance as a Convict 1916–17’, is valuable as an examination of some important documents relating to the development of twentieth-century Irish history, but is nevertheless open to criticism on several points. The title, which accepts the English designation of the Irish prisoners as … Read more
Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals 1919–43 Emmet O’Connor (UCD Press, €25) ISBN 1904558208With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the archives of the Communist International (Comintern), comprising some 55 million pages of documents, long closed to all but a very few trusted scholars, were finally opened to all. … Read more
Marie Coleman (Irish Academic Press, E45) ISBN 0716527030 The War of Independence, 1919–21, was anything but a ‘national’ revolt; the areas of activity were in Munster (principally Cork and Tipperary), Dublin and, most interestingly, the small midlands county of Longford. Marie Coleman’s meticulously researched and thoughtful study has filled an important historical lacuna in explaining … Read more
The transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 Diarmaid Ferriter (Profile Books, £30) ISBN 1861973071 The blurb misleads by suggesting that these 759 pages (excluding the scholarly apparatus) are about the transformation of Ireland from an ‘impoverished . . . corner of the British Empire’ into ‘the “Celtic Tiger”’. In the first chapter, dealing with the years 1900–12, … Read more