Dublin continues to debate a replacement for Nelson’s Pillar, but in its own time (1808-1966), while lording it over Dublin’s O’Connell Street, the Pillar was debated again and again in parliaments, newspapers and council chambers. A controversy that would have continued into the indefinite future was suddenly jolted on Tuesday morning, 3 March 1966. Under … Read more
Just over a decade later, in 1917, the first issue of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce Year Book listed a total of 337 classes of goods manufactured in the city, ranging from account books to zinc goods and including artesian well-boring appliances, buoys, deformity apparatuses, feathers, gunpowder, hat racks, ladies’ corsets, magnesia, prayer books, river … Read more
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) emigrated with his parents from Scotland to America in 1848. He became exceptionally successful in the steel business eventually gaining a near monopoly of steel production in the USA. In 1901 he sold the Carnegie Company and all its holdings to John Pierpont Morgan’s Federal Steel Company for $480,000,000. The new company … Read more
Religion and Rebellion contains the proceedings of the twenty-second biennial Irish Conference of Historians, held in May 1995. The title is not an exact description of the contents. Only a few of the essays deal with ‘rebellion’ in the usual sense of the word: violent resistance to established authority. ‘Religion, rebellion, dissent, and social protest’ … Read more
James Lydon has undertaken a daunting task in writing a history of Ireland from ancient times to the present. It is difficult to cover the broad sweep of history in any detail and too easy to include chronological description instead of analysis or explanation. Yet the author has risen to the challenge admirably and not … Read more