The Vanishing Irish: Ireland’s population from the Great Famine to the Great War

Many countries today face, or will soon face, one of two population problems. Some countries’ populations are growing so rapidly that sheer numbers will endanger their ability to provide schooling, employment, and basic social amenities to their people. Other countries face a situation nearly the opposite. Their population growth is very slow, or in some … Read more

Protestant Female Philanthropy in Dublin in the Early 20th Century

C.S. Andrews said of his youth in turn-of-the-century Dublin that as far as inner-city Catholics were concerned ‘there was no such thing as a poor Protestant’. However, the scale of charitable activity both directed towards, and organised by, Protestants in the city would seem to indicate otherwise. The nineteenth century saw a great increase in … Read more

Land, Politics and Nationalism: a study of the Irish Land Question Philip Bull (Gill and Macmillan, £14.99) ISBN 0-7171-2191-7

Over the past quarter century the Irish land question has been the subject of a barrage of historical inquiry. Traditional nationalist interpretations have been deconstructed and inverted, the class composition and objectives of agrarian movements dissected, and the triangular political relationships between these organisations, landowners and the British government examined in depth. Building on this … Read more

Unionism in Modern Ireland: new perspectives on politics and culture Richard English and Graham Walker (eds.) (Gill and Macmillan, £12.99) ISB: 0-7171-2465-7 Rethinking Unionism: an alternative vision for Ireland Norman Porter (Blackstaff, £10.

When I was a student in London in the late 1940s I was much impressed by Harold Laski’s love of Seeley’s dictum which he worked into nearly every lecture—‘History without politics has no fruit. Politics without history has no root’. So to read twenty years later the Irish revisionist historians was not so much a … Read more

Presbyterians and the Irish Language Roger Blaney (Ulster Historical Foundation/The Ultach Trust, £6.50) ISBN 0-901905-75-5

The events of last summer raised many questions about the nature and exercise of certain aspects of unionist cultural traditions in the North. Whilst historically it is the case that only a minority of the Protestant population there has, at any time, ever had actual membership of organisations such as the Orange Order, the Royal … Read more