In the Irish Free State, the land purchase annuities amounted to over £3m per annum, a substantial figure (given that the total revenue intake in the early 1930s was approximately £25m). The average burden of the annuities on the individual farmer was not huge—about 10% of net income—but it was a fixed amount, so the … Read more
Sir, —I read Tim Pat Coogan’s review of Judging Dev by Diarmaid Ferriter (HI 16.3, May/June 2008) as an inevitable response to a state-sponsored coup in seeking to peddle a particular version of history. When one party is in government so long, it is natural that it elicits actions, which aim to please, from a … Read more
Judging Dev: A reassessment of the life and legacy of Éamon de Valera Diarmaid Ferriter (Royal Irish Academy, €30/£25) ISBN: 9781904890287 De Valera was unquestionably the dominant political figure of twentieth-century Ireland. His achievements included the foundation of Fianna Fáil, wartime neutrality, constitutional innovation, and democratically remaining in power for sixteen uninterrupted years. All of … Read more
The twelve-volume series of official British documents, The transfer of power in India 1942–7, published between 1967 and 1982 is full of references to Ireland, many of them dire warnings about the awful example that Ireland offered to the British government as Indian independence approached. The editor-in-chief, Irishman Nicholas Mansergh, Professor of Commonwealth History at … Read more
By the time you read this we will have a new government, with Enda Kenny as taoiseach (Enda is taoiseach, isn’t he?). We may even have a single-party Fine Gael government, with or without the support of independents (and there are surely plenty of those in the new Dáil to choose from). In that scenario … Read more