Throughout the first half of the twentieth century many household names from the Indian nationalist movement came to Ireland. Keen friendships developed between a variety of Irish and Indian agitators, embracing many of the leading political and literary figures of the day from both countries. As a result of their shared imperial histories, comparisons and … Read more
On 17 July 1924, as the mail boat docked at its usual berth in Kingstown, it brought the first head of state to the new Irish Free State. A contingent of the newly formed Irish National Guard and a number of Irish Free State ministers waited on the quayside. After a slight delay, to the … Read more
On 28 June 1920, a company of the Connaught Rangers stationed at Jullundur on the plains of the Punjab refused to perform their military duties as a protest against the activities of the British Army in Ireland. On the following day, the mutineers sent two emissaries to a company of Connaught Rangers stationed at Solon, … Read more
During World War I most Indians (like the Irish) supported Britain’s war effort on the assumption that some form of self-government would be granted at the end of hostilities. Instead, in March 1919 they got the Rowlatt Act, which gave the British Indian government draconian powers, including that of internment. In response, Mohandas Gandhi began … Read more
On his third visit to Britain, in 1912, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore met with a variety of literary figures, such as Ezra Pound and Thomas Sturge Moore. None would prove as beneficial as his meeting with W.B. Yeats on 7 July 1912. Tagore had initially shown his poems to the English painter William Rothenstein. Overwhelmed … Read more