Interview with Margaret MacCurtain by Thomas O’Loughlin TO’L: Why did you become a historian? MMacC: I can see many cycles in the pattern of my life, and in my intellectual life in particular, that play into my becoming becoming a professional historian. The choice of history ran right though my school subjects, especially as … Read more
Religious homogeneity helped contribute to the relative political stability in the Irish Free State during the 1920s. Politico-religious rivalry in the North on the other hand was a major cause of endemic sectarian tension. There were 3,171,697 Catholics living in Ireland, according to the 1926 census — 2,751,269 in Saorstát Éireann [Irish Free State] and … Read more
Sa lá atá inniu ann, de dheasca an dul chun cinn atá déanta ar stair shóisialta, tá stairaithe ag dul thar fóir ag scaradh coincheap mar thóraíochas agus rapairíochas ó phríomheachtraí na haimsire. Ní thiocfadh staidéar a dhéanamh ar choincheap mar seo gan mórghluaiseachtaí na haoise a thabhairt san áireamh. Is fiú, fosta, príomhfheachtais mhíleata … Read more
In Ireland, public meetings are absolutely necessary preliminaries to any enterprise … The hard-headed, commercially-minded Ulsterman is just as fond of public meetings as the Connacht Celt. He would hold them with drums and full-dress speechifying, even if he were organising a secret society and arranging for a rebellion. George A. Birmingham, General John Regan … Read more
There is a difference between the Irish battle for the land in the nineteenth century and the battle for the soil. Soil is what land becomes when it is ideologically constructed as a natal source, that element out of which the Irish originate and to which their past generations have returned. It is a political … Read more