Peter Edmund Lacy/Pyotr Petrovich Lasci (1678–1751) of Killeedy, Co. Limerick, was the son of Pierce Edmund de Lacy of Ballingarry and his wife Maria (née Courtney). He joined the regiment of his uncle, Colonel John Lacy, as an ensign in the Prince of Wales’ Regiment of Irish Foot at the beginning of the Jacobite/Williamite War … Read more
by Joseph E.A. Connell Jr By the early twentieth century the Curragh army camp in County Kildare was Britain’s premier military base in Ireland. Ulster unionist opposition to the passage of Home Rule in 1912 was heightened by the support it received from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Not surprisingly, given its predominantly privileged background, … Read more
The British government in Ireland, in their desperation to resolve ‘the Irish question’, ceded something they have yet to allow their own people—land reform; in the process, explains Fiona Fitzsimons, they created an institution whose records are an untapped resource for historians and genealogists. In 1881 the Irish Land Commission was founded to establish fair … Read more
Recent developments have focused attention on the nature of British counterinsurgency as ‘dirty war’, not only in Northern Ireland but also in several other anti-colonial struggles after World War II. In 2012 the British high court found that British troops perpetrated the Batang Kali massacre in Malaya in 1948. In 2013 Britain’s foreign secretary, William … Read more
The first years of the Irish state saw the continuation of free market and free trade policies and practices favoured by Britain. As Mary Daly has put it, ‘The Irish public service inherited the British practice of stringent spending control and a profound distaste of government involvement in the economy’. These policies were also suited … Read more