Laurence Kettle was born in 1878, a son of Andrew Kettle, the Parnellite politician and one of the founders of the Land League. He was a brother of Tom Kettle, the nationalist and poet who was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He was a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in … 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
As a historian MacNeill’s credentials were strong indeed, giving him a position of authority as one who sought to ‘define’ Irishness by examining the most important constituent of national identity (certainly in Ireland): the nation’s past. He became Professor of Early Irish History at University College Dublin, and was well known among the ranks of … Read more
MacNeill, though straightforwardly a nationalist, in fact disliked the latter term (at least for many of its late nineteenth/early twentieth-century connotations, though he did refer to it more favourably in Phases of Irish history in the context of medieval Irish history). In his opinion, nationalism had become too closely identified with elevation of the state … Read more
On the morning of Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, members of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers gathered at Liberty Hall. Though these were separate organisations, James Connolly, the leader of the Citizen Army, had come to an agreement with the military council of the IRB to mount a rebellion jointly with the … Read more