Reviews Archives - History Ireland

First of the small nations. The beginnings of Irish foreign policy in the interwar years, 1919–1932

GERARD KEOWN Oxford University Press £65 ISBN 9780198745129 Reviewed by: Michael Kennedy There are two central themes running through this accessible, elegant andauthoritative account of early Irish foreign policy. Firstly, that the ambitious rhetoric of pre-1922 Irish nationalists to develop an international and geopolitical rationale for Irish independence was not always matched by the foreign … Read more

SPORT AND IRELAND: A HISTORY

PAUL ROUSE Oxford University Press £30 ISBN 9780198745907 Reviewed by Kevin McCarthy Firstly, let’s be straight about it: this is a really good book, and one which should appeal in equal measure to both sports fans and students of Irish history. Paul Rouse has won significant acclaim over the years as a social and sporting … Read more

IRISH HUNGER AND MIGRATION: MYTH, MEMORY AND MEMORIALIZATION

PATRICK FITZGERALD, CHRISTINE KINEALY & GERARD MORAN (EDS) Quinnipiac University Press $35/€30/£25 ISBN 9780990945406 Reviewed by Liam Kennedy Ten million people emigrated from the small island of Ireland to other parts of the world between 1700 and the present. Some were adventurers, some were social outcasts, some were missionaries and some were fleeing war and … Read more

I mBÉAL AN BHÁIS: THE GREAT FAMINE AND The LANGUAGE SHIFT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND

GEARÓID Ó TUATHAIGH Quinnipiac University Press and Cork University Press €11.95/£9.95 ISBN 9780990468677 Reviewed by Proinsias Ó Drisceoil Neo-liberal notions of consumer choice may have influenced a tendency to attribute the shift from Irish to English as the dominant spoken language in Ireland to rational personal convenience, but what the author of this brief study … Read more

‘AND SO BEGAN THE IRISH NATION’: NATIONALITY, NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATIONALISM IN PRE-MODERN IRELAND

BRENDAN BRADSHAW Ashgate £75 ISBN 9781472442567 Reviewed by Hiram Morgan This book is a collection of essays by Brendan Bradshaw, the well-known historian of Tudor Ireland and opponent of historical revisionism. Besides a number of new pieces, it includes reprints of the various essays and reviews in which he laid down his famous challenge to … Read more