Local Government in Nineteenth Century Ireland Virginia Crossman (Institute of Irish Studies, Belfast £4.95) Reviewed by Catherine Shannon Over the past three decades historians have documented fully the rise and successful mobilisation of Irish national consciousness during the nineteenth century and the subsequent establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. What is not so … Read more
Reviewed by Willie Nolan The existence of two administrative counties with all the appropriate apparatus of local government within the geographical county of Tipperary has always raised the question as to how this arrangement came about. There are bigger, more populous counties in Ireland: scale and internal geographical features in counties like Donegal, Cork and … Read more
Reviewed by Mats Greiff In the late 1880s trade unionism was an almost unknown phenomenon among unskilled and semi-skilled workers in Connacht. In the agrarian sector it was only the herdsmen who had made efforts to organise in unions, and in the towns it was the artisans and drapers’ assistants who were organised to a … Read more
Reviewed by Myrtle Hill Women’s contribution to philanthropy in the nineteenth century has been well recognised by religious and social historians of the last decade, and in this scholarly work Maria Luddy provides a comprehensive survey of the Irish experience. Her study is informed by the contributions of other scholars—the pioneering work of Frank Prochaska … Read more
Reviewed by Ciarán Parker Irish Convict Lives, a sequel to Exiles from Erin, aims to explore the personal aspects of the Irish convict experience in Australia. The eight essays present pictures of a small sample of the men and women who received sentences of transportation and who responded to their new involuntary environment in different … Read more