Issue 3 (Autumn 1996)

The Miasma:epidemic and panic in nineteenth-century Ireland Joseph Robins (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, £7.95)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ‘miasma’ as ‘infectious or noxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous particles or germs floating in and polluting the atmosphere’. Before the later nineteenth-century scientific discoveries of Pasteur, Lister and Koch established the germ origin of infection, many medical practitioners believed that the environment was responsible for the … Read more

‘An Irish Empire’?: Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire Keith Jeffery (eds.) (Manchester University Press, £40)

The British empire balks large in Irish history and the Irish experience but is one of such ambivalence that it rarely gets examined in a thoughtful and systematic fashion. The ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series has provided Keith Jeffrey with an opportunity to start filling in this gaping hole. His introduction, nuanced around whether Ireland’s role … Read more

The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism and the construction of Irish identity 1760-1830 Kevin Whelan (Cork University Press in association with Field Day, £14.95

The 1790s have emerged, over the past fifteen years or so, as the focus of some of the most vigorous and challenging writing currently forthcoming from Irish historians. In that explosion of debate and reinterpretation, Kevin Whelan is recognised as a central figure. The appearance of The Tree of Liberty will thus attract wide and … Read more

An Exile of Ireland: Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Ulster Micheline Kerney Walsh (Four Courts Press, £7.95)

This book is its author’s interpretation of documents from Spanish sources concerning Hugh O’Neill during the period 1602-1616. Previous writers,  such as Sean  Ó Faoláin, had to rely on sparse and hostile English sources which portrayed him during his exile in Rome as a man cowed by defeat, blind, drunk, melancholic, an image these documents … Read more

Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Longmans, £15.99)

Longmans have launched the first of a six-volume History of Ireland with a synthesis of the last twenty years of Early Christian scholarship. It is an uneven book, relying for source material primarily on Latin manuscripts, and while it is hardly a serious setback for the progress of early Irish historical studies, it is not … Read more