These are the posts that got the most views in 2014: History Carnival 131 (March 2014) Book Review: Fatal Path by Ronan Fanning (June 2014) Significant Commas in Irish History (February 2014) “Scots should recall the poverty of the Irish…
Author: Bruce Gaston
State papers: Dublin’s fear of civil war and Provos bankrolled by Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi:
from BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
There wasn’t as much coverage of the revelations contained in declassified government papers this year as there was last year – surprising as they deal with the period of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. There are a few little gems nonetheless, such…
Who was Felix Park?
Nowadays, of course, there’s Irish History Compressed to deal with these kinds of annoyances!
The Flight of the Earls
This post was originally written on Quora in answer to the question: “Irish History: What was the ‘Flight of the Earls’, and why was it important?” This is my response: It probably matters most because of what it symbolised. The…
Article link: Opinion: ‘Cromwell was Framed’ | The Irish Story
Here’s a brave man: historian and writer Tom Reilly, having gone back to the historical sources, says there is no credible contemporary evidence of the massacre of the population of Drogheda by Roundhead troops in 1649. […] in the eleven…
An answer to my question?
A few weeks ago I posed the question both here and on Twitter about what were the “six times [meaning six rebellions] during the last three hundred years” referred to on the 1916 Proclamation. I didn’t get any response. Having…
Why the most northern part of Ireland is in the south
“British Isles Euler diagram 15” by TWCarlson – Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons. Some years ago I created the following guide to the minefield of names for the constituent parts of the, err, am I allowed…
Was Patrick Pearse bad at maths, or at history, or at both (or at neither)???
The 1916 Proclamation is probably the best known piece of writing in Irish history, but recently I was asked a question about it I just can’t answer. In the text, Patrick Pearse1 refers to previous uprisings and rebellions as precedents…
Book Review: Fatal Path by Ronan Fanning
This book was published last year to much acclaim. There were lots of complimentary reviews, and I’m not going to dissent here from the majority view. Ronan Fanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin and this…
Aside
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From one review of Ireland and the British Empire (which I’ve just ordered from amazon.co.uk):
Apparently de Valera was furious with Costello when he announced, in 1948, that the newly declared Republic would be leaving the Commonwealth, shortly before India and Pakistan announced that, as republics, they would stay in, on just the sort of terms as de Valera had wanted.
Full book details: Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series), edited by Kevin Kenny (OUP, 2006)