Tag: pre-WW1

Propaganda posters and postcards on Pinterest

That’s a very alliterative title! I’ve been neglecting the Irish History Compressed Pinterest pages for quite a while now but just recently I’ve added some new pictures, all related to publicity campaigns/propaganda from the period of the Irish revolution. It’s meant to show many contrasting threads of opinion, so there are posters issued by Irish nationalists and Ulster Unionists, with a few others such as the ICA (who I hesitate to lump in with “Irish nationalists”, as their initial aims were quite different1). The one pictured here is interesting. I’ve never seen something like it before. I assume the rather odd promise not to conscript anyone into the Cumann na mBan sports days is simply a device to get a poster that prominently declares “NO CONSCRIPTION!” past the censor.


  1. As it happens, I’m reading The Irish Citizen Army by Ann Matthews (Mercier Press, 2014) at the minute. 

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…

A Beginner’s Guide to the Irish Volunteers

“Aye, sor! Me, sor! Oi’ll do it, so I will!” What was that? Irish volunteering That’s not funny. Sorry. I’m paying attention now. Ask the standard questions then. What? A paramilitary organisation formed by Irish nationalists. When? November 1913. Where?…

Scenes of old Ireland from ‘The Two Hemispheres’

The Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge, Co. Antrim, Ireland. Still in existence (and open to visitors!) today. Illustration from 'The Two Hemispheres' by George Goudie Chisolm, 1885.

The Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge, Co. Antrim, Ireland. Still in existence (and open to visitors!) today. Illustration from The Two Hemispheres by George Goudie Chisolm, 1885.

The book The Two Hemispheres: a popular account of the countries and peoples of the world … Illustrated, etc. (1885) covers, as its title suggests, the whole world. Scans of its illustrations were among the thousands recently uploaded to Flickr by the British Library. I’ve extracted and added to the Irish History Compressed Pinterest account the ones of sights in Ireland.

My top books on Irish history

There are a lot of books on Irish history, and the current Decade of Commemoration has prompted a flood of new ones. Here’s my choice of a few of those that have been around for a while but are still…