Vol. 1: The Origins of Empire, Nicholas Canny (ed.). (Oxford University Press, £30) ISBN 0198205627 Vol. 2: The Eighteenth Century, Peter Marshall (ed.). (Oxford University Press, £30) ISBN 0198205635

The first two volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire survey ground last comprehensively covered in the Cambridge History of the British Empire, now over half a century […]

Leaving the “dreadful rocks”

The ‘island of dreams’ notion hardly applies to the small islands off the north and west coasts of Ireland.  These have always been what Americans would call ‘hardscrabble’ places. Island […]

Cappoquin & the 1849 Movement

The Young Irelanders’ rhetoric of rebellion was not matched by their actions and it is easy to dismiss their efforts as ‘Widow McCormack’s cabbage patch’. If Smith O’Brien’s failure to […]

The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society 1848-82, R.V. Comerford. (Wolfhound Press, £14.99) ISBN 086327627X Newspapers and Nationalism: The Irish Provincial Press 1850-1892 Marie-Louise Legg (Four Courts Press, £32.99) ISBN 185182341

R.V. Comerford’s The Fenians in Context, re-issued in paperback after thirteen years, has not aged gracefully. To revisit it is to be reminded of a particularly complacent moment in 1980s […]

The writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763-98, Volume I, Tone’s career in Ireland to June 1795, T.W. Moody, R.B. McDowell and C.J. Woods (eds.). (Clarendon Press, £80) ISBN 0198223838.

Theobald Wolfe Tone (TWT) was born in 1763 and died in 1798. In 1963 the late Theodore William Moody (TWM) projected a definitive scholarly edition of TWT’s writings and in […]