Eighteenth-Century Ireland Conference
Published in Issue 5 (Sep/Oct 2007), News, Uncategorized, Volume 15
Slaves cutting sugar cane on Antigua, 1823. One theme of the conference was the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. (British Library)
The annual Eighteenth-Century Ireland Conference, convened by Moyra Maslett and hosted by the interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast, included over 30 papers from speakers from Ireland and abroad. This year’s conference was notable not only for the usual wealth and diversity of papers but also for the focus on two commemorative subjects, the 300th anniversary of the Anglo-Scottish Union (1707) and the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade (1807). Special attention was also given to the Irish poet Thomas Moore and the current research projects relating to his career and works, with a presentation from the Thomas Moore Hypermedia Archive project at NUI Galway and an exhibition highlighting the significance of the Moore collection at Queen’s, Belfast.
Ian Campbell Ross opened the conference proceedings with a lively and insightful re-reading of the works of Sir Paul Rycaut (1621–1700), a British author and diplomat renowned for his writings on the Ottoman Empire and his translations of Garcilaso de la Vega’s classic history of the Incas, highlighting Irish literary influences in his work. The inaugural Alan Harrison Memorial Lecture was an equally stimulating talk, delivered by Angela Bourke, which reassessed the place of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire as an oral source for Irish history by situating it within a rich and spontaneous tradition of Gaelic composition that existed beyond the written word.
The special topics of the conference were discussed in two sessions, with notable papers from Eoin Magennis on the economic discourses of the 1707 union and from Aileen Douglas on the parallels between slaves, Irish tenants and the working class in Maria Edgeworth’s writings. Political history was well represented by papers from Lisa-Marie Griffith on Charles Lucas and his relations with Dublin’s lord mayor in the early 1770s, and from Ultán Gillen on the connections between religion and counter-revolution from 1789 to 1803. Patrick Walsh’s paper on the prosecution of William Conolly for fraud, perjury and body-snatching and Martyn Powell’s contribution on houghing (cutting the tendons at the back of the leg) brought more colourful (read: gruesome) aspects of eighteenth-century history to life.
Sessions on letters and diaries and on cultures of print, image and spectacle raised many aspects of eighteenth-century social history. Willemijn Ruberg discussed gender and the appearance of emotion in the memoirs and diaries surviving from the period of the United Irish rebellion, Michael O’Connor highlighted the career of printer James Magee in Belfast, and Stephen O’Connor analysed the consumption of Benjamin West’s painting Death of Wolfe on printed transfer pottery in Ireland. Prose and poetry papers were also presented on the work of Percy, Orr, Farqhuar, Swift, Sheridan, Burke and Moore. Graham Gargett reassessed the early career of Oliver Goldsmith in 1750s London through textual analysis of his reviews of French-language material for the Monthly Review, and Christina Morin discussed the place of Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent within the genre of the Irish national tale. Irish-language papers also featured, on Gaelic scholars and writers of the period such as Thaddaeus Connellan, Micheál Coimín and Muiris Ó Gormáin.
Returning to one of the special themes of the conference, and a subject that should be well appreciated by History Ireland readers (HI 15.3, May/June 2007), the proceedings closed with a talk by Nini Rodgers, author of Ireland, slavery and anti-slavery 1612–1865, on Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography describing the horrors of slavery is credited with helping to influence the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.