State-sponsored plantations were an instrument in the anglicisation of Irish society from the late 1550s, and the plantation in 1620 of the Gaelic O’Rourke lordship in Leitrim represents a stage in the development of plantation policy. With the exception of a valuable overview by Victor Treadwell, focusing on the involvement of the first duke of Buckingham, historians have largely neglected the Leitrim plantation. This study seeks to explore the programme for the anglicisation of native society in the area, as illustrated in the plantation instructions. Aspirations will be compared with what can be gleaned of the actual implementation of the plantation, drawing largely on the official documentation and correspondence generated by the 1622 commission of inquiry, which was established because of unease with various aspects of state performance in Ireland, including the condition of the plantations. In the case of Leitrim, such concern was amply justified. A further theme is the impact of the plantation on the native population, and especially on the smaller freeholders who were dispossessed under the plantation. Through the natives’ complaints and other material, the 1622 documentation affords rare insights into the impact of the plantation on Gaelic society. Finally, to assess the success of the plantation, the development of the settler community to 1641 will be briefly outlined.

In dedicating his Specimen of the critical history of the Celtic religion and learning to Robert, Lord Molesworth, John Toland carefully outlined his attitude to historical writing: the ‘fundamental law of a historian is, daring to say whatever is true, and not daring to write any falsehood; neither being swayed by love nor hatred, nor gain’d by favour or interest: so he ought of course to be as a man of no time or country, of no sect or party: which I hope the several nations, concern’d in this present enquiry, will find to be particularly true of me’. These words, it will be contended, ought to be the starting-point for treating Toland, in the precision of his own words, ‘as a man of no time or country’. Recently there has been a renaissance of historical interest in the significance of the life and thought of Toland; particular attention has been paid to the question of his religious, cultural and national identity. Variously described as the ‘first Irish philosopher’, an adventurer in scholarship, ‘crazy John’, a ‘traditional Irish trickster’, a postmodernist and even a post-nationalist, Toland’s reputation as an elusive and ambiguous figure has replaced an older historiography that was confident in identifying him as a radical deist, or perhaps a ‘pantheist’ on the margins of the Enlightenment canon of philosophers of reason.

In early August 1910 readers of Reynolds’s Newspaper, a radical weekly journal noted as much for its detailed coverage of divorce court proceedings as for its political radicalism (and in 1911 one of the ‘immoral’ English Sunday papers targeted by Irish ‘vigilance committees’), may have perused the weekly political column written by T.P. O’Connor. ‘T.P.’, the M.P. for Liverpool Scotland, was anything but a disinterested columnist, and with John Redmond, John Dillon and Joseph Devlin formed the inner leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party and Ireland’s nationalist movement.

Throughout the political crisis of early 1910 O’Connor had been the main London-based conduit for communications between the Irish Party and Asquith’s cabinet, and in particular Lloyd George and the Liberal chief whip, the Master of Elibank. The outcome of the January 1910 general election, which had given the balance of power in the House of Commons to the Irish nationalists, and John Redmond’s use of that power to force Asquith to act to end the veto powers of the House of Lords over parliamentary legislation, had enhanced both Redmond’s status in Ireland and the importance of home rule as an issue that had to be resolved.

The Irish Race Conference met in Paris at the end of January 1922 to initiate a new world organisation that would link the people of Ireland with their cousins around the globe. The gathering of delegates attracted comment wherever the Irish had settled, and even the Belfast Telegraph noted its opening ceremonies. The South African Irish newspaper, The Republic, heralded the conference as a ‘family reunion on a world wide scale’, but, like many family gatherings, disagreement was to follow in its wake. The idea of a conference was first mooted in February 1921 by the Irish Republican Association of South Africa (I.R.A.S.A.), to support the efforts then being made to win international recognition for an independent Irish republic. However, the I.R.A.S.A. did not see its work stopping there, envisaging the creation of a worldwide organisation that would link the Irish overseas with their compatriots at home. Over the following months the idea was developed into plans for an Irish International that would pursue a programme of social, cultural and economic objectives in Ireland and abroad. As The Republic explained,

Just how such wide-ranging aims were to be realised would prove a matter of dissent among delegates when they assembled twelve months later in Paris. But in February 1921 the proposal inspired only enthusiasm and hope for the future.

The idea of the conference was a product of the belief prevalent at the time that the Irish had ‘yet to give to the world the best which is in them’. The official programme for the new race organisation captured this sentiment, declaring the organisers’ belief that ‘Ireland has much to give to the world’. It was widely expected that this potential would be realised once the Irish were free to govern themselves. It is thus ironic that it was ultimately over the relationship between the new Irish government and the overseas Irish that the conference, and all its worthy ambitions, would founder.

In the proclamation that was issued on Easter Monday 1916 the provisional government of the Irish Republic undertook to grant ‘equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens’ and to ‘cherish all the children of the nation equally’. It also emphasised that the Republic was ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from a majority in the past’ and referred to the support given to the Republic ‘by her exiled children in America’. The belief that the Irish nation included all inhabitants of the island was a central tenet of Irish nationalism both before and after 1922, and the numerous visits that nationalist leaders have paid to the United States from the time of Parnell and Davitt to the present testify to the importance that has been attached to the Irish overseas. In November 1948, while introducing the second reading of the Republic of Ireland Bill, the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, noted that ‘The Irish at home are only one section of a great race which has spread itself throughout the world, particularly in the great countries of North America and the Pacific.’

The poet and novelist Francis Stuart’s sojourn in Germany during the Second World War and his broadcasting activities for the Nazis remain a cnámh spairne among historians and journalists alike. Assessments of his radio talks range from that of his biographer J.H. Natterstad, who described them as being of ‘a literary or semi-literary’ character, to that of Kevin Myers, who equated the broadcasts with ‘voluntary siding with the most bestial régime in the history of civilisation’. In October 1997 a television documentary during which Stuart was quoted as saying that ‘the Jew was always the worm that got into the rose and sickened it’ triggered off a long-running controversy in the letters pages of the Irish Times. Some prominent intellectuals rushed to Stuart’s defence, arguing, for example, that the worm metaphor was indeed a positive one, representing the ‘hidden, unheroic and critical’. On the other hand, leaving aside the question whether or not Stuart was an antisemite, two German emigrants to Ireland argued that anyone, including Stuart, ‘who lived in Germany at that time, any person working for the Ministry of Propaganda had to be an active Nazi sympathiser’. From a more scholarly perspective, David O’Donoghue has recorded that in his radio talks Stuart was neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Russian, while Dermot Keogh suggested that Stuart’s broadcasts from Germany in fact mirrored the content of antisemitic publications in Ireland at the time. Stuart himself denied ever having backed the Nazis, and rejected the charge of antisemitism in the R.T.É. interview broadcast in January 1998: ‘I never supported that régime.’

The union of the neighbouring episcopal sees of Lismore and Waterford on 16 June 1363 brought to an end a history of disputes and sometimes violent disagreements between the two bishoprics which had lasted for almost two centuries since the arrival of the English invaders in Ireland. The early history of this conflict, up to 1228, has already been dealt with in detail, while its conclusion, from 1325 onwards, has also been treated in outline. What happened between 1228 and 1325, however, has never been discussed, and while this note does not in any way purport to fill this gap, the document upon which it focuses, which dates from 1285, adds something to the stock of knowledge on this topic. It has been in print in summarised translation for well over a century, but it has never been published in full, analysed or put in context, and it has been quite ignored in all previous discussions of this controversy. It gives rise to some interesting questions about the relationship between the English and Irish administrations at the end of the thirteenth century, however, and about how important decisions were taken at the heart of Edward I’s government. It also casts intriguing light on a difficult time in the career of Stephen of Fulbourn, bishop of Waterford, perhaps Edward Fs most important and powerful servant in Ireland until his death in July 1288.

There has been a remarkable revival of interest in the Irish abroad within the past ten years. In part this is attributable to the new confidence experienced by the Irish at home with the economic success of the ‘tiger economy’ and the decline of ‘migration by necessity’. Equally the Irish abroad, especially in the United States, have risen to the top of the immigrant pile and have achieved prosperity and assurance of their position in their adopted homelands. This itself has led to a reduction in some of the inhibitions that have held back serious attention to the history of the immigrants and to a recognition of their place in the sun. Public awareness has been further stimulated by changing patterns of immigration and by the development of new attitudes towards immigrants in the host societies, now including Ireland itself. Such changes have created a need to give meaning to the term ‘plural society’ and to challenge the racism that has characteristically followed in the wake of increased numbers of immigrants.

These seven books are representative of a large number that have begun to address the topic in the last few years from an historical point of view. For the most part they relate to the Irish in Britain but use the focus on the immigrants to open up issues about the history of Ireland and Britain and the role of each in an emerging global system. For example, one of them is a comparative account of the Irish in Liverpool and Philadelphia which allows consideration of some of the broader questions regarding the treatment of the Irish immigrant in the literature both by historians and other interested scholars.