The seventeenth-century tradition that the Irish lord chancellor, Sir Richard Bolton, was the author of the 1644 Declaration asserting the legislative independence of the Irish parliament has long been considered unreliable. Following the arguments of the Declaration’s eighteenth-century editor, Walter Harris, it has been usual to attribute the work to the Catholic lawyer Patrick Darcy, author of An argument delivered … by the express order of the House of Commons … 9. Iunii 1641 (Waterford, 1643).

On 22 August 1798 the United Irishmen’s long-term efforts to obtain French support finally came to fruition with the appearance of three frigates in Killala Bay on the coast of Mayo. Unfortunately for them, their allies had come too late, for the rebellion of 1798 had been suppressed several weeks earlier. Moreover, the French landing force numbered barely a thousand men. Nonetheless, this belated and undersized army was joined by thousands of Irish volunteers and scored several local victories before being overwhelmed at Ballinamuck in County Longford on 8 September.

The two ‘great unknowns’ of Irish migration history, women and Protestants, have received deserved attention in the decade or so since Donald Akenson first drew attention to them as lacunae in an otherwise growing field of scholarly concern. A review of the literature, however, demonstrates that Irish women have benefited more than Protestants from recent research. Despite pioneering efforts, much of the work on the non-Catholic dimension tends to be general or indicative in approach, with little of the depth and range now associated with Irish women’s experiences of migration.

Ulster Protestant, farmer’s son, journalist, I.R.B. member, Irish Volunteer organiser, hunger-striker, Sinn Féin T.D. and Minister for Trade and Commerce, advocate of the Anglo-Irish treaty, Cumann na nGaedheal Minister for Local Government, Finance and Posts and Telegraphs, Vice-President of the Executive Council, Blueshirt intellectual (but no fascist): these successive designations capture the varied early career of Ernest Blythe. Far less is known of his interests and writing after his retirement from political life: the Irish language, theatre and, in particular, the partition question.

The importance to Irish Travellers of the border with Northern Ireland, historically, is difficult to ascertain. Families with limited travel circuits in the southern counties may have considered it irrelevant, while Travellers living in border counties probably traversed it with ease. How the political boundary hindered nomadic life depended to a large extent on the Stormont and Dublin administrations and on how each jurisdiction treated caravan and tent dwellers. A comparison of north and south in the period from partition to 1960 illustrates how Travellers were regarded in each jurisdiction, demonstrating the contrast between the administration of two distinct polities with a common legal and administrative tradition.

The most resounding charge brought during the last two decades against ‘revisionism’ in Irish historiography has been that of a tacit collaboration between historians and the government. This accusation is too serious to be left unexamined. Traditionalists have denounced ‘revisionism’ as a dubious device designed to prop up the border and undo the work of the revolution. Desmond Fennell declared categorically that ‘Both in its ultimate thrust, and as a matter of objective fact, [it] is the historiography of the counter-revolution.’ Séamus Deane defined it as ‘a provincial phenomenon’ and dismissed its practitioners as ‘neo-unionists’.

Among emigrants, the canny and the politic have often risen to some influence. It is flattering to believe that such people made a difference. But for most, ubi panis, ibi patria — conformity and loyalty were the natural price of daily bread and the essential cost of any real eminence. Even constructive opposition presupposed this. Those who thought otherwise were marginalised, sensibly enough, by their hosts.