The following book review has fallen into our nets...

P.O'S.


Hating the Irish.

Summary: THE LAST DAYS OF DUBLIN CASTLE: THE DIARIES OF MARK STURGIS Michael Hopkinson
(editor) Irish Academic Press, 278pp, [pounds]27.50 [pounds]22.50 at
www.newstatesman.co.uk (+ 15% p&p)

Source: New Statesman (1996)
Date: 01/2000
Citation Information: (ISSN: 1364-7431), Vol. 129 No. 4469 Pg. 55
Author(s): MAURICE WALSH

Hating the Irish.

THE LAST DAYS OF DUBLIN CASTLE: THE DIARIES OF MARK STURGIS Michael Hopkinson (editor)
Irish Academic Press, 278pp, [pounds]27.50 [pounds]22.50 at http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/
(+ 15% p&p)

In the mid-l9th century, the popular Irish journalist AM Sullivan propagated the notion
that England was the home of wife murderers and infant chokers. Despite the evidence of
thousands of Irish emigrants to London or Birmingham who returned for the holidays morally
unscathed, a powerful essence of this notion still lurked in some corner of the popular
imagination in Ireland until a couple of decades ago. Its persistence was nourished by the
reputation of the Black and Tans, the band of demobilised soldiers who were allowed to
terrorise the country in 1920, in a failed attempt to suppress the IRA.

From many a bookshelf in rural Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s, you would have been
able to take down a copy of Guerilla Days in Ireland, by the famous IRA commander Tom
Barry. Between its blue covers is a photograph of four British officers at a card game. A
distinguished, silver-haired fellow is jauntily holding as small glass of whisky, a
cigarette dangling from his lips as he gazes at his splayed hand of cards. His bald
companion crouches beside him, eyes upturned towards him in a music-hall display of
suspicious cunning as he clasps his cards to his chest. A third officer plays at being
poker-faced, behind a bottle of Jameson placed prominently on the table. In the
background, another officer, a Jack Hawkins character, is grinning over their heads at the
unseen photographer. The caption reads: "Described in British officer's captured album as
'a little leisure from hunting assassins'."

The snap is clearly posed, intended in a different context to convey unruffled gaiety in
the midst of disorder and outrage. But to gaze at that photograph in Barry's book was to
imbibe its intended message that the card players were a frightening little group:
insouciant, sinister and knavish. This was the British presence in Ireland. There was
little hint that the British administration in Dublin was riven by doubt and hesitation in
its response to the IRA. The diaries of Mark Sturgis, a key civil servant in Dublin Castle
during the war of independence, offer a different impression. The diaries, kept at the
Public Record Office in Kew, have been used as a source by researchers. But this is the
first time that a version has been published, edited, annotated and formally introduced,
by Michael Hopkinson, the historian of the Irish civil war.

So here, in the citadel of British power in Ireland, was an Asquithian liberal who could
confide in his diary: "I don't believe you can force a country to have what's good for it"
and "I think my desire for an early peace springs from an instinctive dislike of much of
our method of warfare and I hate to feel that we are doing things and profiting by them to
which we cannot admit". And later he wrote: "I can't help being uneasy that we are not
taking a big enough view of the position -- not only the future of the Irish is at stake
but the future relations of two countries that must ever live side by side and there is so
much talk as if we had nothing to do but beat the enemy."

While the Black and Tans were carrying out reprisals for IRA ambushes, it was Sturgis's
job to try to interest the IRA in a peace deal that would keep Ireland in the Empire. Many
entries in the diaries are descriptions of stop-start attempts at negotiations. In the
privacy of his diary, Sturgis could dismiss the IRA volunteers as "heroes in pig dealers'
hats"; but his main assets in building contacts with the enemy were his charm and
affability, which made him a sort of period male version of Mo Mowlam. He possessed,
according to a colleague, all the traits of an effective diplomat, including, crucially,
"a complete lack of knowledge of the traditions of the country to which he was
accredited".

As the war intensified, Sturgis and his colleagues were increasingly confined to Dublin
Castle. When he ventured outside it was mostly in pursuit of the horses. The racehorses of
Leopardstown, the Curragh, Baldoyle and Punchestown are the major features of his Irish
landscape. "This going racing isn't as idle as it sounds. One feels the pulse of things on
a racecourse quicker than anywhere else in Ireland and hears all the gossip in no time."

He continually lets slip the prejudices of his class: "I almost begin to believe that
these mean, dishonest, insufferably conceited Irishmen are an inferior race and are only
sufferable when they are whipped -- like the Jews." For the Unionists in the north: "I
never regard them as Irish at all" -- a comment not intended as the compliment it might
seem in the context.

These complex traits are indicative of the official British relationship with Ireland for
decades. Somebody with the traits of Sturgis would have been at work behind the scenes in
Belfast when the seeds of the Good Friday Agreement were sown seven or eight years ago.
But they would have had a freer hand. In 1920 it was constitutionally unthinkable for
Ireland or part of it -- to have been allowed to leave the Empire. What was on offer was a
watered-down dominion status sweetened by the argument that Ireland's status would be
enhanced by membership of the imperial family. A government in Dublin did find greater
status by giving up some of its sovereignty to a larger, transnational entity; hut it was
membership of the European Union that finally helped the Irish Republic to deal with
Britain as an equal.

Maurice Walsh, a BBC journalist, is working on a study of British correspondents and the
Anglo-Irish war


COPYRIGHT 2000 New Statesman, Ltd.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Brian McGinn has asked if anyone can help with this query from Nicholas Luccketti...

P.O'S.

Forwarded by Brian McGinn
on behalf of

Nicholas M. Luccketti
James River Institute for Archaeology
1080 Jamestown Road
Williamsburg
Virginia

Dear Brian

I am trying to finish a report on the Nansemond Fort site that is mentioned in the
Jamestown Rediscovery V booklet. As the booklet notes, this was the second trapezoidal
fort that has been found in Virginia. Noel Hume excavated a trapezoidal fort the
Wolstenholme Towne site at the c. 1619 Martin's Hundred settlement for the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation in the 1970s. At the time, Noel Hume attributed the trapezoidal
plan to the idiosyncrasy of a colonist/builder untrained in the art of military
fortification. However, the presence of 2 nearly identical trapezoidal forts in the same
general area (they are about 35 miles apart on opposite sides of the James River) within
about 16 years of each other strongly suggests, to me anyway, design rather than
happenstance.

It seems to me that the trapezoidal design must be a derivation of a bawn. I know of the
many parallels and connections between the colonization of Ireland and Virginia which I am
currently researching including: Howard Jones article on individuals who were members of
the Virginia Company who also were involved in Irish colonization; David Quinn and others
on people with Irish experience who actually came to Virginia; and the architectural
affinities between bawns and early American settlements. I intend to have a major part of
the report that examines the early Virginia-Irish connection. I am also trying to find out
as much as I can about bawns. Toward that end I have obtained a 1960 article on
fortification in the north of Ireland by E.M. Jope, a 1960 article on Armagh and Tyrone by
Victor Treadwell, a 1990 article of Brackfield Bawn by Nick Brannon, Brooke Blade's 1986
article on Londonderry plantation, and Pynnar's survey.

One puzzling aspect of the documentary record for bawns is that while they invariably were
described as square or rectangular, Raven's depictions frequently seem to show trapezoidal
bawns such as Moneymore, Ballycastle, Brackfield, and the Ironmongers. Raven's trapezoidal
bawns don't seem to be a matter of perspective since the narrow side would be at the far
end of the depictions rather than at the front as shown. In any case, none of them are
the very long trapezoids like Nansemond Fort and Wolstenholme Towne. Further, I am at a
loss to identify why Virginia settlers were building long trapezoidal forts; the terrain
does not dictate such a plan at either of the sites and the contemporary literature on the
art of fortification offers no insights on trapezoidal forts.

I recently wrote Philip Robinson of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, who has written
on bawns, about any precedents and/or rationale for Virginia trapezoidal bawns, but he too
was unable to provide any reason why the Wolstenholme Towne and Nansemond forts were built
like they were. Any suggestions or comments you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Nicholas M. Luccketti

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

It has been pointed out to me that we might need to establish what a bawn is...

Here is a paragraph from
Kieran Denis O'Conor
The Archaeology of Medieval Rural Settlement in Ireland
Discovery Programme Monograph No. 3

Royal Irish Academy
Dublin
1998

ISBN 1 874045 61 5

pp 23-24

'A certain number of tower-houses had a stone-walled enclosure, known as a bawn, around
them or attached to them (Pl. 15; Barry 1987,186; Cairns 1987,13-20; McNeill 1997,
211-23). Documentary evidence suggests that some tower-houses also had bawns defended by
wooden palisades, sod walls and even thick hedges (Barry 1987, 186; Cairns 1987, 17). A
few bawns had circular towers at their corners, which allowed defensive fire to be brought
to bear along the external faces of their curtain-walls. Gun-loops also occur in the walls
of some bawns (Cairns 1987, 16-17). However, most bawns are not seriously defensive. The
majority did not have angle-towers. Their gateways were mostly simple entranceways rather
than scientifically defended gatehouses. Many bawns are really too large for realistic
defence. Most were simply enclosures designed to prevent theft rather than to hold off a
concerted attack. The defences at these castles were usually concentrated on the tower
itself (McNeill 1997, 217). Indeed, many tower houses do not seem to have had actual
bawns beside them (ibid. 222).'

The references are...
Barry T. B. The archaeology of Medieval Ireland 1987, London & New York
Cairns C. T., Irish Tower-houses, a Co. Tipperary case study, Athlone, 1987
McNeill T. E., Castles in Ireland, feudal power in a Gaelic world, London & New York, 1997

(If you have not seen them as yet the Discovery Programme Monographs are excellent. This
one, O?Conor, No. 3, includes an astonishingly sane account of medieval warfare in
Ireland.)

A bawn then seems to be a defended, or defensible, cattle stockade, or kraal.

However there does seem to be a separate discourse of the 'bawn' within a Northern
Ireland/'Ulster' historiography, and within a native/settler duality, historical
geographers notions of 'space', etc, etc. I have not seen this 'discourse of the bawn'
analysed - and I would welcome comment.

Here is an example from the Winterthur Portfolio...

"What, precisely, was a bawn?"
"Although based on an anglicized form of the Irish 'badhun', or 'cattle fort,' the bawn
as constructed by the English in Ulster [Northern Ireland] was a defensible courtyard
whose walls -- built most often of stone, but also of brick, clay, timber (both earthfast
and silled), wattle and daub, and sod -- protected the house, family, and personal
property of the plantation's principal landlord. The house could be freestanding in the
center of the bawn or, as was the case at residences built by the Vintners' Company at
Bellaghy and by the Salters' Company in both Magherafelt and Salterstown, placed against
one of the peripheral walls. These walls usually met at small corner flankers, from which
the entries to the complex could be adequately monitored and defended from the 'wild
Irish,' who ... preferred to 'live like beastes, voide of lawe and all good order,' being
'more uncivill, more uncleanly, more barbarious and more bruttish in their customs and
demeanures, then in any other part of the world that is known.'"

Robert Blair St. George (1990) Bawns and Beliefs: Architecture, Commerce, and Conversion
in Early New England. Winterthur Portfolio 25(4):242-243.

There is an American Historical Review book review at...

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/104.4/br_39.html

'Robert Blair St. George. Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New
England Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1998. Pp. xiv, 466.
Cloth $60.00, paper $24.95.
To read Robert Blair St. George's large and complex book is to dwell in the houses of
early New England's patriarchs. Four sprawling chapters provide a topical and roughly
chronological exploration of a series of critical sites in colonial New England culture.
The opening chapter offers an extended analysis of a Connecticut farmstead and its
relationship to the "bawn," an enclosed and fortified domestic space with special
significance in England's commercial and colonial expansion...'

So that the 'bawn' is an issue within Irish Diaspora Studies.

Brian McGinn tells me...

EXTRACT BEGINS>>>
>The idea that early American town planning was influenced by bawns seems to
have been around since the 1950s, at least. Anthony Garvan, in his
_Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial Connecticut_ (New Haven, 1951),
discussed the possible influence of the Ulster Plantation on Connecticut.
(I wonder if Robert Blair St. George is in turn drawing from Garvan's
work?).

The chief exponent of the theory in Virginia has been John W. Reps in his
influential work, Tidewater Towns: City Planning in Colonial Virginia and
Maryland (Williamsburg, Virginia: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,
1972). Many of Nick Luccketti's references appear to come from Reps. I
cited Reps, also, in my little Jamestown entry in Michael Glazier's
_Encyclopedia of the Irish in America_, though given space limitations in
the end I decided to forego use of the term 'bawn.'

The relevant paragraphs from Reps, p. 16, follow:

"These lesser towns of Ulster exhibited considerable variations in their
plans. The crossroads design of Moneymore was one general pattern used by
the several companies and by individuals who acquired settlement rights
under the same obligations. Sir James Hamilton, for example, used this plan
when he founded Holywood. Linear plans were also popular. The castle and
bawn stood at one end of the town. Leading away from this protective
enclosure, a single street provided access to buildings, church and other
structures of the village. Magherafelt, Salterstown, Articlave, and
Bellaghy all followed this system. Some of the contemporary drawings of the
period omit the spine road of the settlement, as on the drawing (figure 16)
of "The Fishmongers Buildings at Ballekelle," suggesting that some of the
towns at least were less precisely surveyed into the streets and that the
open space between the rows of houses was not clearly demarcated.

In the second phase of the development of Jamestown after about 1614, that
Virginia community must have resembled closely these linear Ulster
villages. The triangular "James Forte" served as the equivalent of the
Ulster bawn, located at one end of the street of detached houses stretching
away in the other direction. By the time Jamestown settlers planned the
first extension of the original small and cramped community many such
linear towns existed in Ireland and may consciously have been imitated by
those first Virginians."

At the Wolstenhome Towne site mentioned in Nick Luccketti's letter, the influence of
the Ulster bawn is also given prominence in a display at an underground
museum (a pleasantly surprising and practically invisible element of the
site, funded by Rockefeller grants and tucked into a hillside between the
17thC fort on the James River and the elevated 18thC plantation house of
Martin's Hundred).

At least two of the Thomas Raven depictions mentioned by Luccketti appear
in Reps, _Tidewater Towns_: a Plan of Moneymore, dated 1622 (fig 15) and
the aforementioned Plan of Ballykelly, also dated 1622 (fig 16). It would
be nice if the art historians could comment on the puzzling question of perspective raised
by
Nick. The plans also appeared in John T. Gilbert, ed., _Facsimiles of National
Manuscripts of Ireland_part 4, no. 2 (London, 1884).
EXTRACT ENDS>>>>

Thank you to Brian McGinn for that.

I would value the art historians' comments on the Raven drawings. Yes, there is something
odd about the perspective - but then there often is odd perspective in the drawings and
plans of the period.

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: John Edward FitzGerald
Subject: Re: Ir-D A Discourse on Bawns

Further to the question of what a bawn is, here in Newfoundland, our Irish
communities traditionally would know a bawn as a beach. Here is how the
Dictionary of Newfoundland English, Eds. Story, Kirwin and Widdowson, 2nd.
Ed. (Toronto, 1990) [available online at
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary] defines it:

bawn n also bon [phonetics unavailable]. EDD ~ sb 4 Ir; JOYCE 214; DINNEEN
badhún for sense 1.
1 Grassy land or meadow near a house or settlement.
1897 J A Folklore x, 203 Bawn ... particularly where the Irish have
prevailed, is the common name for the land about the house. P 113-55
Setting spuds on the bawn (flat expanse of freshly-turned sods). 1968
DILLON 131 'We have to break up some bawn tomorrow.' 'When cattle are dry,
they're out on the bawn in the spring o' the year.' M 69-29 About half-way
between my house and the theatre there was a big grassy bonne (meadow) and
this was a favourite place for courters to go. C 71-24 [In Calvert] a baun
was an enclosed pasture which was used for the grazing of sheep. In
Carbonear [it] meant ground that hadn't been ploughed before. C 75-136 ~ a
plot of grass land where children play and where fishermen spread their
trap when they take it up to dry or mend.
2 Expanse of rocks on which salted cod are spread for the quick-drying
process of the Labrador and Bank fisheries; BEACH. Cp FLAKE. 1895 GRENFELL
66 Newfoundlanders spread [cod] on poles called 'flakes,' or on the natural
rocks, called 'bournes.' [1900 OLIVER & BURKE] 34 "Fanny's Harbor Bawn":
which caused this dreadful contest on [Fanny's] Harbor Bawn... / So pray
begone, all from the Bawn, or I'll boot you in your bloom. 1936 SMITH 17
[The fish] would then lie in the waterhorse for twenty-four hours. It was
then brought out on the bawn and spread 'heads and tails.' 1937
Seafisheries of Nfld 47 When the fish is dried by natural means, it is
placed upon flakes, beaches, rocks and bawns (i.e. artificial beaches),
where the sun and wind are permitted to perform the task of extracting the
moisture. 1955 DOYLE (ed) 78 ... " 'Twas Getting Late Up in September": To
spread fish on the bawn makin' wages / We went there without much sleep. T
393-67 This is where they'd make their fish?on all those small rocks about
the size o' your fist. They used to call it the bawn. M 71-117
Finally the fish would be taken in hand-barrows to the bawns?something like
flakes except that the boughs were laid on the rocks?and spread to dry.
1977 Inuit Land Use 218-19 First, the cod were washed to remove the salt,
then they were placed on small flat stones called bons to dry. The bons
were loosely separated to permit air to circulate around the fish.
3 Phr make bawn: to prepare beach for drying salted cod by making a flat
expanse of rocks. C 70-10 Sometimes the fishermen would fill in the
crevices with beach rocks, and this would be called making bawn. My
grandfather said that he has made bawn down in Labrador while fishing there
in the summer-time.

And here is how the supplement to the DNE additionally defines it:

bawn n
2 1988 Evening Telegram 18 May, p. 19 A bawn was a level, dry area of
beach, sometimes used instead of flakes.
3 1987 Evening Telegram 4 July, p. 56 [tape transcript] We couldn't get
a fish and we never saw a seal. We did nothing only make a bit of bawn and
waited.

From: Brian McGinn
bmcginn[at]clark.net

Paddy,

How old are bawns? I'm not familiar with the Irish sources cited by you or
Luccketti. Are they a native Irish invention, or a Norman import with an
Irish name, an essential adjunct to the tower house? And are the American
writers on colonial town planning aware that bawns existed, all over
Ireland, long before the Ulster plantation? Again, I haven't studied Garvan
and Reps in sufficient detail to form a definite opinion. Nick Luccketti,
however, has clearly done his Irish homework.

Whatever the case, by the early 17th Century the term bawn was understood
by the London authorities and the Ulster undertakers. Instructions for the
Ulster planters specified the construction of a castle and bawn for those
receiving 2,000 acres; a strong house and bawn for a holder of 1,500 acres;
and at least a bawn for grantees getting 1,000 acres. According to Garvan,
pp. 114-115, there was no precedent for bawns in England: "An Englishman
visiting Ulster might be struck by the similarity of the cottages and
settlers' homes, but he would certainly be surprised at the absence of any
manor house. An entirely new sort of building, the Irish bawn, filled the
place of the manor house. These bawns as developed by the London companies
were stone houses built into one side of a large walled courtyard with one
or more sides of the house thus forming a part of the walls of the
enclosure. Set a little apart from the village, they housed the
administrative officials of the London companies in time of peace, and the
entire English population in time of strife."

Some other highlights from Garvan:

"Differing widely from the English town or village, the Ulster plantation
was an experiment in the foundation of a colony....It was, in its day, a
direct precedent for the New England experiment." pp. 32, 33.

"The plan of Jamestown.....was essentially that of a company town in
Ireland." p. 39

"In Britain itself individual counties varied widely from the isolated
farmhouse of Kent or the Devon fishing town to the manorial village of East
Anglia surrounded by open fields. Although each of these types had some
points of similarity to the Connecticut town, the Ulster adventurer town
provided the colonist his only complete prototype." p. 40.

Some further references and clarifications:

1. The trapezoidal footprint of the Namsemond site under investigation by
Nick Luccketti is illustrated in William M. Kelso, Nicholas M. Luccketti &
Beverly Straube, _Jamestown Rediscovery V_ (Richmond, Virginia: The
Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, 1999).

2. The popular Rediscovery series can be purchased at Jamestown itself,
where the archaeological site is jointly owned and administered by the APVA
and the National Park Service, or by mail from the APVA in Richmond.
Details at www.apva.org
Illustrations of the rediscovered James Fort and early 17th C artifacts,
including copper coins minted for use in Ireland, can be found at this
site. APVA's Interim Field Reports can also be downloaded here, with Adobe
Acrobat. The 1997 Interim Field Report, by Nick Luccketti and Beverly
Straube, includes information and illustrations on several Catholic
religious icons unearthed in early 17th C contexts.

3. The other trapezoidal fort, at Wolstenholme Towne, is discussed and
illustrated in Ivor Noel Hume, _Martin's Hundred_(Charlottesville & London:
University Press of Virginia, 1979). The 18th C manor house on the hill,
overlooking the Wolstenholme Towne site and the underground museum, is
called Carter's Grove rather than Martin's Hundred, as I wrote earlier. For
anyone planning to visit, admission to Carter's Grove Plantation includes
the museum and Wolstenholme site.

Brian McGinn
Alexandria, Virginia

Forwarded on behalf of the University of Bremen...

Canadian-European Initiative "Migration and Multicultural Lives"

We are pleased to announce the University of Bremen Migration Research Centre's new
website "Migration and
Multicultural Lives," which was launched in connection with the Bremen conference
"Recasting European and
Canadian History: National Consciousness, Migration, Multicultural Lives" in May.

The University of Bremen Migration Research Centre (WE Migrationsforschung) maintains this
web site to
enhance public access to information about migration and related issues. It is based on a
Canadian-European
initiative promoting the availability of information on these issues.
The website links migration-related academic institutions, scholarly and legal resources
and thus provides
an international exchange forum for academic and non-academic institutions and NGOs.

Links are organised geographically and by keywords. We hope that our website will speed up
the process of finding information.
To give a better overview, there is a description button next to each link via which one
can view a short
presentation of the respective organisation.

Make sure to check out this indispensable new website on migration issues at0

http://www.migration.uni-bremen.de

If you have any questions about this project, please do not hesitate to contact Annika
Lieby at
lieby[at]uni-bremen.de=20

Sincerely,
Dirk Hoerder

From: Patrick O'Sullivan

At this Web address

http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/IASIL

you will find, if you poke around, the

IASIL 2000 - Outline Academic Programme for Participants

July 24-29 2000

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: Patrick O'Sullivan
P.OSullivan[at]bradford.ac.uk

Forwarded for information...

Felix Driver and David Gilbert, eds. Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity.
Studies in Imperialism. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999. xviii
+ 283 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-7190-5413-3.
Reviewed by Brian Ladd, Dept. of Geography and Planning/Dept. of History, University at
Albany, State University of New York.
Published by H-Urban (May, 2000)


Out of the multi-disciplinary stew of "post-colonial studies" has emerged a consensus that
the influence of imperialism on modern Europe has been overlooked. As John M. Mackenzie
puts in his contribution to this volume, "It is now a commonplace that imperialism should
be analyzed in centripetal as well as centrifugal terms" (p. 220). The book at hand, which
grew out of a 1997 conference, examines some ways the possession of empire left its mark
on European cities.

The editors have chosen to define "empire" broadly, including contributions on
Austria-Hungary's central European territories, Spain's long imperial history, and even
the influence of the ancient Roman Empire on modern Rome. The center of attention,
however, remains London (subject of nearly half the contributions) and the early twentieth
century. That, in other words, is the imperial era (when Britain's empire was the largest
one) that frames this book. In their introduction, the editors argue that their topic has
hitherto been neglected, that "post-colonial critics have concentrated their attention on
written texts, especially the canonical works of European literature" (p. 7). Here they
certainly have in mind Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism, [1] perhaps the best-known
work in the field. Several essays cite Jane M. Jacobs's Edge of Empire [2] as one of the
few works to place post-colonial studies in the contemporary city. Imperial Cities is a
collection of historical essays on projects and events that left traces of imperialism in
European urban space.

After the introduction (and before a brief but vivid afterword by Bill Schwarz) the
thirteen essays are grouped into three sections. Those in the first group examine urban
design and perceptions of it. They include Tori Smith's study of the planning of the
Victoria Memorial in London; an essay on the use of ancient imperial imagery in the
planning of modern Rome (by David Atkinson, Denis Cosgrove, and Anna Notaro); Iain Black's
study of the early-twentieth-century reconstruction of the Bank of England; and two essays
that draw mainly on tourist images: Claire Hancock's on Second Empire Paris and Jill
Steward's on late imperial Vienna. The essays in the second section focus on visual
display and major events: one on the 1911 Pageant of London, by Deborah S. Ryan; Yael
Simpson Fletcher's interpretation of the 1922 National Colonial Exposition in Marseille;
Anthony Gristwood on the 1929 Iberoamerican Fair and 1992 World's Fair in Seville; Andrew
Hassam's essay linking the Sydenham Crystal Palace, hothouses, and portable iron
architecture; and Rebecca Preston's essay on exotic plants in nineteenth-century British
gardens. The third section comprises three essays that focus less on particular spaces:
John M. Mackenzie's wide-ranging examination of Glasgow; Christopher Breward on men's
clothing in London; and Jonathan Schneer on the Pan-African Conference of 1900.

The contributors come from several disciplines, but most are geographers or historians.
Most essays are empirical rather than theoretical, focusing in detail on particular
examples and evidence. The advantage of this approach is that the essays offer original
material and mostly avoid the fog of cultural-studies jargon. The problem is that their
conclusions often fall short of the editors' ambitions for a reinterpretation of European
urban space. It would be difficult to identify common themes beyond the obvious point that
the empire left its traces in the metropole. However, the essays offer evocative examples
of the myriad ways in which imperial cities mixed the exotic and the familiar-not only in
gardens, but in architectural ornament, celebratory pageants, and tourist spectacles.

In some of the places and events examined here we see self-conscious attempts to package
the empire for domestic consumption. The examples of the Victoria memorial and the Bank of
England in London, the modern Italian monarchy, and the Seville fair reveal struggles to
create a visual style for an imperial city. In other cases the authors present us with the
views of participants and tourists who took in exotic sights without intentionally
imposing any political categories on them. The gardeners studied by Rebecca Preston, for
example, do not seem to have been guided by any desire to reproduce the particular
geography of the British empire in their domestic gardens. Thus one can read much of the
material in this book as evidence less of imperial influence than of growing links with
the rest of the world and of the subsequent creation of exotic spectacles in many forms.
The book serves to remind us, however, that much of this globalization took place under
imperial control and that even (or perhaps especially) tourists absorbed an increasingly
packaged set of urban images. The editors point out, moreover, that too much recent
literature on the globalization of trade and culture ignores its historical roots
altogether and pretends that globalization is something entirely new. Thus this collection
can perhaps enrich the study of "global cities."

Projections of imperialism onto urban space raise more particular questions about
relationships between center and periphery in cities and in empires. The bounties of
empire -- iconography, customs, goods, and even people -- enriched the homeland, but in
what sense were they to be included in the homeland? This question of uniformity and
differentiation in space arises in many of the contributions, and is particularly central
to Yael Simpson Fletcher's essay on the Marseille colonial exposition. She illustrates the
problematic identity of Marseille as imperial port city (and, more generally, the "elusive
and imagined nature of boundaries between metropole and empire" [p. 151]) by examining the
physical relationship between the exposition and the city as well as the interactions
among native French, urban immigrant workers, and colonial peoples put on display at the
exposition. Tensions between mobility and stability similarly inform Andrew Hassam's
eclectic discussion of temporary architecture, tropical climates, and fears of instability
in London.

Central to the book, therefore, is the question of how empire reshaped urban identity.
However, few of the essays confront that question directly. An exception is Mackenzie's
piece on Glasgow, which is more synthetic and less based on primary research than the
others. (Schneer also does so, with very specific reference to London anti-imperialists; a
broader treatment of empire and urban identity is his new book on London. [3]) Mackenzie
surveys several ways in which Glasgow's identity was shaped by empire, whether through
architecture, exhibitions, trade and industry, or immigration and labor. With reference to
Benedict Anderson's theory of nationalism, [4] he suggests that "we surely need more
analysis of cities as imagined communities" (p. 221). The reference to Anderson should
also remind us that the enormous literature on national identity, little cited in this
volume, needs to be drawn into (and perhaps revised by) the discussion of empire and urban
space.

This modest book does not presume to answer the central question that it raises: What has
been the influence of empire on modern European cities? The book's importance will depend
on the answer to another question: How essential is that influence to our understanding of
European cities? That is a question readers of this book can bring to bear on other works
or urban history that have neglected the imperial legacy.

Notes

[1]. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993).

[2]. Jane M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London and New York:
Routledge, 1996).

[3]. Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven, Conn., and London:
Yale University Press, 1999).

[4]. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, 1991).

Citation: Brian Ladd . "Review of Felix Driver and David Gilbert, eds, Imperial Cities:
Landscape, Display and Identity," H-Urban, H-Net Reviews, May, 2000. URL:
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=17285959011104.

Copyright © 2000, H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit
educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission
questions, please contact hbooks[at]h-net.msu.edu.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: John Goodby / Writing Diasporas conference

John Goodby has kindly let us see the draft programme of his Writing Diasporas Conference,
Swansea, Wales, September 20-23.

Manu items of direct Irish Diaspora interest, and of course many points of connection and
comparison...

P.O'S.


WRITING DIASPORAS DRAFT PROGRAMME

All events at ESSO Lecture Theatre, University of Wales
Swansea (unless indicated).

Meals in Fulton House.

Wednesday 20 September

13.00 onwards: Registration (tea, coffee available; refectory
lunch at delegates' cost)

15.00-15.20 Welcome
On behalf of UWS, the Axial Writing Project, the
Transnational Communities Research
Programme/ESRC, the British Council, the Arts Council
of England, the Arts Council of Wales/Academi, the
British Centre for Literary Translation, *the National
Assembly for Wales

15.20-16.30 Plenary 1: Global Literary Politics Since
the Rushdie Affair
"The Outsider Among Us" - Arne Ruth (Visiting
Professor in Journalism, Stockholm; former editor of
Dagens Nyheter [1982-1998]; founder member of
Rushdie Defense Committee Sweden).
Response from NN [Pnina Werbner? Tariq
Modood? Maya Jaggi?]
Introduced by Dr Tom Cheesman (German, Swansea /
Axial Writing Project)

16.30-17.00 Tea/coffee break

17.00-18.30 Plenary 2: Writing (Against) Diasporas:
Axial Literary Maps
Discussion with writers Caryl Phillips (St Kitts-UK-
USA) and Zafer Senocak (Turkey-Germany-USA),
and Professors Mary Chamberlain (History, Oxford
Brookes) and Ronnie Frankenberg (Anthropology,
Keele/Brunel). Introduced by Dr Deniz Göktürk
(Modern Languages, Southampton / Axial Writing
Project) and Dr John McLeod (English, Leeds / Axial
Writing Project)

18.30-20.00 Dinner

20.15-22.00 Plenary 3: Reinventing Wales? - Becoming
a Diaspora
(Taliesin Theatre)
Professor M. Wynn Thomas (English, Swansea)
introduces:
"T he Welsh Experience from Beulah Land to Cyber
Cymru" - Professor Wayne Parsons (Public Policy,
Queen Mary and Westfield)
"Cool or Celtic Welsh? Marketing Welsh Identity in
the UK Art Scene" -
Dr Petra Kuppers (Contemporary Arts, Manchester
Metropolitan).
Responses and discussion with a panel including
Pamela Petro (US journalist, author of Travels in an
Ancient Tongue: Touring the World Speaking
Welsh), Professor Jane Aaron (Humanities,
Glamorgan), Lord Dafydd Ellis-Thomas AM, Dr Prys
Morgan (History, Swansea), ....



Thursday 21 September

9.00-10.30 Plenary 4: Limits of Diaspora: Lingua
Francas / Idioms of Identity
Professor Marilyn Martin-Jones (Bilingual Education,
Aberystwyth) introduces:
"Plural Literacies in Monolingual States:
Autochthonous and Other Languages in Europe" -
Dr Balasubramanyam Chandramohan (Linguistics
and Postcolonial Studies, Luton)
"Global Englishes and Other Languages" - Dr Tom
McArthur (Editor, World English)
"Welsh, Catalan and Quebequois Resistances" - Dr
Paul Birt (Celtic Studies, Toronto)

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.30 Plenary 5: The Politics of Literary
Translation
Dr Ranjana Ash (writer, translator and critic, London)
introduces:
Amanda Hopkinson (Arts Council of England,
translation policy consultant)
Alistair Niven (British Council, Literature Department)
Peter Bush (British Centre for Literary Translation)
Steve Dearden (co-ordinator, National Association for
Literature Development)
+ NN (Welsh Arts Council)

12.45-13.45 Lunch

13.00-13.45 Lunchtime readings

Either
Parm Kaur (English and Panjabi) and Dorothea
Smartt (English)
or
NN + NN

14.00-16.00 Workshop + 3 Strands (continued 16.30-18.00)

A) Workshop 1: Finding/Funding a Voice:
Local/Transnational Community Writing
Terry Threadgold (Professor of Media, Cardiff)
Amina Souleiman (MAMA East African Women's Writing
Group) - Storytelling and publishing projects with Somali women
Debjani Chatterjee (Bengali Women's Support Group) -
Aydin Mehmet Ali (Turkish-speaking Communities)
? Jessie Lim

B) Strand 1: Axial Writers I (convenor: John
McLeod)
Shirley Chew (Leeds), 'Petrofictions'
Eve Patten (TCD, Dublin), ?Transnational Literatures before
Transnationalism?
Neelam Srivastava (Oxford), ?Reception and Literary
Nationality: The Case of Vikram Seth?
Louise Yelin (New York), ?Maryse Condé and the Vicissitudes
of Axial Writing?
Pumla Dineo Gqola (Free State, Bloemfontein, SA), ?Travelling
Identities: Writing Self and the Worlds of Noni Jabavu?
Rob Burton (California), ?Narrative Tracks Across A Floating
World: Bessie Head?s A Question of Power (1974)?
Gail Low (Dundee), Title to follow

C) Strand 2: Transnational Cinemas (convenor:
Deniz Göktürk)
Suman Bhuchar (London), 'Transnational Cinema: Bollywood
and The West'
Professor Rob Burns (German, Warwick U), 'From Turkish-
German Cinema to Post-Ethnic Cinema?'
Dina Iordanova (CMCR, Leicester), 'Diasporas-in-the-making
and International Film'
Aaron Feng Lan (Florida State University), 'Gender, Revolution,
and the Representation of China in Xiu Xiu'
Yeran Kim (Goldsmith's, London), 'The Other's Self-
representation: "Staccato narrative of memory"'
Angelica Fenner (University of Minnesota/Minneapolis),
'"Transnational" Film Aesthetics and the Western: The Frontier
Imaginary in Sinan Çetin?s Propaganda (1999)'
Dr Josep Lluís Fecé Gómez (Barcelona): 'The Contradictory
Nature of "Hispanicness". The Case of Antonio Banderas'

D) Strand 3: Marketing Ethnicity (convenor:
Sujala Singh)
Gregory Stephens (Oklahoma), 'Marketing Marley: Rasta and
Post-Racialism in Global Context'
Aamer Hussein ( ), 'Marketing South Asian Literature'
David L. Andrews (Memphis, US) and Michael Silk (De
Montford), 'Football and Global Branding'
Ian Cook (Geography, Birmingham) and Michelle Harrison
(The Henley Centre, London), 'Getting in Touch with the
Fetish? Marketing Jamaican Hot Pepper Sauces for the UK
Market'
Dr Pal Nyri (Oxford), 'Patriotic Expatriates or a Global Majority:
Marketing Chinese Migrancy'
Dr Virinder S. Kalra (Sociology, Leicester), 'Curry, Football,
Antiracism and Identity Shopping'
Hito Steyerl (Berlin), 'HeimatKunst: Marketing Multicultural
Arts in Germany'

16.00-16.30 Coffee break

16.30-18.00 Workshop + 3 Strands

A) Workshop 2: Finding/Funding a Voice: Writing
and Exclusion
Fiona Sampson (Stephen Spender Memorial Trust): Writing in
Healthcare
Martin Glenn (BLAK-UK): Prison Writing
Jennifer Langer and Nathalie Teitler: Refugee Writing
Liesbeth de Block: Migrant Children's Self-narration in TV Talk

B) Strand 1: Axial Writers I (convenor: John
McLeod)
C) Strand 2: Transnational Cinemas (convenor:
Deniz Göktürk)
D) Strand 3: Marketing Ethnicity (convenor:
Sujala Singh)

18.00-20.00 Break / dinner

20.00-23.00 Tidal Wave Theatre presents:
Night's Sunlight by Ketaki Kushari Dyson
(Taliesin Theatre)
World English-language premiere of the author's own
translation of her controversial Bengali play. The action
takes place in a British-Bengali living room in December
1989. Previously staged in Bengali in Manchester
(1994), Calcutta (1996).



Friday 22 September

9.00-10.30 Plenary 5: Re-imagining Belonging and
Transnational Citizenship
Prof. Simon Frith (Media, Glasgow) introduces:
[title? - on Iranian diaspora?] - Prof. Hamid Naficy
(Film and Media, Rice, Texas)
"Exiled from the Heart" - Prof. Annabelle Sreberny
(Communications, Leicester)

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.30 Workshop + 3 Strands (continued 14.00-16.00)

A) Workshop 3: "Exotic" Languages and
Literatures in EYL2K+1
Dr Lid King (director, Centre for Information and Research on
Language Teaching)
Dr Graeme Harper (director, Development Centre for
Performing and Creative Arts, Bangor)
Presentations on European cultural policy and funding
opportunities, and especially on the European Year of
Languages 2001 - prospects for "small" European languages
and for languages with no official status in Europe.

B) Strand 4: Virtual Diasporas (convenor: Marie
Gillespie)
Dr Gary Bunt (Theology, Lampeter), 'Virtually Islamic'
Professor Erica McClure (University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign, US), 'The Role of Language in the Construction of
Ethnic Identity on the Internet: The Case of Assyrian Activists
in Diaspora'
Professor Paul Spoonley (College of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Massey University at Albany, NZ), 'Re-inventing
Polynesia: the Cultural Politics of Transnational Pacific
Communities'
Dr Nabeel Zubberi (University of Auckland, NZ), 'Sindh in
Space: Sindh Cultural Activism, Identity and the Internet'
Professor Chandrashekar Bhat and T.L.S. Bhaskar
(Sociology, Hyderabad), 'The Telugu Diaspora as a Virtual
Community'
Anthony King (Oxford), 'The Construction of Greek Identity:
The Symvoulio Apodimou and the Internet'
Russell Southwood (Director, Balancing Act), Presentation on
'Balancing Act - Africa Wired Up' and its cultural, educational
and commercial pilot projects between Africa and UK
Hesham Al Jehani (Director, MiddleEastUK.com), 'Creating the
Ethnic Virtual Community: Examining Emerging Trends and
Case Studies of Online Communities via Culturally Specific
Webs'
Carmel Gahan (Director, South Wales Information Gateway)
and Ali H. Ali, 'Keeping Song and Musical Traditions Alive via
e-Business: Iraqimusic.com'

C) Strand 5: Poetry, Performance and Song
(convenor: John Goodby)
Mary McGlynn (Baruch College, CUNY, US), 'White, Black and
Global in Roddy Doyle's The Commitments'
Kaite O'Reilly (Birmingham), 'Being a Birmingham-Irish
Playwright'
Gabriele Griffin (Kingston), 'The Diasporic Space in Black
British Women's Theatre'
Alke Pande (Chandigarh), 'The (R)Emigration of Bhangra'
Mohammed Nazrul Islam (London), 'From Bengal to Brooklyn
via Brick Lane: Translating Contemporary Bengali Poetry'
Mona Marshy (Edinburgh), 'Performing Art, Identity and
Politics: Musicians of Palestinian Origin in Canada'
?? Joch

D) Strand 6: Axial Writers II (convener: Berthold
Schoene)
Miroslav Jancic (Writer, London), 'Anti-Nationalist Diasporas'
Predrag Finci (Writer, London), 'Refugee Blues'
Neomi Marin (Visiting Professor, Communication, Florida
Atlantic), 'Slavenka Drakulic, Rhetoric and Identity: An Axial
Problem of Redefinition in Eastern European Diaspora'
Len Mars (Anthropology, Swansea), 'Home and Belonging:
Jewish Diaspora Writers'
Leslie Adelson (German, Cornell), 'Touching Tales of Turks,
Germans, and Jews: Reading Between the Lines in the 1990s'
Tony Mathews (German, The Open University), ?Still Writing in
German after all this Time? The translation of Vilém Flusser,
Elias Canetti and W. G. Sebald?
Xiao-huang Yin (American Studies, Occidental
College/Harvard), 'A Different Chinese American Sensibility:
Chinese-Language Writing in America'


12.45-13.45 Lunch

13.00-13.45 Lunchtime readings

Either
Ketaki Kushari Dyson + NN
or NN + NN

14.00-16.00 Workshop + 3 Strands

A) Workshop 4: Writers and Rights - Global/Local
Moris Farhi and Vincent Magombe (PEN) and others.

B) Strand 4: Virtual Diasporas (convenor: Marie
Gillespie)
C) Strand 5: Poetry, Performance and Song
(convenor: John Goodby)
D) Strand 6: Axial Writers II (convener: Bertolt
Schoene)

16.00-18.00 Tea break and breathing space

18.00-19.30 Dinner

19.30-22.00 Film screenings (Taliesin)
OR
19.30-21.00 Exile/Axial Poetry (Fulton House)
Swansea writer, poet and broadcaster Nigel Jenkins
and poet and promoter Stephen Watts (Multicultural
Arts Consortium, London) introduce readings on the
theme of Routes and Roots:
Menna Elfyn
Yang Lian
Esmail Khoi

22.00-24.00 DJ Axis - music and dancing


Saturday 23 September

9.00-10.30 Reports from Strands + Workshops

11.00-12.30 Summary paper [NN] and closing discussion


Dr John Goodby
'Axial Writing' Research Project
on diaspora literary/media cultures
(Transnational Communities Programme,
ESRC/Oxford University)

Congratulations to our friends and colleagues in Brazil, who have produced another packed
issue of the ABEI Journal, The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies...

P.O'S.


From: Laura Izarra
lizarra[at]usp.br

ABEI Journal
The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies
Number 2, June 2000

Contents

Editors? Introduction

The Lizard Michael Longley
Late Summer Lake Nojiri Maurice Harmon

Dance
At the Hawk?s Well ? a dialogue between Japan and the West through the
dances of a hawk woman
Christine Greiner

The Critic and the Author
Reading Contemporary Irish Literature
Nicholas Grene
Irish Writers and Reputation
Christina Hunt Mahony?s response to Nicholas Grene

Poetry
The Colloquy of the Old Men: An Introduction
Maurice Harmon
?The Penetration and Illumination of Life?s Experience? in James Joyce?s
Ulysses and Gerard Manley Hopkins? Poetry
Donald E. Morse

Fiction
Banville?s Fiction Comes of Age as It Lays to rest Old Ghosts
Dawn Duncan

Drama
The Playwright?s Response to the Colonial Process: Innovatory Dramatic
Structure in Brian Friel?s The Freedom of The City (1973) and David Rudkin?s
The Saxon Shore (1986)
Peter James Harris
Elgar and Shaw
Stanley Weintraub

Travel Literature and History
The Voyage of St. Brendan: Celtic Otherworld Tale, Christian
Apologia or Medieval Travelog?
James Doan
Prince of Ulster or Arch-Traitor? The self fashioning of Hugh O'Neill
Eoin O?Néill and Irene Portela

Autobiography and Biography
Newman by Himself; New Man by O?Faolain
Munira Hamud Mutran

Translation
Presenting and Translating Michael Hartnett/Mícheál
Ó hAirtnéide (1941-1999)
Heleno Godoy
Finnegans Wake - O mamafesto
Donaldo Schüler

The Irish in South America
Living Memory
Patrick Clarke
Language and Literature of the Irish in Argentina
Juan José Delaney

Book Reviews
Irish Contemporary Novels
Rüdiger Imhoff
Rural Ireland
Leonardo Mendes
Beckett and 20th Century Criticism
Maria Sílvia Betti
Selected Plays of M. J. Molloy
Beatriz Kopschitz Xavier Bastos

Voices from Brazil
Surviving on Paper: Recent Indigenous Writing in Brazil
Lynn Mário Menezes de Souza

News from Brazil
Publications
Books received
Events

Remembering
Oscar Wilde & Sean O?Faolain

Contributors


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Forwarded on behalf of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America (PIASA)

In 1999 the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America (PIASA) created
the ARCHIVAL INFORMATION CENTER on the Internet with cooperation and support
of the Head Office of State Archives in Warsaw and the Polish Academy of
Sciences. This ELECTRONIC GUIDE FOR POLISH AND POLISH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS
IN THE USA AND CANADA should help scholars and interested persons in locating
special collections, libraries and archives. The guide is a very useful
research tool for historians: http://home.att.net/~piasa/archive.html

The guide contains links to:
1. Archives in the World and on-line catalogues,
2. Archives with Polish holdings in the USA and Canada,
3. Archives in Poland,
4. Information on preserving archival materials.

WHY WE DO IT: Our mission is to protect our archives against destruction or
loss because they are our national heritage and the proof of our identity.
Archival records are the evidence of the history and activities of
organizations, institutions, families and individuals. Polish archival
records in North America tell us about the history of
Polish Americans as an ethnic group. That is why we collect all the relevant
information about Polish and Polish-American archival holdings.

WHAT WE CAN DO FOR YOU: If your institution possesses processed or
unprocessed Polish and Polish American archival collections WE MAY ADD A
SHORT DESCRIPTION OF YOUR HOLDINGS TO OUR WEBSITE. In this way information
about your archives will be easily accessible for researchers. You may give
us information through regular mail or e-mail. We will include a short
description of your archival holdings, contact information - address, phone
and fax numbers, e-mail and link to your website in our ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
CENTER (check the example: http://home.att.net/~piasa/pt.html ). IT IS
ABSOLUTELY FREE - NO COSTS FOR YOU, IT IS A RESEARCH PROGRAM.

WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION WE ARE LOOKING FOR: We are interested in
information on archival historical records produced by individuals,
businesses and institutions. They may occur in any of the following forms:
handwritten, typewritten, electronic, photographs, movies, etc. (e.g.
official and private letters, diaries, certificates, genealogical charts,
licenses, membership lists, memoirs, memoranda, minutes, research notes,
scrapbooks, scripts, reports from meetings, speeches, photos, drafts, tapes
and other sound or video records). We are interested in all historical
records of Polish and Polish-American organizations.

PLEASE CONTACT US:
The Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America
208 East 30th Street, New York, NY, 10016
phone: (212) 686-4164 or (212) 689-3855
e-mail: archiwa[at]att.net or piasa[at]att.net

Best regards

Stanislaw Flis - Archivist in PIASA

_______________________________________

More information at the website of the Polish Institute of Arts &
Sciences of America (PIASA): http://www.piasa.org

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Charles Orser, his colleagues and students, should soon - or by now - be digging in lovely
County Roscommon.

Information about the archaeology can be found at the field school website:
www.ilstu.edu/~ceorser/field_school.htm

Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Campus Box 4660
Illinois State University
Normal, IL 61790-4660

e-mail: ceorser[at]ilstu.edu

The Ballykilcline families have their own Web site at
http://www.ballykilcline.com/index.html

which will give more background information.

Our good wishes to Charles Orser and his team, and our hopes for a happy and successful
dig.

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

[Note: Previous Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) University of Amsterdam
Conferences have been noted on the Irish-Diaspora list. The Web site is certainly worth
at the very least a browse by those of us interested in diasporic economic activities...

This Third Conference is in Liverpool, England - and is well subsidised. P.O'S.]


Forwarded on behalf of...
Giles Barrett g.a.barrett[at]livjm.ac.uk and Jan Rath rath[at]pscw.uva.nl

CALL FOR PAPERS

THEMATIC NETWORK 'WORKING ON THE FRINGES: IMMIGRANT BUSINESSES, ECONOMIC
INTEGRATION AND INFORMAL PRACTICES'

THIRD CONFERENCE
PUBLIC POLICY AND THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT OF IMMIGRANT BUSINESSES

LIVERPOOL, UNITED KINGDOM, 22-25 MARCH 2001


Proposals are invited for papers to be delivered at this international
conference, sponsored by the European Union
under its Targeted Socio-Economic Research programme.

This conference is the third in a series. The first two in Amsterdam (October
1999) and Jerusalem (June 2000) reviewed existing national research, and the
socio-economic context of immigrant businesses, respectively. Prospective
participants are therefore asked to emphasize legal, institutional and public
policy issues in their responses to this call. Please be as specific as
possible about the ways in which the situation in the country or countries
your paper considers is similar to or distinct from that of other countries.

Please send an abstract of your paper (300-400 words) by email to Jan Rath
(email: rath[at]pscw.uva.nl or Giles
Barrett (email: g.a.barrett[at]livjm.ac.uk Please do this as soon as possible,
but in any case not later than September 1 2000.

We will notify you if your paper can be accepted by 30 September 2000.
Contributions are encouraged from any of the social sciences, from business
studies, from policy disciplines, and from workers in national, regional and
local government. (To this end please forward this invitation to others you
feel may have something to contribute.)

Costs. There will be no conference fee for those delivering papers.
Subsistence and accommodation will be provided, and travel costs will be
supported as fully as airfares and budgetary constraints allow.

Further information
More information on the conferences and the international network can be
found on the Internet at
http://home.pscw.uva.nl/rath/imment/tserthird.htm

Or e-mail Giles Barrett g.a.barrett[at]livjm.ac.uk or Jan Rath rath[at]pscw.uva.nl

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

I picked this up from the H-Ethnic list...

Heritage Quest is, of course, a commercial organisation - so that a lot will depend on
pricing policies.

But, potentially, a wonderful resource.

I will not touch on the ethical questions...

P.O'S.

- -----Original Message-----

Heritage Quest, inc. is going online with the entire US Census, all 12,555
rolls of film. The U.S. Census from 1790 to 1920, fully digitized is going
online. You can get more information at a demo during the American Library
Assn. Conference in Chicago, on Saturday, July 8, from 9:30 - Noon in the
Hyatt Regency Grand Ballroom E, or stop by the Heritage Quest booth, #3625.
It will be available by subscription to libraries when it is up this Fall at
GenealogyDatabase.com
This is expected to be the largest data base of any
subject on the Internet.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

It is that time of the year when we especially think of our friends in Northern Ireland -
for it is that time of year when events can undo any hope that has grown during the rest
of the year.

The Irish-Diaspora list, as a corporate entity, does not closely track events in Northern
Ireland. As individuals we are very concerned.

Two recent items caught my attention. It seems that former New York State Police
Superintendent Tom Constantine, who is to oversee the reform of the RUC under the terms of
the Good Friday Agreement and the Patten Report, is not of Greek or Italian heritage, as
we had vaguely thought. His fans have a web site...
http://www.constantinescircus.org
which is one of your basic Irish-American web sites...

A new book, Susan McKay, Northern Protestants: an Unsettled People, Blackstaff Press, is
receiving appreciative if baffled, and angry, reviews in British and Irish newspapers. I
have not yet seen the book - but itt seems a brave attempt by a person of northern
Protestant heritage to think aloud about that heritage. There are reviews at...

http://www.emigrant.ie/bookweek/archive/northern.htm

http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4020551,00.html

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

[We are trying to develop a reaching out programme here in Bradford - and here is an
example, a public lecture.

Shelagh Ward's thesis has already been mentioned on the Irish-Diaspora list - it makes
excellent use of what are generally acknowledged to be an underused source, the Catholic
parish archives in England.

P.O'S.]

Forwarded on behalf of the Lord Mayor of Bradford...

City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
Lord Mayor Councillor John Stanley King
Lord Mayor's Rooms, City Hall, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD1 1HY
Telephone: Bradford (01274) 752276 Fax: Bradford (01274) 395529
E-mail: lord.mayor[at]bradford.gov.uk

THE LORD MAYOR AND THE LADY MAYORESS
(Councillor John Stanley King and Mrs Barbara Ball)
request the pleasure of your company at a Civic Lecture to be given by

Shelagh Ward MA

on the theme of 'Catholics and Poverty in Bradford, 1860 - 1914'

(A discussion of the social manifestations and cultural implications, including religious
and ethnic identities, of the endemic and enduring poverty faced by the Irish Catholics
during this period)

Traditional music played during the evening by Comhaltas Ceoltori Eireann

In the Banqueting Hall, City Hall, Bradford

on Thursday 20 July 2000 at 1930

RSVP: The Civic Affairs Manager, City Hall, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD1 1HY Telephone:
01274752284/752276 Fax: 01274395529

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

[Here is a fun thing - which will interest anyone teaching Irish historiography. Charles
Ludington's article makes plain patterns within the long history of Irish historiography,
using the litmus test of The Huguenots. The abstract does not do justice to the article

On a train of thought... Not far from my home, here in Yorkshire, is Thornton, the
birthplace of the Bronte sisters, and the Bronte shrine at Haworth. (Now heading for
financial crisis, as Bronte worship wanes, and visitor numbers decline...)

There are folk for whom Patrick Bronte's Irish origins are a difficulty. Charles Lemon, A
Centenary History of the Bronte Society, 1893-1993, p. 55, quotes a 1962 report of contact
with the 'Irish section': 'They believe, for instance, that the Brontes were never
Pruntys, still less O'Pruntys, but that they were descendants of Huguenots who came over
in the army of William III...'

But seriously...]

Between Myth and Margin: The Huguenots in Irish History
Historical Research, February 2000, vol. 73, no. 180, pp. 1-19(19)

Charles C. Ludington C.C.
Columbia University

Abstract:

This article surveys the modern historiography of the Huguenots in Ireland. As victims of
religious persecution, but also as Protestants, the historiography of the Huguenots in
Ireland provides an excellent barometer for measuring contemporary political and
historiographical concerns within Ireland. In the long and arduous struggles over Irish
identity, religion and political control, the Huguenots have been used by some historians
to represent heroic Protestant victims of Catholic, absolutist tyranny, and the
prosperity-inducing values of Protestant dissent. Alternatively, they have been overlooked
as inconsequential bit-players in the clear cultural and political divide between Saxon
and Celt. In post-1920 Ireland, they have also represented the legitimacy of southern
Irish Protestantism. More recently, professional historians have attempted to examine the
Huguenot refugee communities in Ireland with no preconceived notions or political points
of view. This approach has proved fruitful. Nevertheless, by representing European
connections in Irish history and cultural diversity within Irish society at a time when
these issues are debated throughout the island, the Huguenots in Ireland remain a potent
political symbol.

Language: English Document Type: Research article ISSN: 0950-3471

Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, UK and Boston, USA

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

A family excursion to Whitby, to eat fish and chips... (Traditionally, in seaside
England, you eat fish and chips, sitting in the car, watching the sea - whilst the rain
hammers on the car roof. But we had a fine day.)

Whitby must be one of the most isolated towns in England - now making a precarious living
as a fishing port, with declining North Sea fish stocks, and as a holiday resort, on a
somewhat bleak and exposed coast.

And I note that one holiday attraction in Whitby is now 'The Dracula Experience'...

A while ago I was nattering to a colleague about Irish influences... We were standing
beside that poster of famous Irish writers - and he looked at those famous folk, and said,
'The most influential was most probably Bram Stoker...'

As I recall, Dracula reaches Whitby because that is where you bump into land as you travel
west, from 'the east'...

A recent History Ireland article (HISTORY IRELAND 8/2,Curran, 'Was Dracula an Irishman?')
explored Dracula's 'Irishness' - the very word might come from the Irish, meaning 'bad
blood'. And the article listed all the Irish folkloric and literary blood suckers that
Stoker MIGHT have known about. And, yes, I suppose there is evidence that Stoker had some
acquaintance with and knowledge of Ireland - and what did he know of Transylvania?

But poor tourist-hungry Transylvania - like Whitby - is now quite willing to let Stoker
re-write its history. See...

http://www.vampyres.com/faqs/wdc.html
Elizabeth Miller's Report

Interview with Elizabeth Miller at
http://www.pathwaytodarkness.com/facts/interview_miller.htm

http://www.nbs.ntu.ac.uk/ctvm/dracula.htm
ROMANIA
MARKETING INAUTHENTIC CULTURE IN ROMANIAN TOURISM - Dracula's castle - a case study

The full text of Dracula, the novel, is available at
http://chimera.choronzon.com/library/dracu10.txt

Another Stoker connection... It was here in Bradford that the actor Henry Irving died in
1905 - Stoker's admired business partner, whose biography he wrote, and published in 1906.

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

[An earlier posting of this message was given a bad Subject line. I'll post it again, to
avoid confusion...]

It is that time of the year when we especially think of our friends in Northern Ireland -
for it is that time of year when events can undo any hope that has grown during the rest
of the year.

The Irish-Diaspora list, as a corporate entity, does not closely track events in Northern
Ireland. As individuals we are very concerned.

Two recent items caught my attention. It seems that former New York State Police
Superintendent Tom Constantine, who is to oversee the reform of the RUC under the terms of
the Good Friday Agreement and the Patten Report, is not of Greek or Italian heritage, as
we had vaguely thought. His fans have a web site...
http://www.constantinescircus.org
which is one of your basic Irish-American web sites...

A new book, Susan McKay, Northern Protestants: an Unsettled People, Blackstaff Press, is
receiving appreciative if baffled, and angry, reviews in British and Irish newspapers. I
have not yet seen the book - but itt seems a brave attempt by a person of northern
Protestant heritage to think aloud about that heritage. There are reviews at...

http://www.emigrant.ie/bookweek/archive/northern.htm

http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4020551,00.html

P.O'S.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


I know that a number of Ir-D members will be interested in the work of Michael C. Coleman.

Coleman is based - I think - at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Partly for that
reason, and partly because of his combination of interests, his work is published in what
will seem to us unlikely places.

Coleman is interested in history 'from below', the experiences of children,
autobiograophy, language and education.


1.
The most recent article is...
Source: The American Indian Quarterly
Date: Sum/1999
Citation Information: (ISSN: 0095-182X) Pg. 83
Author(s): MICHAEL C. COLEMAN

The Responses of American Indian Children and Irish Children to the School, 1850s-1920s.
A Comparative Study in Cross-Cultural Education

I am not sure what the correct politically correct term is - but Coleman seems quite happy
with words like 'Indian' and 'Indianist' when talking about 'native Americans'. At the
risk of confusion - when many Indians from India are now settled in North America - I
follow Coleman here.

This brings together Coleman's earlier work on Indian and Irish children's experiences of
education, in a comparative study of two nineteenth century 'assimilationist' school
systems, the USA Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 'Indian Schools', and
the Irish elementary educational system, under the Commissioners of National Education in
Ireland (CNEI, "the Board"). The Irish system has been much studied, but Coleman notes
that there has been no studies of children's responses, comparable to those produced by
the Indianists.

His sources are some 100 Indian autobiographies, and some 30 Irish autobiographies. Some
of this Irish material involves fragments from the folklore archives. But part of the
charm of the article is to see the familar Irish published autobiographies used in this
comparative way - O'Crohan, O'Sullivan, Peig Sayers, etc., etc.

The most significant other publications are...

2.
M. C. Coleman, American Indian Children at School, 1850-1930 (Jackson MS: University Press
of Mississippi, 1993)

3.
M. C. Coleman, "Eyes Big as Bowls with Fear and Wonder: Children's Responses to the Irish
National Schools, 1850-1922, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 98C:5 (1998): 177-202

4.
M. C. Coleman, "Some kind of Gibberish: Irish-Speaking Children in the National Schools,
1850-1922," Festschrift for Prof. Kari Sajavaara, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 33 (1998):
93-103.

Yes, that is where it was published... 'Some kind of gibberish' is - I think - from
O'Crohan and describes his first encounter with the English language.

P.O'S.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England