From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Also at FindArticles is this essay from

Labor History

Reconsidering Indentured Servitude: European Migration and the Early
American Labor Force, 1600-1775.
Author/s: Christopher Tomlins
Issue: Feb, 2001

Reconsidering Indentured Servitude: European Migration and the Early
American Labor Force, 1600-1775.
http://www.findarticles.com/m0348/1_42/71820489/p1/article.jhtml


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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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

Dympna,

There isn't really that much systematic work on the Irish in Scotland - the
obvious references will be found in Donald MacRaild's bibliographic essay on
the Irish in Britain, which is displayed on both my Irish Diaspora web
sites...
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Use your browser's Search or Find facility, for the references to
Scotland...

Worth looking at is a stream-of-consciousness piece by Bernard Aspinwall, 'A
long journey: the Irish in Scotland', in Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., Religion
& Identity, volume 5 of The Irish World Wide. Publication details can be
found at
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net (Basically,
Bernard simply sat himself down and poured into his computer everything he
knew about the Irish in Scotland. Which is a lot. But made for an untidy
chapter for his poor editor...)

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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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




- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
[mailto:owner-irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Sent: 10 August 2001 15:00
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Irish in Scotland query




From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Dymphna=20Lonergan?=
Subject: Re: Irish in Scotland

Does anyone have information on the extent of Irish
migration to Scotland, both seasonal and permanent, in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? I'm
looking for a short overview to include as background
in a piece I'm writing at the moment.

buíochas

Dymphna Lonergan
Flinders University of South Australia

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The following itemhas been brought to our attention...

English Historical Review
Nov, 2000

The Irish in Wales, 1798-1922.(Review) / (book review)
Author/s: Matthew Cragoe

How far and how fast Irish immigrants to South Wales managed to integrate
with their new surroundings is the subject of an important new monograph,
Immigration and Integration: The Irish in Wales, 1798-1922 (Cardiff: U.
ofWales E, 2000; pp. xiii + 340. 25 [pounds sterling]), by Paul O'Leary.
Traditionally seen by Welsh historians as an intractably separate group,
whose low social origins, tendency to drunkenness, violence and, above all,
Catholicism, marked them out from their self-consciously Protestant host
society, O'Leary argues that the experience of Victorian immigrants to the
small industrial towns of south-east Wales was more diverse than has been
accepted, and changed markedly over time. He begins by considering Irish
immigration before the Great Famine, and demonstrates that, though their
numbers were relatively small (0.8% of the population in 1841), they created
an infrastructure of distinctive institutions in the towns they settled
(notably, Cardiff, Newport, Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea). The fact that these
comprised not only beer-shops and churches, but also Friendly Societies,
suggests that immigrant Irishmen adopted the `respectable' mores of their
host society while simultaneously maintaining a distinct ethnic identity.
The Famine, however, opened a new chapter in relations between the Irish and
the Welsh. Between 1841 and 1851, the number of Irish-born individuals in
Wales increased by 153 per cent, and prompted intense local hostility in the
industrial towns to which the majority headed. The situation remained
volatile until the 1870s, not least due to the popularity of Fenianism among
the immigrants. However, slackening immigration and the displacement of
Fenianism by a demand for Home Rule in the 1870s, a cause with which
Welshmen increasingly sympathized, together with the development of trade
union activity later in the century, provided Welsh and Irish with common
ground. The rise of the Labour party in the early twentieth century sealed
the alliance, and, by the 1920s, the death of a local Irish boxer like Jack
Driscoll could bring the whole community on to the streets of Cardiff in
mourning. O'Leary captures well the broad outline of the Irish experience in
Wales, yet a more systematic approach to local events might have enabled him
to demonstrate more fully the difference he discerns between the experience
of the Irish in great cities like Glasgow and Liverpool, and those in the
small-town environments of South Wales. Passing references in the text
suggest that the Irish in Newport were far more settled and integrated than
those in Cardiff, for example, but at no point is this information drawn
together and analysed. And though `Irish' involvement in local School Board
and parliamentary elections is considered, detailed scrutiny is too often
confined to only one of the four major towns in which there was an Irish
presence: why not examine all four? Nevertheless, this well-written book
represents a valuable addition both to the social and religious history of
Victorian Wales and the wider study of the Irish in Britain.


MATTHEW CRAGOE
University of Hertfordshire


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ---
COPYRIGHT 2000 Addison Wesley Longman Higher Education
in association with The Gale Group and LookSmart. COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ---

- --
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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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
Behalf Of Claire Connolly
Subject: FINAL NOTICE: FACTS AND FICTIONS


Facts and Fictions:
Ireland and the Novel in the Nineteenth Century
Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research
Cardiff University

A draft conference programme along with participants' abstracts and details
of how to register is now available at this address:

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/ceir/facts

The Editor's Introduction to the latest issue of the British Association for
Irish Studies Newsletter is pasted in below...

Our thanks to Jerry Nolan, the Editor, for making this available to us.

BAIS Contact point
http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/hum/bais/index.html.

P.O'S.


BAIS NEWSLETTER NO. 27
July 2001


From
Jerry Nolan
Jcmnolan[at]aol.com

EDITORIAL

Focus Interview 17 strikes me as one of the liveliest in the ongoing
series. Mary King?s original and impassioned interpretation of the anger in
John Synge?s plays commands attention. I am very grateful to the Stephens
family for permission to reproduce on the cover James Patterson?s 1906
crayon portrait of J.M. Synge.

Sid Brown?s reflections are the fruit of an extended study of the
representation of Irish in US school textbooks, chronologically arranged
in nine sections from the early 20th century up to the 1990s. Paradigm:
Journal of the Textbook Colloquium published last October an article
entitled ?The textbook furore in the 1920s?. Battle in the Books 7 climaxes
with an incisive account of a textbook furore in the 1990s.

There is a progress report on the Archive of the Irish Diaspora in Britain
at the University of North London by Tony Murray, the administrator of the
Smurfit Archive of the Irish in Britain. I very much agree with Tony?s view
of the Archive of items from the past as primarily concerned with the
future better documented understanding of the Irish Diaspora in Britain.

There is a report on the presentation of the BAIS Bursaries 2001 Awards at
the Irish Embassy towards the end of May. The splendid occasion was tinged
with a certain sadness at the knowledge among those present that the
occasion was the last presentation of the annual Awards by Ted Barrington
whose outstanding years of service as the Irish Ambassador in London come
to a close in September.

Copy and/or discs (Word 97) with articles, reports, notices, letters etc. to
be included in No. 26 should be sent to Jerry Nolan, 8 Antrobus Road,
Chiswick , London W4 5HY by 9 October 2001.
Email: Jcmnolan[at]aol.com

Note that there is a free sample copy of

Ethnicities
Volume 01 Issue 01 - Publication Date: 1 April 2001 at...
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/frame.html?http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/detail
s/issue/abstract/ab016687.html


The Contents list of the latest issue is pasted in below...

P.O'S.


Forwarded on behalf of

bernie.folan[at]sagepub.co.uk

Ethnicities
Volume 1 Issue 2 - Publication Date: August 2001

Articles

Transforming peoples and subverting states: Developing a pedagogical
approach to the study of indigenous peoples and ethnocultural movements
Alice Feldman University College Dublin, Ireland
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/details/issue/abstract/ab016687.html


Deep diversity versus constitutional patriotism: Taylor, Habermas and the
Canadian constitutional crisis
John Erik Fossum ARENA/University of Bergen, Norway
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/details/issue/abstract/ab018423.html


Bodies, souls and sovereignty: The Austro-Hungarian empire and the
legitimacy of nations
Glenda Sluga University of Sydney, Australia
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/details/issue/abstract/ab018424.html


Debate

Multiculturalism and its discontents: Majorities, minorities and toleration
David Burchell University of Western Sydney, Australia

Beyond the Intention of the State: A Response to Burchell
Ghassan Hage

Debate

Culture and identity: Contesting constructivism
Veit Bader University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Culture and collectivity: Constructivism as the methodology of choice: A
reply to Veit Bader
Gerd Baumann Research Centre for the Study of Religion and Society,
University of Amsterdam

Freedom-fighter versus Stubborn collectivist?: A rejoiner to Baumann
Veit Bader University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Books received

Forwarded on behalf of
Dr. Louis de Paor

CALL FOR PAPERS - IRISH-AUSTRALIAN CONFERENCE AT NUI, GALWAY
A preliminary call for papers has been issued by the Centre for Irish
Studies at NUI, Galway for the twelfth Irish-Australian Conference,
"From Youghal Harbour to Moreton Bay: Remembered Nations, Imagined
Republics", to be held at the university from June 19-22 2001.

Particularly welcome will be papers focusing on the following topics:
Emigration and Immigration, Ethnic Identities and multiculturalism,
Society and politics, Industrial relations, Gender studies, Women's
writing, Republicanism, Irish-Aboriginal relations, Irish
missionaries in Australia, The Irish language in Australia, Legal
History, Economic History, and Folklore and Oral culture.

Submission date is February 1, 2002 and further details may be obtained from
Dr Louis de Paor at louis.depaor[at]nuigalway.ie.


- --
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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Thought might be of interest...

Haven't seen much from David Cairns recently...

P.O'S.


THE OBJECT OF SECTARIANISM: THE MATERIAL REALITY OF SECTARIANISM IN ULSTER
LOYALISM.

Summary: This article examines an important, and neglected, aspect of
sectarianism in contemporary Northern Ireland: its embodiment in the
material culture and everyday social practices of its antagonistic factions.
Following a brief theoretical outline of sectarianism (characterized as a
discursive formation), I describe this phenomenon as found in an Ulster
loyalist community. I show how the material reality of sectarianism
encompasses the everyday activities of these loyalists, including their
'traditional' culture of Orangeism and the spheres of sport, leisure, and
entertainment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ----

Source: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Date: 09/01/2000
Subject(s): Sects--Social aspects; Popular culture--Analysis; Social
conflict--Analysis
Religion

Citation Information: (ISSN: 1359-0987), Vol. 6 No. 3 Pg. 437
Author(s): DAVID CAIRNS
Copyright Holder: 2000, Royal Anthropological Institute
Document Type: Article



- --
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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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...

Patrick O'Brien
celticbk[at]iol.ie


The Celtic Bookshop, [Proprietor Caroline O'Brien] 2 Rutland Street,
Limerick City, Rep. of Ireland, 'specialises in books of Irish interest,
new, out of print and rare'.

We are delighted to announce the publication of our new catalogue 2001 on
the Web available at
www.iol.ie/~celticbk/

Please note postage is extra at cost, all books are hardback unless stated
otherwise. We accept Visa, Mastercard, Cheques and Drafts

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The Reviews in History is becoming, cumulatively, a very browsable, useful
resource...

Below, some reviews of interest...

P.O'S.



http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/jackson.html
Ireland, 1798-1998: Politics and War
Oxford, Blackwells, 1999
Alvin Jackson
Reviewed by: Don MacRaild


http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/johnmcg.html
Political Ideology in Ireland 1541-1641
Hiram Morgan(ed.)
Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1999, 256 pp.
ISBN 1-85182-440-5
Reviewed by: Dr. John McGurk


http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/oleary.html
The Great Famine and Beyond: Irish Migrants in Britain in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries
Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2000, pp. xii, 303.
Donald M. MacRaild (ed.)
Reviewed by: Paul O'Leary
Lecturer, Dept. of History & Welsh History, University of Wales Aberystwyth


http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/peach.html
The Irish in Victorian Britain: The Local Dimension
Dublin Four Courts Press (1999)
ISBN 1 85182 403 0, £39.50
(HB) ISBN 1 85182 444 8
Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley
Reviewed by: Alexander Peach
Department of Historical and International Studies
DeMontfort University, Leicester


http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/macraildDon.html
Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-50
Peter Gray
Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 1999
Reviewed by: Donald M MacRaild
University of Northumbria

http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/maumePatrick.html
Ireland and Empire
Stephen Howe
Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2000
ISBN 0-19-820825-1
Reviewed by: Patrick Maume
Queen's University Belfast


- --
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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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: Kerby Miller
Subject: Re: Ir-D Emigrant Letters from America

Dear Ms. Cusick,

My book, EMIGRANTS AND EXILES (NY, 1985 and still in print)
is based on 1000s of Irish immigrants' letters, mostly written from
the US. In my private collection, I have at least 5,000 Irish
immigrants' letters (rather, I have photocopies and typescripts of
them). You would be welcome to visit here, work in my office, take
notes, etc., as many other grad. students and scholars studying Irish
immigration have done in the past.

Sincerely,

Kerby Miller
Middlebush Professor of History
University of Missouri, Columbia




>From: "christine cusick"
>
>Subject: Emigrant Letters from America
>
>From: christine cusick
>
>I am currently writing a doctoral dissertation that invokes an ecocritical
>analysis of contemporary Irish poetry and photography as well as 19th/20th
>century emigrant letters. Both Patrick O'Farrell's collection of letters
>from Australia and Cecil Houston's study of Canadian letters have been very
>useful. Moreover, Paddy has been so kind as to recommend David
>Fitzpatrick's work, which continues to be helpful. However, other than a
>few special collections here in the States, I'm having difficulty locating
>letters from America. Have I made an enormous oversight? My primary
>interest is in the emigrant's memory of the material landscape, and so, I
am
>also interested in journal and diary entries of the sort. I welcome any
>comments and/or suggestions.
>
>
>Many thanks, in advance.
>
>
>christine cusick
>Duquesne University
>Pittsburgh, PA
>United States

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

It has been a quiet week on the Irish-Diaspora list...

Or so it would seem...

But behind the scenes we have at last solved a problem which - as Ir-D
watchers will know - has been bothering me for years.

The Irish-Diaspora list's archive...

Briefly, we have long had to use the Majordomo list software, because that
it is what the University of Bradford 'supports'. Majordomo is not
'user-friendly' (as poor Russell Murray recently, once again, found...), and
has very limited archiving and retrieving abilities.

My own attitude to Majordomo has changed over the years - I used to get
irritated by its clumsiness, but now I think that its very clumsiness acts
as a firewall. Nothing evil can get past Majordomo and into my computer and
into YOUR computers...

But that still left us with the problem of trying to create a usable,
searchable archive of Ir-D messages. Over the years I have looked at a
range of possible solutions, but all have involved an inordinate amount of
work.

The real solution was always obvious - a database with its own email
address. But when I suggested this to teckies they pursed their lips and
went, Oooh..

Once again our friends at Sobolstones http://www.sobolstones.com
have come up with the answer. Our thanks to Dr. Stephen Sobol for his
thought and work. Yesterday, with the right procedures in place at my end
and at his end, we moved the entire Ir-D archive into a database. It all
took less than an hour of my time...

So, there is now a searchable database of the Ir-D archive, beginning with
Friday November 6 1998 - when the Majordomo archiving system was activated.
(The archive of the very first year of the Ir-D list, 1997-98, was lost due
to hard disk failure - though I still vaguely hope I might one day retrieve
some of it.)

This new database of the Ir-D archive has its own email address, and will be
automatically updated from now on.

We will put this database of the Ir-D archive on a web site.

My feeling at the moment is that this database/archive should be available
only to Ir-D list members: a lot of our discussions were NOT meant for
public consumption; many Ir-D members value their privacy, and do not like
their email addresses to be broadcast; and anything in the Ir-D archive
that was meant for the public domain is available elsewhere, or can be
displayed at http://www.irishdiaspora.net

So, my plan is that access to the Ir-D database/archive should only be
through a password system: the password would be distributed through the
Ir-D list, and would be changed often.

But I would value comments from Irish-Diaspora list members on these
developments and suggestions.

Paddy O'Sullivan

- --
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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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

Please distribute widely...
Contact information is given at the end of this message...

Forwarded on behalf of
Laura Izarra

Pasted in below, the contents of the latest issue of ABEI Journal, which was
co-edited with the support of The Department of Foreign Affairs of Ireland..

ABEI JOURNAL Nº3, June 2001
THE BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF IRISH STUDIES

Contents

Editors? Introduction 7

Alba Samuel Beckett 9
Alba Translation by Maria Helena Kopschitz 10

Personal Helicon Seamus Heaney 11
Hélicon pessoal
Translation by Millôr Fernandes 12
Translation by Rui Carvalho Homem 13

The Critic and the Author
The Politics of Irish Drama
Review, Peter Harris 17
Author's Response, Nicholas Grene 23

Drama
Marina Carr?s ?Heap of Broken Mirrors?: The Mai (1994)
Donald E. Morse 27
Helen Waddell?s the Spoiled Buddha: Intercultural and
Gynocentric Dimensions of an Irish Play.
Wolfgang Zach 41

Fiction
Sanscreed Latinized: The Wake in Brazil and Hispanic America
Haroldo de Campos 51
Thomas Crofton Croker?s Fairy Legends: A Revaluation
Heinz Kosok 63
Ireland and Europe: The ?European Experience? in Selected Works of Modern
Irish Fiction.
Dore Fischer 77

History
The Awakening of the Fires: A Survey of George Russell ? AE?s Mystical
Writings (1897)
Jerry Nolan 89

Reflections, Misrecognitions, Messianisms and Identifications: Towards an
Epistemology of Irish Nationalism
Eugene O?Brien 101

Poetry
Greetings to Brazil, in Our Friends! People, Place and Tradition in Paul
Durcan?s Poetry
Charlie Boland 119

The Irish in South America
Irish Diasporic Literary Voices in South American Border Narratives
Laura P. Z. de Izarra 137

Book Reviews
The Fiction of Colm Tóibín
Rüdiger Imhof 151

Liam O'Flaherty's Letters
John Cronin 159

Playing Boal in Northern Ireland
José Roberto O?Shea 163

Greetings to Paul Durcan
Luci Colin Lavalle 167

Irish Nocturnes
Magda Velloso F. Tolentino 173

Richard Blake Martin, A Novel
Charlie Boland 175

Voices from Brazil
On the Portuguese-Brazilian Practices of Representation of the Seventeenth
Century (1580-1750)
João Adolfo Hansen 179

News from Brazil
Events 196
Books Received 197

Remembering
Looking Forward: The Future of Irish Studies
Adele Dalsimer 201

In memoriam
The Place of Images in Irish Studies: Dedicated to the Memory of Adele
Dalsimer
Vera Kreilkamp 205

Contributors 209

ABEI Journal welcomes contributions from specialists abroad.
Submitted articles should normally not exceed 6,000 words and should conform
to
the method of documentation of the MLA Style Sheet. They should be sent in
one
hard copy with an abstract at the beginning and biodata at its end and in a
floppy disk 3.5" in Word for Windows 6.0, until October of each year.
Subscriptions, submitted articles, books for review and editorial
correspondence
should be sent to the Editors.
Editorial Address:
Universidade de São Paulo - FFLCH/DLM
Munira Mutran & Laura Izarra
Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto 403
05508-900 São Paulo - SP
Brasil
e-mail: lizarra[at]usp.br
Fax: 0055-11-3032 2325

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...


H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (August, 2001)

Peter Gaunt, ed. _The English Civil War: The Essential
Readings_. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. viii + 360 pp. Maps, notes,
select bibliography, and index. $64.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-631-20808-9; $29.95 (paper), ISBN 0-631-20809-7.

J. C. Davis. _Oliver Cromwell_. London: Edward Arnold, 2001.
224 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $65.00 (cloth),
ISBN 0-340-73117-6; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-340-73118-4.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Ronald Hutton ,
Department of Historical Studies, Bristol University

This pair of titles provides a useful indication of the current
condition of studies of the English Civil War and Revolution.
Peter Gaunt's brief reprints a set of fourteen articles and
chapters which are intended to provide students with a sense of
the major themes which have characterised the historiography of
the causes, nature, and consequences of the war over the past
three decades. The word "essential" is susceptible in this
context to two quite different interpretations. The more
customary would be to indicate the most important works in the
field, which attracted the most attention, formulated opinion,
and provoked or resolved debate. Alas! Caprices of copyright
and practicalities of format make such an enterprise very
difficult, and this is not an example of it. To be sure, such
celebrated works do make appearances, key essays by Conrad
Russell and John Morrill being notable examples. It is clear,
however, any compendium on the Civil War which has nothing by
Ann Hughes or Kevin Sharpe, and includes pieces by much less
prominent authors, does not capture the essence of its
historiography by that reckoning. There is, however, a
different take on the word: that it indicates works which sum
up the spirit of moments in debate, and of particular arguments,
so well that they may be taken as representative of the whole.
In that sense, Dr. Gaunt has managed his task with sensitivity
and imagination.

He compounds it by providing his own overviews of the
historiography in four editorial introductions. These lay out
the story of the various debates in a manner which is objective
to a point at which virtually any participant or observer would
find them an acceptable portrayal. The clarity and
fair-mindedness of these summaries will be of considerable value
to students, and if they sound familiar to colleagues, then the
great advantage of stating the obvious is that one has an above
average chance of being right. Peter Gaunt carefully avoids
putting a personal spin on the subject, or trying to suggest any
overall sense of where the study of it is going. Readers are
told that experts differ markedly in interpretation, that the
main debates are probably incapable of resolution and that most
specialists now avoid single or simple explanations for events.

The only real problem with this approach is that what in general
seems fair and restrained, can at times just look tired. To
Gaunt the historiography concerned is very much of a continuum,
so that polemical work published almost thirty years ago is
portrayed as if it were part of ongoing debates. In many ways
the book belongs to the 1980s, in which most of its reprinted
material appeared. Only two of its fourteen pieces came out in
the 90s, both of which belong to the first half of the decade
and neither of which, though well-researched, created much stir.
To attribute a lack of resolution to scholarly exchanges which
are still in progress is one thing, but to do so in the case of
debates which are going dead is to suggest a failure of
achievement. The greatest single recent development in the
study of English history in the 1640s has been its decline from
Great Power status in the academy to that of being just another
area of historical research. Whether this is simply because of
changing fashion, as interest has shifted from political to
cultural studies, or whether revisionism helped to destroy its
own market, by declaring that mighty metanarratives of social,
economic, and ideological change did not in fact converge on the
period, is a question which a later historian may be bold enough
to attempt.

The figure of Cromwell has at least remained enigmatic and
alluring enough to emerge into the new century with scholarly
interest in him still running high. The 1990s produced an
important collection of essays edited by John Morrill and two
biographies, by Peter Gaunt himself and by Barry Coward. All
this work was characterized by a relative lack of new primary
research (Professor Morrill's own contribution to his collection
being the most notable exception) and a generally admiring
attitude towards the man; indeed, this perpetuates a
love-affair between Cromwell and academic historians which has
lasted for over a hundred years and intensified in the last
fifty. This being so, the appearance of a new biographer in the
field is of particular interest. Colin Davis has made his name
as a historian of political and religious thought and as a
brilliant and provocative iconoclast, weakening, or destroying
the traditional categories in which historians had grouped Civil
War radicals. His record promises a man who can at once
understand Oliver better than any before and make a wreck of
traditional perceptions.

The first expectation is largely rewarded, the second not.
Professor Davis brings two considerable strengths to his work.
This first, unsurprisingly, is an ability to characterize
Cromwell's religious mentality and language--antiformalist,
providentialist, and dedicated to the service of a capricious,
all-powerful, and constantly interventionist deity. The second
is a knack for the reconstruction of networks, of those
familial, religious, and political alliances on which the man's
career always depended and to which he devoted much more regard
than to institutions and constitutions. Both enable us to
understand a key actor in English history better than before,
and so this takes its place as an important study. It argues
convincingly for a consistency to Cromwell's policies greater
than that perceived before, centered on a quest for the
achievement of religious and civil liberties without social
revolution, guaranteed by the government of a single presiding
figure limited by Council and Parliament and imbued with an
evangelical Protestant tone. It concludes, moreover, that he
achieved a great measure of success in this, and might have made
it permanent had his death not cut short the process.

This is an excellent case, and superbly argued, but it has
weaknesses. They begin with a functional problem; that, once
again, this is a biography which does not rest on much original
research. Davis has confined himself to the secondary
literature, a selection of mostly published primary sources, and
the famous editions of letters and speeches in which Cromwell
presents and refashions himself. What is lost in this approach
is the practical context of day-to-day warfare and politics. In
the case of military affairs, this results in trivial errors
which do not affect the overall arguments (Donnington Castle was
a royalist not a parliamentarian fortress in 1644, Belton was
the site of a local battle not the capture of a strongpoint,
etc). In political matters, the problem works the other way
round: the facts are right, but interpretation one-sided.

Three aspects of Cromwell's career need to be addressed properly
if Davis's view of him is to be upheld. The first is the extent
to which he was capable of moulding the army on which he
depended to his own will. Biographies tend to assume that he
could, and that therefore his own attitudes are crucial, but it
needs to be demonstrated that his options were not in fact
limited by the men on whose support his power rested. The
second is that in politics, as in war, Cromwell was tactically
devious. A notorious episode ignored in this study is that in
which he not only abandoned his own Major-Generals in the
Parliament of 1656 but silently encouraged his clients to oppose
them. Also untreated is the deliberate way in which he devised
governments of men who were united only by loyalty to himself,
resulting in a paralysis of policy in Ireland under his rule and
a riven power-base for his successor. The third aspect concerns
his achievement. His policy of religious liberty could probably
not have been permanent, because sectarian tensions worsened in
England under his rule. The Restoration was precipitated by the
ex-royalist with no commitment to godly reform whom he had put
in charge of a strategically vital army. His disdain for
constitutions meant that others had to draw them up for him, and
get the blame when they failed; his death does not seem untimely
so much as that of an exhausted man bankrupt of ideas. There is
a darker Cromwell still awaiting his biographer, and another
challenge presented to a historian: that of discovering why the
Victorian admiration of the man has persisted unchallenged till
the present.

Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

Much of interest...

P.O'S.

=46rom: "Erin Pipkin"
Subject: 2001-2002: The Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 15:21:41 -0400

The Boston Seminar in Immigration and Urban History is an academic forum for
scholars as well as interested members of the public to discuss all aspects
of American immigration and urban history and culture. Programs are not
confined to Massachusetts topics.

Most seminar meetings revolve around the discussion of a precirculated
paper. Sessions open with remarks from the essayist and an assigned
commentator, after which the discussion is opened to the floor. After each
session, the Society serves a light buffet supper. We request that those
wishing to stay for supper make reservations in advance.

The Boston Seminar in Immigration and Urban History group meets
approximately once a month between September and April. Sessions begin at
5:15 in the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. For directions, see
our website at www.masshist.org.

To receive advance copies of seminar papers for the year, please send a
$25.00 check payable to the Massachusetts Historical Society. This fee
covers papers for the full academic year. Back copies are provided to those
who subscribe late in the season. Participants may also find copies of the
papers at several area institutions.

To subscribe, make dinner reservations, join our mailing list, or for more
information, please contact Erin Pipkin at the Massachusetts Historical
Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215. Call her at (617) 646-0505
or send email to epipkin[at]masshist.org

____________________________________
The Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar
Schedule for 2001-2002


September 20
Nancy Foner, State University of New York at Purchase
=93Immigrants in the Empire City: Past and Present Perspectives=94
Comment: Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Harvard University

October 25
Kevin Kenny, Boston College
=93An Irish Diaspora?=94
Comment: Nathan Glazer, Harvard University

November 15
Davarian Baldwin, Boston College
=93Mapping the Black Metropolis: An Institutional Geography
of Black Chicago, 1915-1935=94
Comment: Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University

January 31
Peter D=92Agostino, University of Illinois at Chicago
=93The Order Sons of Italy in America, Roman Catholicism,
and Italian Nationalism, 1905-1920=94
Comment: James O=92Toole, Boston College

=46ebruary 28
Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College
=93They Prayed in Boston and It Rained in Brazil:
Comparative Perspectives on Transnational Religion=94
Comment: Nazli Kibria, Boston University

March 28
Heather Fryer, Boston College
=93Vanport, Oregon: A Study of Citizenship in a Federal Community=94
Comment: James Green, University of Mass.=97Boston

April 25
Cheryl Greenberg, Trinity College
=93Blacks and Jews on the Urban Frontier=94
Comment: Robert Hall, Northeastern University

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...


Subject: UNCENSORED VOICES, directed by Daniel Cassidy: Tonight 7:30 New
College


Uncensored Voices: War or Peace in Ireland
Wed Aug. 22, 7:30 pm
New College Cinema
766 Valencia Street
San Francisco

Film: Uncensored Voices: War or Peace in Ireland
Uncensored Voices is a riveting, uncompromising look at he current prospects
for peace in the North of Ireland and features rare archival footage of the
Early Civil Rights Movement, Bloody Sunday, the Hunger Strikes, as well as
footage of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' historic visits to the United
States.

Tearing away the curtain of silence and censorship that has surrounded the
war in Ireland, it reveals the hidden story of the fight for human rights
and justice over the past 25 years. Included are interviews with some of the
leading figures in that struggle, Bernadette Devlin McAlisky, Fr. Des
Wilson, Mary Nelis, Eamon McCann, and Oliver Kearney, all of whom were
censored by Britain.

The film also features an exclusive interview in Federal Prison with Jimmy
Smyth, who escaped from the infamous Long Kesh Prison outside Belfast in
1983, along with 37 other Irish republican prisoners. Smyth recounts the
story of life in Belfast during the 1960s and 70s and how, along with an
entire generation, he was swept up into a war that has ravaged that corner
of the world since the introduction of British troops in 1969. (70 minutes,
1995, Directed by Daniel Cassidy)

and

Film: An Evening with Bernadette Devlin McAlisky
McAlisky, elected at 19 as the youngest woman ever in the Westminster
Parliament, has been a radical voice socialist activist in Ireland inside
and outside the institutions of power her entire life. In 1981 she and her
husband survived wounded from an assassination attempt in their home. Even
her daughter has been jailed and held, while pregnant, on no charges, in
method of threatening McAlisky's fights for freedom.

This film, a short lecture given to Laney College students in Oakland in
1988, she speaks on the history of Ireland as an oppressed and occupied
nation, and argues for a worldwide solidarity of oppressed people in the
struggle for democratic self-determination. (Introduced by Angela Davis, 40
minute,1988) ($3-5 Donation)

For more information, contact: Joe Marraffino, joe[at]climinal.as,
http://www.climinal.as/newcollege/cinema

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


This review of Jill Blee, BRIGID, appeared in
Irish Studies Review, Volume 9 Number 2
Issue Aug 2001...

It appears here on the Ir-D list with the permission and through the
courtesy of the reviewer...

Kristine Byron
Assistant Professor of Spanish
329 Old Horticulture Bldg.
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824

byronk[at]msu.edu



FROM
Irish Studies Review, Volume 9 Number 2
Issue Aug 2001...
pp 282-283

Brigid
Jill Blee, 1999
Victoria, Australia, Indra Publishing
pp.262, ISBN 0.9585805.4.5, AU$21.95, US$19.95 (Pb)

Reviewed by Kristine Byron

A combination of fiction, history, and travel writing, Brigid traces the
contemporary narrator's journey from Sydney to Ireland, where she plans to
hire a car and tour the island in a counter-clockwise direction. Her
itinerary is foiled by the appearance of Brigid, a ghost from the time of
the Irish famine and, as we soon learn, the narrator's great-great aunt who
had emigrated to Australia in the late 1840s. The text offers a dialogue
between past and present, giving voice to one individual's famine
experiences. Indeed, this is Brigid's story, and her narrative is the most
fascinating part of the book.

In a June 2000 article in The Genealogist, Blee discusses her experiences
writing Brigid, outlining her self-education about nineteenth-century
Ireland, her genealogical research, and her three trips to the island. She
admits that she began her project as a travelogue, 'a book of personal
experiences, with travel tips for the over fifties woman travelling on her
own'. Eventually, she explains, she lost interest in the travelogue and the
text became a 'novel'. Both Brigid and Blee's article suggest interesting
questions about genre. One might argue, in fact, that the classification of
Brigid as a 'novel' is problematic. The narrator, though unnamed in the
text, is clearly 'Jill' herself. This highlights the difficultY of
describing contemporary literature that does not neatly fit into standard
categories (Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior comes to mind). Is
Brigid, then, a travel narrative, a historical novel, autobiographical
fiction, a combination of these, or something else entirely?

At one level, Brigid resembles a traditional travel narrative. The
narrator's journey suggests a search for origins, a temporal and spatial
mapping, an attempt to understand the present self through places that
represent the past. In this case, a divorced Australian woman in her
mid-fifties sets off to visit the land of her ancestors, announcing her
intent to 'go where I want to go, at my own pace. I want to blend in with
the local people, eat in cafes, drink in pubs and come away from Ireland
with a feeling that I know it well' (pp. 3-4). As in other travel
narratives, the 'natives' are either criticised (in this case for being bad
drivers, smokers, and late risers) or romanticised (Brigid often chastises
the narrator when she begins to do this).

Our traveller relies heavily on her Lonely Planet Guide, often to the point
where it seems passages are directly gleaned from it, as in the following
description of the Burren: 'According to the Lonely Planet, this region was
once below the sea covered with coral and sea shells which eventually became
limestone. Then about 270 million years ago, during some great convulsion of
the earth, the whole area was pushed up above the sea ...' (p. 32). The
narrator's advenrures in Dublin in- clude many of the usual tourist
attractions, including Christ Church Cathedral, Dublinia, St Stephen's
Green, the National Library and Museum, and the Book of Kells. What
differentiates this travel narrative from others is the presence of Brigid.
She admonishes the narrator for depending so much on the travel guide and
the history books she picks up and reads along the way. Early on, she warns
her, 'don't you be taking too much notice of that book of yours' (p. 32).
Brigid calls into question books as a source of knowledge, privileging
instead lived experience.

Blee's book has also been described as a historical novel. Brigid is,
perhaps, more about an individual's quest for historical knowledge. The
narrator repeatedly proclaims her interest in Irish history, and by the end
of the text she has re- ceived a history education. But, at times, the
narrator's 'historian' character seems at odds with her limited prior
knowledge of Ireland: she 'hadn't realised' that Irish Gaelic was spoken in
western Ireland, and she hadn't heard of the Burren.

Brigid often becomes angry with the narrator when it seems she is sceptical
of her story. For instance, Brigid leads the narrator to the site of the
family house, but the narrator is not satisfied until she has documentation:
'the historian in me still wants proof' (p.51). In addition to this
scepticism, the narrative often digresses into (sometitnes moralising)
history lessons, as suggested by the following passage:

'My mind goes to recent tragedies. Calamities on the scale of the Great
Famine. Ethiopia, Somalia, the Sudan. Their plight came to our living
rooms. We could give anonymously. We could even get something for our money.
A Bob Geldof concert, a recording, a sticker for the car. There were no Bob
Geldofs to stir the hearts of the berter off, no mass media to bring the
famine to us live.' (p. 114)

Overall, the tone seems a bit too self-conscious, somewhat forced. This may
be due in part to the present-tense narrative technique, a difficult feat
for any writer to pull off well. The narrator always speaks in the present
tense, and there are a few distracting narrative gaps. For example, the main
mystery plaguing the narrator is the contents of the letter Brigid was
delivering to Mr D'Arcy in Dublin. Early in the book, Brigid claims she does
not know what was in the letter, yet she later recites the letter verbatitn,
explaining that she had heard its contents read aloud as it was written.
Brigid possibly is lying in the earlier passage to keep the narrator's (and
reader's) attention. Surprisingly, however, this contradiction seems to be
lost on the narrator, who fails to mention it at all.

One of the book's strong points lies in the distinction it draws between the
adventure narrative a la Lonely Planet, and the more personal, authentic
journey. Yet the narrator seems to retain a 'my books tell me' attitude, in
spite of Brigid's firsthand story. The ghost functions as a fictional device
that allows the narrator to talk about history, yet Brigid has ultimate
control over the narrative; her presence drives the plot of the book, which
ends abrupdy with her disappearance. Brigid's audience would seem to be an
Irish diaspora whose knowledge about Irish history is limited. The narrator
acknowledges at one point, 'Perhaps is it a measure of our New World
insecurity which drives Australians to recreate links
with the old country' (p. 62). One might read Brigid as the story of an
individual struggle to break free from tourist narratives of Ireland.

KRISTINE BYRON
formerly University of Connecticut
now Michigan State University

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

We are approaching a Bank Holiday weekend here in England & Wales...

The weather forecast for the whole of the British Isles is excellent...

I am, even as we speak, throwing bags into the back of the car. I am going
to take my smaller boy, Jake, to Ireland, to the house in Castletownroche,
for a long weekend. Jake will do some horse-riding. I will do some
reading. And together we will do Male Bonding...

Back early next week...

Things are quiet. I see no need to impose the chores of the Irish-Diaspora
list on another person.

Messages sent to me or to
Irish-Diaspora list
will simply be stored until I return.

Paddy O'Sullivan

- --
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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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 hope that Ir-D members will understand this rather bad-tempered
'Housekeeping' item.

The membership of the Irish-Diaspora list is not large - at the moment it
hovers between 150 and 200 members. But this number is greater than it used
to be... (It is in fact a good proportion of the people in the world who
are actually interested in Irish Diaspora Studies...)

In July and August this year, during the northern hemisphere's summer
holiday, we have simply been besieged by Error Messages, generated by the
email systems of some Ir-D members.

People will know that the content of email Error Messages often bears no
relation to the actual causing problem. But the usual problems are caused
by... people being on holiday and their email Inboxes becoming too full to
accept new messages, people abandoning email addresses in the academic
summer shuffle and not telling us, people setting up automatic 'On Holiday'
message systems which respond to EVERY Ir-D message... And so on...

I think we are going to have to be a lot less easy-going about all this, and
start being harsh - though maybe not quite as harsh as other email groups.
There is really no way of investigating the cause of every one of these
Error Messages. So, after accepting a reasonable number of Error Messages
from any one email address - say 10 or so - we will from now on delete that
email address from the Irish-Diaspora list.

So, come September a number of people are going to find that they are no
longer members of the Irish-Diaspora list. We are sad about this. We have
no way of contacting these people to warn them - see above, Error
Messages... I'll keep a note, and maybe when things calm down...

The procedures for temporarily suspending your membership of the Ir-D are
outlined in our NewInfo file, automatically sent to every new member. If
you do not have the NewInfo file, it is displayed at
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net
in the Irish-Diaspora list 'folder'.

Or contact me.

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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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...
Elizabeth A. Ragan, Ph.D.
Salisbury University; Salisbury, MD
earagan[at]salisbury.edu


Call for Papers: 37th International Congress on Medieval Studies; Kalamazoo,
Michigan, May 2002

Traders, Saints, and Pirates: The Sea in Early Medieval Northwestern Europe

This session, sponsored and organized by The Heroic Age journal, will
address issues of maritime culture in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages. Contributions are welcome from the fields of archaeology, history,
literature, linguistics, art history, religion, and folklore. Current
research and dissertation reports are encouraged. Topics may include but
are
by no means limited to:

* sea monsters
* fishing and other maritime subsistence activities
* water transport, either of passengers or goods
* the voyages of early Christian saints
* Viking and other seaborne raiding activities
* naval power; for instance, the ship muster in the Senchus fer nAlban
* the types and capabilities of vessels of the period

The papers presented may be included in a future issue of The Heroic Age, an
electronic peer-reviewed journal of this time period.

For more information or to submit a proposal, please contact:

Elizabeth A. Ragan, Ph.D.
Salisbury University; Salisbury, MD
earagan[at]salisbury.edu

The deadline for proposals is September 15, 2001.