From: "Thomas J. Archdeacon"
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies 2

I was also fortunate enough to be in Cork for the opening of the ICMS,
and have enjoyed following its progress in the past (almost) six years.
I hesitate to add my voice to those lamenting its loss, because, if all
of us who will miss ICMS register our feelings, Paddy will go beserk
processing the messages. As the coordinator of the Irish Studies list,
however, I'll indulge myself, on the grounds that I can confidently
speak on behalf of that list's many members.

The loss is truly a shame. Thanks to Piaras, and thanks to all who will
continue to labor with meager institutional resources to bring together
the work of the Diaspora.

Tom Archdeacon
U. Wisconsin - Madison


- -----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: Saturday, June 14, 2003 11:23 AM
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies 2



From:
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies

This is very sad news - shocking but not altogether surprising...

The Irish Centre for Migration Studies has had to fight for funding and
recognition from Day One and, without the magnificent dedication and
tenacity of it staff and, in particular, of its Director, Piaras
MacEinri, it would have been allowed to wither on the vine long ago.

Its closure underlines what I myself, as an independent scholar working
in the field of Irish migration history in Ireland, have always found:
namely, that Official Ireland is utterly indifferent to the living Irish
Diaspora and to those who work on its behalf.

Perhaps, had the ICMS been located in the West of Ireland, it might have
fared better. As an Irish sub-contractor retired from England once said
to me: 'The higher and hillier the ground, the better the workman - like
the mountain hare'. Where people have always had it easy, they like to
keep it that way, and they don't want to be reminded of those who were
less fortunate...

Knowing Piaras, however, I doubt that the story will end here. Tiochaidh
Ar La!

Ultan Cowley











irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:



< Subject: Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies <
< Dear Colleagues
<
< It is with the greatest regret that I must inform the list that the <
authorities of University College Cork have decided on financial grounds
< to close the Irish Centre for Migration Studies. <
< On behalf of myself and my colleagues, I would like to say how much
we < have appreciated the many close working relationships built up
over the < years. As you will know, valuable and worthwhile research
and < publications have resulted.
<
< We are at present considering whether alternative ways and means can
be < found to sustain the Centre's work in the field of migration
studies in < Ireland. <
< Piaras Mac Éinrí Director/Stiúrthóir
< Irish Centre for Migration Studies/Ionad na hImirce
< National University of Ireland, Cork/Coláiste na hOllscoile, Corcaigh
< email/post leictreonach migration[at]ucc.ie web/idirlíon <
http://migration.ucc.ie
<
<

From: "Brian McGinn"
To: "Irish Diaspora Studies"
Subject: Ir-D Query from TIARA

Just to reassure Paddy, and David Collins from TIARA, that there is no
problem in substituting a link to my Montserrat article as found on the
new Irish Roots homepage, for the one previously included among TIARA's
links.

The dispute Paddy refers to involved the posting of my article on
another web site, without my knowledge or permission, and consequent
copyright issues. These I am happy to report have since been amicably
resolved by Irish Roots editor Tony McCarthy and myself.

That said, as a free sample article from the magazine, a casual reader
would not necessarily know that it's the first installment of a
three-part series, and that it lack the "bells and whistles" that
accompanied the print
edition: tables of the ten most common surnames in Montserrat, in 1678
and 1994, and an ethnic breakdown of the island's population based on
the 1678 census.

If more evidence is needed that it's always best to check the printed
source, consider the confusion that Bill Innanen encounters in his
well-intentioned if idiosyncratic effort to post a comprehensive online
history of Montserrat: http://mni.ms/history/index.shtml

He relies heavily--far too heavily, in my opinion, though to his credit
he does acknowledge it--on the excellent historical work of the late
Marion
Wheeler:
http://mni.ms/history/mainsource.shtml

But when he introduces another source, in an effort to lessen his
obvious reliance on Wheeler, he runs into trouble. He cannot decide, for
example, whether Montserrat's first governor was born in Ireland, or
"Wessex" in England. He was born in Ireland (in Co. Wexford), as Wheeler
reports.

Likewise, Innanen's "sources differ" on whether the island's second
governor, Roger Obsorne, was the brother-in-law or father-in-law of
Anthony Brisket the first governor. Again, Wheeler correctly identifies
Roger Osborne of Waterford as the brother of Brisket's wife Elizabeth.
Finally, Innanen reports that in 1655 Osborne entertained the visiting
Oliver Cromwell. His visitor was of course Henry Cromwell, recruiting
for an attack on Spanish-held Hispaniola (in the end, the English
expedition ended up taking Jamaica)..

Not to end on a sour note, here's a nice link written by Bill Innanen on
the background to modern-day celebrations of March 17th in Montserrat:
http://mni.ms/stpats2003/index.shtml


Brian McGinn
Alexandria, Virginia
bmcginn[at]earthlink.net

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Further to our sequence of messages about the proposed closure of the
Irish Centre for Migration Studies by University College Cork...

Breda Gray, who is now based at Limerick...
Breda.Gray[at]ul.ie
has drafted a letter which will be sent to decision makers at University
College Cork and to the print media within Ireland. The letter
expresses dissatisfaction with the decision and asks that it be
reconsidered.

If you would like to support this letter, contact Breda directly, before
12 noon GMT on Wednesday June 18 - please include your organisational
affiliation.

Patrick O'Sullivan


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

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From:
Reply-To:
To: ,

Dear Colleagues,

There are very few words to express our sadness for such a bad news. I
recall the wonderful "Scattering" Conference held in UCC in 1997, where
I was honoured to lecture. Through all these years we have seen all the
work done by Piaras MacEinrí and all the members of the ICMS.

We hope that in the near future the authorities of UCC will reconsidered
this decision and that we could attend the re-opening of the ICMS.

Best regards,
Guillermo MacLoughlin
Buenos Aires
Argentina


- -----Original Message-----
From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies

Dear Colleagues

It is with the greatest regret that I must inform the list that the
authorities of University College Cork have decided on financial grounds
to close the Irish Centre for Migration Studies.

On behalf of myself and my colleagues, I would like to say how much we
have appreciated the many close working relationships built up over the
years. As you will know, valuable and worthwhile research and
publications have resulted.

We are at present considering whether alternative ways and means can be
found to sustain the Centre's work in the field of migration studies in
Ireland.

Piaras Mac Iinrm Director/Stizrthsir
Irish Centre for Migration Studies/Ionad na hImirce
National University of Ireland, Cork/Colaiste na hOllscoile, Corcaigh
email/post leictreonach migration[at]ucc.ie web/idirlmon
http://migration.ucc.ie

From: Don MacRaild
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk '"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies

I'm sorry I missed the breaking news about Cork's decision.

What a great pity. And how short-termist. For is this not a time -- the
most important time -- to study migrations? Ireland, like most of
Europe, is struggling (mainly unsuccessfully) to come to terms with its
own immigrant present and immigrant future, and it staggers me that the
academy believes it knows enough already of its own diasporan
trajectories without further important work in Cork. I can't help but
feel that there is, in this decision, a profound failure to appreciate
what migration means for the world, past, present and future. It smacks
of a comfortable, inward-looking, self-assured sense of priorities: a
stacking up of self-belief which is totally at variance with reality.
I'm sorry Piaras, Breda and all the rest ... Bad times indeed.

Don MacRaild

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

If I can be allowed a personal note - Thomas Archdeacon, sir...

It is only right that we express our concern about the wider
implications of such a decision, and our concern for Piaras...

When I first heard the news I wrote to Piaras...

'I have no words of comfort, and very few words of advice... I suppose
the Old Fogey in me will say: If "they" want to get rid of you
eventually "they" will get rid of you. But only after putting you
through a lot of stress and delay. It is a very fine judgement. Yes,
struggle and rearguard action can slow things down - and maybe a change
of regime or climate will come to the rescue... But, but. Look after
yourself...'

It seems to me, too, that there is a more general background problem, -
which I mentioned in my article for the Galicians, in Tempo Exterior.
(I am not sure if this is covered in the crisper, English language
version in New Hibernia Review). 'Irish Studies' and of course Irish
Diaspora Studies have rarely got themselves dug into the university
academic organisations. They are nearly always out on a limb. A limb
which looks untidy to the organisation. A limb which can be chopped
off. That is always the organisation's easiest cost-cutting exercise.

Looking around Irish academia, within the Republic of Ireland -
something that is now easy to do through the web - I find very few
places with a commitment to Irish Studies, however defined. And fewer
still with any genuine, scholarly longterm interest in the study of the
Irish Diaspora.

Paddy


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

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From:
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies 8

In my opinion Paddy need apologise to no one for expressing
'a personal note' on this issue...

For those working in this field OUTSIDE the academic mainstream, i.e.
unsupported (wholeheartedly) by a specific university department, it
doesn't GET any more personal than this!

Even more so in Ireland, where the arts and humanities are now poor
relations, and ancillary sources of income such as adult education are
consistently starved of funds...

Don MacRaild is quite right to accuse the academic authorities of
smugness and complacency; but we should remember that the upper levels
of the academic hierarchy here belong to a generation which, in the
main, benefited enormously from the absence of competition for scarce
resources caused by the mass emigration of the 1950s & '60s.

In the words of economic historian James Meenan: 'Emigration...has
allowed those who remain at home to enjoy a standard of living which is
not justified by the volume of their production' (The Irish Economy
since 1922, 1970, p.347).

On the same page Meenan observes that, 'In Ireland, there is always a
lost generation' - but who determines its membership? Even in the '80s,
with an unprecedented output of young able graduates, the daily queues
outside the US & Australian embassies stretched around the block from
dawn to dusk for years. But how many bore the names of our Establishment
elite?

I applaud Breda for going public on this issue; that is precisely what's
needed. Hopefully the media will give it a good airing!

Ultan Cowley














irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:




< Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
< Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net
<
< Irish Diaspora Research Unit
< Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
< University of Bradford
< Bradford BD7 1DP
< Yorkshire
< England
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<

From: Maria Power
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: Call for Papers

Could you please post this to the list.

Thank you
Maria


The Women on Ireland Research Network

Meeting of Minds: Comparing Migrant Experiences Across Ethnic Groups

Saturday 22nd November 2003 at the Camden Irish Centre, London.

We are inviting proposals for papers on the themes of

* Migrant culture, gender and identities
* Media representations of minorities and or refugees
* Stereotyping and racism
* Migrant health
* Travellers and gypsies.

Speakers already confirmed include Choman Hardi, Joanne O'Brien and Mary
Tilki.

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to Louise Ryan,
l.ryan[at]rfc.ucl.ac.uk or Dr Louise Ryan, Medical School, Royal Free and
University College Hospital, Rolandhill Street, London NW3 2PF by 1st
September 2003.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The web site of the the Irish American Cultural Institute (IACI) is
turning into a thing of use and beauty...

http://www.iaci-usa.org/

Our attention has been drawn to the Funding section

http://www.iaci-usa.org/funding.html

In particular the Irish Research Funds
http://www.iaci-usa.org/irf.html

Note that the application forms can be downloaded from the web site, and
that the application deadline is October 1.

Here, from the web site, is the list of '2002 Irish Research Fund
Awardees':

Ms. Aine Corrigan - Recipient of an Irish Institute Award for her
research topic, "Enterprising Emigrants - A Sociological Study of the
Irish Ethnic Entrepreneurs in Boston and New York". Ms. Corrigan is a
PhD candidate in Sociology at National University of Ireland-Maynooth,
participating in an exchange program at Boston College.

Ms. Aileen Dillane - Recipient of an O'Shaughnessy Award for her
research topic, "Into the West: The Imagining of Contemporary Irish
Identity in America Through Musical Experience". Ms. Dillane is a PhD
candidate in Ethnomusicology with a specialization in Irish music in
America at the University of Chicago. In addition to the
IACI-O'Shaunessy Award, Ms. Dillane has also been honored with the
University of Chicago Century Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship for
Study in the US.

Professor Kerby Miller - Recipient of an O'Shaughnessy Award for his
research topic, "Irish Religious Demography and Migration, 1659-1861".
Professor Miller received his PhD in History at the University of
California, Berkley, and is currently a Professor of History at the
University of Missouri. Professor Miller proposes to research the
absolute and proportional changes in the numbers of Protestants and
Catholics that occurred in the counties, baronies, and parishes of
Ireland, and particularly of Ulster, between 1659 and 1861.

Ms. Niamh C. Lynch - Recipient of a Friendly Sons of St. Patrick Award
for her research on the 1916 uprising as a consciously anti-imperial
movement rather than simply anti-British. Ms. Lynch is a PhD candidate
in History at Boston College.

Professor Howard Lune - Recipient of an Irish Institute Award for his
research to explore the roots of Irish-American associations in 19th
century Irish civil society and to elaborate on the role of the new
patterns of association in New York on the development of Irish-American
identity, assimilation, and political empowerment. Professor Lune
received his PhD in Sociology at New York University and is currently
serving as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Paterson
University.

Mr. Peter Flynn - Recipient of an Irish Institute Award for his research
topic, "How Bridget Was Framed: Representing the Irish in Popular
American Cinema, 1895-1945". Mr. Flynn is a PhD candidate in
Communication Studies at the University of Massachusetts. Mr. Flynn's
project will examine the cinematic representations of the Irish in
America from the birth of the motion picture industry in the mid-1890s
until the aftermath of the Second World War. Mr. Flynn is also the
founder and curator of the Boston Irish Film Festival.

Professor C.W. Sullivan III - Recipient of a Friendly Sons of St.
Patrick Award for his research topic, "Bound for Australia: The Rhetoric
of the Convict Diary". Professor Sullivan received his PhD in Mythology
in Literature from the University of Oregon and is currently a Professor
of English at East Carolina University.

Professor William Mulligan - Recipient of an Irish Institute Award for
his research topic, "Irish Immigrants in the Michigan Copper Country,
1845-1920". Professor Sullivan received his PhD in History from Clark
University and is currently an Associate Professor of History at Murray
State University

From: Brian Lambkin
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Protest at Closure

Hello Paddy

Sad days. Please post this on our behalf.
Brian

Over the last five, nearly six years it has been our privilege to work
closely with the Irish Centre for Migration Studies and Piaras Mac Éinrí
and his colleagues in a spirit of cross-border co-operation and
complementarity. We are indebted to them for their support more than we
can say and are determined to explore every possible way to minimise the
damage inflicted directly on them and indirectly on all of us in the
network that is Irish Migration Studies. It is heartening to know that
so many others feel the same. Brian Lambkin, Paddy Fitzgerald, John
Lynch, Lorraine Tennant, Chris McIvor, Christine Johnston, Belinda
Mahaffy Centre for Migration Studies at the Ulster-American Folk Park,
Omagh

Dr B K Lambkin
Director
Centre for Migration Studies
Ulster-American Folk Park
Castletown, Omagh, Co Tyrone, N. Ireland
BT 78 5QY
Tel: 028 82 256315 Fax: 028 82 242241
www.qub.ac.uk/cms www.folkpark.com



- -----Original Message-----
From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
[mailto:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
Sent: 17 June 2003 06:59
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Protest at Closure





From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Further to our sequence of messages about the proposed closure of the
Irish Centre for Migration Studies by University College Cork...

Breda Gray, who is now based at Limerick...
Breda.Gray[at]ul.ie
has drafted a letter which will be sent to decision makers at University
College Cork and to the print media within Ireland. The letter
expresses dissatisfaction with the decision and asks that it be
reconsidered.

If you would like to support this letter, contact Breda directly, before
12 noon GMT on Wednesday June 18 - please include your organisational
affiliation.

Patrick O'Sullivan

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The web site of the journal _Studies_ has now reached a stage when it
makes a useful resource...

http://www.jesuit.ie/studies/index.htm

There are Table of Contents of recent past issues, including, in some
cases, abstracts.

The theme of the current issue is
EQUALITY
Summer 2003 - Volume 92 - Number 366

And as well as the TOC and Abstracts you can get access to the text of
some articles... Of special interest is

The Stalwart Ladies:
Nineteenth Century Female Irish Emigrants to the United States
William Phalen

And

THE LEGALISATION OF ADOPTION IN IRELAND
Anthony Keating

'Studies is published quarterly by the Irish Jesuits.'
'Studies examines Irish social, political, cultural and economic issues
in the light of Christian values and explores the Irish dimension in
literature, history, philosophy and religion. Anglo Irish and Irish
North/South relations are regular topics.'

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Interesting material is now beginning to appear on Bettina Arnold's
'rolling' web journal...
http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/celtic/ekeltoi/index.html

Now freely available is this article on Irish film...

http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol2/crosson_2_1.html

Vanishing Point: An examination of some consequences of globalization
for contemporary Irish film Sean Crosson, National University of
Ireland, Galway

Abstract
In the following article, some films produced with the support of Bord
Scannán na hÉireann (The Irish Film Board) since its reconstitution in
1993 are examined in light of the work of global anthropologist Arjun
Appadurai and his theory of global cultural flows. I suggest that
cinema, primarily of Hollywood origin, has had a notable influence on
the development of Irish society and Irish film. Contemporary Irish film
itself also reflects the failure of Irish history to excite the
imagination of Ireland's youth as effectively as the seductive
depictions of America's past as mediated through the Western and
gangster films. Indeed, films made in Ireland today reflect the
influence of both these genres. However, as the key to the Hollywood
continuity style of film-making is its own self-effacement, this has
sometimes been reflected in the effacement of people, politics and place
in contemporary Irish film as film-makers endeavor to attract a global
audience for their work.
Keywords
Irish Film, Bord Scannán na hÉireann (The Irish Film Board),
Globalization, Mediascapes, Ideoscapes

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

I have mentioned already the extraorindary resource that is
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

Below I have pasted in the H-Albion review of this web resource.

Note that there is now on the web site a background essay...

The Irish in London
The Irish Immigrant Community in Eighteenth-Century London

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/history/communities/irish.html

Limited, but that is the state of play...

P.O'S.

- -----Original Message-----
H-NET MEDIA REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (June, 2003)

_The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London, 1674-1834_. A fully
searchable on-line edition of the _Proceedings of the Old Bailey_.
Project Directors, Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker.
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

Reviewed for H-Albion by John Smail , Department
of History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The incredible riches of the _Proceedings of the Old Bailey_ have long
been familiar to historians of British society in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century. Published continuously since the 1670s, they
contain a record of all the trials at London's central criminal court,
many in some detail, and as such provide a unique insight into the lives
of ordinary Londoners during these centuries. Obviously of tremendous
interest to historians of crime, the _Proceedings_ also illuminate many
other issues including work, neighborhood interactions, local politics,
family, and sexuality and gender.

Heretofore, however, using the _Proceedings_ has required access to a
library with the microfilm copies and an almost limitless supply of
patience. The project directed by Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker
has changed that by putting an edition of the _Proceedings_ on line
complete with a very sophisticated search engine. To date, the 22,000
trials for 1714 to 1749 are available. Additional records will be added
in batches, beginning with the trials from 1760-99 due out this summer,
so that eventually the site will include the published _Proceedings_
from 1674 to 1834, some 100,000 trials in all.

The result is truly outstanding, and it is to be hoped that the various
digitizing projects underway in archives across the United Kingdom live
up to the standard set here. What the team led by Hitchcock and
Shoemaker has achieved is an on-line edition that maintains the
integrity of the original source while adding search tools to make the
material it contains much, much more accessible to researchers.
Moreover that achievement is presented in a web format which is easy to
read, easy to navigate, and quite accessible. (Technical note: the
essential features of the site present no problems for a telephone
modem; the only function that really requires a high-speed connection is
viewing the facsimile images of the original.)

Access to the trial records is through the "Search the Proceedings"
page, and the various options there allow one unprecedented access to
the contents of the _Proceedings_ down several different avenues. The
most basic is the ability to browse transcripts of the trials in
chronological order; effectively the same as studying the microfilm
except that it's a lot easier to read. (Sticklers have the option of
checking the transcription against an image of the original page.) The
simplest of the search features is a keyword search that trawls through
the full text of the _Proceedings_ (or selected data fields); users can
combine keyword searches with Boolean operators (and/or) to find
combinations of two or more words, and the option of finding words near
to each other permits searches for phrases. Somewhat more sophisticated
are the search features that allow one to search cases by name, place,
or the details of the crime. These searches rely upon data fields that
have been added by the programmers including the name, gender,
occupation, and residence of all plaintiffs and defendants, the date and
place of the crime, and the type of crime and the trial's outcome. In
addition, a computer program was used to tag most of the personal names
found in the text--including those mentioned in passing in testimony.
Finally, the advanced search option allows users to combine name, place,
and crime searches for further refinement. In addition, there is a
statistical function; the ability to search for references to the same
trial in several sets of associated records (such as the _Newgate
Calendar_); and, promised for a future release, a mapping function. The
search tools are fairly intuitive, though it is worth spending the time
to read the instructions and practicing to be sure to get results that
best suit your purpose. Particularly helpful, given the vagaries of
eighteenth-century orthography, are the various wildcard characters one
can use.

Searching by computer, of course, has its pitfalls. Relatively simple
searches, for types of crimes, specific places, or individuals, are
probably fairly reliable, but the more complex the idea the less easy it
is to be sure that the particular search strategy you have chosen is
identifying all of the relevant records. For example, a search for the
keyword "riot" produced fifty-two records, but failed to include the
trial of John Love and others accused of damage to property in 1716
during the course of what clearly was a mug-house riot. However, since
the only other option is to read through the records of each and every
trial, these are pitfalls that researchers may well be willing to
accept.

The character of the entries turned up by these various search
strategies vary. In the _Proceedings_ from the 1710s and 1720s, more
than half of the entries are a very short paragraph typically giving
just the name, crime, and verdict. These are interspersed with longer
entries covering the more interesting (read salacious) trials which
sometimes a run a page or more and include testimony and sometimes cross
examination. Records from the 1740s onwards tend to be fuller, although
the coverage continues to vary according to the interest and complexity
of the case. Serious students should consult the publishing history
included in the introduction that explains how the commercial market for
the _Proceedings_ shaped its contents in different periods.

Although the ability to view and search the _Proceedings_ is clearly at
the heart of what this project offers, there are some nice extras
included on the site. Particularly useful for visitors unfamiliar with
the basic social and economic history of eighteenth-century London are a
series of essays on the court and criminal proceedings, London and its
environs, gender and gender roles, and important racial and ethnic
communities in London--gypsies, Jews, blacks, Irish, and homosexuals.
Each of these essays is accompanied by a thorough and up-to-date
bibliography. There is also a section for schools, though it is aimed
primarily at teachers in the United Kingdom.

Even as it stands now, at only a quarter of its eventual size, this
on-line edition of the _Proceedings of the Old Bailey_ is a significant
addition to the growing body of source material accessible over the
internet. Hitchcock and Shoemaker should be congratulated both for what
they have done here and for the model they have established. Serious
researchers now have access to a high-quality transcript of the Old
Bailey cases and the ability to check that transcript against the
original on the spot; moreover, the search tools hold the potential of
opening up that material to new kinds of questions because the provide
the tools needed to manage information on this scale. This site is also
a potentially valuable teaching tool, since it allows students access to
a substantial body of primary source material. I for one can imagine
constructing a methods course around the rich resources found here, for
there are plenty of interesting research questions and opportunities for
exploration in what is, virtually, the real thing.

Copyright (c) 2003 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

Much of interest here, including of course the remarks on Clodagh Tait's
book - 'a valuable addition to the study of early modern Ireland also,
a period still dominated by studies of political history...'

P.O'S.


- -----Original Message-----
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (June, 2003)

Vanessa Harding. _The Dead and the Living in Paris and London,
1500-1670_.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xvi + 343 pp.
Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $65.00 (cloth),
ISBN 0-521-81126-0.

Peter Marshall. _Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England_. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002. xi + 344 pp. Notes, bibliography, and
index. $74.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-19-820773-5.

Clodagh Tait. _Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650_.
Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Basingstoke and New York:
Palgrave, 2002. xi + 229 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography,
and index. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-333-99741-7.

Reviewed for H-Albion by William Gibson ,
Faculty of Arts and Professional Studies, Basingstoke College of
Technology

Death, Dying and the Dead in the Early Modern Era

The gravestone of the Revd William Lowth, rector of Petersfield in
Hampshire, erected in 1732, read: "William Lowth ... being dead, desires
to speak to his beloved parishioners and sweetly to exhort them
constantly to attend public worship of God, frequently to receive Holy
Communion and diligently to observe the good instructions of this
place."[1] Such direct interaction between the dead and the living was
rare in eighteenth-century England, but two centuries before such direct
"contact" lay at the core of religious experience. These three
excellent books shed new light on the nature of death, dying and the
treatment of the dead in early modern society.

Tempting as it is to use the old Londoners' grouse about buses (that
none comes along for ages and then three come all at once), in fact
there has been a healthy and stimulating literature on the history of
the dead in early modern society for some time. The doyen of the field,
Phillip Aries, claimed that death in modern society had become
invisible, whereas for those in past times it was highly visible and a
major preoccupation of people.[2] The place of the dead in a wider
social perspective has been the subject of studies by Ralph Houlbrooke,
David Cressy, and J. Whaley.[3] Claire Gittings's studies of funeral and
mortuary processes and culture, and the imagery of death focuses
attention on the economic as well as social aspects of death in the
early modern era.[4] Nigel Llewellyn's study of _The Art of Death:
Visual Culture in English Death Ritual, c. 1500-c. 1800_ (1991) also
argues that death and its rituals were highly symbolic with a visual
language of its own. In short, the thanatology of the early modern
period is a rich and flourishing scholarly field into which the seeds of
these books fall.

All these books argue the case that death, dying and the dead were
central to people in the early modern era. Indeed this can hardly be
doubted by any historian familiar with parish records that include
references to, _inter alia_, the women who washed the bodies of the dead
and wound them in sheets, to the ravages of plague and other epidemics
that visited death on an unmanageable scale on villages and towns, and
to the plethora of folk customs and practices that accompanied deaths.
The claim of Cranmer's liturgy that "in the midst of life we are in
death" which, Aries might claim, is today simply a poetic ornament, was
a reality in Tudor and Stuart societies. Perhaps the immediacy of death
made it less terrifying for people four hundred years ago, perhaps not,
but death was undoubtedly more widely experienced than today. Certainly
there is some evidence that contemporaries who experienced a close
proximity to death made it less unwelcome; Edmund Spencer wrote "Sleep
after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life
does greatly please." Those who did not feel so comfortable with death
were not somehow right-thinking; Sir Francis Bacon wrote that: "death is
a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at
home." Death also played a far greater role in the inner lives of
people in early modern society than it does today. Sin and salvation,
redemption and the intercession for the souls in purgatory were constant
preoccupations for men and women. Indeed, arguably, the whole foundation
of Christianity rested on preparation for death and a clear
understanding of the nature of the afterlife. Whereas for the modern
mind life is not a dress rehearsal, for the early modern mind it was
_exactly_ that. A rehearsal for the one event that united rich and
poor, men and women, paupers and princes in a single common experience.

That shared experience of death, and its consequences, is treated in
different ways by these three books, but the tensions arising from death
is paramount. Clodagh Tait, Lecturer in History at University College,
Dublin surveys dying, death, and funeral practices in largely rural
society Ireland, in which Protestants and Catholics coexisted, uneasily
and sometimes violently. Vanessa Harding, Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck
College, University of London, treats the dead in London and Paris as an
aspect of urban history, in which order, government, and ritual
interacted with corpses. The tension arose from the demand for space
for which the living and the dead competed. Peter Marshall, Senior
Lecturer in History at Warwick University, traces the theological
tensions that arose from the decline of the doctrines of purgatory and
intercession for the dead during and after the Reformation. Tait's book
is the only one of the three that considers the process of dying in
detail. Dr. Tait argues that to the modern mind dying represents
failure, whereas for many in medieval and early modern Ireland dying
could be a triumph. But dying also had a moral ambivalence in early
modern society. There was dying "well" and dying "badly." Dying "well"
was to have learned the lessons of life. Leonardo da Vinci wrote that
"as a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy
death." Irish clergy emphasized the importance of spiritual preparation
for death and Jesuits were especially keen to win deathbed conversions
from Protestants. Here too the cultural contrast with today is stark:
the sudden heart attack or instant death is seen today, perhaps, as a
blessing, but four hundred years ago was felt to have denied people the
opportunity to prepare for death. Dying, for both Irish Catholics and
Protestants, was associated with the disposal of property: charitable
bequests, testaments, and the caricature of the unscrupulous clergy
persuading people to make deathbed endowments of the Church--the
mortmain that was outlawed from Edward I's reign onward. In such
decisions the dying prepared not only for their own departure but
readied the world for their absence. They also made dying a communal
concern, spreading out beyond the individual to his family, parish, and
the wider community. "Bad" deaths included those from famine, war and
disease, the method of dying--and particularly the denial of
preparation--was a sign of providential disapproval. Dying might be a
cause of grief, but excessive grief was inappropriate. Joanna the Mad's
peripatetic pilgrimage with the corpse of her husband, Phillip the Fair,
was an example of such misplaced excess of grief; it was also implicitly
a rejection of God's will. Harding argues that in both London and Paris
dying was highly ritualized and that some social practices became
"para-rituals." In Paris a deathbed was likely to be dominated by the
clergy, and thus represented continuity with the past. In
post-Reformation London deathbeds were far more likely to be secular
with such matters as will and testaments treated as a lay rather than
ecclesiastical matters.

The presence of the corpse after death in the house in Irish tradition,
possibly for three or four days, meant perhaps that the impact of the
moment of death was lessened. But a plethora of death lore and
practices kicked in: ringing bells, washing the body, laying out,
embalming for the rich, biers, lychgates, wakes, death messengers who
were said to visit the living, and the rest. The community joined in
these rites with guilds often lending biers and cloths for the funeral.
Funerals themselves in Ireland were profoundly doctrinal as well as
social moments. The wealthy enjoyed heraldic funerals with sermons,
feasts, processions and even orders of precedence for mourners.
Catholic funerals also entailed elaborate ceremonial, whereas
Protestants preferred simplicity, even night funerals to avoid display.
In 1641 the House of Commons expressed concern at elaborate funerals
because Catholic funerals implied opposition to the government in
Ireland. Riots occurred at some funerals, as in 1623 at the funeral of
Lady Killeen, and in opposition to Catholics their priests were
sometimes assaulted at funerals.

The dead, that is the remains of the dead, caused serious problems for
the living. This is the theme of Harding's book. Comparing London and
Paris in the century and three quarters that straddles the Reformation,
Dr. Harding uses the treatment of the dead to develop new ideas of the
management of space in the early modern town. The sheer scale of the
problem presented by the dead is staggering: London buried between three
and seven thousand a year, even eleven thousand in a time of plague;
whereas Paris, a third larger than London, buried between seventeen and
twenty thousand a year. As in Ireland, food shortages, weather and
disease were as much factors in mortality in London and Paris. But
there were subtle differences between the two cities. Paris had large
hospitals to which the ailing and dying often went, thereby removing the
weight of death from many suburbs--both in terms of numbers and
experience. In contrast, London's hundred or more parishes, each with
its own graveyard, brought the treatment of the dead to more officials
and parishioners than in Paris, which had forty-five parishes and fewer,
larger, graveyards. Thus the experience of death in London was closer to
each inhabitant than perhaps it was in Paris. The regulation of the
dead and their graves was also complex. In London, churchyards filled
quickly, and despite re-use, parishes sought additional burial grounds,
though people had strong preferences for traditional burial sites, close
to their ancestors and hallowed for generations by Catholics as much as
by Protestants after the Reformation. To deal with demand, parishioners
developed fees to try to use market forces to regulate it. Double fees
were exacted for graves of particular location, for night burials, and
for those without the right of residence in the parish. For those who
could not afford such fees, grave pits and unmarked graves that were
subject to multiple occupancy was the norm. Paris tried to relieve the
pressure with compulsory purchase of burial grounds and charnel houses
that enabled bones to be cleared from the graves. Yet in both cities
the demand for space created tension between the living and the dead.
Graveyards had also to be used for secular purposes: markets, assembly
places, thoroughfares, and even places of work--not least the
stationers' trade in St. Paul's churchyard in London. In both cities
overflow graveyards were unpopular but were quickly adopted by religious
dissenters: Quakers and nonconformists in London and Huguenots in Paris.
Otherwise they were to be resorted to only in time of epidemic and were
associated with poverty, overcrowding, illness, and negligent sextons.
The breakdown of the use of traditional burial places had an unsettling
effect.

Harding shows that funerals were also a point at which the dead
connected to the economy of the living. In Paris the _juves crierurs_
exercised control of the valuable funeral trade in accoutrements and in
London also funerals were important moments of consumption and profit.
There were "concentric circles of participation" in funerals, from the
family to the suppliers of services, the recipients of charity, the
clergy, choirs and even spectators in the cases of large civic and royal
funerals. In Paris such participation in funerals implied an explicit
reciprocity which demanded intercession and prayers for the dead. Such
moments had a unifying effect on the cities, using grief as a mean of
social catharsis for other tensions. Harding concludes that the living
and the dead co-existed since they shared space, and this created
instability. The solutions to the problems created by congestion
emphasized the role of civic leaders and created a sense of order in
sometimes unstable urban environments. Despite the Reformation,
funerals in London had a unifying effect, healing social tensions
perhaps because they were closer to the experience of the individual
parishioner. But in Paris, where death was removed from peoples'
experience, there were more sectarian conflicts with frequent
anti-Huguenot violence and tension.

As Tait makes clear in Ireland, and Harding in London and Paris, death
confirmed the social hierarchy by the taxonomy of space. Interior
burials in churches, vaults, chapels and tombs were guarantees for the
rich of the permanence of a burial site, and one that was regarded as
closer to God. Just as in 1627 the Dean and Chapter of Dublin restricted
those entitled to burial in St Patrick's Cathedral, so in London and
Paris vestrymen and clergy regulated such privileges. Catholic Paris
retained chantries and masses for the dead which eroded the public space
available for burial in favor of exclusive and excluding burial space.
In post-Reformation London tombs and vaults were still used, and in both
cities their inscriptions and imagery offered multimedia instruction in
the duty of the living for the dead. Funeral sermons and prayers also
endorsed the social hierarchy as well as such duties. In Ireland burial
practices suggested ambivalence to the affective family: women dying in
childbirth were often buried with their father's rather than their
husband's family. But other types of communities were also suggested:
Catholic clergy were often buried together and, despite the canons, the
executed and the excommunicated were rarely denied burial rites. Some
newly-rich families invented vaults and chantries to create the illusion
of family longevity.[5] Ireland also had a tradition of disinterment, to
permit couples to be buried together, to rebury the dead in battle, and
to separate Catholics and Protestants. Religious orders sometimes
promoted reburial to ensure endowments were protected.

Monuments in Ireland, claims Tait, had a number of significances.
Elaborate decoration might indicate wealth and status; it also suggested
Catholicism or Protestantism. Style might suggest geography, since
Ulster and Connaught contained fewer elaborately decorated tombs.
Occasionally the use of Latin might obscure the meaning of inscriptions,
especially by Catholics, and in time some monuments gained folk powers
such as the capacity to heal. Inscriptions might be used to defend the
actions of the deceased, and in the case of women they often endorsed
the virtues expected of wives, widows and mothers. Above all, they
spoke to the living about death. They often contained indications that
men and women should resign themselves to a predetermined span of life
and to the need to prepare for death. Catholic monuments ensured that
cautionary tales about purgatory and the need for the living to redeem
the dead with masses, charity and prayer were widely-known; whereas
Protestant inscriptions emphasized faith in Christ and sinlessness as a
mean of entering Heaven. Tait's central argument, that in Plantation
Ireland death was highly symbolic and that its rituals created a
powerful "landscape of the dead," finds its strongest illustration in
the study of monumental inscriptions.

Dying and death were powerful features in early modern society, but they
did not contain the rich theological complexities of the nature of
beliefs about the dead that are apparent in Peter Marshall's book. The
central issue of Marshall's book is "the death of purgatory" and the
impact of the Reformation on those practices that arose from it.
Marshall argues that the fate of the dead was the "hub" of religion in
pre-Reformation England. The living saw themselves as soon to join the
dead and therefore relieving the suffering of those in purgatory was of
immediate importance. Purgatory was the object of considerable thought
and study; there was a whole topography that separated, for example, the
limbo reserved for those unbaptized children from those souls who had
died before the incarnation of Christ. Purgatory was brought close to
the living by the whole range of funeral practices and the membrane
between the living and the souls in purgatory was emphasized by lore,
like that of the return of unquiet souls on All Souls eve. All of this
pressed a weight down on the living: a duty to remember the dead and to
relieve them. Masses, anniversaries and "obits" (services to remember
the dead) were used by the clergy to inculcate a fear of the
unremembered dead. But of greatest historical importance were
indulgences, by which the Church responded to the consumer demand that
it had created. A question that arises from Marshall's study is whether
one of the causes of the Reformation was the over-burdensome weight of
the obligations to the dead? Certainly Marshall argues that
intellectually the dependence of the pre-Reformed Church on purgatory
made it vulnerable to demands for reform.

It was, argues Marshall, a coincidence that an emerging evangelical
critique of purgatory and intercession emerged at the same time as the
Henrican reform agenda. Luther may not have disavowed purgatory (though
he did attack indulgences) but Zwingli did. In England Henry VIII's
juvenile theology might have endorsed purgatory, but Simon Fish's attack
on the concept emphasized its clericalism and Anne Boleyn gave a copy of
Fish's work to the King. The most developed attack on purgatory came
from John Frith, who argued that it was not biblical, served the
clergy's corrupt financial interests, and robbed the poor of the true
Christ. There were troubling questions that reforming clergy asked:
where was purgatory? why did the Pope not choose to release all the
suffering souls? The Henrican reforms of the Church in England retained
prayers for the dead but restrained sermons on purgatory. In secular
circles Cromwell was the most determined enemy of purgatory, proposing
its abolition to Parliament and in 1534 outlawing papal indulgences.
But for the remainder of Henry VIII's reign there was an ambivalence
toward purgatory, the Ten Articles retained prayers for the dead but the
language of purgatory became increasingly anachronistic and arcane. If,
as Bishop Latimer held, the monasteries were standard-bearers for
indulgences and intercession, their dissolution had a doctrinal as well
as economic consequences. The sale of the monasteries meant that bodies
were dispersed and in some cases reburied, and by 1545 the Chantries Act
outlawed masses for the souls of the dead.

Edward VI's full-blooded Protestant Reformation attacked purgatory in a
more direct way: four thousand chantries were dissolved, bede-roll and
obits were abolished. Only Bishop Gardiner fought a rear-guard action.
Purgatory and intercession disappeared very quickly with few protests.
A. G. Dickens argued that this was a consequence of the eradication of
chantries, Christopher Haig claimed that the idea was already in
decline; in contrast Marshall argues that there was local resistance to,
and subversion of, the eradication of purgatory, especially in Sussex
and Essex. Nevertheless, while Cranmer's 1549 prayerbook retained
traces of intercession, by 1552 funeral Eucharists were abolished.
During Mary's reign, Marshall argues, there was only a half-hearted
attempt at a restoration of purgatory, and probably it was only revived
as a means of flushing out those who opposed it as a way to identify the
enemies of Catholicism. Under Elizabeth, the bishops and clergy "hunted
purgatory to extinction" (p. 124). Grindall at York stamped out both
purgatory and the customs connected with it, such as ringing church
bells for the dead, though even after its formal abolition in 1571 this
remained the last vestige of purgatory. James I might have dismissed
purgatory as not worth discussing but in such places as Lancashire
(which Marshall describes as "the wild west" of Tudor and Stuart
Protestantism) it remained popular in isolated pockets.

Elizabeth and Jacobean divines struggled to find a replacement for
purgatory, but they found it in the first century practice of prayer for
the dead, not as intercession but as a way of strengthening the hope of
the living for the resurrection and as charity to the memory of the
dead. Such a replacement enabled the Puritans to sustain the concept of
the "community of the Godly" within a wider Protestant framework. There
remained, of course, some ambiguities. Whitgift could argue that the
prayerbook's service for the burial of the dead prayed for both the
living and the dead to enter heaven, and funeral sermons might be
adapted to the teaching of doctrine; but ringing bells and eating
funeral dole remained of questionable doctrine, the latter coming close
to the idea of medieval soul-cakes. By the middle of the seventeenth
century the shift of the theological "hot spot" to the Calvinist issue
of predestination and election suggested that prayers for the dead were
irrelevant--souls predestined to enter heaven needed no intercession
from the living. For Arminians too intercession was unimportant since,
if good works determined salvation, no prayer by the living could
influence the salvation of the dead. But such debates, Marshall argues,
left a vacuum in the interaction between the living and the dead and
polarized the topography of the afterlife into heaven and hell. Some of
this was doctrinal "tidying up": consequently baptism could be
administered by the laity in extreme circumstances and the unbaptized
could enter heaven. Ghosts also had to be resolved as Protestant images
of the dead, rather than the unquiet souls of those in purgatory. But
these were not doctrinal replacements for purgatory. The Protestant
replacement for purgatory was the elevation of the commemoration of the
dead. The living had a duty to remember the dead. This enabled an
element of syncretism to absorb established funeral and mortuary
formulae. Epitaphs could still urge the living to recall the dead, the
dying could still endow charities in their names, and the commemorative
culture and economy of funerals could remain.

All three books are valuable additions to the literature on early modern
death and dying. Tait provides a survey for the undergraduate and
specialist reader alike of death in a rural and doctrinally divided
society and, like Harding, is able to contrast Catholic and Protestant
practices. Tait offers a view of death that is immersed in Irish lore
and folk tradition at a time when metropolitan influences were still
relatively weak. It is a valuable addition to the study of early modern
Ireland also, a period still dominated by studies of political history.
Harding's book is as much a study of urban history and the tensions of
urban life in London and Paris in the period as one of death. Ideas of
urban government and good order and those features of urban life that
contributed to tension and unity are the focus of her monograph. The
dead, for Harding, could destabilise the living in a literal and spatial
sense as much as they could emotionally and religiously. Of the three
books, Marshall's is the most significant in terms of the way in which
historians view the dead and religious attitudes to death in the past.
Marshall's book supports the idea of the "long Reformation" which lasted
for decades after the breach with Rome. The displacement of purgatory
led to a doctrinal vacuum which had to be filled and this in turn led to
religious pluralism as people found different doctrines of the dead.
For Marshall, the idea of the dead was both a motor and a brake on the
progress of the Reformation; purgatory had placed great strains on
society, but people were reluctant to leave behind practices that had
connected them to the dead for generations. John Fletcher in 1647 wrote
in _The Custom of the Country_ that "death hath so many doors to let out
life" and this idea retained its potency for the living well after the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Marshall's book is the study of a
central theme of peoples' lives in medieval England and how they coped
with its disappearance. This elevates his book in importance and places
it in the category of one of the most important books in religious
history to have been written in the last two decades. It will be an
indispensable book for students of the Reformation and for the religious
life of England after the Reformation.

Notes

[1]. F. Bussby, _Winchester Cathedral, 1979-1979_ (Ringwood, 1987), p.
176. For more about Lowth see W. Gibson, "'A Happy Fertile Soil which
bringeth forth Abundantly': The Diocese of Winchester, 1689-1800," in
_The National Church in Local Perspective: The Church of England and the
Regions, 1660-1800_, ed. J. Gregory and J. Chamberlain (Boydell &
Brewer, 2002).

[2]. _The Hour of Our Death_ (1979); _Western Attitudes towards Death
from the Middle Ages to the Present_ (1976); and _Images of Man and
Death_ (1985).

[3]. Ralph Houlbrooke, _Death, Religion and the Family in England,
1450-1750_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); David Cressy,
_Birth, Marriage and Death, Ritual, Religion and Life Cycle in Tudor and
Stuart England_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and, J. Whaley,
ed., _The Mirror of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death_
(New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).

[4]. _Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England_
(London: Croom Helm, 1984); and Gittings and P. Jupp, eds., _Death in
England: An Illustrated History_ (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1999).

[5]. For which also see W. Gibson, "'Withered Branches and Weighty
Symbols': Surname Substitution in England, 1660-1880," in _The British
Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies_ 15 (1992).

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contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

I know this call for papers will interest many members, and I would like
to encourage your participation...

P.O'S.

Forwarded on behalf of...

Julia M. Wright
Canada Research Chair in English
Department of English & Film Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University
75 University Ave. W.
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3C5
e-mail enquiries: jwright[at]wlu.ca


- -----Original Message-----
*Canadian Journal of Irish Studies*
Special Issue: Reconsidering the Nineteenth Century

The interdisciplinary *Canadian Journal of Irish Studies*
invites
submissions for a special issue, "Reconsidering the Nineteenth Century"
(scheduled to appear at the end of 2004). Possible topics, very broadly

defined, include (but are not limited to):
--nationalist movements that challenged the division of Ireland
by
religious affiliation
--reconsiderations of the effects, and causes, of the famines
--Irish music after the Belfast Harper's Festival
--religious debates within (rather than between) religious
communities (e.g., the Veto Controversy)
--nineteenth-century Irish historiography
--Irish influence outside of Ireland (through the circulation
of
Irish culture, including translations, and/or the diaspora)
--Irish literature's engagement with other national literatures
--the Anglo-Irish gothic from Maturin to Stoker
--the Irish periodical press
Submitted essays should be approx. 5000-6500 words in length (including
notes etc.) and should follow either the MLA Style Sheet (literatures
and
languages) or the *Chicago Manual of Style* (other disciplines). The
author's name should appear only on the cover sheet in order to
facilitate
blind vetting.
Please send two hard copies and one electronic copy (MS-Word or

WordPerfect), by *15 February 2004*, to the guest editor:
Julia M. Wright
Canada Research Chair in English
Department of English & Film Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University
75 University Ave. W.
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3C5
e-mail enquiries: jwright[at]wlu.ca


__________________________________________
Julia M. Wright
Canada Research Chair in English
Wilfrid Laurier University
homepage: http://www.wlu.ca/~wwweng/faculty/jwright/
Bibliography of 19th-c. Irish
Literature: http://www.wlu.ca/~wwweng/faculty/jwright/irish

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


publication
Journal of Economic History

ISSN
0022-0507 electronic: 1471-6372

publisher
Cambridge University Press

year - volume - issue - page
2003 - 63 - 1 - 33


article

Technology and Learning by Factory Workers: The Stretch-Out at Lowell,
1842

Bessen, James

abstract

In 1842 Lowell textile firms increased weaving productivity by assigning
three looms per worker instead of two. This marked a turning point.
Before, weavers at Lowell were temporary and mostly literate Yankee farm
girls; afterwards, firms increasingly hired local residents, including
illiterate and Irish workers. An important factor was on-the-job
learning. Literate workers learned new technology faster, but local
workers stayed longer. These changes were unprofitable before 1842, and
the advantages of literacy declined over time. Firm policy and social
institutions slowly changed to permit deeper human-capital investment
and more productive implementation of technology.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Great excitement in the attic of O'Sullivan as this article scrolled
down.

The writer's article is wrapped up in a 'thesis' of course, but it does
what no other Weberian, to my knowledge, has done. He has looked
systematically at Weber's version of the English seventeenth century -
which came to Weber, of course, through the English nineteenth century.
As Ghosh points out Weber's sources and guides tended to be not English
but Scottish or Anglo-Irish - amongst them Carlyle, obviously, and
Ernest Dowden (that representative of 'the shoddy society of "West
Britonism"'...)

Ghosh writes...
'In this sense, then, we might say that the "empirical" basis of the PE
[Protestant Ethic] was weak. Its conception of English history, and of
English Puritanism, was certainly not that of orthodox, empirically
grounded and (insofar as the concept can be applied at all) specialised
English historiography in Weber's day. Yet this is by no means a whole
truth, since there was a minority strain of writing which took a
different view, and this, though written in English, was largely
Scottish and Anglo-Irish. The different view was the product of a quite
different set of historical experiences and premisses. The only
institutional continuity that was known in Scotland and Ireland had come
from, or been imposed by, England, and though it might be recognised as
a good (as in Scotland), it was to that extent alien. In Ireland in
particular there was little real contrast between the era of Cromwell
and that of 1688, or even that of 1900, since all might be conceived as
epochs of English and Protestant supremacy. Thus there was no sense in
which Cromwell needed to be, or indeed could be, hushed up...'

I have gone on elsewhere, and perhaps enough, about the sometimes shoddy
way that Weber's thesis intrudes into Irish Diaspora Studies. And I
have remarked on other oddities in the presentation of the Protestant
Ethic thesis. Ghosh comes at this from a quite different direction -
and it is good to see this sensible, and enjoyable piece of work.

I am trying to work out which P. Ghosh this is - for I would like to
send the writer a thank-you email.

By the way... The author thanks Judith Pollmann and Roy Foster for
assistance with Dutch Puritanism and Edward Dowden, respectively...

P.O'S.



publication
History of European Ideas

ISSN
0191-6599 electronic: 0191-6599

publisher
Elsevier Science Ltd

year - volume - issue - page
2003 - 29 - 2 - 183

pages
183


article

Max Weber's idea of 'Puritanism': a case study in the empirical
construction of the Protestant ethic

Ghosh, P.

abstract

The article examines the construction of 'Puritanism' in Max Weber's
famous essays on the Protestant Ethic, and finds that the principal,
empirical source for this lies in a set of neglected writings deriving
from the religious margins of Britain: Scotland, Ireland and English
Unitarianism. However, the impulse to construct "Puritanism" was not
simply empirical, but conceptual. Historical 'Puritanism' would never
have aroused so much of Weber's attention except as a close
approximation to 'ascetic Protestantism'-the avowed subject of the
Protestant Ethic and an undeniably new and modern idea. The nature of
Weberian asceticism and its relationship to Puritanism is thus the
article's second major concern. Besides exploring the intellectual world
of Max Weber, the article also offers a more general, theoretical
finding: that "empirical sources" are not tablets of stone, eternally
available to the truth-seeking historian; rather they have a history of
their own. They rise into prominence (or fall out of sight) in much the
same way as "secondary" literature, because they can hardly be
understood independently of organizing concepts, and so seldom are.

keyword(s)

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

1.
The solstice at the weekend marked the beginning of northern
hemisphere's summer holiday season. Already there are signs that Ir-D
members are deserting their desks and computers.

Usually at this time I warn people - especially the users of Hotmail and
similar accounts - of the danger of Inboxes becoming full over the
holiday season. With the danger that Irish-Diaspora list messages will
be rejected, bounced back to us, adding to the general Internet clutter.
My usual cry is that there is litle point in our sending out Ir-D
messages to email addresses just bounce them back.

This year the problem is already horrendous, because of the grotesque
proliferation of unwanted email - spam. I myself am deleting hundreds
of spam messages. My email addresses in the public domain have, of
course, been picked up by the spam merchants. One of my back-up email
addresses was discovered through a dictionary attack, and now receives
so much spam that it will have to be abandoned. Perhaps - as the doom
mongers say - spam really threatens the future of email.

You people in Florida - do something...

Given this background I am going to be as patient as I can be, over our
summer, with seemingly inoperative email addresses. I would ask Ir-D
members to do what they can to keep their email addresses working. Or
consider the Unsubcribe option, and not receive Ir-D messages whilst you
are away...
See the info in our NewInfo file in the Irish-Diaspora list folder at
http://www.irishdiaspora.net/
Document 4 in Folder 11...


2.
I will keep the Irish-Diaspora list going over the summer - though I
will occasionally be away from my desk. I am at the Basque World
Congress for a week in July, and on holiday in France and Italy for the
first 2 weeks of August.

I will use the quiet times on the Irish-Diaspora list to clear a backlog
of material and notes - notes on my own reading and so on, that people
seem to find of use and interest. I will also have a sort through the
commercial emails we have received, and send some on to Ir-D - not with
any idea of endorsing products or services, but to give a flavour of the
ways in which the Irish Diaspora is sold...

And of course I will distribute, as usual, any news and Irish Diaspora
Studies information that falls into our nets.

P.O'S.


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

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Jones Irwin"
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D Closure of Irish Centre for Migration Studies 9

Dear All,

Just to add my voice to the general dismay with the UCC disclosure. The
institutional disavowal of Irish Diaspora studies within the Irish
academy is, I think, a topic which ties in with the general issue of the
neglect of the people of the Irish diaspora as such. I do also believe,
however, that if Irish studies is going to survive(or re-emerge)in the
Irish academy, it needs to operate from a broader base. Perhaps the new
interest in 'inter-culturalism' is one example where Irish studies can
become part of a wider problematic, while also remaining an
indispensable part of this wider question.

Regards,

Jones Irwin

From: "Murray, Edmundo"

The article is online at:
http://www.elsevier.nl/inca/publications/store/6/0/5/

Edmundo Murray

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

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Great excitement in the attic of O'Sullivan as this article scrolled
down...

publication
History of European Ideas

ISSN
0191-6599 electronic: 0191-6599

publisher
Elsevier Science Ltd

year - volume - issue - page
2003 - 29 - 2 - 183

pages
183

article

Max Weber's idea of 'Puritanism': a case study in the empirical
construction of the Protestant ethic

Ghosh, P.

abstract

The article examines the construction of 'Puritanism' in Max Weber's
famous essays on the Protestant Ethic, and finds that the principal,
empirical source for this lies in a set of neglected writings deriving
from the religious margins of Britain: Scotland, Ireland and English
Unitarianism. However, the impulse to construct "Puritanism" was not
simply empirical, but conceptual. Historical 'Puritanism' would never
have aroused so much of Weber's attention except as a close
approximation to 'ascetic Protestantism'-the avowed subject of the
Protestant Ethic and an undeniably new and modern idea. The nature of
Weberian asceticism and its relationship to Puritanism is thus the
article's second major concern. Besides exploring the intellectual world
of Max Weber, the article also offers a more general, theoretical
finding: that "empirical sources" are not tablets of stone, eternally
available to the truth-seeking historian; rather they have a history of
their own. They rise into prominence (or fall out of sight) in much the
same way as "secondary" literature, because they can hardly be
understood independently of organizing concepts, and so seldom are.

keyword(s)