From: "Nieciecki, Daniel"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 3

I did not say that the "penal laws" were based on race. There's practically
nothing to suggest that, as Connolly argued rightly. But as a political
institution designed to alienate one clearly defined subgroup of the
population from access to political power, then it's the closest system in
Irish history to apartheid. And for individuals who sincerely believed that
their only hope for eternal salvation was found within the Church of Rome,
conversion would be just as impossible a choice.

As for the Statutes of Kilkenny, it's always dangerous to go looking for
modern concepts in pre-modern ideology. Segregation or apartheid usually
function to deprive one group of power and influence. In the Lordship of
Ireland, the native Irish were not directly part of the political system to
begin with--I'm referring to the Lordship as the social complex of relations
between the English King as Lord of Ireland, his tenants-in-chief in
Ireland, and their vassals. For the most part, the native Irish were either
the peasants who actually worked the land and supported this whole system,
vassals or clients of the Anglo-Norman lords, or outside the system
completely. If anything, the Statutes of Kilkenny were a kind of "reverse
apartheid": if the apartheid system can be viewed as a wall keeping the
"inferior" people out of the elite group, these statutes were an attempt to
keep the "superior" people INSIDE the elite group.

I'd be interested to know there is any work on the concept of "blood
purity": I don't recall whether anything similar to the obsession with
purity or cleanness of blood that developed in Spain ever occurred in late
medieval Ireland.

> -----Original Message-----
>
> Subject: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 3
>
>
> From: Peter Hart
>
> Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 2
>
> Although, as I think Sean Connolly and perhaps Tom Bartlett have argued,
> race was never an issue in the Penal Laws - just religion. Converts could
> easily cross the legal barrier - an option unavailable to those
> discriminated against under apartheid or jim crow.
>
> Peter Hart

From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: Irish binge-drinking

President McAleese was criticised by some of the media last May for a
passing reference in her speech in Charlottesville to the culture of
drinking in Ireland. However, a new comparative study just released would
appear clearly to show that there is a basis in fact for the view that Irish
drinking habits are different. The following report from today's Irish
Examiner is typical of the coverage. I think the figure of EUR2.4 million
given below should actually read EUR2.4 billion.

Piaras


Young Irish biggest binge drinkers
By Eddie Cassidy
YOUNG Irish men binge-drink six times more than most of their counterparts
across Europe.

Alcohol consumption here is three times higher than in Finland and Sweden
and twice the rate in Germany, France and Italy.

At the same time, the proportion of Irish people who had not consumed any
alcohol during the past 12 months was 23%. This was three times higher than
in the Nordic countries and twice higher than in the other countries
surveyed.

Although the British almost match the Irish in alcohol consumption, there
are more problems per drinker here than in five other European countries
surveyed.

Significant numbers of Irishmen and women concede binge-drinking is the
norm.

Adverse effects of high consumption levels, however, lead to Irish people
falling victim to more accidents and violence, new research shows.

Experts admit there is no easy solution to problems caused by the Irish
drinking culture.

Health Minister Micheál Martin warned yesterday: "We must change our
drinking patterns we need to cut down and slow down our drinking."

A damning insight into Irish drinking trends was revealed in a joint study
conducted by the Department of Health's national alcohol policy advisor, Dr
Ann Hope, and Mats Ramstedt from Stockholm's Centre for Social Research on
Alcohol and Drugs.

They said their results "contain enough evidence to conclude that Ireland
has a strikingly high prevalence of binge-drinking and alcohol-related
harm".

The pair strongly advised: "It will be an important challenge to find
preventative measures that can reduce these problems."

Their research paper, The Irish Drinking Culture a European Comparison,
coincided with the launch of the third phase of the department's national
alcohol awareness campaign, Think Before You Drink Less is More.

Research commissioned four years ago showed the yearly costs associated with
alcohol problems, both in personal terms and the burden on state services,
was EUR2.4 million.

Mr Martin said he intended to ensure the problem remained uppermost on the
public agenda. "I am anxious that it stays there until a reduction in
alcohol consumption and the associated problems have been achieved."

He hit out at people who trivialised the problems of changing drinking
patterns. "They say things such as 'we were the same when we were young' or
'going out and getting drunk is a type of initiation into adulthood'. These
people do not have a clear or complete picture of alcohol in our society.

"Things are not the same as when we were young. Alcohol consumption has
increased by 49% in the past decade. We are not drinking in the same manner
our drinking patterns have changed and many people now drink to become
intoxicated," the minister said.

The research showed people in the 18-25 years group are more likely to
binge-drink, though they drink less frequently than older age groups. Acute
problems associated with binge-drinking included falls, alcohol poisoning,
incidents of unintentional sex and public order offences.

Current initiatives aimed at reducing alcohol and preventing harm included
the setting up of a strategic task force on alcohol, which has recommended
new regulations to control alcohol advertising, sponsorship and marketing
practices.

The government is likely to put forward shortly a bill incorporating the
task force's recommendations.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Over the years I have listened to and read the standard analyses of the
Statutes of Kilkenny, and the Penal Laws - and, for what it's worth, I have
never been quite convinced. The English response to Ireland and the Irish
is always curiously double-jointed - if prejudice, and action, cannot be
based on one thing it will be based on something else, culture, race,
ethnicity, religion, Malthus, Darwin, Lombroso... Even before The
Reformation incursions into Ireland would be justified by the need to
'reform' Irish religion - eg Laudabiliter, whether Laudabiliter is or is not
genuine.

Sean Duffy, Ireland in the Middle Ages, says of the Statutes of Kilkenny
that they 'amounted to a policy of racial exclusiveness on the part of the
English in Ireland...' (p 154). That, it seems to me, is exactly how
'apartheid' systems work. They try to control the group that can most
easily be controlled, the advantaged group. They draw lines. The 'other'
group will be driven out and excluded. Hence, on the outskirts of many
Irish towns and cities, you often find a suburb called 'Irishtown'. As in
Kilkenny.

Paddy 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: "MacEinri, Piaras"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Irish binge-drinking 2

Dear Kerby

The Minister's speech, which gives the title and authors of the research on
which the news report is based, has now been posted at
http://www.doh.ie/pressroom/sp20031008.html but the survey itself is not yet
to hand. Cassidy's report in today's Irish Examiner is at
http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sg3opkjR6gGGQ.asp.

Warm regards

Piaras

From: "Nieciecki, Daniel"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 5


The 1703 statute that is one of the most familiar elements of the "penal
laws" was titled the Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery. Most of
the provisions on land inheritance and purchase, horse and weapon ownership,
voting, membership in the professions, and education really would have had
no impact on the vast majority of the population who didn't own land and
couldn't have bought any if it were legal, probably didn't own any fine
horses or swords or guns, couldn't vote anyway, and didn't have the finances
for education and professional training to begin with.

If the original intent had been to eliminate Catholicism, they could have
been a bit clearer about it--passing laws that had more effect on the
general population rather than the gentry and nobility.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Now that the (northern hemisphere's) academic year is underway I think it
right to remind Ir-D members of the publication of Kevin Kenny's Special
Essay, Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study, in the
Journal of American History, June 2003, Volume 90, No. 1.

The article addresses many of the central themes and concerns that animate
us on the Ir-D list, and gives those themes and concerns a prominent place
at the centre of Americanist historiogrpahical debate. In a way that is
perhaps Kevin Kenny's special achievement in his Special Essay - getting it
into the Journal of American History.

In my own recent contacts with scholars of other diasporas I have been
recommending Kevin Kenny's essay - as a demonstration of the ways in which
our concerns interact with historiographic debates.

And all Ir-D list members will find the references useful.

The Journal of American History has a web site...
http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/
which does not seem to be working this morning - but never mind...

The JAH articles are available on the web through the History Cooperative
system
http://www.historycooperative.org/jahindex.html

Many Ir-D members based within the academic institutions will have access to
the full text. The first few hundred words are freely available - and I
have pasted them in below...

Thereafter, I am not sure what to do... I can tell Ir-D members what I did
- - I identified a member of the OAH with access to the JAH, and I badgered
him until he downloaded the full text and emailed it to me.

But I'd prefer to find a truly legal way of letting all Ir-D members have
access to Kevin Kenny's important essay. We will negotiate.

In a recent essay of my own, in New Hibernia Review, I complained that too
often when we met to discuss Irish Diaspora Studies we could not seem to
move beyond Square One. Kevin Kenny has moved us on...

P.O'S.


In the Journal of American History
June 2003
Volume 90, No. 1

There is a

Special Essay

Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study

Kevin Kenny

ABSTRACT
How do immigration and ethnicity fit into the recent efforts of American
historians to write transnational history? Surveying studies of Irish
immigration, Kevin Kenny evaluates current scholarly efforts to put
migration in global context. Diasporic approaches examine the movement of
people, capital, and ideas across national and regional boundaries, and they
highlight reciprocal interactions and a common sensibility in a globally
scattered population. But the concept of diaspora obscures the emergence in
countries of settlement of nationally specific ethnicities that
differentiate an ostensibly unitary people, be they Irish, Italian, or
African. Understanding American immigration and ethnicity in global context
thus requires a powerful and flexible framework of inquiry that combines
both cross-national comparison and diasporic history.


http://www.historycooperative.org/jahindex.html

Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study
Kevin Kenny

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

If a single theme has dominated the historiography of the United States in
the last decade, it is the need to extend the boundaries of inquiry beyond
the nation-state, to internationalize the subject and render it more
cosmopolitan. Placing American history in a global context was a central
initiative of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) in the late
1990s, with the Journal of American History devoting several round tables
and special issues to the topic. In 1999 the annual meeting of the American
Historical Association (AHA) took as its theme "Diasporas and Migrations in
History," and at the 2001 meeting AHA president Eric Foner added a global
dimension to his ongoing investigation into the history of American freedom.
Under the auspices of the OAH, Thomas Bender directed a four-year
collaborative effort culminating in the recent publication of a manifesto on
teaching, training, and faculty development, the La Pietra Report, and a
seminal collection of essays, Rethinking American History in a Global Age.
One might confidently expect that American immigration and ethnicity, which
by definition have an international dimension, would fit comfortably into
this newly emerging framework. Yet there is confusion over the appropriate
perspective and methodology. This essay seeks to delineate an approach
suited to the history of one prominent migrant group, the Irish, but the
issues at stake are central to American immigration history as a whole.1 1

The recent literature suggests two broad possibilities. Diasporic approaches
to the subject seek to transcend the nation-state as the primary unit of
historical analysis, searching for reciprocal interactions and the
sensibilities they nurture among globally scattered communities. Comparative
approaches, by contrast, examine specific similarities and differences in
the experiences of similar migrants who have settled in different nations or
national regions. The first of these approaches, following Ian Tyrrell,
might be called "transnational," and the second, following George M.
Fredrickson, "cross-national."2 The argument presented here is that neither
perspective will suffice, but that a combination of the two holds promise.
Nation-based comparisons cannot capture the fluid and interactive processes
at the heart of migration history: mass movement of people across oceans and
continents, participation by migrants or their descendants in the
nationalist affairs of the homeland, and articulation of literary, cultural,
or political sensibilities that connect widely dispersed migrant groups with
one another and with the homeland. But a strictly transnational approach can
underestimate the enduring power of nation-states and the emergence within
them of nationally specific ethnicities that sharply differentiate an
ostensibly unitary "people" (the Irish, the Italians, those of African
descent) across time and space. What is needed is a migration history that
combines the diasporic or transnational with the comparative or
cross-national. Only then can the history of American immigration and
ethnicity be integrated into its wider global context. 2

Irish global migration had some distinctive characteristics. For most of the
nineteenth century, emigration as a proportion of population was higher in
Ireland than in any other European country, and no other country experienced
such sustained depopulation in that period. By the second half of the
nineteenth century, as the historian David Fitzpatrick put it, "Emigration
had become a massive, relentless, and efficiently managed national
enterprise." Counting those who went to Britain, between 9 and 10 million
Irish men, women, and children have migrated from Ire-land since 1700. The
number of migrants is almost twice the population of Ireland today (5.3
million), and it exceeds the population at its historical peak on the eve of
the great famine in the 1840s (8.5 million). In the century after 1820
almost 5 million Irish people emigrated to the United States alone. In 1890
two of every five Irish-born people were living abroad. Today, an estimated
70 million people worldwide claim some Irish descent; among them are 45
million Americans who claim "Irish" as their primary ethnicity.3

From: lryan[at]supanet.com
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Forthcoming conference 'Meeting of Minds: Comparing Migrant
Experiences across ethnicity'


Please note that booking forms for the forthcoming conference 'Meeting of
Minds: Comparing Migrant Experiences across ethnic groups' are now
available.

The conference will be held at the Camden Irish Centre, Murray Sq. London,
NW1 on Saturday 22 November. The aim of the conference is to begin together
different migrant groups, e.g. Irish, Turkish, Carribbean, Chinese, German
and recent asylum seekers to compare and contrast the experiences of
migration to Britain.

We have an excellent panel of invited speakers including Mary Tilki, Choman
Hardi, Joanne O'Brien, David Miller and many interesting paper givers as
well. In addition, there will also be poets and artists and musicians and
an exbition of photographs.

This promises to be a packed day.
The deadline for booking is 30 October.

Booking forms are available from
Louise Ryan
l.ryan[at]rfc.ucl.ac.uk

- --
Dr. Louise Ryan, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London,
NW3 2PF.
l.ryan[at]rfc.ucl.ac.uk

From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Re: Ir-D Irish binge-drinking

Dear Piaras,

Please pass on to us the full citation for Cassidy's article.

Any changes concerning the Centre's fate? Still being shut down?
When is doomsday?

Best wishes,

Kerby.


>From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
>To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
>Subject: Irish binge-drinking
>
>President McAleese was criticised by some of the media last May for a
>passing reference in her speech in Charlottesville to the culture of
>drinking in Ireland. However, a new comparative study just released
>would appear clearly to show that there is a basis in fact for the view
>that Irish drinking habits are different. The following report from
>today's Irish Examiner is typical of the coverage. I think the figure
>of EUR2.4 million given below should actually read EUR2.4 billion.
>
>Piaras
>
>
>Young Irish biggest binge drinkers
>By Eddie Cassidy
>YOUNG Irish men binge-drink six times more than most of their
>counterparts across Europe.
>

Sender: P.Maume[at]Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 9

From: Patrick Maume
Leighton's argument is that the Penal Laws were based on the assumption that
once the Catholic elite was destroyed/converted, the populace would
naturally follow - don't forget that we are talking about a society based on
hierarchical presuppositions.
There is another interpretation which would be more in line with an
"apartheid" interpretation - it argues that the Catholic elites are targeted
because they were potential military leaders (bearing arms and riding
high-value horses have clear military implications), & that the objective of
the Penal Laws is to make future Jacobite rebellions impossible by
eliminating the potential leaders of an organised military force. (As Count
Dracula puts it "What good are peasants without leaders"?)
I am not saying that religious persecution is not persecution and that it
does not involve suffering for those of firm conviction & hideous violence
to the consciences of the weak (cf Piaras MacGearailt's C18 poems in which
he laments that he has had to embrace a religion which he considers false
because he is not willing to see his children dispossessed)- I am merely
pointing out that it is not the same thing as ethnic/racial persecution. An
opportunistic Catholic, or one who became sincerely converted to
Protestantism, could change his religion; a dark-skinned black could not
"pass" as white however he/she might wish to do so.
On the other hand, in C18 Ireland a certain amount of suspicion continued
to attach to converts from Catholicism - there was much talk of a "convert
interest" and widespread, often justified, suspicions of crypto-Catholicism
among nominal converts. This area has been opened up for debate (like so
many others) by Louis Cullen; the debate about whether or how far Burke can
be seen as a crypto-Catholic is related to it.
(Albeit some of the bitterest bigots of the period were ex-Catholics or sons
of converts; the most outspoken charges of crypto-Catholicism against Burke
were made by Dr. Duigenan, a convert married to a Catholic wife, & John
Fitzgibbon [Lord Clare]'s contempt for aristocratic "Patriots" and
pro-Emancipationists seems to owe something to awareness of the bitterness
felt by his Catholic relatives - his father was a convert.)
Paddy is right about the long tradition of exclusion on various grounds -
indeed, there is a longstanding tradition of liberal unionism which argued
that equal citizenship within the Union had never failed because it had
never been tried - today's electoral integrationists in Northern Ireland are
perhaps the last vestige of this viewpoint. If the Gaelic Irish had become
Baptists or Wesleyan Methodists during the eighteenth century, they would
still have been seen as significantly "other" - but would a Protestantised
Ireland have been more likely to express its resistance to such exclusion in
terms of variants on a pan-British radicalism (a la nineteenth century Welsh
nonconformists and Gaelic-speaking Scots Highlanders) rather than through
political nationalism?
I'm not necessarily saying this would have been a better outcome. (By the
way, I'm a Catholic, just in case anyone thinks my beliefs are relevant in
the context of this discussion.)
Best wishes,
Patrick
>
> From: "Nieciecki, Daniel"
> To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
> Subject: RE: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 5
>
>
> The 1703 statute that is one of the most familiar elements of the
> "penal laws" was titled the Act to Prevent the Further Growth of
> Popery. Most of the provisions on land inheritance and purchase, horse
> and weapon ownership, voting, membership in the professions, and
> education really would have had no impact on the vast majority of the
> population who didn't own land and couldn't have bought any if it were
> legal, probably didn't own any fine horses or swords or guns, couldn't
> vote anyway, and didn't have the finances for education and professional
training to begin with.
>
> If the original intent had been to eliminate Catholicism, they could
> have been a bit clearer about it--passing laws that had more effect on
> the general population rather than the gentry and nobility.
>
>

----------------------
patrick maume

From: "Dr Paul O'Leary"
To:
Subject: Statutes of Kilkenny


From: Paul O'Leary

The point about the extent to which there was a developed sense of race in
medieval Europe is an important one, and probably requires a comparison with
other countries that experienced colonial rule during these years. There
was, of course, a precursor to the Statutes of Kilkenny, the Statute of
Wales of 1284, which followed the Anglo-Norman conquest of that country and
set out not dissimilar ideas in which the Welsh came to be defined as
'foreigners' in their own country. The work of R.R. Davies is central here -
he actually has an early article on 'Race Relations in Medieval Wales'. His
piece in 'Past and Present' in 1974 on 'Colonial Wales' is a useful starting
point for comparison with Ireland. Davies has increasingly come to see a
pattern of power relationships extending across the British Isles in this
period, set out most recently in his book 'The First English Empire: Power
and Identities in the British Isles, 1093-1343'. Perhaps the Statutes of
Kilkenny should be seen in this context.

Paul

From: "Brian McGinn"
To: "Irish Diaspora Studies"
Subject: Encyclopedia of Ireland

IRISH AMERICA Magazine (NY)
Aug./Sept. 2003

A Sampling of the Latest Irish Books

Recommended:

The Encyclopedia of Ireland is being dubbed the most comprehensive book to
date on Irish life, culture, and history, and leafing through its pages, it'
s hard to disagree.

Arranged in alphabetical order, the Encyclopedia contains more than 5,000
essays written by nearly 1,000 contributors.

A random sampling (under G) captures the wide range of topics covered in
this impressive volume: "games, mediaeval," "Garinish" (a small island in
Bantry Bay) and "George IV's footprints" (these are actual impressions in a
granite boulder which mark the monarch's August 12, 1821 visit to Dublin,
the first such peaceful visit by a British monarch in over 100 years).

The Encyclopedia rightly takes a very broad view of Ireland. Editor Brian
Lalor also wisely decided to include lots of information about Irish people
not just in Ireland, but across the globe. Lalor was a good choice for this
project, having written numerous books on Ireland's landscape, topography
and travel, such as The Irish Round Tower, The Blue Guide to Ireland, The
Laugh of Lost Men and West of West.

Frank McCourt also offers up a fine introductory essay, writing: "This is a
book that will settle many an argument and, I hope, send many a reader off
on a journey."

There is always room to quibble in a book such as this. The Battle of the
Boyne entry, for example, is quite brief. The description of the 1690 clash
between the armies of King James II and King William III is adequate.
However, there is no mention of the battle's contemporary relevance. After
all, the battle is marked by tension in Northern Ireland to this day.

Such minor flaws aside, however, this is a must-have for any Irish book
lover. (1216 pages / $65 / Yale University Press )


___________
Brian McGinn
Alexandria, Virginia
bmcginn2[at]earthlink.net

From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 7

Paul
Thanks for this input. I have sought out the book and ordered it. The
pattern of imperialist/colonial behaviour is what I am interested in.
The notion that the colonists treat the natives as foreigners in their own
county and build a wall around them - and whether with the notion of keeping
the natives out or the colonists in is immaterial.

Carmel

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

>From: "Dr Paul O'Leary"
>To:
>Subject: Statutes of Kilkenny
>
>
>From: Paul O'Leary
>
>The point about the extent to which there was a developed sense of race
>in medieval Europe is an important one, and probably requires a
>comparison with other countries that experienced colonial rule during
>these years. There was, of course, a precursor to the Statutes of
>Kilkenny, the Statute of Wales of 1284, which followed the Anglo-Norman
>conquest of that country and set out not dissimilar ideas in which the
>Welsh came to be defined as 'foreigners' in their own country. The work
>of R.R. Davies is central here - he actually has an early article on
>'Race Relations in Medieval Wales'. His piece in 'Past and Present' in
>1974 on 'Colonial Wales' is a useful starting point for comparison with
>Ireland. Davies has increasingly come to see a pattern of power
>relationships extending across the British Isles in this period, set
>out most recently in his book 'The First English Empire: Power and
>Identities in the British Isles, 1093-1343'. Perhaps the Statutes of
Kilkenny should be seen in this context.
>
>Paul
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of
Dr Willa Murphy
AICH

Please distribute...

CALL FOR PAPERS

NEW VOICES 2004

Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages
University of Ulster
Magee Campus
Derry
6-8 February 2004

The Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster is
pleased to announce that it will host the sixth annual New Voices in Irish
Criticism Conference on the University's Magee Campus in Derry on 6-8
February 2004. New Voices has established itself as the premier forum for
emerging scholars in Irish Studies. Papers are invited from research
students in all fields of Irish Studies-including anthropology, cultural
theory, folklore, gender studies, geography, history, languages, literature,
music, philosophy, popular culture, sociology and theology. Defining 'Irish
Studies' broadly, the conference welcomes contributions on all aspects of
the study of Ireland, as well as on non-Irish topics by scholars working
from Ireland, north or south. New Voices aims to provide an opportunity
for research students in Ireland to discuss and debate their work, and also
welcomes the participation of doctoral students and other writers and
researchers from Britain, continental Europe, North America, Australia and
Asia. The conference is free.

Abstracts for 20-minute papers should be 150 words, and submitted by 1
December to:

New Voices
Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages
Aberfoyle House
University of Ulster
Magee Campus
Northland Rd
Derry BT48 7JL

Email: W.Murphy[at]ulster.ac.uk
Full conference details can be found at: www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/academy

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

P.O'S.


Article
Seamus Heaney's Religious Redress

Literature and Theology, March 2003, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 32-43(12)

Dau D.[1]

[1]Department of English, Communication and Cultural Studies, University of
Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia duda[at]cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Abstract:

For Seamus Heaney, as it is for many who originate from Northern Ireland,
religion is closely allied to politics. Heaney's religious ideals, however,
extend beyond the divisiveness of sectarianism, and stem from the desire for
unity, balance and redress. He finds these religious and social ideals
voiced by Simone Weil, the religious writer and social activist. The
religious nature of Heaney's early poems originates in part from his regard
for the landscape as a sacramental book that offers an alternative reality
beyond the covert level of meaning. By naming or renaming a place, one has
written or rewritten one's meanings onto it, endowing it with an alternative
reality. Hence, the first task of historical redress is to recover the
poet's alternative or Celtic heritage beneath the Anglicisation of
placenames. The second task, which balances and interrogates the first, is
to seek out the linguistic heritage shared by the Celts and their British
colonisers. Heaney's etymological endeavours, therefore, work to uncover and
unite the different and yet interrelated cultural identities of Ireland and
Northern Ireland. Likewise, his desire for equilibrium enables him to reread
and interrogate the wounded text-bodies of sectarian 'martyrs', thereby
challenging their apotheosis. He compares the poet to a medieval poet-scribe
whose function was to negotiate between two differing visions of reality,
the 'pagan' and the Christian. Similarly, he believes the present-day poet
may offer the middle way of peace and redress.

Language: English Document Type: Original article ISSN: 0269-1205

SICI (online): 0269-12051713243

Publisher: Oxford University Press

I realise that this thread has drifted away from the Statutes of Kilkenny -
but I guess it all counts as a Statutes of Kilkenny, Poyning's Law, Act of
Union collective reverie...

Paul O'Leary's point about comparisons with Wales reminds me that there was
some interesting historical geography about the Norman settlements in Wales,
with the ejected Welsh in Welsh equivalent of 'Irishtowns' on the outskirts
of towns. I cannot now recall the reference. (And in a minute I will write
a stern note to myself, chiding myself for falling below the standards
expected of the Ir-D list...)

Another comparison is with Scotland, where the Scottish kings decided they
wanted Norman military expertise on their side, invited the Normans in,
rewarded them and arranged marriages for them. There are many books on the
theme - I happen to have been reading The Anglo-Norman era in Scottish
history by G.W.S. Barrow.

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

Sender: P.Maume[at]Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 12


From: Patrick Maume
There was a recent collection of essays on the history of the Diocese of
Dublin which discusses the decision to establish an Irish diocesan structure
independent of Canterbury (remember that the first Bishops of Dublin, &
bishops in one or two of the other Viking ports, were consecrated at
Canterbury & subordinate to it) in terms of factional differences at Rome,
whose nature I cannot now recall. The Pope who established the Irish
hierarchy belonged to one faction - Adrian IV belonged to another.
The Reformation did not necessarily involve subordination of the Church of
Ireland to Canterbury. Archbishop Ussher for one devoted considerable
antiquarian effort to arguing that Armagh was a patriarchate equal with
Canterbury rather than subordinate to it.
best wishes,
PAtrick

From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 6

This is absolutely true. Although the document itself has never surfaced
many scholars accept it as a genuine article based on the contemporary
references to it. But besides this there is evidence of John of Salisbury
approaching the Pope [in the 1150s] with the idea of an English invasion of
Ireland to 'reform' the Irish church of the twelfth century. Canterbury had
ambitions of taking the Irish church entirely under its control long before
the Reformation. These Vikings-turned-Norman were never going to sit home
in England and have a quiet life. Expansion of their territory - and the
accompanying control/ subjugation of native populations - were to be a part
of English history for the next 900 years.

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

>>From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
>
>>Even before The
>>Reformation incursions into Ireland would be justified by the need to
>>'reform' Irish religion - eg Laudabiliter, whether Laudabiliter is or
>>is not genuine.
>
>

From: J.C. Belchem
j.c.belchem[at]liverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Bochum book

Paddy

After inordinate delay, I am now pleased to report that a selection of
papers presented to the Bochum conference in 1999 has now been published:

John Belchem and Klause Tenfelde (eds) IRISH AND POLISH MIGRATION IN
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE (Essen: Klartext, ISBN 3-89861-095-0).

I am sure it will be of interest to many list members.

Best wishes, John B

Professor John Belchem
Dean of the Faculty of Arts
University of Liverpool
12 Abercromby Square
Liverpool L69 7WZ
email: j.c.belchem[at]liv.ac.uk
phone: (0)151-794-2457
fax: (0)151-794-2454

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

I am forwarding in full this message from Irish Studies QUB...

As a shorthand way of dealing with queries, and because there is much of
interest...

EG, Does anyone know what John Nagle has to say about Irish Traditional
Culture in London?

P.O'S.


________________________________

From: Irish Studies General Office [mailto:irish.studies[at]qub.ac.uk]
Sent: 13 October 2003 16:34
To: "QUB Institute of Irish Studies List"[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Irish Studies at Queen's University Belfast


Dear Colleagues

We are writing to update you with recent news about the Institute:

1. New MA in Irish Studies with Mary McNeill Scholarship
2. Forthcoming Seminar Programme
3. New Research Fellows appointed
4. Flags and Emblems Research Project
5. Protestant Identities Research Project

1. New MA in Irish Studies with Mary McNeill Scholarship
The Institute's MA programme provides the opportunity for interdisciplinary
study across a broad range of themes. A Scholarship to the value of £3,000
is available for a US/Canadian student who has applied for and been accepted
onto the programme. Full details can be found on our website at:
www.qub.ac.uk/iis/courses/ma-about.htm

2. Forthcoming Seminar Programme
This latest seminar series titled 'Senses of Irishness' will commence on
October 30 with a paper by John Nagle 'The revival of Irish Traditional
Culture in London'. Full programme can be viewed at
www.qub.ac.uk/iis/news/events.htm

3. New Research Fellows Appointed
The Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of research fellows Drs
Tina O'Toole and Catherine O'Brien. Dr O'Toole will be continuing research
begun initially as part of her PhD thesis, and developed over the last
twelve months, towards the publication of a monograph at the end of 2004 on
the subject of the New Woman and Ireland. The subject of Dr Morris's
research will be 'The Northern Patriot: Alice Milligan and the Irish
Cultural Revival'.

4. Flags and Emblems Project
This research has recently been completed for the Office of the First
Minister and Deputy First Minister. It examined the issues over the flying
of official and unofficial flags and the display of symbols. The project
concentrated on the legal environment within which action has been taken and
explored the policies of local authorities and other key agencies. A review
was also undertaken of good practice in dealing with 'symbolic conflicts' in
Northern Ireland, comparing approaches that utilise legal processes with
those that derive from local negotiations and mediation (and combinations of
all three).

5. Protestant Identities Research
The Institute is presently undertaking some research for local organisation
'Diversity Challenges' to examine the standing of the protestant community
in the border counties in the Republic.

If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to:
irish.studies[at]qub.ac.uk

Best wishes

Catherine Boone
Administrator
Institute of Irish Studies
Queen's University Belfast
8 Fitzwilliam Street
Belfast BT9 6AW
Northern Ireland
Tel: (0) 28 9027 3386
E-mail: irish.studies[at]qub.ac.uk

From: "Richard Jensen"

American National Biography Online

Coleman, William Tell (29 Feb. 1824-22 Nov. 1893), merchant and vigilante,
was born near Cynthiana, Kentucky, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte Coleman, a
civil engineer and lawyer (mother's name unknown). Both his parents had died
by the time the boy was nine, and an aunt mothered him and his three
siblings on their maternal grandfather John Chinn's plantation in Kentucky.
At fifteen Coleman was given a job on a railroad survey in Illinois by his
uncle Marcus Chinn, but when the state's program for railroads collapsed the
next year, he went to St. Louis where he worked in an insurance and later a
lumber company. At the age of eighteen, he entered St. Louis University and
completed the four-year legal course in two, but overstudy had brought on
the symptoms of tuberculosis.
After regaining his health in Florida, he became the overseer of a
plantation at West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for his uncle, Whig
ex-congressman Thomas W. Chinn. He soon left Louisiana, however, for St.
Louis, and his former employers in the lumber company sent him to Wisconsin
to look after their timber tracts and sawmills.

With his brother DeWitt, Coleman went overland to California, arriving at
Sutter's Fort on 14 August 1849. The two young men became builders and
speculators in real estate in Sacramento but soon moved on to Hangtown
(Placerville) to establish a mercantile business. Their activity in this
field was short-lived; DeWitt went to Oregon and William to San Francisco,
where he started the merchandising firm of William T. Coleman & Company,
first locating on Sansome Street and then moving to Montgomery Street.
The fire of 4 May, 1851, the fifth and greatest in a series of fires, burned
him out, but he quickly rebuilt and soon had the largest commission business
in San Francisco.

Coleman came to prominence as a member of the executive committee of the
1851 Committee of Vigilance for the suppression of crime.
Founded in June and dominated by commission merchants and sea captains, it
came to have a membership of approximately 500.
Coleman usually favored a more moderate and deliberate course than the quick
decision and execution advocated by the leader, Sam Brannan. Before its
extrajudicial activities ended in September, the Committee of Vigilance had
arrested nearly ninety-one people, of which four were hanged and
twenty-eight sentenced to deportation.

In 1852 Coleman went east by way of the Isthmus of Panama to Boston, where
in August he married Carrie M. Page, the daughter of Daniel D. Page, one of
the founders of the banking firm of Page & Bacon in St. Louis. Coleman and
his wife were to have at least two children. Without his bride, he made a
hurried trip to California in 1853 and on returning to the East established
a branch of his firm in New York City.

In 1856 he again went to San Francisco alone and in his words "found a
state of affairs not at all encouraging for the prospect of a comfortable
residence, or the prosperity of the country, or security; social, political,
or otherwise" (quoted by Scherer, p. 147). The city had been governed mainly
by Democrats under David C. Broderick. Improvements had been made in the
booming, cosmopolitan city, but merchants--concerned about the rampant
graft, the soaring municipal debt, and skyrocketing taxes--were not averse
to taking control of the government. But the immediate cause of the revival
of the vigilance movement was the 14 May shooting of James King of William,
the anti-Catholic editor of the Daily Evening Bulletin, by the politician
James P. Casey.
King had denounced the Tammany-style political machine of Broderick and
accused him of having imported Casey, an Irish Catholic, from New York City
as an expert ballot-box stuffer. He also revealed that Casey had served a
term in the penitentiary at Sing Sing.

The shooting of King became interrelated in the public mind with the
earlier killing of a U.S. marshal by an Italian-Catholic gambler named
Charles Cora. Cora's first trial ended in a hung jury, which had brought
scathing editorials from King. Cora was in jail awaiting a second trial on
the day King was shot, and the Committee of Vigilance, with Coleman as
chairman of its powerful committee, was organized. The vigilantes seized
Casey and Cora from the jail, tried them, and on the day of King's funeral,
hanged them with great public ceremony.

The vigilance committee made further arrests, strengthened the defenses of
its headquarters building known as Fort Gunnybags, scuffled with the Law and
Order party, and defied the governor.
Approximately 6,000 joined the movement before it was disbanded in August
1856. It hanged four accused murderers, including Cora and Casey, sentenced
twenty-eight others to deportation, and possibly frightened several hundred
other bad characters into leaving the city. During the 1851 movement, the
expatriated had largely been ex-convicts from Sydney, Australia; in 1856
they were primarily Americans, either by birth or adoption, and more tainted
by political corruption than the others. As a result of the movement, former
vigilantes won control of city offices and slashed taxes.

After completing his vigilante work, Coleman left almost immediately for
New York, which became his base of operations for the next fourteen years,
although he frequently traveled to and from California.
In developing a fleet of clipper ships (Coleman's California
Line) and a steamship line for sailing around Cape Horn, he was more often
the charterer than the owner of the vessels. As a Union Democrat, he helped
subdue the New York City draft riots during the Civil War.

He took his family to San Francisco in the early 1870s and erected a white
Roman villa on Nob Hill and a spacious country home in San Mateo county. In
the anti-Chinese agitation of July 1877, during which a mob wrecked Chinese
laundries and tried to burn the docks of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company,
thought to be the largest importer of Chinese laborers, business owners
organized a Committee of Public Safety with Coleman as president. The U.S.
Army put rifles and ammunition at his disposal, but Coleman armed the 5,000
or so men who enlisted in the "merchants' militia"
with hickory pick handles. Within a few days, order was restored and the
committee was disbanded.

In addition to its normal wholesale mercantile trade, Coleman's company
acted as commission agents for numerous manufacturers and put money into the
salmon, fruit, and sugar industries. His last venture, a heavy investment in
borax property in Death Valley, proved ruinous. His economic kingdom, which
had an estimated business of $14 million a year, collapsed in 1886. He
finally paid off his creditors a year before his death in San Francisco.

Among the honors conferred on Coleman were the presidencies of the Society
of California Pioneers and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Various
newspapers and officials sought his candidacy as a Democrat for the
presidency, but he was never nominated.
Hubert Howe Bancroft, a historian of early California, praised Coleman in
the highest terms, noting that physically he was "tall, large, symmetrical
in form." General William T. Sherman described him as "a man of fine
impulses, manners, character, and intelligence.
. . . He has not much education and not the least doubt of himself, his
motives or intentions." That Coleman was able to maintain his prestigious
status in San Francisco over three decades is a tribute to his ability to
adapt to the ever-shifting economic and social structure of the city.


Bibliography

Coleman's short pamphlet, The Chinese Question Considered by a Calm and
Dispassionate Merchant (1882), was an argument against further "Mongolian"
immigration. James A. B. Scherer, "The Lion of the Vigilantes," William T.
Coleman and the Life of Old San Francisco (1939), is a laudatory biography.
A more critical treatment is Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence:
Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantes (1975). Peter R.
Decker, Fortunes and Failures: White-Collar Mobility in Nineteenth Century
San Francisco (1978), characterizes the vigilantes as businessmen seeking to
bolster their economic position. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., ed., The San Francisco
Vigilance Committee of 1856: Three Views (1971), has a fine bibliography and
shows how writers' assessments of the work and value of the 1856 vigilance
committee has changed over time. Nunis reprints from Century Magazine (Nov.
and Dec.
1891) Coleman's reflections on the 1851, 1856, and 1877 movements, William
T. Sherman's 1856 letters articulating the attitude of the "Law and Order"
faction, and the little pamphlet of James O'Meara, a trained journalist who
was in San Francisco at the time but did not participate on either side. The
second volume of Hubert Howe Bancroft's massive two-volume Popular Tribunals
(1887) is devoted entirely to the vigilance committee of 1856.
Mary Floyd Williams edited the Papers of the San Francisco Committee of
Vigilance of 1851 (1919); her History of the San Francisco Committee of
Vigilance of 1851 (1921) is generally very admiring.
An obituary is in the San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Nov. 1893.

Mary Lee Spence

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

Citation:
Mary Lee Spence. "Coleman, William Tell";
http://www.anb.org/articles/20/20-00198.html;
American National Biography Online Oct 2003


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