Kirjahaku

The history of Union Ireland is typically told through its best-known historical events and leaders - from the 1798 Rising, the Great Famine, and the Irish Revolution, to Parnell and De Valera -- and as moments of sectarian division and high parliamentary politics. Instead, Ciaran O'Neill here makes the case for a broader, more inclusive, and decentred approach that emphasizes transnational phenomena, a settler-colonial diaspora, and minority groups on the island. Through the lenses of 'power' and 'powerlessness', he demonstrates that the received historiographical wisdoms suffer from several misconceptions: on the one hand they misconstrue the nature of power and the powerful, perpetuating historical myths about the 'ungovernability' of Ireland. After securing the Union, the British state proceeded to govern Ireland with less and less certainty of ever persuading its citizens of its legitimacy. Despite all reforms and investment, there was a widespread sense that Ireland would never recover and be a willing partner in the Union. And on the other hand they take at face value the nature of the so-called 'powerless', ignoring the myriad ways in which marginalized and diasporic groups negotiated and asserted their agency during the Union period, influencing and transforming the powerful centre in the process. The result is an untraditional and thought-provoking reappraisal of Union Ireland that raises important questions about colonialism and resistance - of what it means to govern and be governed, and the long-lasting legacies of the spaces in between.

For as far back as school registers can take us, the most prestigious education available to any Irish child was to be found outside Ireland. Catholics of Consequence traces, for the first time, the transnational education, careers, and lives of more than two thousand Irish boys and girls who attended Catholic schools in England, France, Belgium, and elsewhere in the second half of the nineteenth century. There was a long tradition of Irish Anglicans and Catholics sending their children abroad for the majority of their formative years. However, as the cultural nationalism of the Irish revival at the end of the nineteenth century took root, Irish Catholics who sent their children to school in Britain were accused of a pro-Britishness that crystallized into still recognisable terms of insult such as West Briton, Castle Catholic, Squireen, and Seoinin. This concept has an enduring resonance in Ireland, but very few publications have ever interrogated it. Catholics of Consequence marks the first ever attempt to analyse the education and subsequent lives of the Irish children that received this type of transnational education. It also tells the story of elite education in Ireland, where schools such as Clongowes Wood and Castleknock College were rooted in the continental Catholic tradition, but also looked to public schools in England as exemplars. Taken together it tells the story of an Irish Catholic elite at once integrated and segregated within what was then the most powerful state in the world.

For as far back as school registers can take us, the most prestigious education available to any Irish child was to be found outside Ireland. Catholics of Consequence traces, for the first time, the transnational education, careers, and lives of more than two thousand Irish boys and girls who attended Catholic schools in England, France, Belgium, and elsewhere in the second half of the nineteenth century. There was a long tradition of Irish Anglicans, Protestants, and Catholics sending their children abroad for the majority of their formative years. However, as the cultural nationalism of the Irish revival took root at the end of the nineteenth century, Irish Catholics who sent their children to school in Britain were accused of a pro-Britishness that crystallized into still recognisable terms of insult such as West Briton, Castle Catholic, Squireen, and Seoinin. This concept has an enduring resonance in Ireland, but very few publications have ever interrogated it. Catholics of Consequence endeavours to analyse the education and subsequent lives of the Irish children that received this type of transnational education. It also tells the story of elite education in Ireland, where schools such as Clongowes Wood College and Castleknock College were rooted in the continental Catholic tradition, but also looked to public schools in England as exemplars. Taken together the book tells the story of an Irish Catholic elite at once integrated and segregated within what was then the most powerful state in the world.