Author: James Kelly
Publisher: Four Courts Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Propagandist, popular politician, conservative reactionary, Edward Newenham excited sharply different responses during his lifetime. He was encouraged by his admiration for Charles Lucas in Ireland and John Wilkes in England to take up the issue of parliamentary reform, and by his support for the cause of the American colonists to become one of the warmest advocates of American independence from Britain this side of the Atlantic during the American Revolution. His admiration for the American cause brought him into contact with Benjamin Franklin, who aspired to recruit him to the American cause, George Washington, John Jay and the marquis of Lafayette who introduced him to the court of Louis XVI though Britain and France were at war. Their surviving correspondences provide one of the main sources for this study, and they show clearly that Newenham did not, as some contemporaries believed, ever engage in treasonable activity. His commitment throughout his political life was to uphold the Protestant constitution, and it is this commitment that allows one to make sense of a life that saw him make a significant contribution as a reforming revenue officer, as a prolific and outspoken propagandist, as a popular MP for County Dublin for more than twenty years, as a Volunteer officer, and finally as a conservative ideologue who supported the Act of Union and opposed Catholic relief. He was also a devoted husband and father (to eighteen children) until his mismanagement of his inheritance, largely on the construction of Belcamp Hall in north County Dublin, precipitated him on an economic roller coaster that caused him to spend a spell in a debtors' prison. He died in genteel poverty, but he remained until the end a representative voice of that strong strand of Protestant opinion that believed utterly in the merits of a 'Protestant constitution'.
Author: D. Hayton
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023027496X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
A pioneering exploration of the phenomenon of the composite state in Eighteenth-century Europe. Employing a comparative approach, it combines the findings of new research on Ireland with broader syntheses of major composite states in Europe – those of France, Austria and Poland-Lithuania.
Author: Neal Garnham
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843837242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
This text shows how the militia played a larger role in the defence of 18th century Ireland than has hitherto been realised, and how it's reliability was therefore a key point for the government.
Author: E. M. Johnston-Liik
Publisher: Ulster Historical Foundation
ISBN: 9781903688601
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
The Irish Parliament met for the first time on June 18, 1264 at Castledermott and for the last time in the Parliament House, Dublin, on August 2, 1800. It had lasted for over 500 years, and from 1707 it was the only parliament in the British Empire with the medieval structure of King (represented by the Lord Lieutenant), Lords and Commons. Like the English/British parliament it only met regularly from the end of the 17th century. In 1692 Ireland had a minimal infrastructure; by 1800 it had become recognisable as the country in whose history and culture there is a continuing and irresistible tide of interest worldwide. Since its publication, "History of the Irish Parliament "has acquired an already legendary status. This companion volume looks at Irish society and the personal concerns which influenced the MPs. This volume will form a valuable reference work in addition and complementary to the "History of the Irish Parliament." The six-volume "History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800" was published in 2002. The online resource is available at www.historyoftheirishparliament.com.
Author: Alvin Jackson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191667609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 979
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Book Description
The study of Irish history, once riven and constricted, has recently enjoyed a resurgence, with new practitioners, new approaches, and new methods of investigation. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History represents the diversity of this emerging talent and achievement by bringing together 36 leading scholars of modern Ireland and embracing 400 years of Irish history, uniting early and late modernists as well as contemporary historians. The Handbook offers a set of scholarly perspectives drawn from numerous disciplines, including history, political science, literature, geography, and the Irish language. It looks at the Irish at home as well as in their migrant and diasporic communities. The Handbook combines sets of wide thematic and interpretative essays, with more detailed investigations of particular periods. Each of the contributors offers a summation of the state of scholarship within their subject area, linking their own research insights with assessments of future directions within the discipline. In its breadth and depth and diversity, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History offers an authoritative and vibrant portrayal of the history of modern Ireland.
Author: Desmond Keenan
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 166412859X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 968
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Book Description
The 18th century tended to be neglected by Irish historians in the 20th century. Irish achievements in the 18th century were largely those of Protestants, so Catholics tended to disregard them. Catholic historians concentrated on the grievances of the Catholics and exaggerated them. The Penal Laws against Catholics were stressed regardless of the fact that most of them affected only a small number of rich Catholics, the Catholic landowners who had sufficient wealth to raise a regiment of infantry to fight for the Catholic Stuart pretenders. The practice of the Catholic religion was not made illegal. Catholic priests could live openly and have their own chapels and mass-houses. As was the law at the time, the ordinary workers, Catholic or Protestant, had no vote, and so were ignored by the political classes. Nor had they any ambitions in the direction of taking control of the state. If they had local grievances, and in many places they had, especially with regard to rents and tithes, they dealt with them locally, and often brutally, but they were not trying to overthrow the Government. If some of them looked for a French invasion it was in the hope that the French would bring guns and powder to assist them in their local disputes. It is a peculiarity, as yet unexplained, that most of the Catholic working classes, by the end of the century, had names that reflected their ancestry as minor local chiefs. The question remains where did the descendants of the former workers, the villeins and betaghs go? The answer seems to be that in times of war and famine the members of even the smallest chiefly family stood a better chance of surviving. This would explain the long-standing grievance of the Catholic peasants that they were unjustly deprived of their land. We will perhaps never know the answer to this question. Penal Laws against religious minorities were the norm in Europe. The religion of the state was decided by the king according to the adage cuius regio eius religio (each king decides the state religion for his own kingdom). At the end of the 17th century, the Catholic landowners fought hard for the Catholic James II. But in the 18th century they lost interest and preferred to come to terms with the actually reigning monarch, and became Protestants to retain their lands and influence. Unlike in Scotland, support for the Catholic Stuarts remained minimal. Nor was there any attempt to establish in independent kingdom or republic. When such an attempt was made at the very end of the century it was led by Protestant gentlemen in imitation of their American cousins. Ireland in the 18th century was not ruled by a foreign elite like the British raj in India. It was an aristocratic society, like all the other European societies at the time. Some of these were descendants of Gaelic chiefs; some were descendants of those who had received grants of confiscated land; some were descendants of the moneylenders who had lent money to improvident Gaelic chiefs. Together these formed the ruling aristocracy who controlled Parliament and made the Irish laws, controlled the army, the judiciary and the executive. Access to this elite was open to any gentleman who was willing to take the oath of allegiance and conform to the state church, the Established Church but not the nonconformists. British kings did not occupy Ireland and impose foreign rule. Ireland had her own Government and elected Parliament. By a decree of King John in the 12th century, the Lordship of Ireland was annexed to the person of the king of England. When not present in Ireland in person, and he rarely was, his powers were exercised by a Lord Lieutenant to whom considerable executive power was given. He presided over the Irish Privy Council which drew up the legislation to be presented to the Irish Parliament. One restraint was imposed on the Irish Parliament. By Poynings’ Law it was not allowed to pass legislation that infringed on the rights of the king or his English Privy Council. The British Parliament had no interest in the internal affairs of Ireland. The Irish Council were free to devise their own legislation and they did so. The events in Irish republican fantasy are examined in detail. The was no major rebellion against alleged British rule. The vast majority of Catholics and Protestants rallied to the support of their lawful Government. The were local uprisings easily suppressed by the local militias and yeomanry. Atrocities were not all on one side. Ireland at last enjoyed a century of peace with no wasteful and destructive wars within its bounds. No longer were its crops burned, its buildings destroyed, its cattle driven off, its population reduced by fever and famine. Its trade was resumed and gradually wealth accumulated and was no longer dispersed on local wars. Gentlemen, as in England, could afford to build great country and town houses. The arts flourished as never before. Skilled masons could build great houses. Stone cutters could carve sculptures. The most delicate mouldings could be applied to ceilings. The theatre flourished. While some gentlemen led the life of wastrels, others devoted themselves to the promotion of agriculture and industry. Everywhere mines were dug to exploit minerals. Ireland had not the same richness of minerals as England, but every effort was made to find and exploit them. Roads were improved, canals dug, rivers deepened, and ports developed. Market towns spread all over Ireland which provided local farmers with outlets for their produce and increased the wealth of the landlords. This wealth was however very unevenly spread. The population was ever increasing and the poor remained miserably poor. In a bad year, hundreds of thousands of the very poor could perish through cold and famine. But the numbers of the very poor kept on growing. Only among the Presbyterians in Ulster was there emigration on any scale. Even before the American Revolution they found a great freedom and greater opportunities in the American colonies. Catholics, were born, lived and died in the same parish. Altogether it was a century of great achievement.
Author: Benjamin Franklin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300203748
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 756
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Book Description
After the signing of the definitive peace treaty on September 3, 1783, Franklin’s official duties as minister plenipotentiary diminished. Great Britain refused to negotiate a commercial agreement, and Congress failed to act on the draft treaties of commerce with Denmark and Portugal that Franklin had sent them the previous summer. In the six months after the peace was settled, Franklin’s sole diplomatic achievement was a draft consular convention with France. With his welcome leisure time, however, Franklin eagerly followed scientific developments (witnessing the first balloon ascensions in Paris), advised the French government on schemes for civic improvement, and wrote three of his most remarkable pieces about what it meant to be American.
Author: Mi Gyung Kim
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822981955
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
The hot-air balloon, invented by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, launched for the second time just days before the Treaty of Paris would end the American Revolutionary War. The ascent in Paris—a technological marvel witnessed by a diverse crowd that included Benjamin Franklin—highlighted celebrations of French military victory against Britain and ignited a balloon mania that swept across Europe at the end of the Enlightenment. This popular frenzy for balloon experiments, which attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators, fundamentally altered the once elite audience for science by bringing aristocrats and commoners together. The Imagined Empire explores how this material artifact, the flying machine, not only expanded the public for science and spectacle but inspired utopian dreams of a republican monarchy that would obliterate social boundaries. The balloon, Mi Gyung Kim argues, was a people-machine, a cultural performance that unified and mobilized the people of France, who imagined an aerial empire that would bring glory to the French nation. This critical history of ballooning considers how a relatively simple mechanical gadget became an explosive cultural and political phenomenon on the eve of the French Revolution.
Author: R. Usher
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230362168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
This innovative urban history of Dublin explores the symbols and spaces of the Irish capital between the Restoration in 1660 and the advent of neoclassical public architecture in the 1770s. The meanings ascribed to statues, churches, houses, and public buildings are traced in detail, using a wide range of visual and written sources.
Author: Jack P. Greene
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521114985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Consisting of an introduction and ten chapters, Exclusionary Empire examines the transfer of English traditions of liberty and the rule of law overseas from 1600 to 1900. Each chapter is written by a noted specialist and focuses on a particular area of the settler empire - Colonial North America, the West Indies, Ireland, the early United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa - and on one non-settler colony, India. The book examines the ways in which the polities in each of these areas incorporated these traditions, paying particular attention to the extent to which these traditions were confined to the independent white male segments of society and denied to most others. This collection will be invaluable to all those interested in the history of colonialism, European expansion, the development of empire, the role of cultural inheritance in those histories, and the confinement of access to that inheritance to people of European descent.
