Ireland's Arctic Siege of 1947
Ireland's Arctic Siege of 1947

Author: Kevin C. Kearns

Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd

Published: 2011-10-21

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 0717151964

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On 19 January 1947 Ireland was invaded by a freakish anticyclonic weather phenomenon unleashed from the depths of Siberia. Its prolonged two-month grip entombed the country in snow and ice. This arctic siege brought freezing temperatures of 7° Fahrenheit -14°C, a piercing east wind reaching 60-70 m.p.h., five major blizzards, and snowdrifts of 12 to 20 feet-some topping 50. Cars, buses, houses and entire villages were buried, leaving scores of passengers and inhabitants marooned. Roads were blocked, telephone and electricity lines felled and towns and farms isolated as food and fuel dwindled. Tragically this happened amidst the worst fuel crisis in Ireland's history. People were forced to strip wood from their homes, and nearly half of all Dubliners were burning furniture to survive. Severe food shortages and a virulent influenza epidemic weakened people. By 19 February 1947 Dublin's death rate had more than doubled as the poor and elderly succumbed to hunger, cold and illness. Kevin C. Kearns presents a graphic account of what was regarded as a near-biblical calamity of blizzards, freezing, hunger, floods, and threatened famine-so imperilling, wrote one newspaper, that it seemed almost as if the wrath of God was directed against Ireland. It is a vivid tale of suffering and courage, death and survival, of human resilience and real heroism, poignantly authenticated by the oral testimony of those who lived through the arctic siege.

Ireland's Burning
Ireland's Burning

Author: Paul Cunninghan

Publisher: Poolbeg Press Ltd

Published: 2016-05-17

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13:

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How Will Climate Change Affect You? Climate change is the biggest threat to the world today. Rising temperatures and shifting weather patterns are already creating havoc in parts of the world. The issue has been hotly debated by experts and policy-makers; it is now widely accepted that human activity has played a crucial part in climate change. Nobody now denies the urgency of the situation. But how will climate change affect Ireland? What do we know about climate change? What is happening now? What will happen in the future, and what can we do about it? RTÉ’s Environment Correspondent Paul Cunningham takes us on a tour of Ireland, meeting people whose lives and livelihoods have already been affected or will be affected in the future – farmers whose lands have been flooded and who find their crops threatened by unseasonal weather; coastal residents whose homes are in danger of collapsing into the sea; and ordinary parents whose children will bear the cost of our actions today. He also speaks to Ireland’s leading weather and climate experts and campaigners, who paint a realistic picture of what lies in store for us over the coming decades; businesses whose responsibility for leading change is as big as their carbon imprints; and Environment Ministers, former and current, Noel Dempsey and John Gormley. Cunningham looks at the proven facts and the various scenarios that may be played out. Finally, the author sums up what we can do to prevent disaster on a local and global scale. Ireland’s Burning is a highly readable, accessible book that addresses an issue that is not going to go away.

Famine and Disease in Ireland, vol 1
Famine and Disease in Ireland, vol 1

Author: Leslie Clarkson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 1014

ISBN-13: 1351221922

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The Great Famine of 1845-9 remains the great climacteric in Irish history. This title contains the first volume in a set of five of reprints of contemporary works relating to the Great Famine, including writings on the medical conditions in Ireland at the time gathered from the "Dublin Journal of Medical Science" and similar publications.

Ireland, France, and the Atlantic in a Time of War
Ireland, France, and the Atlantic in a Time of War

Author: Thomas M. Truxes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-04-21

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1317133447

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In March 1757 – early in the Seven Years’ War – a British privateer intercepted an Irish ship, the Two Sisters of Dublin, as it returned home from Bordeaux with a cargo of wine and French luxury goods. Amongst the cargo seized were 125 letters from members of the Irish expatriate community, which were to lay undisturbed in the British archives for the next 250 years. Re-discovered in 2011 by Dr. Truxes, this cache of (mostly unopened) letters provides a colorful, intimate, and revealing glimpse into the lives of ordinary people caught up in momentous events. Taking this correspondence (published by the British Academy in 2013) as a shared starting point, the ten essays in this volume are not so much "about" the Bordeaux–Dublin letters themselves, but rather reflect upon themes, perspectives, and questions embedded within the mail of ordinary men, women, and children cut off from home by war. The volume’s introduction situates these essays within a broad Atlantic context, allowing the succeeding chapters to explore a range of topics at the cutting edge of early-modern British and Irish historical scholarship, including women in the early-modern world, the consequences of war across all classes in society, the eighteenth-century penal laws and their impact, and Irish expatriate communities on the European continent. Leavening these broad themes with the personal snapshots of life provided by the Bordeaux-Dublin letters, this edited collection enlarges, complicates, and challenges our understanding of the mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland
Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland

Author: Christine Kinealy

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-10-10

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1441133089

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The Great Irish Famine was one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the nineteenth century. In a period of only five years, Ireland lost approximately 25% of its population through a combination of death and emigration. How could such a tragedy have occurred at the heart of the vast, and resource-rich, British Empire? Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland explores this question by focusing on a particular, and lesser-known, aspect of the Famine: that being the extent to which people throughout the world mobilized to provide money, food and clothing to assist the starving Irish. This book considers how, helped by developments in transport and communications, newspapers throughout the world reported on the suffering in Ireland, prompting funds to be raised globally on an unprecedented scale. Donations came from as far away as Australia, China, India and South America and contributors emerged from across the various religious, ethnic, social and gender divides. Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland traces the story of this international aid effort and uses it to reveal previously unconsidered elements in the history of the Famine in Ireland.

Charity Movements in Eighteenth-century Ireland
Charity Movements in Eighteenth-century Ireland

Author: Karen Sonnelitter

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1783270683

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Relates charity movements to religious impulse, Enlightenment 'improvement' and the fears of the Protestant ruling elite that growing social problems, unless addressed, would weaken their rule.

A History of Women in Ireland, 1500-1800
A History of Women in Ireland, 1500-1800

Author: Mary O'Dowd

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 131787725X

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The first general survey of the history of women in early modern Ireland. Based on an impressive range of source material, it presents the results of original research into women’s lives and experiences in Ireland from 1500 to 1800. This was a time of considerable change in Ireland as English colonisation, religious reform and urbanisation transformed society on the island. Gaelic society based on dynastic lordships and Brehon Law gave way to an anglicised and centralised form of government and an English legal system.