The first biography of Alfred Webb, Irish nationalist and president of the 1894 Indian National Congress. The biography explores how Webb viewed nationalism as a vehicle for global social justice. Drawing on archives in Britain, Ireland and India the author reveals how Irish and Indians used cosmopolitan London to create networks across the Empire.
It was in the Victorian period that the political traditions we know today took shape, but they did so against an intellectual landscape dominated by preoccupations that are now often unfamiliar. H. S. Jones' book provides a genuinely historical overview of this rich period in political thought, incorporating the insights of an abundance of recent work in the history of ideas. Fresh perspectives are given on leading thinkers of the time, including John S. Mill, Thomas and Matthew Arnold, Walter Bagehot, Thomas Green, and Herbert Spencer.
Situating the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context, Jill C. Bender traces its ramifications across the four different colonial sites of Ireland, New Zealand, Jamaica, and southern Africa. Bender argues that the 1857 uprising shaped colonial Britons' perceptions of their own empire, revealing the possibilities of an integrated empire that could provide the resources to generate and 'justify' British power. In response to the uprising, Britons throughout the Empire debated colonial responsibility, methods of counter-insurrection, military recruiting practices, and colonial governance. Even after the rebellion had been suppressed, the violence of 1857 continued to have a lasting effect. The fears generated by the uprising transformed how the British understood their relationship with the 'colonized' and shaped their own expectations of themselves as 'colonizer'. Placing the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context reminds us that British power was neither natural nor inevitable, but had to be constructed.
An accessible and innovative look at Irish history by some of today's most exciting historians of Ireland This book brings together some of today's most exciting scholars of Irish history to chart the pivotal events in the history of modern Ireland while providing fresh perspectives on topics ranging from colonialism and nationalism to political violence, famine, emigration, and feminism. The Princeton History of Modern Ireland takes readers from the Tudor conquest in the sixteenth century to the contemporary boom and bust of the Celtic Tiger, exploring key political developments as well as major social and cultural movements. Contributors describe how the experiences of empire and diaspora have determined Ireland’s position in the wider world and analyze them alongside domestic changes ranging from the Irish language to the economy. They trace the literary and intellectual history of Ireland from Jonathan Swift to Seamus Heaney and look at important shifts in ideology and belief, delving into subjects such as religion, gender, and Fenianism. Presenting the latest cutting-edge scholarship by a new generation of historians of Ireland, The Princeton History of Modern Ireland features narrative chapters on Irish history followed by thematic chapters on key topics. The book highlights the global reach of the Irish experience as well as commonalities shared across Europe, and brings vividly to life an Irish past shaped by conquest, plantation, assimilation, revolution, and partition.
This book is a social history of Irish officers in the British army in the final half-century of Crown rule in Ireland. Drawing on the accounts of hundreds of officers, it charts the role of military elites in Irish society, and the building tensions between their dual identities as imperial officers and Irishmen, through land agitation, the home rule struggle, the First World War, the War of Independence, and the partition of Ireland. What emerges is an account of the deeply interwoven connections between Ireland and the British army, casting officers as social elites who played a pivotal role in Irish society, and examining the curious continuities of this connection even when officers’ moral authority was shattered by war, revolution, independence, and a divided nation.
'All our absorbing interest in our own Irish affairs should not blind us to what is going on in other countries, should not lessen our sympathies towards men and women in other countries who are striving for free institutions as we are.' Thus wrote Alfred Webb (1834-1908), Irish Quaker, nationalist, Member of Parliament, suffragist, and President of the 1894 Indian National Congress. In the first full-length biography of Webb, Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre describes a vibrant civic and political life in Nineteenth-century Ireland. She reveals how Irish and Indian nationalists met in London, the capital of the British Empire, and pursued a multi-cultural politics of cooperation. Rich in detail and drawing on extensive original research, this historical biography provides a fascinating journey into the political, social and cultural worlds of late-Victorian imperialism, and provides a new assessment of the Irish role within it.
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.
It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, a story of building a welfare state and coping with decline. But what if Britain's history was approached from a different angle? What if we wrote about it with as we might write the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union, as a story of power, and of transformation? David Edgerton's major new book breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to radical discontinuities. Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation. This was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers. From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways. Such a perspective produces new and refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nationgives us a grown-up, unsentimental history, one which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.
Introduction -- Writing about wine -- Why Britain? -- Dutch courage : the first wine at the Cape -- First fleet, first flight : creating Australian vineyards -- Astonished by the fruit : New Zealand's first grapes -- Cheap and wholesome : Cape producers and British tariffs -- Echunga hock : colonial wines of the nineteenth century -- Have you any colonial wine? Australian producers and British tariffs -- Planting and pruning : working the colonial vineyard -- Sulphur! phylloxera and other pests -- Served chilled : British consumers in the Victorian era -- From Melbourne to Madras : Wine in India, Cyprus, Malta, and Canada -- Plonk! colonial wine and the First World War -- Fortification : the dominions and the interwar period -- Crude potions : the British market for empire wines -- Doodle bugs destroyed our cellar: wine in the Second World War -- And a glass of wine: colonial wines in the postwar society -- Good fighting wine : colonial wines battle back -- All bar one : the new world conquers the British market -- Conclusions.
Shows that a rising antipathy in Ireland toward Victorian Britain's expanding global imperialism was a crucial factor in popular support for Irish Home Rule.
