The Strokestown Park Archive is one of the largest estate collections in existence in Ireland, with more than 50,000 documents comprising rentals, leases, accounts, correspondence maps, drawings, architectural plans, and photographs. Of particular importance are the papers that relate to the Great Irish Famine. This book introduces the reader to the archive and provides an microscopic insight into the many and varied experiences of Famine for those who inhabited the estate in the 1840s. Documents from the archive, many of which have not seen the light of day since they were generated almost 170 years ago, illuminate the text and provide the reader with a unique insight into Famine Ireland. Although the 1990s (and later) witnessed an outpouring of scholarly work on the Great Famine to commemorate the sesquicentenary, only a handful of studies examined the impact of Famine on individual landed estates. In the social memory of the Great Famine at Strokestown, the assisted emigration of 1,490 people to Canada, the murder of Major Denis Mahon in 1847, and the subsequent clearance of as many as 3,000 tenants from the estate between 1848 to 1851 predominates. While, it is certainly true that the emigration schemes and the clearances caused considerable unrest, which contributed to the murder of Denis Mahon, social memory, if left untested, can hide many other complexities of the Famine. The existence of the Strokestown Famine archive highlights that there are still major questions to be answered in relation to the greatest social calamity in modern Irish history. For example: How widespread and effective were local efforts to alleviate the plight of the impoverished? How did the local community react to the clearance of thousands of people? Who benefited from these clearances? How did those who emigrated fare in their receiving communities? This book offers answers to some of these crucial questions. *** "The value of any historical account arises not only from its veracity, detail and clear delivery, but also from its engaging presentation; this book delivers it all! Ciar���¡n Reilly provides astounding insights into the lives of landless laborers and their families just before and during the horrific Great Famine. Of particular note is the volume of old photos, illustrations, documents and drawings that grace many pages." - The Celtic Connection, June 2015 [Subject: History, Irish Studies]

"The Belfast Jacobin is the first-ever biography of Samuel Neilson, a founding member of the Society of United Irishmen whose profound influence on this radical movement was to alter the course of Irish history. Samuel Neilson joined Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell at the inaugural meeting of the United Irishmen in 1791, forming a radical front that would challenge the political realities of the day in increasingly strident ways. As editor of the Northern Star, Neilson was to be a principal figure in shaping the United Irishmen's ideology before the newspaper was suppressed by the military. He brought the excitement caused by the French Revolution into Irish focus, putting public dissatisfaction into words and, later, gathering the forces necessary for revolt. Kenneth Dawson, conducting original research and drawing upon innumerable archive sources, reveals Neilson's formidable strength as an organiser of radical politics, his incessant run-ins with the authorities, and his central role in planning the United Irish Rebellion of 1798. Samuel Neilson brought talk of revolution to the street - The Belfast Jacobin is a pivotal history that illuminates the true import of his deeds and writing, sorely obscured in many accounts of the 1790s"--Back cover.

The papers collected here are a product of the second conference on Ireland's Great Hunger held at Quinnipiac University in 2005. This volume, focused on the theses of relief, representation, and remembrance, contains essays from a broad range of disciplines including works of history, literary criticism, anthropology, and art history.

Many thousands of Irish peasants fled from the country in the terrible famine winter of 1847-48, following the road to the ports and the Liverpool ferries to make the dangerous passage across the Atlantic. The human toll of "Black '47," the worst year of the famine, is notorious, but the lives of the emigrants themselves have remained largely hidden, untold because of their previous obscurity and deep poverty. In The End of Hidden Ireland, Scally brings their lives to light. Focusing on the townland of Ballykilcline in Roscommon, Scally offers a richly detailed portrait of Irish rural life on the eve of the catastrophe. From their internal lives and values, to their violent conflict with the English Crown, from rent strikes to the potato blight, he takes the emigrants on each stage of their journey out of Ireland to New York. Along the way, he offers rare insights into the character and mentality of the immigrants as they arrived in America in their millions during the famine years. Hailed as a distinguished work of social history, this book also is a tale of adventure and human survival, one that does justice to a tragic generation with sympathy but without sentiment.

The Great Famine of 1845-52 was the most decisive event in the history of modern Ireland. In a country of eight million people, the Famine caused the death of approximately one million, while a similar number were forced to emigrate. The Irish population fell to just over four million by the beginning of the twentieth century. Christine Kinealy's survey is long established as the most complete, scholarly survey of the Great Famine yet produced. First published in 1994, This Great Calamity remains an exhaustive and indefatigable look into the event that defined Ireland as we know it today.

Honorable Mention, Theodore Saloutos Book Award, given by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society A vivid, new portrait of Irish migration through the letters and diaries of those who fled their homeland during the Great Famine The standard story of the exodus during Ireland’s Great Famine is one of tired clichés, half-truths, and dry statistics. In The Coffin Ship, a groundbreaking work of transnational history, Cian T. McMahon offers a vibrant, fresh perspective on an oft-ignored but vital component of the migration experience: the journey itself. Between 1845 and 1855, over two million people fled Ireland to escape the Great Famine and begin new lives abroad. The so-called “coffin ships” they embarked on have since become infamous icons of nineteenth-century migration. The crews were brutal, the captains were heartless, and the weather was ferocious. Yet the personal experiences of the emigrants aboard these vessels offer us a much more complex understanding of this pivotal moment in modern history. Based on archival research on three continents and written in clear, crisp prose, The Coffin Ship analyzes the emigrants’ own letters and diaries to unpack the dynamic social networks that the Irish built while voyaging overseas. At every stage of the journey—including the treacherous weeks at sea—these migrants created new threads in the worldwide web of the Irish diaspora. Colored by the long-lost voices of the emigrants themselves, this is an original portrait of a process that left a lasting mark on Irish life at home and abroad. An indispensable read, The Coffin Ship makes an ambitious argument for placing the sailing ship alongside the tenement and the factory floor as a central, dynamic element of migration history.