The domestic linen industry left an indelible imprint on Ulster history. It was introduced by colonists from the north of England in the 17th century, before the arrival of the Huguenots, and encouraged by the landlords to improve their rentals. Earnings from raising flax, spinning yarn and weaving cloth, provided farming families with regular incomes that enabled them to lease small farms and improve marginal land. Continual improvements by Ulster bleachers in the finishing of linens secured for them control of the industry, focussing its development. Exports to Britain first through Dublin and then direct to Liverpool and London, created a merchant class and underpinned the development of Belfast and the provincial market towns. By 1800 Ulster was reckoned to be the most prosperous province in Ireland. It was also the most densely peopled with a population of two million in 1821, almost equal to that of Scotland.

Chapter Introduction -- part Part I The linen industry: The lead sector in the industrialisation of Ulster -- chapter 1 The evolution of the linen industry prior to mechanisation, 1700-1825 -- chapter 2 Transition: the first generation of wet spinners, 1825-50 -- chapter 3 The high watermark of the Ulster linen industry, 1850-1914 -- part Part II Southern comfort: The food, drink and tobacco industries -- chapter 4 The food-processing industries -- chapter 5 Drink and tobacco -- part PART III Missing links? Engineering, shipbuilding and the dearth of mineral wealth -- chapter 6 The mining and engineering industries -- chapter 7 Shipbuilding: An exception to the rule? -- part Part IV Construction and the Irish economy -- chapter 8 The timber trade and the Irish building industry.

Twenty Irish immigrants, suspected of belonging to a secret terrorist organization called the Molly Maguires, were executed in Pennsylvania in the 1870s for the murder of sixteen men. Ever since, there has been enormous disagreement over who the Molly Maguires were, what they did, and why they did it, as virtually everything we now know about the Molly Maguires is based on the hostile descriptions of their contemporaries. Arguing that such sources are inadequate to serve as the basis for a factual narrative, author Kevin Kenny examines the ideology behind contemporary evidence to explain how and why a particular meaning came to be associated with the Molly Maguires in Ireland and Pennsylvania. At the same time, this work examines new archival evidence from Ireland that establishes that the American Molly Maguires were a rare transatlantic strand of the violent protest endemic in the Irish countryside. Combining social and cultural history, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires offers a new explanation of who the Molly Maguires were, as well as why people wrote and believed such curious things about them. In the process, it vividly retells one of the classic stories of American labor and immigration.

Bill Crawford had played a key role in the development of Irish economic, social and regional history for over forty years. The essays in this book are testimony to his many spheres of influence - as teacher, archivist, curator, researcher and writer - and focus on the themes in which Bill himself has been most interested: the relations between town and countryside, the linen industry and trade, land and population. His innovative use of historical sources, extensive scholarship, many publications and the enthusiasm for research which he imparts to so many people are acknowledged in this wide-ranging volume.