Monthly Archives: December 2016

Irish history under the Christmas tree

Santa brought me three new Irish history books for Christmas. Two are 2007 titles about late 19th and early 20th century republican political agitation, which came from my wish list. The third book, selected by my wife, covers a range of topics from the 16th to 21st century.

The Princeton History of Modern Ireland 
Edited by Richard Bourke & Ian McBride:

The book is divided into two sections, described by Bourke in the Introduction:

Part 1 contains six overarching narrative chapters dealing with the main developments in society and politics throughout the period covered by the book. The aim here is to present readers with an up-to-date rendition of the course of Irish history. Part 2 then focuses on topics and themes that played a peculiarly important role in the shaping of that trajectory. These chapters range from exercises in intellectual, cultural, and literary history to analyses of formatively significant subjects like religion, nationalism, empire, and gender.

The IRB: The Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Féin
By Owen McGee

This title won the 2009 NUI Centennial Prize for Irish History. McGee “argues that [the IRB] was never primarily an insurrectionary conspiracy; rather it was a popular fraternal organization and propagandistic body, committed to bringing about popular politicization in Ireland along republican lines,” according to publisher Four Courts Press.

Michael Davitt: freelance radical and frondeur
By Laurence Marley

Another title from Four Court Press. In a review for History Ireland, Seán O’Brien described the book as:

…the first substantial biography of Michael Davitt in 25 years and the only book to deal with all of the roles he assumed in public life. It presents Davitt as an ad hoc activist temporarily allied with a number of different movements but ultimately unable to maintain a lasting connection with any of them. Examining the details of the principled positions that led to his alienation from the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Parnellites, British labour and the House of Commons, the book makes a strong case for Davitt’s role as a kind of radical consultant, compelled to struggle by his ethical principles but unable to suppress them enough to remain loyal to an organisation.

 

Best of the Blog, 2016

The centennial of the 1916 Easter Rising and my sixth trip to Ireland made this a great year for the blog. Major elections in Ireland, the U.S. and the U.K. also produced outcomes that will have significant impacts for years to come. And there were other historical anniversaries and interesting contemporary developments. So let’s get right to the annual wrap-up:

Elections of 2016

  • In February, the national election in the Republic of Ireland ended in what Irish Times columnist Una Mullally described as a “weird, fractured, all-over-the-place result.” … In my ancestral home of County Kerry, brothers Michael and Danny Healy-Rae, both independents, took the top two of five seats in polling that ousted Fine Gael Minister of Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan and others. … It took until late April for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to reach a deal on forming a new minority government coalition.
  • A May vote on all 108 seats of the Northern Ireland Assembly resulted in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and [nationalist] Sinn Féin remaining the two largest blocks, “while newer parties running on nicher subjects with no connection to Northern Ireland’s traditional religious divide are rapidly rising,” the London-based New Statesman said. … Children born just before or after the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement began to turn 18 in 2016 and enter the electorate. 
  • In June, United Kingdom voters decided to leave the European Union by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, while the Northern Ireland electorate favored remaining in the E.U. by 56 percent to 44 percent. The so-called “Brexit” raises a number of tough questions about border controls with the Republic and the northern peace process. It has stirred talk of reuniting the island of Ireland, allowing the six northern counties to remain in the E.U. by joining the Republic.
  • For the second consecutive U.S. presidential election  cycle, two Irish-American candidates vied for the number two job. … Donald Trump’s victory drew harsh criticism from many Irish and Northern Irish political pundits as “America’s Brexit.” … Trump invited Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the White House for St Patrick’s Day in 2017, continuing a tradition that dates to 1952. Aside from the photo op, however, there are serious issues to discuss, such as the tax conditions of U.S. businesses operating in Ireland and Irish immigration.

The entrance of Trump’s Doonbeg golf course in County Clare with U.S., Irish and Trump flags.

Rising centennial

  • Sunday, 24 April was the calendar centennial of the start of the 1916 Easter Rising. It also was Census Day in Ireland, which revealed a changing, modernizing country. … The 100th anniversary generated plenty of opinions and interpretations in Ireland, the U.K., the U.S. and throughout the world.
  • I produced more than a dozen stories about 1916, including a five-part series on U.S.-Irish relations; Q & A style interviews with an Irish film producer and a U.S. archivist; and other original features. This work is gathered into the new 1916-2016 section of the blog.

Books about 1916 on the shelves at Eason & Son on O’Connell Street next to the General Post Office, epicenter of the rebellion. July 2016.

Other news and features

  • Irish tourism continued to grow in 2016, fueled in part by 1916 centennial. Fáilte Ireland suggested the market needs to continue “offering more compelling and authentic branded visitor experiences rather than relying on a hazy green image and warm welcome.” … In July, I visited the new, interactive Epic Ireland emigration museum in Dublin, then later contrasted it with the stalled effort to open an Irish American Museum in Washington, D.C. … I also visited Titanic Belfast, which was named the world’s leading tourist attraction for 2016. … For those considering a trip to Ireland, I published travel suggestions based on my visit. … I also introduced a new section of the blog featuring U.S. museums, libraries, cultural centers and programs devoted to Irish ancestry and contemporary connections.
  • 2016 was the 75th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz. … It also was a Leap Year, which marked the 128th (or only the 32nd) anniversary of the opening of the Listowel & Ballybunion Railway, a personal interest of mine, on 29 February 1888.
  • New York drug maker Pfizer and Dublin-based Allergan called off their proposed $160 billion merger after the U.S. Treasury Department announced new steps to curb tax-avoiding maneuvers called “inversions.” … The European Union’s antitrust commission ordered Ireland to collect €13 billion ($14.5 billion) of back taxes from tech giant Apple.
  • “Revolution in Color,” a 90-minute documentary told Ireland’s struggle for independence from Home Rule to Civil War through beautifully colorized archive newsreel and photos. … “The Journey,” a new film about the unlikely Northern Ireland peace partnership between Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness and the late unionist firebrand Rev. Ian Paisley, debuted to dreadful reviews. … Sonder Visuals produced a montage of drone-captured images of Ireland–rural and urban, natural and built–that fly past as quickly as the many voices (and dialects) that describe living there.

Freelance stories

In 2016, I published three Irish stories outside of the blog:

Guest posts:

I was pleased to welcome several guest bloggers this year, including:

I appreciate their contributions and encourage other readers to contact me for future guest posts.

Departed in 2016

  • Alan Rickman, British actor who portrayed Éamon de Valera, at 69.
  • Sir Terry Wogan, Limerick-born star of the BBC, at 77.
  • John McLaughlin, former Jesuit priest, speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and conservative provocateur, at 89.
  • Dr. Edward Daly, former Bishop of Derry, at 82. In an iconic photograph from “Bloody Sunday” in January 1972, he waved a blood-stained handkerchief ahead of a group of injured civil rights protesters as they tried to pass through British troops.
  • William Trevor, novelist and short story writer, at 88.

From the Archive:

View of the coast at County Kerry .

Christmas and New Year message from Ireland

Irish President Michael D. Higgins highlights the plight of migrants in global trouble spots such as Syria in his annual Christmas and New Year message.

“The circumstances of the birth of Christ, with its forced migration, homelessness and powerlessness, are being re-enacted for us the world over, in the conditions of migrants – including infants and children – as they wait, not knowing what the future will hold for them,” Higgins says.

His message also gives a final node to this year’s 1916 Easter Rising centennial.

“We commemorated how one hundred years ago a small group of women and men set in train a series of events that ultimately led to an independent State. In doing so, we celebrated elements of our past that can provide us with a lasting source of pride and confidence, as well as a compass for the future. We also reflected on aspects of our history that had been forgotten, evaded or even downplayed.”

“His Last Trip” was 75 years ago

About half seven in the morning of 17 December 1941, my Kerry-born grandfather braked his streetcar to a stop in front of St. Mary of Mercy Catholic Church, the inbound terminus of a trip to Pittsburgh’s city center.

As he stood to tug a cord that flipped an exterior sign to show his outbound destination, a heart attack dropped him to the floor of the motorman’s cab. Someone summoned a priest from the church to administer the last rites.

Willie Diggin was 47, a husband and the father of six girls. After a home wake, he was buried five days before Christmas.

I researched and wrote His Last Trip as a 12-part blog serial to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Willie’s 1913 emigration from North Kerry. The linked section also contains information about the similarly-titled book I later developed about Willie.

And this weekend, he is remembered with a Mass intention at St. Mary of Mercy.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord …

William Diggin.jpeg

Irish Ambassador reflects on 1916 centennial in U.S.

When Anne Anderson became Irish Ambassador to the U.S. in 2013, planning for the 1916 Easter Rising centennial commemoration in America was one of her early diplomatic duties.

“We knew 1916 would have huge resonance in the U.S., more than anywhere outside of Ireland,” Anderson told a 15 December Irish Network D.C. audience. “The road to the Rising and its aftermath have very big connections to Irish America.”

Ambassador Anne Anderson, left, interviewed by Fionnuala Sweeney of The Cipher Brief.

The Embassy faced several challenges, such as teaching a new generation of Irish Americans about an event more familiar to their parents and grandparents, and also reaching beyond the 30 million U.S. residents of Irish heritage, “not just those already part of the family,” Anderson said.

Cultural events, such as the three-week “Ireland 100” festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., were blended with more historically-focused examinations. The Embassy tracked more than 300 events across the U.S. “that we knew about,” Anderson said, including many “absolutely organic, grassroots” 1916 gatherings outside big Irish hubs such as New York and Boston.

“People were motivated by a sense of joy in their Irishness,” Anderson said. “The brand that Ireland has is extraordinarily positive.”

In the U.S., as in Ireland, the 1916 centennial commemoration required sensitivity to British and unionist perspectives, Anderson said. There were no attempts to “airbrush history.”

This year’s experiences will inform future commemorations as Ireland and Irish America move through the “Decade of Centenaries,” which extends until 2022, and includes the 100th anniversaries of the War of Independence and partition of the island.

“We are looking at what is most significant in the U.S.,” Anderson said, such as Eamon de Valera’s 1919-1920 fundraising tour in America. “But we always felt the biggest year in America would be 1916 (2016).”

Irish government puts new focus on arts and culture

The Irish government is launching an ambitious five-year program that “places creativity at the center of public policy.” Called Creative Ireland, the program will build on the legacy of this year’s successful 1916 centennial.

The arts initiative is based on the core proposition that participation in cultural activity drives personal and collective creativity, with significant implications for individual and societal well-being and achievement. It will have a strong focus on children.

“Creative Ireland is about placing culture at the center of our lives, for the betterment of our people and for the strengthening of our society,” Taoiseach Enda Kenny said in a news release. “Together we can do extraordinary things: we can make Ireland the first country in the world to guarantee access for every child to tuition and participation in art, music, drama and coding.”

Another of the program’s goals is to make Ireland a global hub for the production of film, television and animation. More at the Creative Ireland website, and check out this announcement video:

Another story for ‘The Irish Story’

The Irish Story published another of my stories this week. The website features articles, interviews, ebooks and podcasts about Irish history. I had the pleasure of meeting TIS chief editor and independent historian John Dorney this summer in Dublin. John does an excellent job of managing the website along with his own excellent research and writing projects. We enjoyed some non-history craic, as well.

James Brophy, of Dublin or New York?

“Mrs. Brophy’s Late Husband” joins my other work exploring how ordinary Irish and Irish American lives were overshadowed by large historical events. In this case, the Irish War of Independence of the early 1920s. My earlier piece for TIS, “Nora’s Sorrow – The Murder of John Foran, 1888,” deals with the Land War period. My blog serial and book “His Last Trip,” about my Kerry-born grandfather, also fits this category.

Such stories “humanize and enrich history by reminding us that the study of the past should include the study of the lives of ordinary people, their attitudes, beliefs, motives, experiences and actions,” Bill McDowell wrote in “Historical Research: A Guide for Writers of Dissertations, Theses, Articles and Books.”

I certainly haven’t invented a new technique for historical exploration, much less perfected the approach. But I intend to purse it, especially while I have access to the U.S. Consulate in Ireland records at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland.

In addition to managing commercial interests and the major political and social issues of the day, consulate officials also handled more routine matters, including notes and letters asking about missing people and the dead; emergency passport applications; and inquiries about estates and pensions. These records are a primary source for the stories of Anna Brophy and Nora Foran … and others I hope to find in the future.

Guest post: ‘Fantastic Beasts and How to Find Them’ has an Irish-American backstory

I’ve published several guest posts on the blog this year, but nothing could make me happier than to welcome my wife, Angie Drobnic Holan, to this space. Angie has her own excellent blog, and she is also quite the Harry Potter fan. MH

***

Even most Harry Potter fans may not realize there’s an Irish connection in the new movie, “Fantastic Beasts and How to Find Them.”

The film takes place in New York City in the 1920s. That’s before Harry Potter was born, but his future headmaster Albus Dumbledore was then at the magical school Hogwarts, where he taught a budding zoologist named Newt Scamander. The movie is about Scamander’s search for magical beasts, a search that takes him to the United States.

It turns out there’s a thriving magical community in the States, complete with a U.S. school of magic. That school is called Ilvermorny, and it was founded by an Irish immigrant to America.

Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is mentioned in the film only in passing, but Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling — who wrote the screenplay for “Fantastic Beasts and How to Find Them” — provided a detailed backstory for the school on her website Pottermore. (Read the lengthy story in full on the Pottermore website; registration required.)

The story begins in County Kerry. There, a young witch named Isolt Sayre is born in 1603. (Read the real history of Ireland in this period.) Isolt is part of a magical family, but her parents die, leaving her in the care of an eccentric and malevolent aunt. The aunt, a practitioner of dark magic, hates non-magical human beings and tries to make Isolt hate them as well.

Rowling describes Isolt as growing up “in the valley of Coomloughra,” and notes that her father “was a direct descendant of the famous Irish witch Morrigan, an Animagus [a wizard who can turn into an animal] whose creature form was a crow.” The aunt, Gormlaith Gaunt, takes Isolt to “the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or ‘Hag’s Glen.’”

Coomloughra is a real place, located about 20 miles west of Killarney. The area offers one of Ireland’s best ridge walks, a strenuous 4- to 5-hour hike over several mountain peaks in the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks range.

The Coomloughra Horseshoe Loop Walk in Kerry.

The Coomloughra Horseshoe Loop Walk in Kerry.

To get away from Gormlaith, Isolt runs away, first to England and then to America, disguising herself as a boy and traveling on the Mayflower. Hiding in the forests of North America, Isolt befriends magical creatures and has many adventures. She meets and marries a non-magical man, they start a family and eventually open their own school of magic: Ilvermorny.

But the aunt eventually learns of Isolt’s whereabouts and comes to find her, seeking to punish the niece for both running away and marrying a man who is not a wizard. A great battle ensues, and Isolt’s family eventually wins the day. To train and teach magical children in more peaceable ways, they open the school of Ilvermorny.

Ilvermorny, located in Massachusetts, grows and flourishes, accepting wizards and witches from around North America into one of its four houses: the Horned Serpent, the panther Wampus, the Thunderbird (one is seen in “Fantastic Beasts”) and the magical creature the Pukwudgie.

The story of this Irish-American witch has a lot of classic elements of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding stories. The story encourages open-mindedness, bravery and adventure, and it calls for peace between magic and non-magic people.

While Ilvermorny is mentioned only briefly in “Fantastic Beasts,” Rowling and the filmmakers have promised more movies to continue the story of Newt Scamander. The movie out now shows how Scamander befriends the American witches Tina and Queenie Goldstein, who are both alumnae of Ilvermorny. Perhaps we will learn more about the magical school started by an Irish immigrant in subsequent installments of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”

Ireland moves toward legalizing medical marijuana

Medicinal marijuana could be legal in Ireland by the spring.

The governing Fine Gael party declined to block the first reading of the “Cannabis for Medicinal Use Regulation Bill,” which is backed by all other parties in the Dáil. It now moves on to committees for further consideration. Health Minister Simon Harris has said he would seek to tighten the proposal as it moves through the legislative process.

More than 90 percent of Irish people support the legalization of the drug on medical grounds, the Irish Independent reported. Critics say the proposal opens the door to recreational use.

There is a “back to the future” element here, Gordon Hunt writes in SiliconRepublic:

In 1839, Irish physician William Brooke O’Shaughnessy brought cannabis into Europe from India. Seeing beneficial effects the drug seemed to have on relieving pain while in the subcontinent, O’Shaughnessy, having written numerous papers on the drug, thought it well suited for western medicine.

The drug took off and, for around 100 years, its widespread use (crossing the Atlantic, too) was notable throughout the streets of major cities, largely thanks to its pungent smell.

However, in the 1930s, U.S. lawmakers decided against it, instigating a ban that spread throughout much of the western world up until recent years.

October 2014 image from UniversityTimes.ie.

October 2014 image from UniversityTimes.ie.

 

Titanic Belfast named world’s top tourist attraction

Titanic Belfast, the museum dedicated to the ill-fated liner and city’s maritime heritage, is the world’s leading tourist attraction for 2016. The honor was announced 2 December by World Travel Awards, a travel tourism and hospitality industry marketing effort.

The Northern Ireland attraction is located on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard, in the city’s Titanic Quarter, where the RMS Titanic and other ships were built. Titanic Belfast has attracted more than three million visitors since opening in 2012, the centennial of the disaster.

“The Titanic story captures hearts and minds throughout the world and at Titanic Belfast, this is no exception,” Tim Husbands, Titanic Belfast’s chief executive, said in a release. “Our interpretation of the story and ability to engage with visitors on many different levels has been fundamental in winning this award.”

I spent several hours at Titanic Belfast in July. It is a well-designed blend of traditional museum elements and modern, interactive features and amenities. I highly recommend a visit to the attraction, and to the city.

This is the first time any attraction on the island of Ireland has won in the 23-year history of the World Travel Awards, dubbed the Tourism Oscars. The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin was among eight global finalists.

The view from inside Titanic Belfast look out across the dry dock where the ship was launched in 1912.

The view from inside Titanic Belfast looking across the dry dock area where the ship was launched in 1912.

From the waterfront look back across the dry dock at the museum, which is designed to evoke the Titanic.

Looking back across the dry dock to the museum, which is designed to evoke the Titanic.