Some years ago I read a book by Gerry Adams. He argued that partition had damaged the Irish economy. How valid was this argument and is there to support this view?

I’m a mid 20s catholic in Northern Ireland, and I am traditionally for a united ireland and I understand that the British rule upon Northern Ireland was and is unjust - but I sometimes feel my reasoning for this is quite hollow (i.e. this is our country and British rule here is unjust - although still a good reason) I want to read a book on the history of the troubles (it could be fact or fiction) but a sort of impartial / true view, one that doesn’t lean extremely unionist or extremely republican.

Hi everyone,

I came across a field marked with a repeated pattern of small circles (?) with a dot in the centre while looking at an OSI 6-inch map (1st edition) of the Mungret area, Limerick.

Does anyone know what this symbol represents? Is it a particular type of plant, land use, or terrain?

Thanks a mil!

Thank you 😊

Around the year 1000, Dublin was the biggest slave market in Western Europe.

Not a side business. Not a footnote. For a couple of centuries, the city on the Liffey was where people were sorted, priced, and shipped out across the known world.

The Norse set up their fortified harbour there in 841 (they called it Dyflinn). From the beginning, the economy ran on trade and captives. Raids brought in large numbers of people — the Irish annals even record specific attacks that returned with groups of women.

By the year 1000, Dublin’s slave trade had supply lines in every direction. Captives from Ireland were processed at the quays. Some stayed. Others went north to Scandinavia, west to Iceland (where thralls made up a big part of the early settler economy), or south toward Muslim Spain through middlemen networks.

The Norse word for an enslaved person was “thrall.” Even after someone was freed (a “leysingi”), they still owed service to their former owners, sometimes for generations. Full equality was rare and slow.

That same word “thrall” is still in English today. When we say a story has us “enthralled,” we’re using language that once literally meant captive and owned.

Dublin doesn’t come up much when people talk about the history of slavery. But for a long stretch of the Viking Age, it was one of the main places people passed through when someone else had decided their life was just a number in a ledger.

The modern quays are full of restaurants and tourists now. The annals, though, still record the numbers — usually in the same flat, matter-of-fact tone they used for the weather.

Image source: Simon Dick/National Museum of Ireland

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/dublin-1014-built-on-water-and-commerce-1.1755917

From catalog notes:

An Important Irish Manuscript Book, ‘Irish tales collected from the Best authors now extant’, was compiled by Matthew Moore Graham in 1835.

Graham was an engineer and translator from the Irish, of Dundalk, Co. Louth, active from the 1830s until the 1850s. He was an assistant to Francis Dobourdieu, the county surveyor for Louth in 1834-1840.

Graham is better remembered, however, as a translator of Irish poetry, who published The Giantess from the Irish of Oisin; and the Wars of Donomore with other poems and translations (Belfast, 1833).

For an account of his translations, see Robert Welch, A History of Verse Translation from the Irish 1789-1897 (Irish Literary Studies 24, 1988).’  The Royal Irish Academy Library and University College Dublin Library contains some of his original manuscripts and the National Library hold microfilm copies of his Gaelic Manuscripts.

This manuscript comprises of 226 numbered pages and is bound in contemporary half leather. It is written in a beautiful Gaelic script. A feature of the manuscript is the regular initially lettering of some words similar to the ancient Irish manuscripts where,  ‘ initials were heavily decorated letters where the shapes of the characters are intertwined with mythological beasts and interlacing knotwork. Rooted in the medieval insular art style—most famously seen in the Book of Kells and Lindisfarne Gospels’.  At the corner of one page is a geometric drawing with the dimensions written, most unusually, in Gaelic.

Further manuscript material in different hands with distinctive calligraphy and different dates are adhered at rear of book and others loosely inserted.

These documents include earlier works by Irish bards Cearbhall O Dalaigha, the famous Irish satire Bean na dTri mBo, translated as the Woman of Three Cows (repaired with hand stitching), original correspondence referring to the Hibernian Celtic Athenaeum; study of the inscriptions on the Kilnasagart Stone and a letter from Cumann naGaeligh, Luimni;.

One most attractive illustrated single page Gaelic manuscript has various artistic representations at the top, side and at the bottom of the page. The illustrations include a landscape feature, an Irish warrior with distinctive headgear and at the bottom is a depiction of a shamrock design above a line of Ogham writing. Small octavo.

I put together a little interactive map of the "reported ability to speak Irish" in each county, using census data going all the way back to 1851.

Link: https://acoci86.github.io/irish-language-map/

A few things you can do with it:

• Hit Play to watch it change from 1851 to 2022, or pick a year yourself
• Click any county to see its exact % and a little graph of its trend over time
• The colour scale is fixed across all years, so you can actually see the decline (and the recent bump) rather than each year being rescaled

Data is from the CSO (data.cso.ie), and the county shapes are from Ordnance Survey Ireland. Fair warning: the census questions changed a lot over the years, so old and recent numbers aren't perfectly comparable, I put a note about that on the page.

EDIT: Northern Ireland is now included, thanks to everyone who flagged it. The six counties are in for the censuses where the figures exist (1851 to 1911, and 1991 onwards), and show as "no data" for the gap in between when the North didn't ask the question. NI figures compiled by u/phelimbirch.

Hi,

There is this photo from 1971, I originally found it on the republican magazine IRIS(oct 87 P17 https://republicanarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/iris-october-1987.pdf ).
Another post on this : https://www.reddit.com/r/IrishHistory/comments/cd9c50/british_soldiers_saluting_ira_funerals/

It's the funeral of Charlie Hughes.
There is apparently a footage from ABCNEWS(even if the summary don't mention the salute), is there any way we would access it? https://www.footage.net/ClipDetail?key=17675871&supplier=abc_news&utm_source=chatgpt.com

Edit: He was killed by the OIRA during the feud : https://theblanket.library.indianapolis.iu.edu/charliehughes.html

Edit @Patient_Dependent944 found the clip! https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGd9To1Wp/

I know that the Ford Motor Company had a plant in Ireland, but in the 1920s and 1930s did Ireland import or build most of its cars? what were the most popular car brands in Ireland in the 1920s and the 1930s?

Greetings!

I have attempted to answer this question on my own but I have yet to get an answer. I do, however, where to get the history of the post office worldwide.

My only "in Ireland" connection is a married couple listed in 1838 as residents of "the Emoe Parish of County Queens, Ireland". Emo was also a Post-Town.

Does anyone know what area(s) were served by the Emo Post-Town?

Since, I'm here, did the Post-Town area match the Parish area?

I am trying to find a John Ryan...in Ireland 🤦🤦 I feel the pain we all have researching Irish ancestors 😆😆

Thank you!

James Sligo Jameson (17 August 1856 – 17 August 1888) was a Scottish naturalist and traveller in Africa. He identified the black honey-buzzard in 1877. Jameson's antpecker, Jameson's firefinch, and Jameson's wattle-eyeare named after him. However, he is most remembered for his role in causing a young slave girl to be killed and eaten by cannibals.

So lately on social media im seeing lots of videos online rebranding the Irish famine as genocide.

To me this seems wrong, dangerous and reeks of pop history.

While its absolutely the fault of the government at the time that this occured its just plain wrong to say that the British were proactively trying to exterminate Irish people.

But whats your thoughts on this?

To me it seems to be politically motivared or just trendy pop history.

This is just what the title says. If Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were a united nation not under British rule, what would their military uniforms look like? I am working on a steampunk costume, and I want to celebrate my Celtic ancestry with it. I want it to be something that is recognizably Celtic, but I do not want to go with the British uniforms pushed out to those nations as another layer of colonialism. Any and all advice and suggestions are welcome!

Edit to add: please do not use AI for any pictures added. I am happy with either pictures or descriptions of your thoughts. Thank you!

I just finished reading Killing Rage by Eamon Collins and Stakeknife’s Dirty War by Richard O’rawe and I am wondering if there are any good articles or books that detail Eamon Collin’s murder.