Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland, 1801-1922
The British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland (BPPI) are an indispensable primary source for virtually every historian (and many non-historians) working in most fields of Irish history, and the history of Anglo-Irish relations, during the period of the Union (1801-1922). We have identified some 13,700 official publications relating to Ireland from the House of Commons[1] Sessional Indexes for this period, ranging in scale from short bills of a few pages and reports, to the massive social inquiries with volumes of minutes of evidence exemplified by the decennial censuses, the Poor Inquiry Commission (1836) and Devon Commission (1845) reports, each of which were multi-volume documents covering thousands of pages.
Subjects covered by BPPI range from government, politics and administration, to finance, agriculture and industry, communications, emigration, social conditions, poor relief and health, population, law and order, education, cultural institutions, religion and language. The types of evidence contained are extremely varied, from statistical series and accounts to lightly- or unedited transcripts of emigrants’ letters and witness interviews from across the social spectrum.
Obviously the BPPI are elite documents, created by the Government, Parliament and state agencies for the purposes of governance, administration, and the creation of official knowledge. This naturally implies an official bias in what was thought relevant of observation, what data was collected, and what was selected for publication. The principal value of the BPPI might thus be taken to lie in what they tell us about governing knowledge, preoccupations, strategies and ideologies – all crucial in themselves for an understanding of the British-Irish relationship in the period between the Act of Union and the Irish Revolution and the partition of the island in 1919-22.
But the BPPI can also provide us with much more than the ‘official view’. British governance of Ireland took place in the context of executive responsibility to Parliament, a body which contained growing numbers of oppositional and nationalist Irish members who could demand returns of official data and serve on committees and commissions of inquiry, and beyond Parliament (however imperfectly) to an Irish as well as a British public opinion, increasingly conscious through the burgeoning popular press of the proceedings of Parliament. Irish newspapers, for example, carried not only verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates, but long extracts from the BPPI, and debated their findings and implications in editorials. The BPPI were very much part of the public life of 19th and early 20th-century Ireland.
After the Act of union had been passed, Daniel O’Connell worked effectively in addressing Irish grievances; his actions were significant in contributing to the changing nature of the Irish question. Even though O’Connell tried to address the same issues as the society of united Irishmen, he abandoned the use of violence and instead took a constitutional approach such as the use of monster meetings and working alongside parliament in order to gain catholic emancipation and repeal of the union. O’Connell’s zeal for reform influenced parliament in passing the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829. Even though in the short term the Act had been insignificant in Ireland as the British government purposely reduced the Irish electorate by increasing qualifications from 40 shillings to £10 in an attempt to retain Protestant dominance, it was the prime cause for the d...
O'Connor, Thomas H. The Boston Irish: A Political History. Boston, MA. Northeastern University Press, 1995.
In order to legitimise a regime or cause, traditions may be constructed around historical or mythological events, people or symbols that reinforce the image required to focus people’s conception of the past. People can be encouraged to invent a cohesive view of their shared ‘traditions’ by what could be called cherry picking bits of history.
The Great Irish Potato Famine was during a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration through 1845-1850. According to the journal, “The Context of Migration: The Example of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century” by James H. Johnson, this caused the population of Ireland to decrease 20-25% and it did not stabilize again until the 1930’s. Although there was a potato crop failure in Europe in the 1840’s, one third of the Irish population was dependent on this crop. This was inevitable due to the sole dependency of the Irish people on home-grown potatoes and the population almost doubling from 1800 - 1840. The journal, “Spaces for Famine: A Comparative Analysis in Ireland and the Highlands in the 1840’s” by Liz Young states that “if the crop was poor or failed, families could not manage and to compare, 50,000 people died when crops failed in 1817-1819.” The Irish people could not sustain could not sustain their diet of potatoes because they had not the means to buy more seed or, indeed, purchase the land on which to grow enough potatoes to feed their rapidly multiplying families for a year. As families increased in size, their excess produce, that previously would have given them a means to purchase livestock etc., was consumed. There were many factors that were involved in this catastrophe. The main causes were environmental conditions, agricultural practices and climate conditions, economic faults, and social and political trends. Social unrest and the history of Irish poverty was the direct cause of the Irish Potato Famine and the sole dependency on the potato crop which inevitably led them to starvation.
Most common people will see that they are suffering from type 2 diabetes. Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 is not because your immune system is attacking the insulin but is because your body simply does not produce the required insulin. 90% of people who have diabetes are diagnosed with type 2 (Medical News...
Gray, Peter. Famine, Land, and Politics: British Government and Irish Society. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999.
The underlying causes of the revolution that happened in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century stem from vast injustices that the Irish people suffered at the hand of British rule. ‘For the history of nineteenth-century Ireland is more than a prologue to the events of the twentieth and has a character of its own, which is all too often distorted by those who, neglecting all else, confine their attention to the signposts which point to the developments of a later age. Irish history would be a simpler, but less rewarding subject, were it indeed that all the signposts pointed one way.’ (A...
The Irish and British governments fought for many years over the ownership of Northern Ireland. Britain had main control over Northern Ireland, and Ireland did not think that was fair. Be...
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Diabetes has been divided into two groups: Type 1 and Type 2. Although Type 2 is more common, a person can develop either of the two types of diabetes at any age. Type 1 diabetes is either called “juvenile diabetes” or “insulin-dependent diabetes.” This kind of diabetes is usually diagnosed in children, teenagers, and young-adults (What Diabetes Is). The beta cells of the pancreas, which normally store and release insulin, can no longer create insulin because the body’s immune system has been taken over, and destroyed them (the beta cells) (Beta Cells) .
To undertake a full thematic investigation of this period would be very much beyond the scope of this paper. Thus, the essay will embark on a high level chronological interpretation of some of the defining events and protagonists, which influenced the early modernization of Ireland during the period 1534-1750. The main focus of the paper will concentrating on the impact and supervision of the Tudor dynasty. Firstly, the essay will endeavour to gain an understanding as to what contemporary historians accept as being the concept of modernization during this time period. The paper will then continue by examine the incumbent societal and political structure of Ireland prior to the Tudor conquests. This will have the impact of highlight the modernising effects produced by the subsequent attempts by the Tudors to consolidate and centralise power in the hands of the State. Once more, due to the vast nature of the time period, not every modernizing effect can be examined. Therefore, the paper will concentrate on the modernization of the political landscape, land ownership and the impact this had on the geographic construct of the island.
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).
Maintaining a long-term customer relationship between customer and company is economically more advantageous than seeking on new customers. (Liliana L. Bove Lester W. Johnson, 2000)
Home Rule emerged shortly after the potato famine in 1870 (10, pg 73). The Irish Parliamentary Party established this idea, seeking to encourage national pride, and by doing so the Irish Parliament would be re-established (10, pg 73). This was to be accomplished through a revival of the language, sport, and culture (12, pg 9). Promoting Home Rule seemed like a positive notation, but problems did arise. Pope Leo XIII, the Catholic hierarchy of Ireland, opposed the idea of Home Rule, because the leader of the movement, Charles Stewart Parnell, was a Protestant (10, pg 73). This issue would continue to grow well into the 20th century, dividing Ireland into two separate groups (10, pg 73).
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (London: 2005). pp. 51, 71-72. Accessed May 3, 2014. http://www.jhud.co.uk/huddleston/uk2005_tcm77-248610.pdf.