History (Peer-reviewed publications)

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Survival and assimilation: loyalism in the interwar Irish Free State (Pre-published version)
(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022-12-03) Hughes, Brian
In 1997, historian R. B. McDowell suggested that when “compared to the thorough methods for dealing with unpopular minorities … in eastern and central Europe and elsewhere, the harassment of loyalists was not notably severe” in Southern Ireland. When measured in lethal violence (a crude and sometimes unreliable metric), there is much truth in this. Between 1919 and 1921, during an Irish War of Independence which was followed by a short, sharp civil war and part of a longer “Irish Revolution,” just over 2,300 people were killed in ways that can be directly linked to the conflict. The separatist Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed 184 alleged civilian “spies” and informers, out of a total of just under 1,000 civilian casualties. Elsewhere, the “Posen Uprising” claimed twice as many lives in seven weeks as the Irish War of Independence did in three years. There were over 36,000 fatalities in less than five months during the Finnish Civil War, 3,000 or so in a few days in Bulgaria in September 1918, and another 1,500–3,000 over five days in September 1923. The shorter Estonian and Latvian Wars of Independence saw 11,750 and 13,246 fatalities, respectively. And as Charles Townshend has written, the significant reduction of the non-Catholic minority in Southern Ireland between 1911 and 1926 “may appear trivial in comparison with the massive dislocation of peoples in Europe, starting with the Greek-Turkish conflict in the early 1920s.
The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association and Irish ex-servicemen of the First World War, 1922–1932 (Pre-published version)
(Routledge, 2023-08-20) Hughes, Brian
In 1925, the Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA), originally founded for the relief of southern Irish loyalist refugees in Britain, created a fund for ex-servicemen resident in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated primarily from among the ‘diehard’ right of the British Conservative Party, SILRA’s charitable work was inevitably influenced by the world view of its membership and their audience. But it also had a Dublin sub-committee that operated in very different circumstances in the IFS. This study of SILRA’s efforts to provide welfare to southern Irish veterans of the First World War highlights the extent to which conditions in Ireland – real or perceived – continued to animate British Conservatives long after the Irish Revolution (1916–23). It also adds to the growing literature on ex-servicemen in post-revolutionary Ireland through the lens of SILRA’s lobbying and fundraising.
The disbanded Royal Irish Constabulary and forced migration, 1922–31
(2022-04-08) Hughes, Brian
This article concerns the men of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) who were disbanded from the force in 1922 and felt obliged to leave Ireland for Britain. Afforded unique – if not always entirely sufficient – financial and practical arrangements by the British government, this was in many respects a distinctive but particularly well documented cohort of Irish migrants. While the RIC was an exclusively male force, disbandment and migration also impacted on the wives and children of married members. The article will first examine the nature of migration under threat of republican violence for Irish-born, disbanded RIC members. It will then explore forced separation and the experiences of police families, before offering some reflections on what this case-study can tell us about contemporary understanding of gender and violence.
Hunting for the genetic legacy of Brian Boru in Irish historical sources (Pre-published version)
(Four Courts Press, 2017) Swift, Catherine
In his travels in Ireland in 1842, Thackeray followed the course of the Shannon up river from Tarbert to Limerick and then travelled through Clare to Galway, visiting “a decent little library” in Ennis where he bought “six volumes of works strictly Irish”. As he describes them subsequently, “these yellow-covered books are prepared for the people chiefly” and included tales of a highwayman entitled Adventures of Mr James Freeny, legends in Hibernian Tales2 and “the lamentable tragedy of the ‘Battle of Aughrim’ writ in the most doleful Anglo-Irish verse.” He does not refer explicitly in his Irish Sketchbook to Brian Boru but it seems fair to assume that his description of Barry Lyndon’s ancestry was based, at least in part, on stories he had heard when travelling through Thomond or, perhaps, even elsewhere in Ireland.
Irish and British saints of the early Medieval period (Pre-published version)
(Tablet Publishing Company, 2012) Swift, Catherine
How reliable are the annals as a source for the history of the Uí Néill?
(UCD [University College Dublin] History Society, 1996) Swift, Catherine
A review of 'Irish Women at Work 1930–1960. By Elizabeth Kiely and Máire Leane' (Pre-published version)
(Cambridge University Press, 2013) Cronin, Maura
This exploration of Munster women’s experience in the workplace is based on the stories of forty-two women, representing a broad spectrum of generational, social and employment backgrounds. It is one of two linked outcomes of a major H.E.A.-funded project completed in 2002–03 at U.C.C.’s School of Applied Social Studies, the major outcome being the online audio and pictorial archive of the women’s interviews, available at http://www.ucc.ie/acad/appsoc/OralHistoryProject/.
A review of 'Arrangements for the Integration of Irish Immigrants in England and Wales. By Anthony E.C.W. Spencer, edited by Mary E. Daly' (Pre-published version)
(Cambridge University Press, 2014) Cronin, Maura
This report, completed in 1960 but kept from the public domain until the publication of the present volume by the Irish Manuscripts Commission, was the product of the conjunction of two forces – Catholic church concern for the faith of Catholic migrants in Protestant countries, and the emergence of the relatively new discipline of sociology. Three Catholic welfare bodies were involved: the International Catholic Migration Commission which commissioned the report; the Newman Association of Great Britain, whose Catholic graduate members, particularly Anthony Spencer, were involved in the necessary research and analysis; and the Dublin-based Catholic Social Welfare Bureau (C.S.W.B.) founded by John Charles McQuaid, which took exception to the report and was instrumental in its being shelved. Mary Daly’s Introduction to the report teases out the complicated relations between these three bodies, and explores the conflicting approaches to Catholic immigration on the part of the English and Irish Catholic hierarchies. It also traces the tensions between Irish church-centred bodies like the C.S.W.B. (to some extent a mouthpiece of McQuaid) and Catholic sociologists whose deeply held pastoral concerns were counterbalanced by an empirical approach to research. This conflict is further clarified throughout the present publication, where passages to which McQuaid and the C.S.W.B. objected are reproduced in italics, allowing the reader to identify the two rival perspectives simultaneously.
A review of 'The account books of the Franciscan House, Broad Lane, Cork 1764–1921. Edited by Liam Kennedy and Claire Murphy' (Pre-published version)
(Cambridge University Press, 2014) Cronin, Maura
This book, making accessible in printed form the accounts of the Cork Franciscan Friary, should be read in conjunction with the database available on the Irish Manuscripts Commission website. Both book and database are the result of painstaking and meticulous transcription and analysis by Clare Murphy and Liam Kennedy of almost 130 years of accounts (no records are extant for the years 1785 to 1803). Although the level of information available varies over the period, with the greatest detail appearing up to the mid-nineteenth century, the work is an invaluable guide to the day-to-day expenditure as well as to some of the larger capital outlays of a religious house in a provincial Irish city from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Every entry (almost all exactly dated) outlines the nature of the transaction and the amount of payment in pounds, shillings and pence, with decimalised equivalents for those unfamiliar with the ‘old money’ of pre-1971.
A review of 'Dublin through the Ages by Art Cosgrove' (Pre-published version)
(Cambridge University Press, 1990) Cronin, Maura
This collection of eight studies examines the development of Dublin from the ninth century to the late 1980s, tracing the physical growth of the city, the fluctuations of its population, and the varying fortunes of its inhabitants.
A review of 'Dublin Slums, 1800-1925: A Study in Urban Geography by Jacinta Prunty' (Pre-published version)
(Cambridge University Press, 1999) Cronin, Maura
This study of the development of the Dublin slums over a period of a century and a quarter investigates the interrelated themes of public health, housing and poverty, as well as the reaction thereto by central and local government, religious denominations and private charities. The study involves in-depth analysis of several issues: early nineteenth-century mortality trends and their impact on contemporary opinion; attempted sanitary improvements from the early nineteenth century onwards; faltering steps into the provision of public authority housing after the enabling legislation of the late 1870s; slum 'clearance' and its social and environ- mental effects; the role of denominational competition in the progressive amelioration of the lot of slum-dwellers; social analysis of both the practitioners and the recipients of private charity; and changing attitudes to the slum question on the part of both central and local government. Considerable attention is paid to the process whereby, on the heels of de-industrialisation from the late seventeenth century onwards, the prosperous classes moved to the growing suburbs, leaving whole reaches of Dublin city to decay into tenement zones. The city's poor and those fleeing rural deprivation moved into in-fill housing in the back gardens and stable lanes attached to former grandee houses or into one-room accommodation in rapidly demoted genteel streets like the appropriately named Fade Street. The in- exorable progress of such conditions through the city over the course of the nineteenth century resulted in 25,000 individuals - 35 per cent of the city's population - living in slum conditions by the eve of the First World War.
A review of 'Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster, 1630-1830 by David Dickson' (Pre-published version)
(Oxford University Press, 2007) Cronin, Maura
David Dickson's monumental work analyzes society in the southern Irish counties of Cork, Kerry, and west Waterford in the two centuries before the Great Famine, addressing the evolution of a key region and exploring plantation, cultural assimilation, and socioeconomic change. It not only reconstructs contemporary society but illuminates developments in the region and beyond in the following century when the twin forces of reforming state and emergent nationalism undermined the "old colony."
A review of 'King Dan: the rise of Daniel O'Connell, 1775-1829 by Patrick M. Geoghegan' (Pre-published version)
(Cambridge University Press, 2009) Cronin, Maura
This very readable work is the first volume of a proposed two-volume study of the life and political career of Daniel O'Connell, concentrating on his career up to the granting of Catholic emancipation in 1829. One might ask whether there was any need for such a work given the range of similar studies, from that by O'Faolain in 1938 through those of O'Ferrall (1985) and MacDonagh (1988), as well as edited volumes by MacCartney (1980), and Nowlan and O'Connell (1991). Many of the themes dealt with in Geoghegan's first volume have already been given considerable attention in these earlier works. For example, O'Connell's ebullient personality and his straddling of the Gaelic and Anglicised worlds form the core of O'Faolain's aptly entitled King of the Beggars', O'Ferrall's Daniel O'Connell and the birth of Irish democracy has teased out the mechanics and dynamics of the emancipation campaign - and especially the role of the Waterford clergy - in laying the foundation of O'Connell's political machine; and MacDonagh's Hereditary bondsman: Daniel O'Connell 1775-1829 has explored the impact of family and locality on O'Connell's political evolution, as well as the tensions in his public personality between statesman and popular agitator. The essay collections have further extended the examination of O'Connell's career to cover such issues as his position as a folk hero, his social and economic beliefs, his impact, and his reputation in the wider European context.
Limerick regional archives
(Irish Labour History Society, 1998) Cronin, Maura
Sources for labour history in the Limerick Regional Archives are to be found within a number of local administrative and estate collections. Some data on the cost of living can be found in the Were Hunt Papers, dating from the late eighteenth century. The Monteagle Papers, though not directly labour-related, give considerable insight into the working of a nineteenth century estate and especially to the complex relationship between landlord and various grades.
A review of 'Women of the House: Women's Household Work in Ireland 1922-1961. Discourses, Experiences and Memories by Caitriona Clear'
(Galway Archaeological & Historical Society, 2001) Cronin, Maura
This study is based on exhaustive research in government departmental correspondence and reports, folklore records, newspapers, handbooks, periodicals and prescriptive literature, as well as on the personal testimonies of over forty individuals, male and female. Hence, it is a study not only of Irish women's household work, but also of the intricacies of Irish society as a whole in the period between the foundation of the state until the early 1960s when the accelerated availability of electricity and running water arguably reduced women's household workloads, but before the more radical questioning of women's social role gained currency. The title - Women of the House - has been carefully chosen to reflect the depth and range of experience of those many married and single women who 'had primary responsibility for the daily maintenance of a dwelling and the lives of its members.'
Report to the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism on the work of the commission 1997-2003
(The Irish Manuscripts Commission Ltd., 2004) Cronin, Maura; McGuire, James; Byrne, Francis J.; Canny, Nicholas; Corish, Patrick J.; Craig, David; Cullen, Louis M.; Daly, Mary E.; Hand, Geoffrey J.; Harkness, David; Kelly, James; Kiberd, Declan; Lydon, James F.; Mac Conghail, Máire; Ni Dhonnchadha, Máirín; Ó Briain, Máirtín; O'Dowd, Mary; Ó Tuathaigh, Gearóid; Simms, Anngret; Trainor, Brian
We, the Chairman and Members of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, have the honour to present our report as required by section 1 of the terms of reference of the Commission.
Class and status in twentieth-century Ireland: the evidence of oral history
(Irish Labour History Society, 2007) Cronin, Maura
In his recent monumental study of twentieth-century Ireland, Diarmaid Ferriter has emphasised pervasiveness of class distinction, particularly in the decades up to I960. This consciousness social class in its specifically Irish setting can be traced to the late 1930s when Arensberg Kimball examined the shopkeepers and farmers of County Clare through an anthropological while the early 1960s saw the publication of the Limerick Rural Survey, which explored the self-images, social relationships and economic shapers of the various groups in the rural population.In the 1980s political scientists, economists and anthropologists joined in the search for the of status and community.3 The windows on social stratification were further opened by the of memoirs of childhood, urban and rural, published from the late 1980s onwards. These can be divided roughly into two types: the nostalgic and romantic, epitomised by Alice works on rural Cork, and the starker and more critical memoirs represented by the publications Frank McCourt on urban Limerick.4 Even when works like these do not engage directly issues of social class and status, such realities can easily be read between the lines: the more the memory, the more sharply the inter-status divide that is presented.
A review of 'The Second World War and Irish Women: An Oral History by Mary Muldowney'
(Irish Labour History Society, 2007) Cronin, Maura
This book, based on interviews with twenty-seven Dublin and Belfast-born women, explores the Irish female experience during World War II. Combining personal testimonies with the evidence of contemporary newspapers, official publications, mass observation records and privately held ephemera, it discusses the changes initiated and/or accelerated by the war, as well as the more hidden experiences of 'ordinary women' in two states with contrasting experiences of the conflict, i.e. Northern Ireland and the neutral southern state. The study emphasises that, despite the undoubtedly contrasting official attitudes to the war, the general experience in the two states was in some ways remarkably similar. Both northern and southern governments were tardy in the development of welfare legislation and the provision of housing, both were under prepared for the practical problems of wartime, and citizens (especially women) in both jurisdictions reacted in similar ways to both change and continuity. At times, indeed, the remembered experience seems so similar that the reader has to check back in order to remember whose testimony is being discussed, and about which community and jurisdiction.
A review of 'Business archival sources for the local historian by Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh and Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh'
(Irish Labour History Society, 2011) Cronin, Maura
This, the most recent volume of the Maynooth Research Guides in Irish Local History series, brings together the expertise troika of the socio-economic historian, the accountant and the accounting historian. The result is a valuable combination of the 'who,' 'what,' 'where' and 'how-to' of business history. The authors are already well-immersed in such research: they have singly and jointly published much related work, and have together compiled a database of business-related material in the National Archives of Ireland, a copy of which is reproduced at the...
Loyalists and loyalism in a southern Irish community, 1921– 22 (pre-published version)
(Cambridge University Press, 2016) Hughes, Brian
A second Irish Grants Committee met for the first time in October 1926 to deal with claims for compensation from distressed southern Irish loyalists. By the time it had ceased its work, the committee had dealt with over 4,000 applications and recommended 2,237 ex-gratia grants. The surviving files constitute over 200 boxes of near-contemporary witness testimony and supplementary material making them an incomparable, if problematic, source for the study of the southern loyalist experience of the Irish Revolution – a topic of much current historiographical interest. Applicants had to prove that they had suffered loss on account of their ‘allegiance to the government of the United Kingdom’, and by applying labelled themselves as both ‘loyalist’ and ‘victim’. A study of the claim files from one district, Arva in County Cavan, offers unique perspectives on the loyalist experience of revolution in a southern Irish community, personal definitions of loyalty, and the relationship between behaviour and allegiance during war. The Arva applicants often struggled to present their financial losses as resulting directly from their ‘loyalty to the Crown’. Their statements, and the way they were treated by the committee, serve to complicate an often over-simplified understanding of civilian behaviour and popular support.

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