Search results for ""Author James Quinn""

In 1842 a small group of Irish nationalists, who would later be known as Young Ireland, founded the Nation newspaper. They saw their mission as awakening the Irish people to the fact that they were an historic nation that should determine its own future. Ireland, they insisted, had a proud history, which told of sufferings bravely endured, resistance that had never faltered and a national spirit that had never been crushed. However, since Ireland's history had mostly been written by its conquerors, the true record of her past had been misrepresented, leading the Nation to proclaim that 'The history of Ireland has not yet been written'. Rectifying this was one of their most pressing tasks, to which they devoted much of their labour. This work examines why Young Ireland attached such importance to the writing of history, how it went about writing that history, and what impact their historical writings had. Young Ireland and the Writing of Irish History deeply explores the Young Ireland vision of history.Often selective and polemical, but ultimately compelling and powerful, their vison would inspire generations with a pride in Ireland's history, and would set the scene for the revolutionary period 1916-21 that followed.

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John Mitchel (1815-75) was born at Camnish, near Dungiven, Co. Derry, the son of a Presbyterian minister. After qualifying as a solicitor, he became a leading contributor to the Nation newspaper and the most militant of the Young Irelanders. Sentenced to 14 years' transportation for attempting to incite rebellion in Ireland in 1848, in captivity he wrote his famous "Jail Journal", which starkly expressed his hatred of the British empire and had an immense influence on later nationalists. Escaping to America after five years, he became a strong supporter of slavery and the Confederate States, and two of his sons died fighting for the South.The harshness of his views, especially his violent hatred of Britain and support for slavery, does much to explain Mitchel's neglect in recent decades. He was, however, one of the most powerful polemical journalists of the nineteenth century and a central figure in the revival of militant Irish nationalism. His portrayal of the famine as deliberate genocide became central to nationalist orthodoxy, and his hatred of British rule and contempt for parliamentary politics did much to inspire Fenianism.This new biography attempts to discover the origins of Mitchel's views, to examine their influence, and to place his anglophobia in a more general critique of the age in which he lived.

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