The Forgotten Irish

Author: Damian Shiels
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750980877
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
On the eve of the American Civil War, 1.6 million Irish-born people were living in the United States. The majority had emigrated to the major industrialised cities of the North; New York alone was home to more than 200,000 Irish, one in four of the total population. As a result, thousands of Irish emigrants fought for the Union between 1861 and 1865. The research for this book has its origins in the widows and dependent pension records of that conflict, which often included not only letters and private correspondence between family members, but unparalleled accounts of their lives in both Ireland and America. The treasure trove of material made available comes, however, at a cost. In every instance, the file only exists due to the death of a soldier or sailor. From that as its starting point, coloured by sadness, the author has crafted the stories of thirty-five Irish families whose lives were emblematic of the nature of the Irish nineteenth-century emigrant experience.

Paisanos

Author: Tim Fanning
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268104921
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
In the early nineteenth century, thousands of volunteers left Ireland behind to join the fight for South American independence. Lured by the promise of adventure, fortune, and the opportunity to take a stand against colonialism, they braved the treacherous Atlantic crossing to join the ranks of the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, and became instrumental in helping oust the Spanish from Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Today, the names of streets, towns, schools, and football teams on the continent bear witness to their influence. But it was not just during wars of independence that the Irish helped transform Spanish America. Irish soldiers, engineers, and politicians, who had fled Ireland to escape religious and political persecution in their homeland, were responsible for changing the face of the Spanish colonies in the Americas during the eighteenth century. They included a chief minister of Spain, Richard Wall; a chief inspector of the Spanish Army, Alexander O'Reilly; and the viceroy of Peru, Ambrose O'Higgins. Whether telling the stories of armed revolutionaries like Bernardo O'Higgins and James Rooke or retracing the steps of trailblazing women like Eliza Lynch and Camila O'Gorman, Paisanos revisits a forgotten chapter of Irish history and, in so doing, reanimates the hopes, ambitions, ideals, and romanticism that helped fashion the New World and sowed the seeds of Ireland's revolutions to follow.

The Irish in the American Civil War

Author: Damian Shiels
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752491970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
Just under 200,000 Irishmen took part in the American Civil War, making it one of the most significant conflicts in Irish history. Hundreds of thousands more were affected away from the battlefield, both in the US and in Ireland itself. The Irish contribution, however, is often only viewed through the lens of famous units such as the Irish Brigade, but the real story is much more complex and fascinating. From the Tipperary man who was the first man to die in the war, to the Corkman who was the last General mortally wounded in action; from the flag bearer who saved his regimental colours at the cost of his arms, to the Roscommon man who led the hunt for Abraham Lincoln's assassin, what emerges in this book is a catalogue of gallantry, sacrifice and bravery.

The Irish Buddhist

Author: Alicia Turner
Publisher:
ISBN: 019007308X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
The Irish Buddhist is the biography of a truly extraordinary Irish emigrant, sailor and migrant worker who became a Buddhist monk and anti-colonial activist in early twentieth-century Asia. Born Laurence Carroll in 1856, U Dhammaloka defied the British Empire and missionary Christianity in defense of local culture. He had five different aliases, was tried for sedition, put under police and intelligence surveillance, faked his own death, and ultimately disappeared. His dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion.

Diarmuid Lynch

Author: Eileen McGough
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781781171370
Category : Ireland
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
On Saturday night 22 April 1916, a tense meeting in Dublin went on into the small hours to decide whether or not the Easter Rising would go ahead. Present at that meeting were Pádraig Pearse, Tomás MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett and Seán MacDiarmada. The fifth man present at the all-night session, Diarmuid Lynch, was the only one still alive a month later. It is difficult to understand how Lynch, a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, has been forgotten so completely. Lynch was at the heart of plans for the Rising and was aide-de-camp to James Connolly in the GPO. Initially sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to ten years penal servitude because he was an American citizen. However, he was released on 16 June 1917. Immediately following his release, Lynch became active again, and along with Michael Collins and Thomas Ashe, participated in the reorganisation of the IRB. After the 1917 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Lynch, like Collins, held three senior posts: in the IRB, Sinn Féin and in the Irish Volunteers. He was again arrested and deported to America in 1918.Lynch was elected, although still in the US, as a TD for the constituency of Cork South-East in the 1918 elections. In America he was working frenetically as the national secretary of the FOIF (Friends of Irish Freedom) organisation, but later sharp differences arose between De Valera and the FOIF about how funds raised in America should be spent. Lynch did not take part in the Civil War, but made several unsuccessful attempts to stop it.

How the Irish Won the American Revolution

Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1634503872
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Book Description
When the Continental Congress decided to declare independence from the British empire in 1776, ten percent of the population of their fledgling country were from Ireland. By 1790, close to 500,000 Irish citizens had immigrated to America. They were was very active in the American Revolution, both on the battlefields and off, and yet their stories are not well known. The important contributions of the Irish on military, political, and economic levels have been long overlooked and ignored by generations of historians. However, new evidence has revealed that Washington’s Continental Army consisted of a far larger percentage of Irish soldiers than previously thought—between 40 and 50 percent—who fought during some of the most important battles of the American Revolution. Romanticized versions of this historical period tend to focus on the upper class figures that had the biggest roles in America’s struggle for liberty. But these adaptations neglect the impact of European and Irish ideals as well as citizens on the formation of the revolution. Irish contributors such as John Barry, the colonies’ foremost naval officer; Henry Knox, an artillery officer and future Secretary of War; Richard Montgomery, America’s first war hero and martyr; and Charles Thomson, a radical organizer and Secretary to the Continental Congress were all instrumental in carrying out the vision for a free country. Without their timely and disproportionate assistance, America almost certainly would have lost the desperate fight for its existence. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Ireland's Forgotten Past: A History of the Overlooked and Disremembered

Author: Turtle Bunbury
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500775400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
This volume delves into Ireland’s forgotten history bringing to light some of the most colorful characters and intriguing episodes of the country’s long history. Ireland is approximately the size of the state of Indiana, yet this small country boasts an extensive, rich, and fascinating history. Ireland’s Forgotten Past is an alternative history that covers 13,000 years in 36 stories that are often left out of history books. Among the characters in these absorbing accounts are a pair of ill- fated prehistoric chieftains, a psychopathic Viking, a gallant Norman knight, a dazzling English traitor, an ingenious tailor, an outstanding war-horse, a brothel queen, an insanely prolific sculptor, and a randy prince. This volume offers a succinct account of the Stone Age and Bronze Age, as well as insights into the Bell-Beakers, the Romans, and the Knights Templar. Historian Turtle Bunbury writes a gently off-beat take on monumental events like the Wars of the Roses, the Tudor Conquest and the Battle of the Boyne, as well as the Home Rule campaign and the Great War. Ireland’s Forgotten Past adds color to the existing histories of the country by focusing on the unique characters and intriguing events. This volume will delight anyone interested in the rich untold history of Ireland.

The Forgotten Waltz: A Novel

Author: Anne Enright
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039308325X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Winner of the 2012 Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence in Fiction "A tour de force."—Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review "A new, unapologetic kind of adultery novel. Narrated by the proverbial other woman—Gina Moynihan, a sharp, sexy, darkly funny thirtysomething IT worker—The Forgotten Waltz charts an extramarital affair from first encounter to arranged, settled, everyday domesticity…This novel’s beauty lies in Enright’s spare, poetic, off-kilter prose—at once heartbreaking and subversively funny. It’s built of starling little surprises and one fresh sentence after another. Enright captures the heady eroticism of an extramarital affair and the incendiary egomania that accompanies secret passion: For all their utter ordinariness, Sean and Gina feel like the greatest lovers who’ve ever lived." —Elle

The Men who Built Britain

Author: Ultan Cowley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780956643612
Category : Civil engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description

The Alamo's Forgotten Defenders

Author: Phillip Thomas Tucker
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611211921
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Within the annals of Alamo and Texas Revolutionary historiography, the important contributions of the Irish in winning the struggle against Mexico and establishing a new republic are noticeably absent. Breaking new ground with fresh views and original insights, Phillip Thomas Tucker’s The Forgotten Defenders of the Alamo: The Irish of the Texas Revolution, 1835-1836, sets forth one of the best remaining untold stories of the Alamo and Texas Revolution by exploring a largely forgotten and long ignored history: the dramatic saga of the Irish in Texas. Dr. Tucker has thoroughly explored a hidden history long ignored by generations of historians. Relying upon a wealth of previously unexplored primary sources, The Forgotten Defenders of the Alamo is the first book devoted to the dramatic story of Irish achievements, contributions, and sacrifices in winning independence for Texas. In doing so, Tucker’s study bestows much-needed recognition upon the Irish and shatters a host of long-existing stereotypes and myths about the Texas Revolution. Reflecting a distinctive cultural, political, and military heritage, the Irish possessed a lengthy and distinguished Emerald Isle revolutionary tradition reborn during the Texas uprising of 1835-1836. The Irish were the largest immigrant group in Texas at the time and among the most vocal and passionate of liberty-loving revolutionaries in all Texas. Symbolically, the largely Ireland-born garrison of Goliad raised the first flag of Texas Independence months before the Alamo’s fall. More than a dozen natives of Ireland fought and died at the Alamo, and the old Franciscan mission’s garrison primarily consisted of soldiers of Scotch-Irish descent. From 1835-1836, Irish Protestants and Catholics made invaluable and disproportionate contributions in the struggle for Texas Independence that will no longer pass unrecognized. Presented not only as a military history of the Irish in the Texas Revolution, but also as a social, economic, and cultural history of the Irish in Texas, The Forgotten Defenders of the Alamo will stand as a long-overdue corrective to the outdated “standard” views of the story of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution.