The Belfast Jacobin is the first-ever biography of Samuel Neilson, a founding member of the Society of United Irishmen whose profound influence on this radical movement was to alter the course of Irish history. Samuel Neilson joined Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell at the inaugural meeting of the United Irishmen in 1791, forming a radical front that would challenge the political realities of the day in increasingly strident ways. As editor of the Northern Star, Neilson was to be a principal figure in shaping the United Irishmen’s ideology before the newspaper was suppressed by the military. He brought the excitement caused by the French Revolution into Irish focus, putting public dissatisfaction into words and, later, gathering the forces necessary for revolt. Kenneth Dawson, conducting original research and drawing upon innumerable archive sources, reveals Neilson’s formidable strength as an organiser of radical politics, his incessant run-ins with the authorities, and his central role in planning the United Irish Rebellion of 1798. Samuel Neilson brought talk of revolution to the street – The Belfast Jacobin is a pivotal history that illuminates the true import of his deeds and writing, sorely obscured in many accounts of the 1790s.

"The Belfast Jacobin is the first-ever biography of Samuel Neilson, a founding member of the Society of United Irishmen whose profound influence on this radical movement was to alter the course of Irish history. Samuel Neilson joined Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell at the inaugural meeting of the United Irishmen in 1791, forming a radical front that would challenge the political realities of the day in increasingly strident ways. As editor of the Northern Star, Neilson was to be a principal figure in shaping the United Irishmen's ideology before the newspaper was suppressed by the military. He brought the excitement caused by the French Revolution into Irish focus, putting public dissatisfaction into words and, later, gathering the forces necessary for revolt. Kenneth Dawson, conducting original research and drawing upon innumerable archive sources, reveals Neilson's formidable strength as an organiser of radical politics, his incessant run-ins with the authorities, and his central role in planning the United Irish Rebellion of 1798. Samuel Neilson brought talk of revolution to the street - The Belfast Jacobin is a pivotal history that illuminates the true import of his deeds and writing, sorely obscured in many accounts of the 1790s"--Back cover.

"This collection of essays offers diverse perspectives on the impact of the Great Famine in Ireland, with particular focus on the experience in the province of Ulster."--Back cover.

Between Two Flags tells the gripping story of the turbulent yet enduring and loving marriage of John Mitchel and Jenny Verner. Their courtship was opposed by both families, and their elopement and marriage caused public consternation, but this remarkable couple went on to live through and influence the politics of mid-19th-century Ireland and the United States. Both were ardent supporters of physical force Republicanism and of the American Confederates. Their story spans the landscape - of Ulster, Europe, the Americas, and Van Diemen's Land (the island of Tasmania) - on a journey through the Great Famine, the American Civil War, Fenianism, revolution, and deportation. Beset by tragedies within their family life, theirs was a world of paradox and adventure, counter-pointed by sacrifice to shared political ideals. Controversially, their enthusiastic support of the institution of slavery is a subject that the book meets head on in an evocation of the period and its context. Destined to be separated by death in different continents, John Mitchel's and Jenny Verner's heroic relationship is sympathetically documented and analyzed in this engaging and captivating story. *** "As fascinating as it is edifying, 'Between Two Flags' is highly recommended." -- Midwest Book Review, Wisconsin Bookwatch: November 2015, The Biography Shelf [Subject: Biography, Irish Studies, History, Politics]

"This is an informative, balanced biography that embraces a man who seemed defined by contradictions. McGovern unravels these to reveal how Mitchel made sense of himself and his world. The result is a must-read book for anyone interested in nineteenth-century Irish and American history." --Susannah U. Bruce, author of The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861-1865 This book chronicles the life and times of John Mitchel, a radical Irish nationalist who relocated to the American South, where he became an ardent supporter of the Confederacy before and during the Civil War. Mitchel was exiled for his beliefs by the British government in 1848, during the Great Famine (1845-52). Though neither a peasant nor a Catholic, he empathized with the plight of over one million impoverished Irish Catholic emigrants who fled starvation. These expatriates believed that they had been forced unwillingly from their homes by the British government, which they also blamed for causing the famine or at least creating conditions that seriously threatened Irish survival. As a publisher of several expatriate newspapers, Mitchel was able to echo the sentiments of his audience, and perhaps more important, shape the prevailing attitudes of Irish Americans attempting to adjust to a hostile society. Well educated, bourgeois, and respected by the Irish immigrant community, the Protestant Mitchel became an ardent Irish nationalist during a time when most Irish Protestants, including the "Scotch-Irish" in America, were becoming almost uniformly opposed to Irish nationalism. In giving full treatment to his experience in America, this first contemporary biography of Mitchel addresses the basic paradox of his ideology: why an Irish nationalist who called for an end to the British "enslavement" of the Irish enthusiastically supported the slave society of the American South. It thus sheds invaluable light on how Irish nationalism played out on both sides of the Atlantic and on issues of racism and cultural assimilation facing the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. Bryan McGovern is an assistant professor of history at Kennesaw State University. He published an essay on Mitchel in New Hibernia Review.

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the British government was bitterly accused of not averting the disaster or offering enough aid. Some even believed that the Whig government's policies were tantamount to genocide against the Irish population. James Donnelly's account looks closely at the political and social consequences of the great Irish potato famine and explores the way that natural disasters and government responses to them can alter the destiny of nations.

This edition of Cormac O'Grada's study expands upon his central arguments about the agricultural and demographic developments surrounding the Great Irish Famine. It provides new statistical information, new appendices and integrated responses to the new research and writing on the subject that has appeared since the publication of the first edition in 1987.

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.

The Great Irish Famine remains one of the most lethal famines in modern world history and a watershed moment in the development of modern Ireland – socially, politically, demographically and culturally. In the space of only four years, Ireland lost twenty-five per cent of its population as a consequence of starvation, disease and large-scale emigration. Certain aspects of the Famine remain contested and controversial, for example the issue of the British government’s culpability, proselytism, and the reception of emigrants. However, recent historiographical focus on this famine has overshadowed the impact of other periods of subsistence crisis, both before 1845 and after 1852. This volume breaks new ground in bringing together foundational narratives of one of Europe and North America’s first refugee crises — making visible their impact in shaping perceptions, public opinion, and patterns of memorialization of Irish forced migration. It documents eyewitness impressions of suffering Irish emigrants, and raises questions about what literary conventions, mnemonic motifs, and popular images can be found in eyewitness accounts, press coverage, and foundational narratives of Famine Irish forced migration. These primary sources provide a model for understanding how representations of forced migration shape public opinion and policy.