6. Richardson and provincial science -- 7. Conclusion:Richardson's historical significance -- Bibliography -- Index

The nineteenth century was an important period for both the proliferation of "popular" science and for the demarcation of a group of professionals that we now term scientists. Of course for Ireland, largely in contrast to the rest of Britain, the prominence of Catholicism posed various philosophical questions regarding research. Adelman's study examines the practical educational impact of the growth of science in these communities, and the impact of this on the country's economy; the role of museums and exhibitions in spreading scientific knowledge; and the role that science had to play in Ireland's turbulent political context. Adelman challenges historians to reassess the relationship between science and society, showing that the unique situation in Victorian Ireland can nonetheless have important implications for wider European interpretations of the development of this relationship during a period of significant change.

This book examines the pivotal period immediately after the Irish Union from the unique perspective of the Reverend William Richardson (1740–1820). A clerical polymath, Richardson’s activities ranged from Ulster politics to international scientific debates. His private correspondence adds to our knowledge of central Ulster before and during the 1798 rebellion and provides insights into the tensions between Irish provincial science and the metropolitan scientific world. The book is based on extensive primary research, including material new to Irish historiography, and follows the political and scientific themes of Richardson’s career in a broadly chronological sweep, assessing the role of various shaping features, including religion, politics, personality and Enlightenment ideology, and analysing each theme in terms of its broad contemporary historical significance. This book will appeal to students and academics with an interest in the period, or politics, religion or science.

This is the first full-length study of Irish Ribbonism, tracing the development of the movement from its origins in the Defender movement of the 1790s to the latter part of the century when the remnants of the Ribbon tradition found solace in a new movement: the quasi-constitutional affinities of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Placing Ribbonism firmly within Ireland's long tradition of collective action and protest, this book shows that, owing to its diversity and adaptability, it shared similarities, but also stood apart from, the many rural redresser groups of the period and showed remarkable longevity not matched by its contemporaries. The book describes the wider context of Catholic struggles for improved standing, explores traditions and networks for association, and it describes external impressions. Drawing on rich archives in the form of state surveillance records, 'show trial' proceedings and press reportage, the book shows that Ribbonism was a sophisticated and durable underground network drawing together various strands of the rural and urban Catholic populace in Ireland and Britain. Ribbon Societies in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and its Diaspora is a fascinating study that demonstrates Ribbonism operated more widely than previous studies have revealed.

Based on newly unearthed source material, this book follows the career of clergyman William Richardsona and assesses his impact on politics, science and agriculture nationally and internationally.

Through the first half of the nineteenth century there was a widespread notion that political economy was little known and not highly thought of in Ireland, and that the Irish and Roman Catholic 'character' was either 'non-economic' or 'anti-economic'. Such economic ignorance came to be seen as a major cause of Irish backwardness and social divisions. The educational system was identified as the chief non-coercive means of establishing hegemony over the Irish, with political economy playing a leading role in promoting the economically progressive virtues (seen as English and rational) of self-interest and individualism, the socially desirable objective of neutralising class antagonisms and, above all, the political objective of 'tranquillising' Ireland and assimilating it to English norms, the better to promote the integrity of Empire. In a country so spectacularly divided as Ireland ideological consensus was sought in that allegedly value-free and incontrovertible form of knowledge, political economy. But this book argues that political economy was partisan and defended the social, political and ideological status quo. The Great Famine of 1846-7 provoked an Irish outcry against political economy, and especially its constant companion laissez-faire. The validity and universality of its laws were impugned and it was subjected to unrelenting moral and political attacks. Although the establishment strenuously defended it, within ten years a moral critique of the discipline had seriously questioned its scientific status. Its basic tenets, such as individualism and self-interest, were challenged in the name of social and cooperative values and the family, rather than the individual, was seen as the basic unit of society. A political economy based on English experience and ideas was rejected and the notion was embraced that Ireland should be governed by 'Irish ideas'. This is the first history of the academic and non-academic propagation of the discipline in Ireland. It deals with the foundation and careers of university chairs, the role of the Statistical Society and the Barrington Trust, and the teaching of the subject to children in the national schools. In all of these areas the central role of Archbishop Richard Whately is emphasised.

The environmental humanities are one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding areas of interdisciplinary study, and this collection of essays is a pioneering attempt to apply these approaches to the study of nineteenth-century Ireland. By bringing together historians, geographers and literary scholars, new insights are offered into familiar subjects and unfamiliar subjects are brought out into the light. Essays re-considering O'Connellism, Lord Palmerston and Isaac Butt rub shoulders with examinations of agricultural improvement, Dublin's animal geographies and Ireland's healing places. Literary writers like Emily Lawless and Seumas O'Sullivan are looked at anew, encouraging us to re-think Darwinian influences in Ireland and the history of the Irish literary revival, and transnational perspectives are brought to bear on Ireland's national park history and the dynamics of Irish natural history. Much modern Irish history is concerned with access to natural resources, whether this reflects the catastrophic effect of the Great Famine or the conflicts associated with agrarian politics, but historical and literary analyses are rarely framed explicitly in these terms. The collection responds to the 'material turn' in the humanities and contemporary concern about the environment by re-imagining Ireland's nineteenth century in fresh and original ways.

Demonstrating Ireland's central role in European debates about empire and commerce in the global age of revolutions, this pathbreaking book offers a new perspective on the crisis and transformation of the British Empire at the end of the eighteenth century, and restores Ireland to its rightful place at the centre of European intellectual history.

In Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science, David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers gather essays that deftly navigate the spaces of science in this significant period and reveal how each is embedded in wider systems of meaning, authority, and identity. Chapters from a distinguished range of contributors explore the places of creation, the paths of knowledge transmission and reception, and the import of exchange networks at various scales. Studies range from the inspection of the places of London science, which show how different scientific sites operated different moral and epistemic economies, to the scrutiny of the ways in which the museum space of the Smithsonian Institution and the expansive space of the American West produced science and framed geographical understanding. This volume makes clear that the science of this era varied in its constitution and reputation in relation to place and personnel, in its nature by virtue of its different epistemic practices, in its audiences, and in the ways in which it was put to work.

Explores loyalism as a social and political force in eighteenth and nineteenth century British colonies and former colonies.