Ireland, 1815–1870: Emancipation, Famine and Religion ed. by Donnchadh Ó Corráin and Tomás O’Riordan (review)

This is an odd volume, but one that will be useful for teachers and students of Irish history. The editors approach nineteenth-century Ireland through three events: the Great Famine, the campaign for Catholic Emancipation, and the Synod of Thurles. These studies are prefaced by contextual chapters and followed by brief glossaries of the concepts and personalities referenced in the text. This is an introductory book that emphasises narrative and primary sources, like a hybrid of a reader and a textbook, and it aims to provide a reliable synthesis rather than new avenues of research in Irish Victorian studies.

The volume begins with three broad but succinct contextual chapters. In the first, Christine Kinealy nimbly summarises Irish politics and administration in just thirteen pages (nominally covering 1815 through 1870 but actually stretching from 1798 to 1914), with topics including electoral reform, secret societies, the Poor Law, and Fenianism. S. J. Connolly’s chapter on Irish society and economy follows: it is crisp and vivid, enlivening such underappreciated topics as the decline of the wool industry and the standard of living. In spite of its brevity, it is as nuanced as his longer contribution on the topic to A New History of Ireland: Volume V: Ireland Under the Union (1990). The third chapter is Myrtle Hill’s overview of religion and culture, in which she convincingly represents the period as one of change for all major religious groups in Ireland, analysing each in turn. This ecumenical approach serves as useful contextualisation for a volume that is largely concerned with official Catholic experience. Had space permitted, a longer discussion of popular culture and the Irish language would have been welcome, though Hill’s approach is consistent with the institutional and political focus of the volume.

The main body of the book is then devoted to three major events. Each is represented by one or two narrative chapters and then a documents chapter (although some of the narrative chapters contain lengthy source extracts, too). There are three chapters about the Famine, by Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Kinealy, and Tomás O’Riordan. These are deeply critical of British governance and particularly powerful when offering detailed description of the prognosis of Famine diseases. The section places special emphasis on relief efforts and firsthand accounts from philanthropists; one benefit of this approach is that it gives voice to women, in particular Asenath Nicholson and Queen Victoria. A few minor errors jar the otherwise fluid narrative: Isaac Butt was no longer Whately Professor in 1847 (76), and the Quaker population was twice as large as Kinealy estimates (88).

Reversing chronologically, there are then two chapters on Catholic Emancipation by Gillian M. Doherty and O’Riordan. The documentary chapter, focusing on the progress of Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Association and the correspondence of politicians debating its fate, provides what is probably the most useful source in the volume, as most of the documents are drawn either from the archives of the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland or from contemporary printed sources that are not widely available.

Thirdly, two chapters cover the 1850 Synod of Thurles, the convocation of Catholic hierarchy summoned by Paul Cullen to discipline Irish Catholicism into line with Roman practice. Surprisingly, Doherty and O’Riordan conclude that the legislation passed at the Synod showed “there were no serious differences between Catholicism in Ireland and on the Continent” (191). The corresponding documents chapter was prepared by John Paul McCarthy and O’Riordan. Since the authors rightly emphasise that the Synod received great public attention because of the university question, it would have been helpful to have that public debate reflected in the choice of documents, which concentrate on discussions among Catholic hierarchy. Many of these texts have already been published, but it is useful to have them grouped together here.

The book promises to “answer to the...