Áras an Uachtaráin, 27 May 2021
I hope you find today’s seminar interesting, thought-provoking, perhaps even a further reminder of the value of transacting history.
In choosing themes for today’s
Machnamh seminar, I was conscious that in the historiography of the 19th century, dominated as it was by the campaigns for Emancipation, Repeal, Home Rule, the anti-tithe movement, the underlying theme for all such campaigns carried the resonance of land; be it access to land, to security of tenure, response to changes in production, population pressure – it is always there.
The vocabulary of Irish history in relation to land contains some of the most emotive terms in Irish memory, terms such as ‘enclosure’, ‘occupation’, ‘settlement’ ‘plantation’ ’eviction’, ‘improvements’. Such resonating cries were all present in the discourse of the 19th century.