- Ian d’Alton, MA (NUI), PhD (Cambridge), FRHistS, FRNS is a historian who has been researching southern Irish Protesta... moreIan d’Alton, MA (NUI), PhD (Cambridge), FRHistS, FRNS is a historian who has been researching southern Irish Protestantism for over forty years, latterly through the medium of the literary. He is the author of 'Protestant Society and Politics in Cork, 1812-1844' (Cork UP, 1980). His latest attempt to synthesise the southern Protestant experience is in a forthcoming book of essays, co-edited with Dr Ida Milne - 'Protestant AND Irish: the minority's search for place in independent Ireland'. He is also working on a book about the Royal Historical Society’s Alexander Prize, and its influence on British historiography, 1897-2005 (he was a recipient of the Prize in 1972). Ian was a contributor and editorial advisor to the Royal Irish Academy/Cambridge University Press 'Dictionary of Irish Biography' (2009), and wrote the entries, amongst others, for Thomas Lipton (he of the tea), the ‘Ponsonby estate’ landlord A.H. Smith Barry, and the writers Elizabeth Bowen, Iris Murdoch and Molly Keane. In 2011-12 he was an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool; in 2014 a Visiting Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; and currently (2018), a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College, University of Dublin. At end-February 2012, he retired from the positon of Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Housing Finance Agency, an Irish state-owned company.edit
This chapter attempts to place a taxonomy and a structure on sectarian violence in county Cork. Bandon—notorious for its ‘ostentatious protestantism’—provides the focus. Celebrations of orangeism, heightened tensions at closely fought... more
This chapter attempts to place a taxonomy and a structure on sectarian violence in county Cork. Bandon—notorious for its ‘ostentatious protestantism’—provides the focus. Celebrations of orangeism, heightened tensions at closely fought elections, and religious zealotry in various guises all ensured that Bandon could, at times, resemble more a northern town than its southern equivalents. Yet this stimulating analysis highlights the folly inherent in simply categorising localised outbreaks of confessional violence as ‘sectarian’ without fully exploring the factors that provoked them. Hence, sectarianism was not necessarily the trigger but often the consequence of violence.
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Southern Irish Protestants, mostly loyal, fought in British forces in both world wars. This chapter, focussing on individual histories from such as Norman Leslie and Michael d’Alton, interrogates their motivation in voluntarily joining... more
Southern Irish Protestants, mostly loyal, fought in British forces in both world wars. This chapter, focussing on individual histories from such as Norman Leslie and Michael d’Alton, interrogates their motivation in voluntarily joining the war efforts. War is cathartic, and sharpens the notions of identity, belonging and place – physical and metaphysical – that are examined in this essay. Through the prism of two wars and Leslie’s and d’Alton’s approaches to them the development of southern Protestant ‘loyalism’ and its accommodation to the contemporary – vital to the community’s survival and search for place in twentieth century Ireland – is tracked and analysed.
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Peterloo Massacre and the Cato Street Conspiracy. By the 1870s, Ribbonism had become less shadowy and mainly found ‘expression in public national identification’ and ‘collective mutuality’ (p. 229). The book brings to light comical images... more
Peterloo Massacre and the Cato Street Conspiracy. By the 1870s, Ribbonism had become less shadowy and mainly found ‘expression in public national identification’ and ‘collective mutuality’ (p. 229). The book brings to light comical images from these years in the magazine Zozimus that poked fun at the constabulary’s exaggeration of the Ribbon threat. By the close of the century, Ribbon societies merged with the more open and respectable Ancient Order of Hibernians, which operated with the support of the Catholic Church. This important book advances our understanding of Ribbonism and how seriously the state considered the threat it presented, as well as Catholic politics and social organisation more widely in nineteenth-century Ireland and the diaspora. It demonstrates considerable levels of politicisation amongst urban and rural workers in nineteenth-century Ireland and emigrant centres during periods when more overtly nationalist movements were at a low ebb. The Ribbonmen may not have been staging rebellions and holding monster meetings, but they were engaged in regular acts of defiance and reformism, and their ‘low’ politics challenges the traditional nationalist narrative of the nineteenth century.
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A sermon delivered at Sidney Sussex College Chapel, Cambridge, on the Second Sunday before Advent, 16 November 2014, at Choral Evensong by Ian d’Alton, Visiting Fellow in History, Michaelmas Term 2014
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An academic directory and search engine.
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AUGUST THE FIFTH, 1914, was a cool, windy day at Mitchels-town. County Cork: but the guests at the houseparty in the Castle were not really conscious of the chilly breeze that whisked the clouds over the tops of the Galtee mountains that... more
AUGUST THE FIFTH, 1914, was a cool, windy day at Mitchels-town. County Cork: but the guests at the houseparty in the Castle were not really conscious of the chilly breeze that whisked the clouds over the tops of the Galtee mountains that stood towering behind the Castle. Here ...
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On the surface, stability (with or without progress) seems to have been the keynote of Irish electoral history between 1885 and 1915, with a number of major exceptions. Ulster increasingly delineated itself as a 'special... more
On the surface, stability (with or without progress) seems to have been the keynote of Irish electoral history between 1885 and 1915, with a number of major exceptions. Ulster increasingly delineated itself as a 'special area': there were nationalist splits in the 1890s and 1910s: and the ...
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Review by Ian d'Alton of Guy Beiner's Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press) The Irish Catholic, 21 March 2019 "Beiner’s scholarship is exemplary. The... more
Review by Ian d'Alton of Guy Beiner's Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press)
The Irish Catholic, 21 March 2019
"Beiner’s scholarship is exemplary. The referencing and bibliography is mind-bogglingly comprehensive. His writing is complex, but light in touch. … Beiner paints on a wide canvas; he interrogates the material world in particular to create a three-dimensional and vivid argument. … We’re doing a lot of remembering on this island at the moment. Guy Beiner’s wonderful book puts that activity into a wider context and embeds it into a deeper conceptual framework"
https://www.irishcatholic.com/the-memory-of-the-dead-past-in-the-lives-of-the-living/
The Irish Catholic, 21 March 2019
"Beiner’s scholarship is exemplary. The referencing and bibliography is mind-bogglingly comprehensive. His writing is complex, but light in touch. … Beiner paints on a wide canvas; he interrogates the material world in particular to create a three-dimensional and vivid argument. … We’re doing a lot of remembering on this island at the moment. Guy Beiner’s wonderful book puts that activity into a wider context and embeds it into a deeper conceptual framework"
https://www.irishcatholic.com/the-memory-of-the-dead-past-in-the-lives-of-the-living/
