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Hayes Mccoy1952
Hayes Mccoy1952
proble~n confrolited a British government for the first time with the
question of compensation for expropriating private property on a significant
scale ' (p. 198); for there was a most appropriate precedent in the
compensation paid to British slaveowners under the emancipation act
of 1833. A topic that is wholly omitted, and ought surely to have been
given some place in even an economic interpretation, is the strategic
factor in Anglo-Irish relations; and there should have been a t least
some indication of the I-epercussions on Anglo-Irish relations of the Irish
in A~nericaafter the fanline exodus.
T h e book may be recon~n~ended to the critical attention of all students
of modern Irish history. I t is not easy reading, but there is not a flabby
sentence in it. Its challenges deserve to be met in the spirit in which
they have been offered.
T. W. MOODY
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021121400027437
1 7 ~ Reviews
the technicalities of his subject, the history of Irish shipping and ship-
building (exclusive of the screw steamship) from the end of the eighteenth
century. Students of the history of that period, and in particular those
interested in econon~ichistory, will find his work of much value. Detailed
studies of technical aspects of Irish history are all too few, and one could
wish for other Andersons to write of the history of our railways (on
which K. M u r r a y in T h e Grrat Northern Railway has ~ n a d ea beginning),
our roads (of what remains to be done here we had a foretaste in Colm
0 Lochlainn's paper in FEil-sgrihhinn E6in n l h i c Ngill), our bridge
building, canalisation and inland transport in general. T h e general
reader with an interest in maritime affairs may well find these glimpses
which Anderson gives of what must be for most a ' hidden Ireland '
absorbing. Such worthy forerunners of the ' Irish T r e e ' ships of to-day
as the early Canadian-built ships with which most ports commenced
their more modern fleets, the Belfast and Derry clippers and nitrate ships,
the Cork W e s t Indiamen, and the Dublin sailing tramps, not to speak
of the hundreds of lesser ships owned in the smaller ports, belie the
suggestion that the Irish are not a sea-minded people. &laterial for very
many school lessons to capture the interest of our youth in the ports
and coastal parishes could be drawn from Anderson's book.
O n e less skilled in the subject than the author can courlt few omissions.
Perhaps a more careful search in local newspaper files would have yielded
information on ships like the " Minerva," built in Galway for a maiden
voyage to America in 1791, which he misses (Connaught Journal,
28 November 1791, 7 June 1792). But the main picture is clear, and
remarkably full.
G. A. HAYES-McCoy