Quinnipiac University Faculty Book Publications

Building on the narratives explored in volume one, this publication recovers the story of a further seven Black visitors to Ireland in the decades prior to the American Civil War. This volume examines each of these seven activists and artists, and how their unique and diverse talents contributed to the movement to abolish enslavement and to the demand for Black equality. In an era that witnessed the rise of minstrelsy, they provided a powerful counter argument to the lie of Black inferiority. Moreover, their interactions with Irish abolitionists helped to build a strong transatlantic movement that had a global reach and impact. The lives explored are: Ira Aldridge (the African Roscius), William Henry Lane (Master Juba), William P. Powell, Elizabeth Greenfield (the Black Swan), Reuben Nixon, James Watkins and William H. Day. Individually and collectively they demonstrated the agency and power of Black involvement in the search for social justice. This book will be of value to students and scholars alike interested in modern European history and social and cultural history.

The heroics and humanitarian contributions of those who came to the aid of their fellow men and women during the Great Hunger of 1845 and 1852 has been largely ignored and forgotten until recently. Many of the neglected heroes were prepared to put their lives on the line and, in a number of instances, suffered permanent health damage in coming to the aid of the starving and diseased. They include landlords, poets, clergymen and philanthropists. This volume follows on from the collection of essays on Famine Heroes and shows that there were many who were on the front line in coming to the assistance of their fellow man during this period of large-scale emigration, starvation and death. At a time when the world continues to deal with the horrors and legacies of the COVID pandemic with many front line workers putting their lives at risk, the heroics of those who gave their time, energy and resources--and lives--during the calamity of the Great Hunger is recorded and acknowledged in this collection. This edited collection is a follow up to Heroes of the Great Hunger (2021).

Hunger and Hope: The Irish Famine Migration from Strokestown, Roscommon in 1847 brings together leading experts who trace the harrowing voyage of 1,490 assisted emigrants from Ireland to Canada. Their journey was emblematic of the worst horrors of the Irish Famine migration, yet the causes of their misfortune remain poorly understood. The volume's contributors meticulously reconstruct the movements of Strokestown's Famine migrants to Dublin, onwards to Liverpool, then across the Atlantic, and their settlement patterns in North America to reappraise their fate.The Strokestown Park Estate of Major Denis Mahon in County Roscommon was one of the worst afflicted during the Great Hunger. The transatlantic voyage of the estate's assisted emigrants in 1847 was intended to alleviate their plight. Yet almost half of those on the Virginius and Naomi died from infectious disease aboard ship or in the "fever sheds" at Grosse Île when they arrived in Quebec. Over 40 children were left orphaned in Canada. When news of the high death toll reached Strokestown, Major Mahon was the first Irish landlord to be assassinated. While many of the Strokestown Famine emigrants succumbed to infectious disease, others defied the odds to start new lives overseas. Their journey from hunger to hope defined a story of resilience and survival.The editors of Hunger and Hope were three of the five historians who, in 2019, recreated the 100-mile walk to Dublin undertaken by the Strokestown emigrants in 1847. This was the inaugural walk that formed the award-winning National Famine Way: https://nationalfamineway.ie/Christine Kinealy, Jason King and Mark G. McGowan (eds) Hunger and Hope: The Irish Famine Migration from Strokestown, Roscommon in 1847 (Hamden, CT: Quinnipiac University Press; Cork University Press, 2023).