Biography
Biography
My specializations are Modern Britain & Ireland. My Research and Teaching Interests: As an Irish Historian, I have had three main research interests over the years: 1) landlord-tenant relations; 2) agrarian rebellions; and 3) popular religion. To these might be added a fourth: the Great Famine of the late 1840’s. For teaching purposes I am also keenly interested in modern British history, Irish nationalist politics and in popular religion in Western Europe in the years 1500-1900.
Education
Ph.D., Harvard
M.A., Harvard
B.A., Fordham College
Books
Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821—1824
James S. Donnelly, Jr. Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821—1824. University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.
Named for its mythical leader “Captain Rock,” avenger of agrarian wrongs, the Rockite movement of 1821–1824 in Ireland was notorious for its extraordinary violence. In Captain Rock, James S. Donnelly, Jr., offers both a fine-grained analysis of the conflict and a broad exploration of Irish rural society after the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Originating in west Limerick, the Rockite movement spread quickly under the impact of a prolonged depression. Before long the insurgency embraced many of the better-off farmers. The intensity of the Rockites’ grievances, the frequency of their resort to sensational violence, and their appeal on such key issues as rents and tithes presented a nightmarish challenge to Dublin Castle—prompting in turn a major reorganization of the police, a purging of the local magistracy, the introduction of large military reinforcements, and a determined campaign of judicial repression. A great upsurge in sectarianism and millenarianism, Donnelly shows, added fuel to the conflagration. Inspired by prophecies of doom for the Anglo-Irish Protestants who ruled the country, the overwhelmingly Catholic Rockites strove to hasten the demise of the landed elite they viewed as oppressors. Drawing on a wealth of sources—including reports from policemen, military officers, magistrates, and landowners as well as from newspapers, pamphlets, parliamentary inquiries, depositions, rebel proclamations, and threatening missives sent by Rockites to their enemies—Captain Rock offers a detailed anatomy of a dangerous, widespread insurgency whose distinctive political contours will force historians to expand their notions of how agrarian militancy influenced Irish nationalism in the years before the Great Famine of 1845–1851.
Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780–1914
Samuel Clark (Editor), and James S. Donnelly, Jr. (Editor). Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780–1914. University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.
“The strength of this volume cannot be conveyed by an itemisation of its contents; for what it provides is an incisive commentary on the newly-recognised landmarks of Irish agrarian history in the modern period. . . . The importance, even indispensability, of this achievement is compounded by exemplary editing.”—Roy Foster, London Times Literary Supplement “As a whole, the volume demonstrates the wealth, complexity, and sophistication of Irish rural studies. The book is essential reading for anyone involved in modern Irish history. It will also serve as an excellent introduction to this rich field for scholars of other peasant communities and all interested in problems of economic and political developments.”—American Historical Review
The Great Irish Potato Famine
James S. Donnelly, Jr. The Great Irish Potato Famine. Sutton Publishing, 2001.
The great Irish potato famine of the late 1840s and early 1850s was a massive social catastrophe which resulted in the death of about one million people – a scale of mortality which, taking into account the scale of Ireland’s population in 1845, places this disaster among the worst in modern world history. The famine was also largely responsible, in conjunction with British government politics, for one of the great international human migrations in modern history – the mass exodus of some two million people from Ireland, mostly to North America, in the years 1845-55.
Irish Popular Culture 1650-1850
James S. Donnelly, Jr. (Editor), and Kerby A. Miller (Editor). Irish Popular Culture 1650-1850. Irish Academic Press, 1988.
A book edited by two such distinguished historians as James S. Donnelly Jr., and Kerby A. Miller promises to be lively and important: this collection of ten essays fully lives up to the expectations raised by the editorial imprimatur. The articles by an impressive panel of authors are source-based, and the tight editorial control is reflected in the way in which they complement one another.
The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork: The Rural Economy and the Land Question
James S. Donnelly, Jr. The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork: The Rural Economy and the Land Question. Routledge, 1975.
First published in 1975. Using estate records, local newspapers and parliamentary papers, this book focuses upon two central and interrelated subjects – the rural economy and the land question – from the perspective of Cork, Ireland’s southernmost country. The author examines the chief responses of Cork landlords, tenant farmers and labourers to the enormous difficulties besetting them after 1815. He shows how the great famine of the late 1840s was in many ways an economic and social watershed because it rapidly accelerated certain previous trends and reversed the direction of others. He also rejects the conventional view of the land war of the 1880s, arguing that in Cork it was essentially a ‘revolution of rising expectations’, in which tenant farmers struggled to preserve their substantial material gains since 1850 by using the weapons of ‘agrarian trade unionism’, civil disobedience and unprecedented violence. This title will be of interest to students of rural history and historical geography.
History Courses Taught
- History 124 – British History 1688-present
- History 200 – Historical Studies – Topics: “Popular Religion in Europe 1500 – 1900”
- History 365 – Revolution and Nationalism in Ireland, 1780 to the Present
- History 600 – The Celtic Tiger and Modern Ireland
- History 837 – Seminar—History of Modern Britain and Ireland