The Limerick Boycott in Context

by Eamon Maher (Editor), Seán William Gannon (Editor), Natalie Wynn (Editor)

Overview

«Historically it has been fashionable to view the Limerick Boycott as a deplorable but isolated incident. The essays in this volume expertly challenge this view, assiduously placing the boycott in much wider religious and political contexts.»

(Geoffrey Alderman, Professor Emeritus, University of Buckingham)

«The contributors brilliantly embed the Limerick Boycott amid the land and cultural movements that reshaped Irish society, while demonstrating convincingly that European trends informed those at the centre of the boycott. Equally, they use new sources to interrogate the contested memories that played a significant role in shaping earlier scholarship.»

(Timothy G. McMahon, Associate Professor of History, Marquette University)

The Limerick Boycott, instituted in January 1904 by the Redemptorist priest, Fr John Creagh, remains Ireland’s most iconic symbol of anti-Jewish prejudice. A relatively minor, localized episode, the boycott has come to be remembered as a pogrom which effectively destroyed an established provincial Jewish community. This volume brings together new and established scholars in the fields of Irish History and Jewish Studies to provide the first in-depth, critical investigation of the history, historiography, and cultural memory of its events and their afterlife, by examining them through a variety of lenses: local, political, economic, theological/ecclesiastical, sectarian, and Jewish.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800798991
Publisher:	Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	01/28/2025
Series:	Reimagining Ireland , #136
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x (d)

About the Author

Seán William Gannon has published widely on twentieth-century Ireland, the Irish Revolution, and Irish imperial history. He is a Research Associate of the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religions and Culture, Trinity College Dublin.

Natalie Wynn is a Research Associate of the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religions and Culture, Trinity College Dublin, specializing in Irish Jewish history, historiography, identity, and experience from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

Table of Contents

Contents: Seán William Gannon and Natalie Wynn: Introduction – Salvador Ryan: Antisemitism and the Limerick Boycott: Reassessing the Motivations of Fr John Creagh – Trisha Oakley Kessler: Jews as a Threat to Irish Society? Economic Antisemitism and the Limerick Boycott – Colum Kenny: Political Ambiguities: John Redmond, Michael Davitt, and Arthur Griffith on the Limerick Boycott – Eugenio F. Biagini: A Case of Instrumental Solidarity? Protestants and the Limerick Boycott – Seán William Gannon: Policing the ‘Pogrom’: The Royal Irish Constabulary and the Limerick Boycott – Natalie Wynn: What was the Limerick Boycott Really About? – Katrina Goldstone: The Kahn–Goldberg Murders in Cultural Memory and Comparisons with the Limerick Boycott.