Friday, September 10, 2010
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Editors Blog

Our Editor's regular blog on history topics

Call For Submissions

An essential part of HistoryJournal.ie will be articles and pieces submitted and written by the readership.

Each article submitted will be read and approved by our Editorial Board and authors will be credited for their work in full.

We have updated our Submissions page with lots of information about how to submit and our Editorial Board.

Some of the upcoming topics (Irish Slavery, the Nine Years War) may interest you so don't hesitate to check them out and then jump over to the Submissions page and register. We welcome submissions on all Irish History topics however, so don't feel bound by the subjects we are planning in the near future.

The Erie Canal And Public Works

We often debate the slow pace of progress and the poor return for investment from infrastructure spending in Ireland. Motorways seem to take forever to complete, not least because we worry so much about damaging our treasured national heritage, and new schools and hospitals always seem to be built too late or with inadequate facilities.

But reading, as I did today some of the notes on the construction of the Erie Canal in New York State on the pages of the History News Network, it struck me that the problems of 21st Century Ireland are not so new and not at all unique:

  • Benjamin Wright, the country surveyor who emerged as Erie’s chief engineer (and is honored today as the Father of American Civil Engineering), was nearly fired for avoiding hazardous Erie fieldwork and neglecting his Erie work generally for outside jobs. His peers also didn’t like him very much.
  • Conflict of interest was an unborn term in Erie’s day. Men who served as Erie canal commissioners and engineers pursued healthy speculative profit in remote lands made more valuable by the canal’s passage.
  • Waste of public moneys in the service of private interest flowered on the eastern end of the Erie Canal: commissioners and engineers conspired to make the canal unnecessarily crisscross the lower Mohawk River on two risky aqueducts, instead of taking a more direct and much cheaper route between Schenectady and Albany. As one incredulous and knowledgeable observer put it: “crossing the river, in order to pay the county of Saratoga a compliment; and . . . recrossing again to convince the public how easy and practicable a matter it was.”

    • Perhaps we should feel lucky? But then you hear the news about the safety system in the Port Tunnel and you realise that though the world changes, people and the problems they encounter rarely do. Eoin

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    RTE's History Documentaries

    I am something of a radio fan. My morning schedule begins at 7am with Morning Ireland, skips the 9-10am slot because who can cope with Ryan Tubridy and recommences with the solid two hours of Today With Pat Kenny (I also enjoy the show when it is hosted by Myles Dungan, himself a noted historian). It continues with Lunchtime from Newstalk then back to RTE for the News At One. If I have time I'll also listen to DriveTime though I preferred it when it was 5-7 Live.

    All of this is a precursor to talking about RTE's massively impressive site devoted to their radio documentaries. While I love great daily radio, a good radio documentary is something quiet extraordinary and RTE are past masters of creating well crafted and enjoyable documentaries for the radio. Even the selction of history documentaries will impress the toughest critic. To access that list, go here and read through. There is a particularly interesting piece on mass emigration featured called The Starry Frame. Even if that doesn't work for you, I'm certain you'll find something you can enjoy.

    Eoin

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    Pue's Occurrences


    Pue's Occurrences is a relatively new Irish History blog that I stumbled across a few days ago. It has an interesting array of articles and some great contributors. It's mission statement is pretty clear too:

    Pue’s Occurrences was an eighteenth-century newspaper ‘containing the most authentick and freshest translations from all parts, carefully collected and impartially translated’. Our Irish history blog aims to provide a bit of freshness and debate, as well as viewing Irish history (and history in Ireland) as impartially as possible. We welcome suggestions, contributions and discussion.

    One of the nicest features of the blog is their weekly round up of forthcoming TV and radio history programs. Worth adding them to your RSS Feed just for that. You can follow them on Twitter too (puesoccurrences) which seems like a good moment to mention HistoryJournal.ie's Twitter feed which you can find here (@historyjie).

    Glad to see Irish historians embracing the web. We'd like to create a list Irish history & Irish historian's blogs and their Twitter feeds too so if you have any send them on by e-mail or drop them into a comment.

    Eoin

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