The occupation of the Irish consulate, New York, 1922

This year we are delighted to be back, in person, at the Milwaukee Irish Festival. The Festival runs from 18 to 21 August with a very busy schedule. Our author John Gibney will be there to deliver three lectures on key events in modern Irish history.

The third lecture will take place at 12.30 p.m. on Sunday, 21 August, as part of the Festival's Hedge School.

In December 1922 supporters and opponent of the new Irish Free State faced off against each other in the Irish consulate on Nassau St in New York. At stake were the huge sums of money raised in the US to fund the Irish independence struggle. By focusing on an almost trivial offshoot of the Irish Civil War, this lecture will explore how the Irish revolution resonated across the globe, and how story of the funds raised by the revolutionaries eventually became a struggle over who were the rightful heirs of the revolution itself.

Read more on this topic in Ireland 1922, edited by Darragh Gannon and Fearghal McGarry. This book provides a snapshot of a year of turmoil, tragedy and, amidst it all, state-building as the Irish revolution drew to a close.

John Gibney is Assistant Editor with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) series. He was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame and NUI Galway, and is the author of A short history of Ireland, 1500-2000 (Yale University Press, 2017) co-author, with Kate O’Malley, of The Handover: Dublin Castle and the British withdrawal from Ireland, 1922 (Royal Irish Academy, 2022), and co-editor, with Zoë Reid, of The Treaty, 1921: Records from the Archives (Royal Irish Academy, 2022), the official catalogue of the National Archives’ centenary exhibition of the same name.

Find out more about Lecture #1 and Lecture #2. Check out the Festival programme and buy your tickets at wwwirishfest.com.