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Introduces the geography, history, government, people, economy, and culture of the "Emerald Isle." ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: At the Clarendon press in 1911 in 232 pages; Subjects: Ireland; History / Europe / Ireland; Travel / General; Travel / Essays & Travelogues; Travel / Maps & Road Atlases; ... Read more

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Specially written for the revised GCSE specification for first teaching in September 2001 and first examination in 2003, this book is absolutely up to date. The text deals with geographical issues and covers the new emphasis on sustainability in the urban environment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Historical Maps of Ireland
This is a really good collection of colour reproductions of early maps of Ireland, taken from the English Public Record Office, and well organised. The best are the very early (16th & 17th century) ones, but there are also interesting later ones. The book has two flaws. The major one is that there are no PRO reference numbers, making it hard for anyone to go and search out the originals, the lesser one is that the introduction is a long historical essay about Ireland covering the last two thousand years. I don't see any need for this in a book of this sort, though the essay is, in itself, unobjectionable. ... Read more

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Product Description
An Historical Geography of Ireland offers students a comprehensive reassessment of the evolution of society and economy in Ireland, presenting an informed account of how that past illuminates the present. In this volume distinguished scholars synthesize recent research in Irish historical geography and economic history and present it in an explicit theoretical framework. Starting from the ninth century and continuing to the present it examines both the internal and external forces that have shaped Ireland.

Key Features
* Comprehensive historical geography of Ireland in one volume
* Covers the Irish diaspora, especially to the US
* Starts from the ninth century and continues to the present day
* Places Ireland in its international context ... Read more

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The idea behind this text was to survey the historical geography of the British Isles. But due to the complexity it was decided to concentrate on the 19th century period. Furthermore, in view of the substantial documentary resources which have already sustained extensive work on thie period, a narrow thematic focus seemed appropriate. Hence the attempt to extend previous work on the impact of railways, a technological innovation which is widely regarded as having been a potent force in the spatial transformation of the United Kingdom prior to World War I. The aim is twofold; to trace the development of the railway network in the context of separate company interests, and to consider the impact of the railways with reference to the waterway system and to everyday life in both towns and the countryside. ... Read more

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This lively study illuminates the dynamic nature of Celticity and Celtic geography by exploring the many ways in which an old culture is being re-interpreted to serve the needs of particular groups of people in modern times. This work critically questions traditional conceptualization of Celticity that relies on a homogenous interpretation of what it means to be a Celt in contemporary society. ... Read more

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Gerald of Wales was among the most dynamic and fascinating churchmen of the twelfth century. A member of one of the leading Norman families involved in the invasion of Ireland, he first visited there in 1183 and later returned in the entourage of Henry II. The resulting "Topographia Hiberniae" is an extraordinary account of his travels. Here he describes landscapes, fish, birds and animals; recounts the history of Ireland's rulers; and tells fantastical stories of magic wells and deadly whirlpools, strange creatures and evil spirits. Written from the point of view of an invader and reformer, this work has been rightly criticized for its portrait of a primitive land, yet it is also one of the most important sources for what is known of Ireland during the Middle Ages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good read for class
Interesting primary resource for the 12th century. Had to read this for my history class and of all the books that were on the list, I'm glad I chose this one. Some tall tales and funny accounts but not a bad read to have to do a paper on.

Fascinating
Have you ever seen a medieval map? People had only the vaguest idea of the world they lived in - and when men such as Gerald of Wales set out to gather information they very often had to rely on what local people told them (as did Herodotus over 1000 years earlier). So of course Gerald's History and Topography of Ireland is going to be riddled with factual errors - if you want to find out about the history and geography of Ireland you should look at modern maps, produced by satellites, and modern histories, written by scholars with hundreds of thousands of documents at their fingertips. Books written in the eleventh century tell you what people thought THEN, in the eleventh century, and are as such fascinating journeys into the early medieval mindset. Myths mingle with facts as the locals tell Gerald about things that matter to them, and really brings home history - in a way that reading of battles and kings doesn't. It tells you about daily lives and what people thought - we are really quite amazingly lucky that books such as these have survived a thousand years to tell us what life was like then.

Interesting but flawed medieval account of Ireland
I found the chapters relating ot the topographyof Ireland to be seriously flawed and containing inaccurate descriptions of the rivers and areas of Ireland. However it does give a very good idea ofthe mindset ofthe early Norman invaders in their conquest of Ireland and offers some tomoder day readers humourous rhetorical accounts of native Irish tribalbehaviour. ... Read more

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This edition has been considerably revised to take account of the latest research and place-name identification. The treatment of statistics for boroughs has been brought into line with the other volumes in this series, a number of maps have been altered, and a short section of 'Vineyards' with one new map has been added to the last chapter. ... Read more

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This book examines the diverse relationships between people and place through the kaleidoscope of cultural geography. Presenting a range of fascinating case studies embracing analyses of race, class, sexuality, gender, and age in location as diverse as the backyard, the streets, the wilderness, and the inner city, the contributors establish a context for the practice of cultural geography. ... Read more

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Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Amur region had been a virtual terra incognita for the Russian public. However, the region's annexation succeeded in stirring the dreams of the country's most outstanding social and political visionaries, who declared it "civilization's most important step forward." A decade later, this enthrallment and optimism had evaporated. Mark Bassin examines Russia's perceptions of the new territories, placing the Amur enigma in the context of Russian Zeitgeist mid-century, and offers a new perspective on the relationship among Russian nationalism, geographical identity and imperial expansion. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Visions of a Russian Mississippi
This is a masterful book that combines intellectual history and geography in a way that has not been done before, shining a new light on the issues of Russian identity and the interrelationship between exploration, conquest and nationalism.

At the center of Bassin's work is the region around the Amur River.The Amur, closed to the Russians since the late seventeenth century, attracted intense interest in Russia throughout the later part of Nicholas I's regime, but especially in the aftermath of the country's defeat in the Crimean War.Wild, unsubstantiatedexaggerations fueled this "Amur euphoria." The conquest and settlement of the Amur came to be seen as a national imperative, compensation for humiliation elsewhere. Amidst this frenzy, eager promoters who had never set their eyes on the Amur tagged the river as the "Siberian Mississippi," hoping that it would do for Siberia--and indeed for Russia as a whole--what the Mississippi did for the United States.They attached great hopes to this river.The waters of the Amur were to cleanse Russia's wounds, and redeem her in her newly-asserted eastern destiny.Yet the euphoria proved fleeting.Not long after the Russians reconquered the Amur, the realities confounded the hopes.

Although the Amur region is at the center of Bassin's book, its real subject, as the title indicates, are the "visions" of that object-region.These visions are the reflections of the visionaries, and become in certain ways "self-portraits" (p. 274), to use the author's own apt metaphor that indicates a methodological affinity to other recent works, most notably Yuri Slezkine's _Arctic Mirrors_.Whether as "mirrors" or as "self-portraits," these visions reveal far more about the visionaries than the envisioned.The "Amur euphoria" of the 1850s reflected the desperate desire of the Russian visionaries, in the wake of the Crimean War debacle, to both turn away from a Europe that "spurned" them and wounded their national pride and, at the same time, reaffirm their own Europeanness as effective "civilizers" of the east.These are complicated, sometimes conflicting visions of an "imagined" region, but Bassin skillfully steers us through them one at a time with the exuberance of a Huck Finn sailing on his raft down the Mississippi.In the process, he produces a work that will be indispensable for anyone grappling with the hisitorical issues of Russia's imperial visions. ... Read more

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To contemporaries the nineteenth century was 'the age of great cities'. As early as 1851 over half the population of England and Wales could be classified as 'urban'. In the first full-length treatment of nineteenth-century urbanism from a geographical perspective, Richard Dennia focuses on the industrial towns and cities of Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands and South Wales, that epitomised the spirit of the new age. In recent years urban historians and geographers have produced a wide range of detailed studies, both of particular cities and of specific aspects of nineteenth-century urban society, including the housing system, local government, public transport, class structure, residential segregation and social and geographical mobility. Dr Dennis offers a critical review of this research, integrated with his own original study of mobility, social interaction and community in the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

what was it like being an early industrial city ?
So what was it like in the early years of the Industrial Revolution? Dennis looks not at London, which has already been exhaustively studied for this period, but at other British cities. Especially Liverpool and Manchester. The cities are analysed according to how their urban structure developed. Like the types of affordable housing for newly urbanised masses migrating from the countryside. Then there were issues of how the workers got to and from their workplaces. Giving rise in part to the proliferation of public transport.

Remember too that during those years, there were few templates for city planners, to the extent that they existed, to draw on. Hence we see comments by contemporaries about the chaotic nature of some cities. But the book looks deeper, and describes a dynamic logic to the layouts.
... Read more