Sexual crime in the Irish Free State 1922–33: its nature,extent and reporting

This paper explores sexual crime in the Irish Free State through the utilisation of hitherto unexamined files held in the National Archives in Dublin. An exploration of these files has provided a deepening understanding of the realities of sexual crime, societal attitudes towards it and the views of those charged with protecting the public. The files also provide valuable insights into attitudes towards female sexuality, the nation's youth and the rights of children. Additionally, the files have facilitated the widest study, to date, of the reporting of sexual offences trials by local and national newspapers – a study that shows that the overwhelming majority of sexual crime prosecutions were never reported in the nation's press and that those that were, were reported in ways that obscured the actual nature of the offence or portrayed them as alien, non-Irish crimes committed by outsiders. The article demonstrates that sexual crime in the Free State was an ideological as well as a law enforcement issue in a newly emerging state sensitive to the views of its enemies and the outside world and insecure about its place in it, a nation that legitimised itself, in no small part, as a beacon of Celtic Catholic purity in a world otherwise sullied by sin.     

The United States and the Question of the Greco-Turkish War, 1919–1922

Abstract

In the post World War II era, the strain in the trilateral relation between the United States, Greece and Turkey is one of the most disquieting and vexatious elements to emerge from American foreign policy. The so-called southeastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is currently beset with tensions that threaten to impede its contributory role in NATO's overall defense strategy for southeastern Europe (if they have not already done so). In this political drama, the principal antagonists, Greece and Turkey, have a number of outstanding differences which on occasion have brought them to the precipice of war. As a result, the United States has intervened as the protagonist and consequently has become the recipient of the enmity of these two NATO allies for not recognizing their ‘special’ claims or interests. As in the characteristic classical Greek drama, the chorus of NATO partners offer a common chant: they are united in proclaiming that the current state of affairs seems to portend failure to the concerted effort to defend Western Europe.     

“Nobody’s children?”: the Ministry of Pensions and the treatment of disabled Great War veterans in the Irish Free State, 1921–1939

This article analyses the treatment and rehabilitation of disabled Irish Great War veterans who lived in the Irish Free State. To do so, it utilises the records of the Ministry of Pensions, the British governmental department, that was charged with assisting these men. This research argues that the Irish Free State was a particularly challenging society for disabled ex-servicemen to reside. Yet, whilst the social and governmental reception on offer to disabled Great War veterans was less favourable in the Free State than their similarly afflicted former comrades in Britain, they were better able to benefit from substantial assistance from the Ministry of Pensions. The department lived up to its billing as an “imperial obligation” in the newly formed state.