Early Modern Ireland

The primary sources for this lesson are:

• Erin go bray
• Miss Hibernia at Johns Bulls family dinner!! [sic]
• An Irish union! [sic]

The instructor provides the students with a link to the cartoons and transcriptions of the cartoons as students may experience difficulties deciphering the handwriting on the cartoons.  

The students also read a secondary source, Thomas Bartlett’s “Ireland during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1791-1815,” (in The Cambridge History of Ireland, Vol. III: 1730-1880, ed. James Kelly, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 74-101) in preparation for the class meeting. (Another overview chapter on the developments in Ireland between the French expedition of 1796, the so-called Irish Rebellion of 1798, the Acts of Union of 1800, and the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, would work equally well.) 

In preparation for the class, the students also read the online article “How to interpret the meaning of political cartoons” on the site “History Skills."  Although written for high school students in Australia, this article provides US upper-division college students with basic information about the interpretation of political cartoons and the visual language they should be paying attention to. 

It is helpful to show the cartoons in class, by handing out print-outs, so that each student has personal copies to look at, and/or by displaying the cartoons on a large screen, so that the instructor can zoom in on details during the class discussion.  

The lesson begins with a short talk by the instructor. The instructor first reminds the students of the primary sources depicting English and British attitudes toward the Irish that they have already encountered during the semester. Second, the instructor briefly summarizes the historical context of the cartoon as presented in Bartlett’s chapter. (5 minutes) 

The students are then asked to form small groups. The instructor assigns each group to one of the three cartoons above, with roughly 30% of students studying one of the three cartoons. Each group is also handed the worksheet “Analyzing cartoons" from the Library of Congress.  

The instructor reminds students that, when conducting research, the first step is always observation, followed by reflection and drawing conclusions about the meaning of a source and asking further questions. Students are asked to strictly separate their observations of the cartoon from their interpretation as they engage with the cartoon and record their answers to the questions on the worksheet. (25 minutes) 

For the “reflection” part of their group work, students are encouraged to carefully note the information about the cartoon on the Library of Congress website (e.g. date of publication) and to perform an internet search about any historical events or details that they think might be relevant for an interpretation of the cartoon. 

During the second half of the course meeting, each group of students is asked to step forward and explain to their classmates their observations, reflections, and questions. This can take different forms. For example, students can be asked to record their responses on posters to be displayed in class or they can prepare short presentations. (30 minutes)  

In an online course, students can be asked to post to a discussion board or create a Voicethread.  

At the end of the class period, the instructor takes up any loose threads. They answer questions about the context of the cartoon, in particular living conditions in Ireland and Britain in the late eighteenth centuries, and the Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. The instructor engages with the “who? what? when? where? why? how?” questions the students brought up, and they encourage students to share more details of what they would like to find out and provide additional information and contextualization in response. (15 minutes) 

Except for the readings mentioned above, there are no out-of-class assignments associated with this lesson. Students may use information they have acquired from working on these cartoons to craft their research paper, for example by choosing to write about an aspect of Irish history or by analyzing cartoons or other visual primary sources. 

Except for taking attendance, this is an ungraded, low-stakes activity in class. Student learning takes place without formal assessment as students discuss their impressions in small groups and each group has to give a short presentation of the results of their group work in front of the entire class.  

The process of first observing and then reflecting on a primary source can help to make visual primary sources accessible to students who are vision-impaired and enable these students to fully participate in this lesson.  

If a class participant is vision-impaired, the students who are non-disabled can describe the visual primary source to the student who is vision-impaired during the “observation” part of the group work. It might be helpful to divide the group work into two formal sessions, “observation” and “reflection,” to ensure that students do not mix these two forms of primary source engagement. During the observation part of the group work, both the student who is vision-impaired and the non-disabled students will benefit: The student who is vision-impaired will be provided an image description that is as accurate as possible because the non-disabled members of the group will pool their observations. The students who are non-disabled will learn to strictly separate observation from reflection because they have to focus on first providing the student who is vision-impaired with a description before being able to move on to a group discussion of the meaning of the primary source.