FIRST THOUGHTS: Anti-imperialism of Parnell’s party

EXOTIC names of places like Kabul, Kandahar and Khartoum were on the lips of many Irish people not only during the past 20 years but also in the 1870s and 1880s. These places and others were locations where the British Empire was spreading “Christianity and civilization” — at the point of a sword.

The author, Paul A Townend, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, takes us for a tour of these far-off lands through the mouths of the more advanced nationalists, both in the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster and in local and national newspapers of the day.