We are delighted to announce that Centre member Anthony Farrell is the recipient of the Military Heritage of Ireland Trust’s prestigious annual essay award for 2016, for his essay ‘A Brief Outline of the Development of British Military Pensions in Ireland 1914-1922’. The judges in particular praised Tony’s wide-ranging use of primary and archival sources in telling this story.
Tony’s essay, which traces the surprising continuities of British state support for Irish war veterans of its army during the period of war and revolution in Ireland, is part of a larger project he is working on looking at the fate of Irish veterans of the British army in the free state and Northern Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s. Tony is two years into this project (which will become his doctoral dissertation) and has visited archives throughout the island of Ireland, as well as the UK, to construct the story of this often forgotten group of war veterans. His work challenges presumptions about the radical break with institutional and care-providing traditions between the Free State and the UK, and makes pertinent comparative points about the continuities and discontinuities of post-imperial and post-war spaces across the continent. There are important implications of this work for a range of other case studies. Tony has presented his ideas at Maynooth University’s History Department seminar series and at conferences in the UK.
As recognition of his award and the quality of his research, an expanded and revised version of the essay will be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal Defence Forces Review.