Index

Ireland, India and the British empire

“…Originally from Bombay, where she had personal experience of the famine of 1896-97 (that claimed 8 million lives), Cama set up and edited nationalist journals in Paris and Berlin from where she promoted the cause of Indian independence. 79 Raising awareness of the Irish struggle for home rule in India became the cause of three other radical women: Margaret Noble (d. 1911), who entered orders as Sister Nivedita; the socialist and theosophist, Annie Besant (d. 1933), who founded the All India Home Rule League; and Margaret Cousins (d. 1954), a friend of W.B. Yeats and later Rabindranath Tagore.…”

“…During the Bengal famine of 1943, de Valera persuaded the Irish government to send £500,000 in aid, a significant amount for wartime Ireland. 88 The Bengal famine came at an especially poignant moment, as Ireland prepared to commemorate the centenary of the Great Irish Famine of 1845-51 when about 1.5 million people died and another million emigrated, out of a pre-famine population of 8 million.…”