On September 13, 2024, Mary Mullen will present "Ireland, Public Money, and the Price of Emancipation" as part of a keynote panel on Revisiting the Irish Famine at the North American Victorian Studies Association 2024 meeting at Boston College.
Her talk considers debates over public money in the context of slavery emancipation—enslavers received 20 million pounds from the British government for their 'lost property’—and Irish famine relief. It focuses especially on how Irish nationalists like Daniel O’Connell and John Mitchel used slavery compensation to argue for Irish famine relief. In quite different ways, these nationalists argue for Irish inclusion into a British public sphere by claiming whiteness and excluding formerly enslaved people from public accounting.
