Spring Lecture 2025

Dr Andy Bielenberg

In person and online Zoom lecture

There is no dispute that a significant share of the Protestant minority left the south of Ireland in the years between 1911 and 1926. The question of when and why they left remains a matter of significant controversy. This lecture sets out to provide the context and reasons explaining this major exodus, utilising a range of historical sources including annual membership records of the Methodist community, which include figures for emigration during the years in question. It considers evidence on the timing and variation in the annual outward flow of Protestant emigrants, including conflict migration between 1919-23, economic migration, regime change and British withdrawal in 1922 in addition to other factors which affected population decline during these years.

Andy Bielenberg has recently retired as senior lecturer in social and economic history at UCC. He has published extensively on Irish industrial history, emigration and aspects of the Irish revolution. He has just completed a project which has identified and analysed all fatalities during the Irish civil war which has been published in the Atlas of the Irish Revolution.