Many of you who have added yourself to our map have left intriguing snippets of tales of your ancestors. Indeed, in many ways our little bubbles on the map are rather like short tweets of Irishness. However, these stories are fascinating and it’s something we’d think would be great to expand.

What’s your story
Your ancestor is the person who has probably bestowed you with that strange affliction called ‘Irishness.’ Their story has been handed down to you from parent to child. Or maybe you knew the Irish ancestor who first arrived in your country. Whatever it is, we’d like to hear your story. And so would lots of other Irish descendants people too!

Share their story

We’d like to offer you a place to share your family story with others who would be interested to hear it. At our sister site SeventyMillion.com we are attempting to create an online storybook of Irish emigration tales. Why not write a little something about your Irish ancestor. When did they leave Ireland? Why? Where did they land or settle? What did they get up to in their new home? What did they pass on to you? You can add photos or videos. It’s your ancestor so you decide how to tell their story. Here are a few examples we’ve been lucky enough to collect already:

The Killing of Major Mahon” and Patrick Hunt
Famine Casualties
‘Survivors’ by Trish Giles
Black 47 - emigration to Argentina

How to participate

If you’d like to share your yarn then simply go to our sister website at www.seventymillion.com, sign up and then simply post your tale.  You can find out how to do everything here.

The Emancipator of Chile

It’s really quite amazing the things we Irishmen and women got up to in our new homes. Even more amazing is what the descendent generations get up to. Terrance who always fires me interesting titbits about Irish Diaspora history around the world, recently revealed that the man known as the Emancipator of Chile was another one of the Diaspora, one Bernardo O’Higgins. Yep, that’s right, another Irishman causing trouble down South America way.

Bernardo O’Higgins was born on 20 August 1778, in Chillán, a small village in southern Chile to Isabel Riquelme. He was the illegitimate son of Ambrose O’Higgins, a Sligo-born 58-year-old military man who was the most powerful man in the region. His father took some interest in the care of his son but, as far as can be established, didn’t ever meet him. When his father died in 1801, leaving Bernardo a large piece of land (hacienda Las Canteras) near the Chilean city of Los Angeles, Bernardo who had been living it up in Lonon returned to Chile, adopted his father’s surname, and began life as a gentleman farmer. He became involved in local politics and so, it was only natural that he became involved in the independence struggle.

The Chilean war of independence began roughly around 1810. Like most of the wars of independence in Latin America the impetus for the revolt came from events in mainland Spain. Napoleon had invaded Spain in 1808, exiled the king and installed his brother Joseph as new puppet king in Spain. The mainland Spanish themselves, rejected this king and established free “juntas” to coordinate resistance to the Napoleonic Forces in what became known as the Peninsula War. Juntas were also established in the territories in South America… which takes us to Chile.

In the absence of the King, the Chilean territory was ruled by one García Carrasco, a man of mean and nasty temperament. He managed to become despised by everybody. The majority of the people of the region were royalists. But they were divided into two groups: those who favoured the status quo and the divine right of King of Spain Ferdinand VII (known as Absolutists) and those who wanted to proclaim Charlotte Joaquina (sister of Ferdinand VII and wife of the King of Portugal) as Queen (known as Carlotists). There was a third and smaller group, composed of those who proposed the replacement of the Spanish authorities with a local junta of notable citizens (known as Juntistas).

In 1810, however, it was the juntistas who managed, by way of political cunning, to establish the Government Junta of the Kingdom of Chile. This was followed by elections, instability, and numerous coups until a young Spanish-born man named José Miguel Carrera managed to take power. His government included one Bernardo O’Higgins.

The government was short-lived and in 1815 was overthrown by the Spanish royalist forces that were sent from still loyal Peru. Carrera and O’Higgins fled to Argentina from where they regrouped and re-entered Chile in 1817 to defeat the royalist forces at Battle of Chacabuco. O’Higgins was named Supreme Director of Chile. On the first anniversary of the Battle of Chacabuco, O’Higgins formally declared independence.

His rule was neither uneventful nor peaceful. Loyal Peru harried its borders and sent troops time and again. In the end, O’Higgins decided that the only way to secure Chilean independence was to secure Peruvian independence. An army and a navy was formed to defend Chile, but more often to attack Peru. It was, however, the great Simon Bolivar who eventually won freedom for Peru.

Higgins was a popular leader. However, his more radical and liberal reforms, (establishment of democracy and abolition of titles of nobility) were resisted by traditionalists. He was deposed by a conservative-led coup on January 28, 1823.

He left Peru with the intention, like so many before and after, of returning to Ireland. He was changing ship in Peru when he was asked to help in the independence movement. He did and stayed and never saw his father’s homeland.

(This post was originally posed on SeventyMillion.com) For more info:

http://www.irlandeses.org/0610sepulveda1.htm

http://www.bernardoohiggins.cl/

This week, Brian Lenihan the Irish Finance Minister, warned that the nation faced the challenge of its life. The doom-mongering came as he outlined plans for Ireland to set-up a national asset management agency (Europe’s first ‘bad bank’, another first from Ireland) to take over an estimated Euro80 – 90 billion of bad loans extended by local domestic banks to developers and property companies that now look as if they will not be able to repay. At the heart of Brian’s measures is a levy of 4 per cent of gross income on anyone earning more than Euro75k, rising to 6 per cent for those earning above Euro175k. The levy is on top of income tax. So here we have it: the banks bail out the developers, the government bails out the banks, and the tax-payer bails out the government, in particular the middle-class tax payer. There are two things I wanted to say about this turn of events.

One, I’m intrigued by the notion of a bad bank: what if we could introduce it into other aspects of our lives? What if there were a ‘bad me’ and a ‘good me?’ You could get home after a two-day Guinness-driven bender and avoid any arguments by simply depositing it in the ‘bad me’ bank. Why not have that dessert even though you’re already full and could do with losing some weight? The healthy food goes in the ‘thin me’ and the chocolate fudge sundae is deposited in the ‘fat me’ bank. The ‘bad bank’ is a peculiar notion and one I think must have been thought up by a Catholic – someone at any rate who had a full understanding of purgatory, a limbo place to put things that shouldn’t have happened and you’d like to pretend don’t exist.

Two, the last ‘challenge of the nation’ was arguably the Great Famine, the main reason for the Irish Diaspora as we know it today. My take on the famine years as a lay historian was that the middle classes benefited then – the poor starved and were driven away, the landlords fled and headed back to England, leaving only the shop owners and middle-men to run the place and make the money. The famine brought about the middle-classes in Ireland. I just thought it ironic that in this current challenge, as Brian Lenihan would have it, that it is those very middle-classes who bear the biggest brunt. Now that doesn’t make me happy, it’s just an observation.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! And before we head out to drink some green Guinness we thought it’d be good to reflect on where the seventymillion project is just now and more importantly, where it’s headed. Karl and myself started this project, a project to connect the global Irish Diaspora on the Internet, exactly one year ago today. We wondered at the time if there were in fact seventymillion of us and if so, where exactly in the world. Beyond that, we wondered what’s the state of the global Irish Diaspora - is it alive and well? Is Irishness meaningful generations down the line? If it is, in what way is it meaningful beyond beer promotions and green hats on St. Paddy’s? Although we called the project ’seventymillion’, it was always more than about the number, it was about the people.

Seventymillion is then a human project and going forward into year 2 it needs to remain just that is our feeling. It’s been slower going than we thought in the first year - we have a thousand involved in the project now so just sixty-nine odd million to go. But this is a passion driven project - it’s not commercially backed and we’re not politically connected. We’re sure we could increase the numbers if we worked harder but we both have our day jobs. It’s organic, it’s modern, it’s the Internet the way Tim Berners-Lee intended it. We wanted this project to be for the community and to come from the community.

We only say that as today sees the launch of the well financed and well organised www.irishcentral.com by Niall O’Dowd. He arranged for An Taoiseach Brian Cowen to launch the website in NYC. We could never do that. Or at least not yet. (What exactly does it take to get the current Taoiseach to launch your commercial enterprise I wonder, not shares in Anglo Irish Bank I’m certain of that. Never mind.) But that’s not what we want to do anyway. That website is a media project, a business project. (Also and by the way, did you notice how O’Dowd called his website the first online website for the global Irish? Cheeky! We all know who can claim that). O’Dowd’s site is a newspaper online. Which is great, I’ll read it. But it tells us nothing about the seventymillion people calling themselves Irish. The best way to get that is for that seventymillion to tell us themselves.

This Seventymillion project cannot and isn’t supposed to be owner-operated like a regular website. It can’t be an online Department of the Irish Abroad. But it can be a place for Irish people to connect and discuss and upload stuff that’s important to them. So for phase 2 of this project (March 17th, 2009 to March 16th, 2010) no more Karl and myself talking down from on high (not that we ever did), no more generic blogs about Irishness. Karl lives in the UK, he’s going to ‘natter’ or give his view on Irish stuff going on there. I live in the UAE and I’m going to give my view about Irish stuff going on here. It’s somewhat factual but it’s mostly personal. We’ve developed a new word for this, it’s called ‘NATTER’ (a sort of Irish expression, ‘Natter’ is to talk about Irish stuff online - a combination of twitter and chatter if you like, just to bring it online and up-to-date). We’re going to natter more and preach less (again, not that we ever did really).

Please natter with us and everyone else. Find a way to share what’s happening in your part of the world. And talk to as many people as you can about seventymillion so we can get them nattering online too. Good luck. Thanks agus Slainte. Nick

Whether you are Irish-born or have an Irish Mum or a granny, or you just have that single molecule of Irishness in you, today is your day. Today is the day for all of us around the world to celebrate our wonderful, ancient, strange and incomparable heritage. Wherever you are and however you celebrate, we hope you have a happy, craic-filled Paddy’s Day.

This day also marks the the first anniversary of the SeventyMillion Project and over the next few days we’ll be telling you what we have learned from the many hundreds of people around the world who have shared their feelings about their Irishness with us. But if you want to get a sneak peek, you can go to the home page and run the map movie.

We’d love to hear from you and about how you celebrate Paddy’s day where you are. Share it with us all with a blog post or upload a pic or a movie at the SeventyMillion community site at www.SeventyMillion.com.

In the meantime, have a great day!

Every once in a while we get an email to the site asking for help. We are, of course, only too glad to help out when we can. I reprint the and we wanted to share it with you. It follows:

My name is Martin Coyle I undertake voluntary Research for the Mayo Memorial. It is a non political non sectarian project. Are aim is to find and Remember all County Mayo Personnel who have lost there lives in conflict anywhere in the World, no matter what uniform they wore or traditions they followed from the Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force, Merchant Navy, Medical Staff, Clergy and Civilians who were from County Mayo Republic of Ireland.  The Website is: http://www.mayomemorialpeacepark.org

The Memorial was opened by the President of Ireland Mary McAleese in October 2008 it contains the names of 1,114 to Date. We believe there are some names which have being Forgotten and they need to be added to the Memorial Wall so we are asking all Groups and Organisations to forward there names to this site they will be added in due course. The most recent being Marine Robert McKibben RM. Who lost his life in Afghanistan in November last Year.

This is an Irish Television Station RTE. The Nationwide Programme in Remembrance week (November 2008) broadcast on the Event, Six Minutes duration. Click here to view.

Contact - http://www.mayomemorialpeacepark.org

A forecast by Ireland’s Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment predicts that 27,000 more people will leave the country next year than will enter it. This, reports the UK’s Sunday Times on Nov 29^th, will lead to the first net emigration in 12 years. It seems that the end of the building boom in Ireland and the general economic downturn is driving the Irish abroad once again.

What implications might this have on the Irish Diaspora? That it is again active, that it is being replenished in a way that wasn’t happening during the Celtic Tiger? Through that recent period of economic success in Ireland, it became a net importer of people reversing the movement of men, women and children established centuries ago. But the impact of 27,000 people into a global population of 70 million hardly seems worthy of mention. It’s less than half of one percent of the total population.

The real implication lies less with the Irish Diaspora and more with the Irish in Ireland themselves. The Celtic Tiger brought about a change in Ireland’s perception of itself perhaps. No longer was she a nation defined by hardship and long-standing emigration – she was now a positive, vibrant and successful place. In fact, Ireland and the Irish found them-selves to be far better off financially that those places paved with gold that the Irish landed on in harder times. Ireland could hold its head up and expect to be looked upon differently. Will this still be the case now? Might this turn of events bring on a crisis in Ireland’s recent and positive self-identity?

Hardly, Ireland has turned a corner and will never go back to those experiences of its terrible past. But perhaps this new reality can change the way Ireland views its global Irish population. In a recent blog Karl here talked of a more sustainable policy toward the Irish Diaspora by Ireland, one where it was not seen by the Irish solely as a financial resource. Rather, it should be a reciprocating relationship where it is a living, human eco-system that does not view ‘us’ as the Irish in Ireland and ‘them’ as the plastic Paddies abroad who can be tapped for a few quid for the betterment of Ireland alone.

Last week I attended the Irish Diaspora Forum in University College, Dublin. It was an interesting event with a great many people from what could be called the Irish Diaspora industry.

Niall O’Dowd of the Irish American Magazine had organized the event so perhaps it was only natural that the United States would dominate many of the sessions. Indeed, with 40 million Americans having some kind of Irish heritage it is only reasonable that the US gets the attention it does. However, it was not this that got me thinking. It was the Irish themselves. And how they see the Irish Diaspora.

The Irish nations (both north and south) view the Diaspora in a very particular way. In general, they view the Irish Diaspora as a quasi-natural resource, a resource that is to be exploited for the betterment of the Irish nations. The product of this exploitation is primarily Foreign Direct Investment into Ireland.

Indeed, many of the speakers dealt with the issue of how Ireland would further mine this resource in an uncertain economic future. Even the election of Barack Obama was seen largely through the prism of apparent threats to US Foreign Direct Investment into Ireland.

But this view of the Diaspora as an exploitable resource strikes me as flawed. While the seventy million people around the world may well seem to be an inexhaustible resource, we all know that there is no such thing. All resources are finite. Emigration may once have been enough to replenish it, but no longer.

As if to illustrate the dangers, Loretta Brennan Glucksman spoke of the changing role of the Irish American Fund. No longer can it simply raise funds in the US for projects in Ireland. Ireland is now wealthier than many parts of the US from where the money was being raised.

If the Irish nations want to view the Diaspora as a resource, they must exploit it sustainably. They must begin to think of the Diaspora as an ecosystem that must be respected. The Irish nations must start thinking about protecting it.

At the conference David McWilliams spoke of the Israeli project which invites young Jewish people to Israel. While not immediately economically profitable, in the longer term it creates a greater affinity of non-Israeli Jews for the state of Israel. Israel has given its Diaspora something. It has recharged and replenished the link to Israel and Jewishness. The Israeli policy is about protecting and nurturing the Jewish ecosystem from which future resources may emerge. Down the road, no doubt, that Diaspora ecosystem will result in New Shekels. But the return will not solely be financial. It will be political and cultural.

The Irish nations must begin to think in the same way. They must begin to think about the Irish ecosystem. They must begin to think about how they can nurture Irish heritage. It really is time for the Irish nations to adopt new type of green politics for the Irish Diaspora.

RTE (the Irish state broadcasting company) has put on hold its plans to launch ‘RTE International’ (reported in The Irish Independent this week).  What’s been called ‘Diaspora TV’ has been shelved as RTE can’t afford the Euro 2m per year it would take to keep the channel going.  The plan was for launch on St. Patrick’s Day 2009 but not any more.  They will launch it (there’s a statutory obligation to do so following the 2007 amended Broadcasting Act), though there’s no commitment to when.

The primary audience for the channel is the 850,000 Irish born people living in Great Britain.  I’m not an economist but a simple calculation has me wondering why at Euro 2.35 a head, per year, the Irish born residents of Great Britain can’t afford to do this on their own.  And what about asking the non-Irish-born in Britain to club together, that’d bring the price down even further. 

Why stop there?  It’d be even cheaper if they offered it on the net and the seventy million people calling themselves Irish around the world chipped in! It’d cost less than 1 cent per person, per year. Not bad, even if all you watched were the Father Ted re-runs.  

The big question is:  Why do we need the ‘State’ to deliver this channel at all?  Why can’t we do it on our own?  Seems to me, what we’re missing is not a TV channel from RTE but leadership.  The USA has Barack Obama, the Environment has Al Gore, new technology has Steve Jobs, fluffy lap-dogs have Paris Hilton but what about the Diaspora? Nothing!  No one to consolidate a vision, fulfill a dream and organize this motley crew.  No one to interest businessmen in their constituents and sell ideas like Diaspora TV to us all.

I guess until we can find and agree such a leader or until RTE can rustle up the cash to entertain us off-site Irish, can I ask that we all post our videos on to www.seventymillion.com (the social network part of this SEVENTYMILLION project) so we have some content for us all to share.  Meanwhile, I’m off to prepare my party political broadcast.

We know through our own SEVENTYMILLION social network (www.seventymillion.com) that there are efforts across the global Irish community to learn and keep up the Irish language.  One day soon, we hope to have a blog in Irish, but for now we’ll have to make do with one about the Irish language written in English. 

Apparently, the Irish language is witnessing a re-birth (’Ireland’s Language Dilemma‘ by Don Duncan).  In Irish education, the fastest growing sector is ‘gaelscoileanna’ - schools where all the lessons are taught in  Irish.  Gaelscoileanna make-up 5% of schools but their numbers have tripled since the early 1990s.  Today, between 5 and 10% of the 4.2 million people living in Ireland speak Irish on a daily basis, and many of those are students who speak it in school.

But as the language has been rejuvenating itself over the past twenty years there’s been another dynamic happening in Ireland – immigration.  More and more foreigners (from China, Nigeria, Poland, etc) have been arriving on the back of the Celtic Tiger:  In fact between the late 1980s and today, the percentage of foreign-born residents in Ireland grew from around 1% to almost 12%.

Ireland has an obligation to integrate its increasingly immigrant population and it’d be nice to think that all can be a part of this new interest in the Irish language.  This beautiful and poetic tongue could be used as a tool to bring disparate peoples together and unite them with a shared interest in the land they live.

And if you don’t quite know what I’m getting at, here’s something someone overheard in Dublin recently, which sums up a possible language dilemma in Ireland nicely:

“I was standing at a bus stop on O’Connell Street. There were two girls beside me talking in Irish to each other. Next thing you know, two local Dubliners walk by and hear the two girls talking. One of the Dubliners looks at the two girls and says -

”Hey f**k off back to yer own country”.