For my Digital Exhibition I would like to present the British colonization of Ireland, as well as the background of Ireland, in a different way than most Americans know it.  In Anglophone education systems the world over, the treatment of the Irish by the British is glossed over.  But it is fact that over three hundred years of colonization had the effect of making Ireland the poorest country of Western Europe during the 20th century and reducing a culture thousands of years old to almost nothing.

Examples of documents I can include are correspondence between Republican groups in Ireland, culture documents, land tenure (big issue in 19th century), and political documents regarding Ireland’s quest for Home Rule within the British Empire.  Plus many more.  I am taking a class which spent several weeks on the history of Ireland, and what I, as an American, had not been taught.  As I have been taught what really happened, with this exhibition I hope to spread the truth to more people.

I think that in order to best accomplish my goal, my exhibition will be mostly text and document based, along with some cartoons, spread out along a timeline.  Some documents will concern Old Irish culture, and thus be in the far past, but the vast majority will be from 1200 onward.  It will be a serious exhibit.  In effect, the British used Ireland as a training ground for the techniques they would later use in colonizing much of the world.  Along with massive human rights abuses.

I may also touch on British actions in Northern Ireland in the latter half of the 20th century, but that will depend on how I’m feeling about it and how much material I have already.