The "Anglosphere" of a small railway station in Ireland
On the seaside of the small town of Cove in southern Ireland, there is a small place that is particularly worth seeing, which is the small railway station in the photo, also called "Victoria Station", which today is also a memorial center that tells countless stories about the town of Cove in the past two hundred years.
So why did a small railway station still in use become a memorial center in the small town of Cove? According to the station, the creation of the memorial center originally stemmed from a "town plan" issued by a committee, which wanted to establish a foundation to raise funds for the construction of a Cobh Memorial to record the role of the town of Cobh in major historical events such as the wave of immigration. It may be that this old railway station of Coboff, built in 1790, witnessed the wave of immigration at that time, and after a vote of citizens, it was finally decided to set up a memorial center at the Victoria railway station in Coboff.
History records that in the more than 100 years from 1848 to 1950, more than 6 million adults and children emigrated from Ireland to other countries, and about 2.5 million of them left Ireland from the small town of Cove. Friends who know Irish history must know that from 1845 to 1850, Ireland broke out the worst famine in history, and in five years, the population of Ireland under British rule fell by a quarter, in addition to the death of starvation and disease, about one million people moved overseas due to famine, and thousands of Irish fled their homes and began unprecedented large-scale migration. A statue (fig. 14) of 15-year-old Annie Moore and her two younger brothers on the seaside of the small train station chronicles the story behind the first Irish immigrants to the United States after the new immigration laws came into effect in 1892. In American history, almost one-third of presidents are of Irish descent, and Biden and Obama, Clinton, Reagan, etc. before him are of Irish descent.
What does this history of Irish immigration say? If compared with today's world pattern, are Britain, Ireland, and the United States inextricably linked? Britain ruled Ireland for more than 700 years, and the occurrence of the Great Famine was inseparable from the British designation, but looking at the influence of Britain on Ireland for more than 700 years, can it be said that without Britain, there would be no Ireland today? From the landing of the Mayflower in the United States in 1620 to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775, the British operated on the North American continent for more than a hundred years. That's logical, right?
The small train station records the history of Irish immigration to the United States, and is there anything else? Many people say that Australia is a developed country where British prisoners were established, why is there such a statement? Ireland was part of Britain until 1922, and from 1791, when Captain Cook discovered the Australian mainland, the British Empire sent a large number of prisoners to Australia for imprisonment, and the first sailing ship "Queen" carrying 159 prisoners to Australia set sail from the shore of this small railway station. For 62 years, from 1791 to 1853, more than 30,000 male prisoners and more than 9,000 female prisoners were sent from Port Cove, Ireland, to Australia. The British royal family at the time believed that transporting prisoners out of overpopulated Europe to a place where labor was desperately needed was the ideal way to get rid of criminals. But the British could never have imagined that the more than 40,000 prisoners they sent to Australia would multiply for more than two hundred years to build one of the most developed countries in the world today. Do you think the cultural connotation and heritage of the UK are strong enough?
Is the above short story talking about the relationship between the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia? Is it also possible to say that without Britain, Australia would not be what it is today? A very small train station that tells so much about the history of the world, is that the benefit of travel? For me, the greatest desire to walk on the road is to unlock the unknown in my heart. Many times, reading books can not find the answer, only go out, only walk on the road to observe carefully, only by connecting what you read in the book with what you see on the road, will you make your eyes brighter, will make your head more clear.
Figure 7 is the national flag hanging in the waiting room of the station, and the previous travelogue said my observation of these national flags, and here are a few more words. From left to right, Ireland 🇮🇪, the United States, Australia 🇦🇺, the United Kingdom, Canada 🇨🇦, New Zealand 🇳🇿 flags, in addition to Ireland, the other five countries are called the 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 "Five Eyes Alliance", but also these five countries call themselves "Anglo circle", do you think Ireland and they are one?
History is not always read in books, and those who write history carry their own subjective intentions. If you want to have a correct view of history, you need to form it in reading, traveling, thinking, and judging actual results. Do English-speaking countries have a big impact on today's world? The answer to this question can only be found in factual judgments, value judgments and logical judgments.
