We have the privilege of living in interesting times. The imminent departure of British rule from Hong Kong really does mark the end of empire, surely a cause of celebration as the second millenium approaches.

Studies such as this are therefore very timely. A fascinating series of essays explores aspects of the experience of Ireland and Irish people within the British Empire. The book chiefly concerns three groups: the Anglo-Irish aristocracy who supplied administrators and military leaders to Britain for her colonies; the Irish soldiers who fought so many imperial wars; and the unionists whose relationship with the Empire tells much about their political mentality.

``No surrender! Let every man die at his post; but never make terms,'' said the dying Henry Lawrence at the siege of Lucknow, India in 1857. Lawrence's defiance was in conscious imitation of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, where he and his brothers were educated. They were running the show for England in the Punjab and after Lucknow the surviving brothers went on to defeat the Indian uprising by methods which included shooting captured prisoners from the mouths of cannons.

Sixty years later another Irishman was running the Punjab - Sir Michael O'Dwyer, son of a big farmer and a Catholic. It was under his rule that Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer slaughtered 379 unarmed demonstrators at Amritsar on 13 April 1919. Dyer and O'Dwyer were defended in the House of Commons by Edward Carson.

The following year in the Punjab the Connaught Rangers mutinied in solidarity with the Irish independence struggle. Corporal James Daly of Tyrellspass, County Westmeath was executed for his part in the mutiny. The hand of fate followed O'Dwyer all the way to London in 1940 when he was assasinated by a young Sikh whose relatives had been killed at Amritsar. (This story was the subject of a drama-documentary on British television last year. I missed the title; does any reader have information on the programme?)

The chapter on the British Army shows clearly the role of economic conscription. In the decade before 1914 recruitment to the British Army was far higher in Dublin than in `loyal' Belfast. The difference was that unemployment was lower in the industrial North-East while the king's shilling was a means of escape from the hungry slums for young Dublin men. The exploited became the exploiters in the imperial army.

Donal Lowry has an excellent chapter on `Ulster resistance and loyalist rebellion in the empire'. He shows how white racists in Natal, Kenya and Rhodesia looked to the precedent of the unionist rebellion in Ireland of 1912-1914 to justify their opposition to London's plans for them. In the 1930s an Anglo-Irish anti-semite called Henry Hamilton Beamish sat in the Rhodesian legislature. He warned Ulster and Rhodesia not to obey the ``be-Jewed'' House of Commons. Other charming imperial exports included Charles Olley, big game hunter, founder of the White Rhodesia Council and Belfast-born Orangeman.

Fearing majority rule, the white Rhodesians declared UDI in 1965 and found vocal supporters among unionists here. Lowry describes UDI as ``the kind of direct action, country ranch syndicalism which Ulster Unionists could admire''. According to Paisley's Protestant Telegraph both Rhodesians and Ulstermen had ``primitive natives'' to deal with; the Irish threw holy water while the ``cannibals'' threw human bones.

It is worth pondering the words of Clifford Smyth (later a DUP Assembly member) in a racist paper in South Africa in 1969:

``Fundamental to any understanding of the Irish Question is our appreciation of the fact that the government of Northern Ireland, together with Rhodesia and South Africa, is based on the Protestant Ascendancy, and the last in the world so based.''

It is a suitable epitaph for empire and a certain reminder that the Six Counties will fall to democracy as surely as did those other sectarian states.

BY MICHEAL Mac DONNCHA

Don't pocket this history

There is an American theatre company which performs Shakespeare plays in 60 seconds. Rapid fire, breathless delivery squeezes in all you need to know in one minute flat.

I was reminded of them when I started reading this ``pocket history''. By the end of the first page we have time travelled from Strongbow in 1170 to the Fenians in 1867. Unfortunately, it doesn't contain all you need to know. There is, for example, no mention of the plantation - a little snippet which I thought would have been high on the list of things you need to know about Ulster.

The book slows down after the first page and becomes quite a detailed history, not of Ulster but of the Six Counties in the 20th Century. It is written with Daily Telegraph terminology (eg PIRA, Eire) and refuses to concede that the very structure of the state will always make it ungovernable. Barton is one of those with blind faith in that constant mirage, ``the middle ground''.

Needless to say, republicans do not get a good press. In a peculiar sentence Barton writes that the IRA sought to achieve a united Ireland ``by bringing death, casualties and destruction to British and Northern Irish streets and by making the Six Counties ungovernable and Britain's interest in them unprofitable by the brutal punishment of suspected informers and the skilful use of propaganda.''

My advice is, better the pound in your pocket than the Pocket History of Ulster.

BY BRIAN CAMPBELL