Conclusion

Abstract

On 7 August 2004, the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Ireland and the British Ambassador participated in a formal military ceremony at Aughavale Cemetery in County Mayo. They were, appropriately, joined by military re-enactors dressed in redcoat uniforms, for the ceremony honored a nineteenth-century Irish soldier, a sergeant major in the Connaught Rangers named Cornelius Coughlan. Coughlan had earned the Victoria Cross in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and had died in 1915 in the nearby town of Westport. He was buried with military honors at a well-attended public funeral, but for many years his body had lain in an unmarked grave.¹ The Minister of Defense and the ambassador watched as a new headstone was unveiled over Coughlan’s grave and the ‘redcoats’ fired a musket volley. To the ambassador, the ceremony ‘symbolized the development of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, the new willingness to discuss things which were not so easily discussed at all and the willingness to think about the extent of our shared history.’²