Ireland From Colony To Nation State

This volume addresses the political, cultural and economic dimensions of Irish life, presenting Ireland as a hybrid of cultures and peoples. Coverage includes: an explanation of how the literature and folklore reflect the desire for national independence in both political and cultural forms; an analysis of how the Gaelic, Norman English, Elizabethan English, Ulster Planter English, Scots, Cromwellian English and Williamite English conflict and meld into the present character of Ireland and the Irish; a discussion of how the English impact, Catholicism, the Land Question, emigration, literacy and Gaelic cultural nationalism coalesce to create Irish nationalism; emphasis on the influence of British presence on Irish values and personality; an examination of how the Irish question moved Britain in the direction of liberal democracy and the welfare state; and an exploration of Ireland as a paradigm case of a country fighting imperialism and colonialism to move from colony to nation state, accomplishing the latter through one of the 20th century's most notable guerrilla wars of liberation.

With the emphasis on the South, this book looks at the island since partition and examines the performances of the two entities created by the collapse of the old Union. The author traces the establishment and development of the independent Irish state in detail, drawing on his knowledge of Irish government sources.

Nationalism is a particularly slippery subject to define and understand, particularly when applied to early modern Europe. In this collection of essays, Brendan Bradshaw provides an insight into how concepts of ’nationalism’ and ’national identity’ can be understood and applied to pre-modern Ireland. Drawing upon a selection of his most provocative and pioneering essays, together with three entirely new pieces, the limits and contexts of Irish nationalism are explored and its impact on both early modern society and later generations, examined. The collection reflects especially upon the emergence of national consciousness in Ireland during a calamitous period when the late-medieval, undeveloped sense of a collective identity became suffused with patriotic sentiment and acquired a political edge bound up with notions of national sovereignty and representative self-government. The volume opens with a discussion of the historical methods employed, and an extended introductory essay tracing the history of national consciousness in Ireland from its first beginnings as recorded in the poetry of the early Christian Church to its early-modern flowering, which provides the context for the case studies addressed in the subsequent chapters. These range across a wealth of subjects, including comparisons of Tudor Wales and Ireland, Irish reactions to the ’Westward Enterprise’, the Ulster Rising of 1641, the Elizabethans and the Irish, and the two sieges of Limerick. The volume concludes with a transcription and discussion of ’A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland, 1554-5’. The result of a lifetime’s study, this volume offers a rich and rewarding journey through a turbulent yet fascinating period of Irish history, not only illuminating political and religious developments within Ireland, but also how these affected events across the British Isles and beyond.

This work chronicles the ways in which the Irish revolution was remembered in the first two decades of independence by significant nationalist intellectuals: Eimar O'Duffy, P.S. O'Hegarty, George Russell, and Desmond Ryan. It provides a lively account of their controversial critiques of the revolution, and an intimate portrait of their lives and times.

A revised and updated version of the leading history of the Irish experience in America.