The Imperial Irish

Between 1914 and 1918, many Irish Catholics in Canada found themselves in a vulnerable position. Not only was the Great War slaughtering millions, but tension and violence was mounting in Ireland over the question of independence from Britain and Home Rule. For Canada’s Irish Catholics, thwarting Prussian militarism was a way to prove that small nations, like Ireland, could be free from larger occupying countries. Yet, even as tens of thousands of Irish Catholic men and women rallied to the call to arms and supported government efforts to win the war, many Canadians still doubted their loyalty to the Empire. Retracing the struggles of Irish Catholics as they fought Canada’s enemies in Europe while defending themselves against charges of disloyalty at home, The Imperial Irish explores the development and fraying of interfaith and intercultural relationships between Irish Catholics, French Canadian Catholics, and non-Catholics throughout the course of the Great War. Mark McGowan contrasts Irish Canadian Catholics' beliefs with the neutrality of Pope Benedict XV, the supposed pro-Austrian sympathies of many immigrants from central Europe, Irish republicans inciting rebellion in Ireland, and the perceived indifference to the war by French Canadian Catholics, and argues that, for the most part, Irish Catholics in Canada demonstrated strong support for the imperial war effort by recruiting in large numbers. He further investigates their religious lives within the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the spiritual resources available to them, and church and lay leaders’ negotiation of the sensitive political developments in Ireland that coincided with the war effort. Grounded in research from dozens of archives as well as census data and personnel records, The Imperial Irish explores stirring conflicts that threatened to irreparably divide Canada along religious and linguistic lines.

A social and religious history of ethnic conflict and nationalism during the Great War.

This is an innovative study of the role of Ireland and the Irish in the British Empire which examines the intellectual, cultural and political interconnections between nineteenth-century British imperial, Irish and Indian history. Barry Crosbie argues that Ireland was a crucial sub-imperial centre for the British Empire in South Asia that provided a significant amount of the manpower, intellectual and financial capital that fuelled Britain's drive into Asia from the 1750s onwards. He shows the important role that Ireland played as a centre for recruitment for the armed forces, the medical and civil services and the many missionary and scientific bodies established in South Asia during the colonial period. In doing so, the book also reveals the important part that the Empire played in shaping Ireland's domestic institutions, family life and identity in equally significant ways.

Ireland in an Imperial World interrogates the myriad ways through which Irish men and women experienced, participated in, and challenged empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most importantly, they were integral players simultaneously managing and undermining the British Empire, and through their diasporic communities, they built sophisticated arguments that aided challenges to other imperial projects. In emphasizing the interconnections between Ireland and the wider British and Irish worlds, this book argues that a greater appreciation of empire is essential for enriching our understanding of the development of Irish society at home. Moreover, these thirteen essays argue plainly that Ireland was on the cutting edge of broader global developments, both in configuring and dismantling Europe’s overseas empires.

This book explores Irish participation in the British imperial project after ‘Southern’ Ireland’s independence in 1922. Building on a detailed study of the Irish contribution to the policing of the Palestine Mandate, it examines Irish imperial servants’ twentieth-century transnational careers, and assesses the influence of their Irish identities on their experience at the colonial interface. The factors which informed Irish enlistment in Palestine’s police forces are examined, and the impact of Irishness on the personal perspectives and professional lives of Irish Palestine policemen is assessed. Irish policing in Palestine is placed within the broader tradition of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)-conducted imperial police service inaugurated in the mid-nineteenth century, and the RIC’s transnational influence on twentieth-century British colonial policing is evaluated. The wider tradition of Irish imperial service, of which policing formed part, is then explored, with particular focus on British Colonial Service recruitment in post-revolutionary Ireland and twentieth-century Irish-imperial identities.

This edited collection explores the complexities of Irish involvement in empire. Despite complaining regularly of treatment as a colony by England, Ireland nevertheless played a significant part in Britain’s imperialism, from its formative period in the late eighteenth century through to the decolonizing years of the early twentieth century. Framed by two key events of world history, the American Revolution and Indian Independence, this book examines Irish involvement in empire in several interlinked sections: through issues of migration and inhabitation; through literary and historical representations of empire; through Irish support for imperialism and involvement with resistance movements abroad; and through Irish participation in the extensive and intricate networks of empire. Informed by recent historiographical and theoretical perspectives, and including several detailed archival investigations, this volume offers an interdisciplinary and evolving view of a burgeoning field of research and will be of interest to scholars of Irish studies, imperial and postcolonial studies, history and literature.