Reappraisals in Irish History – serie

Covering the period from the Armistice to 1939, the book examines the experiences of Irish soldiers who had fought in the British army in the First World War on returning home to what became the Irish Free State. At the onset of the War, southern Irishmen volunteered in large numbers and marched off accompanied by cheering crowds and the promise of a hero’s welcome home. In 1916, while its soldiers fought in the British army, Ireland witnessed an insurrection against British rule, the Easter Rising. Ireland’s soldiers returned to a much-changed country, which no longer recognised their motives for fighting and which was at war with the country in whose army they had served.It has long been believed that the returning soldiers were subject to intimidation by the IRA, some killed as a retrospective punishment for their service with the imperial power, and that they formed a marginalised group in Irish society. Using new sources, this enlightening book argues otherwise and examines their successful integration into Irish society in the interwar years and the generous support given to them by the British Government. Far from being British loyalists, many served in the IRA and the Free State army, and became republican supporters.

Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument presents for the first time a visual cultural history of the 1840s Irish Famine, tracing its representation and commemoration from the 19th century up to its 150th anniversary in the 1990s and beyond.As the watershed event of 19th century Ireland, the Famine’s political and social impacts profoundly shaped modern Ireland and the nations of its diaspora. Yet up until the 1990s, the memory of the Famine remained relatively muted and neglected, attracting little public attention. Thus the Famine commemorative boom of the mid-1990s was unprecedented in scale and output, with close to one hundred monuments newly constructed across Ireland, Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia. Drawing on an extensive global survey of recent community and national responses to the Famine’s anniversary, and by outlining why these memories matter and to whom, this book argues how the phenomenon of Famine commemoration may be understood in the context of a growing memorial culture worldwide. It offers an innovative look at a well-known migration history whilst exploring how a now-global ethnic community redefines itself through acts of public memory and representation.

The purpose of this book is to produce what is essentially a ‘home front’ study of Ireland during the Crimean War, or more specifically Irish society’s responses to that conflict. This will principally complement the existing research on Irish servicemen’s experiences during and after the campaign, but will also substantially develop the limited work already undertaken on Irish society and the conflict.This book primarily encompasses the years of the conflict, from its origins in the 1853 dispute between Russia and the Ottoman Empire over the Holy Places, through the French and British political and later military interventions in 1854-5, to the victory, peace and homecoming celebrations in 1856. Additionally, it will extend into the preceding and succeeding decades in order to contextualise the events and actors of the wartime years and to present and analyse the commemoration and memorialisation processes.The approach of the study is systematic, with the content being correlated under six convenient and coherent themes, which will be analysed through a chronological process. The book covers all of the major aspects of society and life in Ireland during the period, so as to give the most complete analysis of the various impacts of and people’s responses to the war. This study is also conducted, within the broader contexts not only of the responses of the United Kingdom and broader British Empire but also Ireland’s relationship with those political entities, and within Ireland’s post-famine or mid-Victorian and even wider nineteenth-century history.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Additional resources for this book are available on our Manifold site, which can be accessed via https://liverpooluniversitypress.manifoldapp.org/projects/defying-the-iraThis book examines the grass-roots relationship between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the civilian population during the Irish Revolution. It is primarily concerned with the attempts of the militant revolutionaries to discourage, stifle, and punish dissent among the local populations in which they operated, and the actions or inactions by which dissent was expressed or implied. Focusing on the period of guerilla war against British rule from c. 1917 to 1922, it uncovers the acts of ‘everyday’ violence, threat, and harm that characterized much of the revolutionary activity of this period. Moving away from the ambushes and assassinations that have dominated much of the discourse on the revolution, the book explores low-level violent and non-violent agitation in the Irish town or parish. The opening chapter treats the IRA’s challenge to the British state through the campaign against servants of the Crown – policemen, magistrates, civil servants, and others – and IRA participation in local government and the republican counter-state. The book then explores the nature of civilian defiance and IRA punishment in communities across the island before turning its attention specifically to the year that followed the ‘Truce’ of July 1921. This study argues that civilians rarely operated at either extreme of a spectrum of support but, rather, in a large and fluid middle ground. Behaviour was rooted in local circumstances, and influenced by local fears, suspicions, and rivalries. IRA punishment was similarly dictated by community conditions and usually suited to the nature of the perceived defiance. Overall, violence and intimidation in Ireland was persistent, but, by some contemporary standards, relatively restrained.

Covering the period from the Armistice to 1939, the book examines the experiences of Irish soldiers who had fought in the British army in the First World War on returning home to what became the Irish Free State. At the onset of the War, southern Irishmen volunteered in large numbers and marched off accompanied by cheering crowds and the promise of a hero’s welcome home. In 1916, while its soldiers fought in the British army, Ireland witnessed an insurrection against British rule, the Easter Rising. Ireland’s soldiers returned to a much-changed country, which no longer recognised their motives for fighting and which was at war with the country in whose army they had served.It has long been believed that the returning soldiers were subject to intimidation by the IRA, some killed as a retrospective punishment for their service with the imperial power, and that they formed a marginalised group in Irish society. Using new sources, this enlightening book argues otherwise and examines their successful integration into Irish society in the interwar years and the generous support given to them by the British Government. Far from being British loyalists, many served in the IRA and the Free State army, and became republican supporters.

This book is a richly detailed exploration of the complex and cosmopolitan urban culture inhabited by the Presbyterian elite of late-Georgian Belfast, which will prove to be of interest to a wide range of scholars working on the political, cultural and intellectual histories of both Ireland and Britain during the age of reform. Employing both biographical and thematic approaches, the book begins by examining the story of the Tennents, one of the most prominent Presbyterian families in early-nineteenth-century Belfast, before turning to reconstruct their milieu. Challenging existing narratives, the study provides a major re-assessment of the political life of late-Georgian Belfast, highlighting the activities of a close-knit group of advanced reformer – the ‘natural leaders’ of the books title – who sought to promote the cause of reform and engage with British and European political events. In addition, the book contains the first serious scholarly examination of the cultural and intellectual life of the town in the early-nineteenth century, and the first major treatment of the middle classes’ philanthropic activities. The interplay of politics and culture is discussed, as is the accuracy of Belfast’s reputation as the ‘Athens of the North’ and the religious underpinnings of the town’s charitable societies. In examining these areas, attention is paid to the influence of trends such as romanticism and evangelicalism and of writers such as Lord Byron, Walter Scott, Robert Owen and Thomas Chalmers, and it is argued that, both culturally and politically, the Presbyterian middle classes of Belfast inhabited a British world.

Two Irelands beyond the Sea: Ulster Unionism and America, 1880-1920 uncovers the transnational movement by Ireland’s unionists as they worked to maintain the Union with Great Britain during the Home Rule era of Irish history. Overshadowed by Irish-American nationalist relations in this era, this transnational movement attempted to bridge the Atlantic to gain support for unionism from the United States. During the Home Rule era, unionists were anxious about Irish-American extremism, apprehensive of American involvement in the Irish question, and eager sought support for their own movement. Two Irelands beyond the Sea explores the political, social, religious, and ethnic connections between Irish unionists and the United States as unionists appealed to Americans for backing and reacted to Irish nationalism. The role of the United States in unionist political thought is also investigated, as unionists used American history, political systems, and Scotch-Irish ethnic traditions to bring legitimacy to their own movement. This examination drives the historical study of Irish unionism into a new arena, illustrating that Irish unionists were much more internationally-focused than traditionally portrayed. Two Irelands beyond the Sea challenges our understanding of Irish unionism by revealing the many ways in which unionists reached out to the United States, sought international support, and constructed their own image of America to legitimize the unionist movement.

Winner of the 2019 NUI Publication Prize in Irish History. This book is the first comprehensive history of the anti-diphtheria campaign and the factors which facilitated or hindered the rollout of the national childhood immunization programme in Ireland. It is easy to forget the context in which Irish society opted to embrace mass childhood immunization. Dwyer shows us how we got where we are. He restores Diphtheria’s reputation as one of the most prolific child-killers of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland and explores the factors which allowed the disease to take a heavy toll on child health and life-expectancy. Public health officials in the fledgling Irish Free State set the eradication of diphtheria among their first national goals, and eschewing the reticence of their British counterparts, adopted anti-diphtheria immunization as their weapon of choice. An unofficial alliance between Irish medical officers and the British pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome placed Ireland on the European frontline of the bacteriological revolution, however, Wellcome sponsored vaccine trials in Ireland side-lined the human rights of Ireland’s most vulnerable citizens: institutional children in state care. An immunization accident in County Waterford, and the death of a young girl, raised serious questions regarding the safety of the immunization process itself, resulting in a landmark High Court case and the Irish Medical Union’s twelve-year long withdrawal of immunization services. As childhood immunization is increasingly considered a lifestyle choice, rather than a lifesaving intervention, this book brings historical context to bear on current debate.

This book is the first comprehensive history of medical student culture and medical education in Ireland from the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1950s. Utilising a variety of rich sources, including novels, newspapers, student magazines, doctors’ memoirs, and oral history accounts, it examines Irish medical student life and culture, incorporating students’ educational and extra-curricular activities at all of the Irish medical schools. The book investigates students' experiences in the lecture theatre, hospital, dissecting room and outside their studies, such as in ‘digs’, sporting teams and in student societies, illustrating how representations of medical students changed in Ireland over the period and examines the importance of class, religious affiliation and the appropriate traits that students were expected to possess. It highlights religious divisions as well as the dominance of the middle classes in Irish medical schools while also exploring institutional differences, the students’ decisions to pursue medical education, emigration and the experiences of women medical students within a predominantly masculine sphere. Through an examination of the history of medical education in Ireland, this book builds on our understanding of the Irish medical profession while also contributing to the wider scholarship of student life and culture. It will appeal to those interested in the history of medicine, the history of education and social history in modern Ireland.

Reframing Irish Youth in the Sixties focuses on the position of youth in the Republic of Ireland at a time when the meaning of youth was changing internationally. It argues that the reformulation of youth as a social category was a key element of social change. While emigration was the key youth issue of the 1950s, in this period young people became a pivotal point around which a new national project of economic growth hinged. Transnational ideas and international models increasingly framed Irish attitudes to young people’s education, welfare and employment. At the same time, Irish youths were participants in a transnational youth culture that appeared to challenge the status quo. This book examines the attitudes of those in government, the media, in civil society organisations and religious bodies to youth and young people, addressing new manifestations of youth culture and new developments in youth welfare work. In using youth as a lens, this book takes an innovative approach that enables a multi-faceted examination of the sixties, providing fresh perspectives on key social changes and cultural continuities.

This is the first full-length study of Irish Ribbonism. It traces the development of Ribbonism from its origins in the Defender movement of the 1790s until the latter part of the century when the remnants of the Ribbon tradition found solace in the quasi-constitutional affinities of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Placing Ribbonism firmly within Ireland’s long tradition of collective action and protest, this book shows that, owing to its diversity and adaptability, it shared similarities, but also stood apart from, the many rural redresser groups of the period and showed remarkable longevity not matched by its contemporaries. The book describes the wider context of Catholic struggles for improved standing, explores traditions and networks for association, and it describes external impressions. Drawing on rich archives in the form of state surveillance records, ‘show trial’ proceedings and press reportage, the book shows that Ribbonism was a sophisticated and durable underground network drawing together various strands of the rural and urban Catholic populace in Ireland and Britain. Ribbon Societies in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Its Diaspora is a fascinating study that demonstrates Ribbonism operated more widely than previous studies have revealed.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Beggars and begging were ubiquitous features of pre-Famine Irish society, yet have gone largely unexamined by historians. This book explores at length for the first time the complex cultures of mendicancy, as well as how wider societal perceptions of and responses to begging were framed by social class, gender and religion. The study breaks new ground in exploring the challenges inherent in defining and measuring begging and alms-giving in pre-Famine Ireland, as well as the disparate ways in which mendicants were perceived by contemporaries. A discussion of the evolving role of parish vestries in the life of pre-Famine communities facilitates an examination of corporate responses to beggary, while a comprehensive analysis of the mendicity society movement, which flourished throughout Ireland in the three decades following 1815, highlights the significance of charitable societies and associational culture in responding to the perceived threat of mendicancy. The instance of the mendicity societies illustrates the extent to which Irish commentators and social reformers were influenced by prevailing theories and practices in the transatlantic world regarding the management of the poor and deviant. Drawing on a wide range of sources previously unused for the study of poverty and welfare, this book makes an important contribution to modern Irish social and ecclesiastical history.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Moving Histories is an original and enlightening book which details the lives of women who left Ireland after independence. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, this book traces new narratives to bring original insights into the migration of thousands of Irish women in the twentieth century. Despite having a strong tendency to leave Ireland like men, women’s migration to Britain has been less well studied. Yet Irish women could be found in all walks of life in Britain, from the more familiar fields of nursing and domestic service to teaching, factory work and more. This fascinating study also considers the public commentary made about Irish women from the pulpit, press and politicians, who thought the women to be flighty, in need of guidance and prone to moral failures away from home. The repeated coverage of the ‘emigrant girl’ in government memos and journals gave the impression Irish women were leaving for reasons other than employment. Moving Histories argues that the continued focus on Irish unmarried mothers in Britain was based on genuine concerns and a real problem, but such women were not representative. They were, rather, an indictment of the conservative socio-cultural environment of an Ireland that suppressed open discourse of sexuality and forced women to ‘hide their shame’ in institutions at home and abroad.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Moving Histories is an original and enlightening book which details the lives of women who left Ireland after independence. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, this book traces new narratives to bring original insights into the migration of thousands of Irish women in the twentieth century. Despite having a strong tendency to leave Ireland like men, women’s migration to Britain has been less well studied. Yet Irish women could be found in all walks of life in Britain, from the more familiar fields of nursing and domestic service to teaching, factory work and more. This fascinating study also considers the public commentary made about Irish women from the pulpit, press and politicians, who thought the women to be flighty, in need of guidance and prone to moral failures away from home. The repeated coverage of the ‘emigrant girl’ in government memos and journals gave the impression Irish women were leaving for reasons other than employment. Moving Histories argues that the continued focus on Irish unmarried mothers in Britain was based on genuine concerns and a real problem, but such women were not representative. They were, rather, an indictment of the conservative socio-cultural environment of an Ireland that suppressed open discourse of sexuality and forced women to ‘hide their shame’ in institutions at home and abroad.

This book vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the time of the city’s greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. Using extensive primary material including personal correspondence, memoirs, diaries and newspapers, the author draws a rich portrait of Belfast society and explores both the public and inner lives of Victorian bourgeois families. Leading business families like the Corrys and the Workmans, alongside their professional counterparts, dominated Victorian Belfast’s civic affairs, taking pride in their locale and investing their time and money in improving it. This social group displayed a strong work ethic, a business-oriented attitude and religious commitment, and its female members led active lives in the domains of family, church and philanthropy. While the Belfast bourgeoisie had parallels with other British urban elites, they inhabited a unique place and time: ‘Linenopolis’ was the only industrial city in Ireland, a city that was neither fully Irish nor fully British, and at the very time that its industry boomed, an unusually violent form of sectarianism emerged. Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast provides a fresh examination of familiar themes such as civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelicalism, recreation, marriage and family life, and represents a substantial and important contribution to Irish social history.

The focus of this study is the poor law system, and the people who used it. Introduced in 1838, the Irish poor law established a nationwide system of poor relief that was administered and financed locally. This book provides the first detailed, comprehensive assessment of the ideological basis and practical operation of the poor law system in the post-Famine period. Analysis of contemporary understandings of poverty is integrated with discussion of local relief practices to uncover the attitudes and responses of those both giving and receiving relief, and the active relationship between them. Local case studies are used to explore key issues such as entitlement and eligibility, as well as the treatment of ‘problem’ groups such as unmarried mothers and vagrants, thus allowing local and individual experience to enrich our understanding of poverty and welfare in historical context. Previous studies of poverty and welfare in Ireland have concentrated on the measures taken to relieve poverty, and their political context. Little attempt has been made to explore the experience of being poor, or to identify the strategies adopted by poor people to negotiate an inhospitable economic and social climate. This innovative interrogation of poor law records reveals the poor to have been active historical agents making calculated choices about how, when and where to apply for aid. Approaching welfare as a process, the book provides a deeper and more wide ranging assessment of the Irish poor law than any study previously undertaken and represents a major milestone in Irish economic and social history.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Additional resources for this book are available on our Manifold site, which can be accessed via https://liverpooluniversitypress.manifoldapp.org/projects/defying-the-iraThis book examines the grass-roots relationship between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the civilian population during the Irish Revolution. It is primarily concerned with the attempts of the militant revolutionaries to discourage, stifle, and punish dissent among the local populations in which they operated, and the actions or inactions by which dissent was expressed or implied. Focusing on the period of guerilla war against British rule from c. 1917 to 1922, it uncovers the acts of ‘everyday’ violence, threat, and harm that characterized much of the revolutionary activity of this period. Moving away from the ambushes and assassinations that have dominated much of the discourse on the revolution, the book explores low-level violent and non-violent agitation in the Irish town or parish. The opening chapter treats the IRA’s challenge to the British state through the campaign against servants of the Crown – policemen, magistrates, civil servants, and others – and IRA participation in local government and the republican counter-state. The book then explores the nature of civilian defiance and IRA punishment in communities across the island before turning its attention specifically to the year that followed the ‘Truce’ of July 1921. This study argues that civilians rarely operated at either extreme of a spectrum of support but, rather, in a large and fluid middle ground. Behaviour was rooted in local circumstances, and influenced by local fears, suspicions, and rivalries. IRA punishment was similarly dictated by community conditions and usually suited to the nature of the perceived defiance. Overall, violence and intimidation in Ireland was persistent, but, by some contemporary standards, relatively restrained.

Being an Irish man was a consistent, contentious issue in the Canadas. The aim of this book is to provide the first gendered examination of male Irish migration to Upper and Lower Canada within the broader contexts of negative stereotypes about Irish violence and Irishmen’s questionable loyalty to the British Empire. Through examinations of key violent episodes and (in)famous individuals, Violent Loyalties argues that being an Irishman in the Canadas meant daily negotiations with discrimination, ethnic rivalries, the pressure to become more ‘British’, and having to base one’s sense of manliness on being the most visible ‘other’ in the colonies. Irish Catholics faced the burden of being dual minorities – the ‘other’ religion within the Anglophone world and English-speaking in the Catholic sphere already established by French-Canadians. Irish Protestants also had difficulties adapting to their new communities, as the problematic association with violent Orangeism and rivalries with Scottish and English immigrants, many of whom were United Empire Loyalists, created obstacles in the quest for upward social mobility. Both Canadian and Irish historiographies are sorely lacking in examinations of masculinity compared with those investigating American, French, Australian, or British manliness. This gap in the literature becomes even more apparent outside of a twentieth-century focus. Violent Loyalties aims to fill these lacunae in the histories of colonial Canada and the Irish diaspora.

This book is the first comprehensive history of medical student culture and medical education in Ireland from the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1950s. Utilising a variety of rich sources, including novels, newspapers, student magazines, doctors’ memoirs, and oral history accounts, it examines Irish medical student life and culture, incorporating students’ educational and extra-curricular activities at all of the Irish medical schools. The book investigates students' experiences in the lecture theatre, hospital, dissecting room and outside their studies, such as in ‘digs’, sporting teams and in student societies, illustrating how representations of medical students changed in Ireland over the period and examines the importance of class, religious affiliation and the appropriate traits that students were expected to possess. It highlights religious divisions as well as the dominance of the middle classes in Irish medical schools while also exploring institutional differences, the students’ decisions to pursue medical education, emigration and the experiences of women medical students within a predominantly masculine sphere. Through an examination of the history of medical education in Ireland, this book builds on our understanding of the Irish medical profession while also contributing to the wider scholarship of student life and culture. It will appeal to those interested in the history of medicine, the history of education and social history in modern Ireland.

The late nineteenth-century city acted as a magnet for the poor of rural Ireland, attracting them with the promise of employment and economic independence. For many, however, urban life meant economic precarity, marginalisation and destitution, with the workhouse as an all-too-present reality. Young families were particularly vulnerable, with the result that thousands of children found themselves confined within the workhouse walls.This book explores the changing role of the Irish poor law in child welfare in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century city. Taking as its focus Belfast, a burgeoning industrial and port city at the heart of a global trade network and a city deeply divided along political and confessional lines, it examines the ways in which that city’s poorest children and their families engaged with the poor law and used the workhouse as part of their economy of makeshifts. It examines the various spaces of the poor law – whether the workhouse, the foster home, or the far reaches of empire – as sites of encounter and engagement between welfare authorities and the city’s poorest families, and explores the development of child welfare practice at a time of increasing state encroachment into the daily lives of poor children.

Winner of the 2019 NUI Publication Prize in Irish History. This book is the first comprehensive history of the anti-diphtheria campaign and the factors which facilitated or hindered the rollout of the national childhood immunization programme in Ireland. It is easy to forget the context in which Irish society opted to embrace mass childhood immunization. Dwyer shows us how we got where we are. He restores Diphtheria’s reputation as one of the most prolific child-killers of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland and explores the factors which allowed the disease to take a heavy toll on child health and life-expectancy. Public health officials in the fledgling Irish Free State set the eradication of diphtheria among their first national goals, and eschewing the reticence of their British counterparts, adopted anti-diphtheria immunization as their weapon of choice. An unofficial alliance between Irish medical officers and the British pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome placed Ireland on the European frontline of the bacteriological revolution, however, Wellcome sponsored vaccine trials in Ireland side-lined the human rights of Ireland’s most vulnerable citizens: institutional children in state care. An immunization accident in County Waterford, and the death of a young girl, raised serious questions regarding the safety of the immunization process itself, resulting in a landmark High Court case and the Irish Medical Union’s twelve-year long withdrawal of immunization services. As childhood immunization is increasingly considered a lifestyle choice, rather than a lifesaving intervention, this book brings historical context to bear on current debate.

Two Irelands beyond the Sea: Ulster Unionism and America, 1880-1920 uncovers the transnational movement by Ireland’s unionists as they worked to maintain the Union with Great Britain during the Home Rule era of Irish history. Overshadowed by Irish-American nationalist relations in this era, this transnational movement attempted to bridge the Atlantic to gain support for unionism from the United States. During the Home Rule era, unionists were anxious about Irish-American extremism, apprehensive of American involvement in the Irish question, and eager sought support for their own movement. Two Irelands beyond the Sea explores the political, social, religious, and ethnic connections between Irish unionists and the United States as unionists appealed to Americans for backing and reacted to Irish nationalism. The role of the United States in unionist political thought is also investigated, as unionists used American history, political systems, and Scotch-Irish ethnic traditions to bring legitimacy to their own movement. This examination drives the historical study of Irish unionism into a new arena, illustrating that Irish unionists were much more internationally-focused than traditionally portrayed. Two Irelands beyond the Sea challenges our understanding of Irish unionism by revealing the many ways in which unionists reached out to the United States, sought international support, and constructed their own image of America to legitimize the unionist movement.

This is the first full-length study of Irish Ribbonism. It traces the development of Ribbonism from its origins in the Defender movement of the 1790s until the latter part of the century when the remnants of the Ribbon tradition found solace in the quasi-constitutional affinities of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Placing Ribbonism firmly within Ireland’s long tradition of collective action and protest, this book shows that, owing to its diversity and adaptability, it shared similarities, but also stood apart from, the many rural redresser groups of the period and showed remarkable longevity not matched by its contemporaries. The book describes the wider context of Catholic struggles for improved standing, explores traditions and networks for association, and it describes external impressions. Drawing on rich archives in the form of state surveillance records, ‘show trial’ proceedings and press reportage, the book shows that Ribbonism was a sophisticated and durable underground network drawing together various strands of the rural and urban Catholic populace in Ireland and Britain. Ribbon Societies in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Its Diaspora is a fascinating study that demonstrates Ribbonism operated more widely than previous studies have revealed.

Reframing Irish Youth in the Sixties focuses on the position of youth in the Republic of Ireland at a time when the meaning of youth was changing internationally. It argues that the reformulation of youth as a social category was a key element of social change. While emigration was the key youth issue of the 1950s, in this period young people became a pivotal point around which a new national project of economic growth hinged. Transnational ideas and international models increasingly framed Irish attitudes to young people’s education, welfare and employment. At the same time, Irish youths were participants in a transnational youth culture that appeared to challenge the status quo. This book examines the attitudes of those in government, the media, in civil society organisations and religious bodies to youth and young people, addressing new manifestations of youth culture and new developments in youth welfare work. In using youth as a lens, this book takes an innovative approach that enables a multi-faceted examination of the sixties, providing fresh perspectives on key social changes and cultural continuities.

This book explores advertising and consumer culture as key aspects of everyday life and national culture in twentieth-century Ireland. It makes a particular argument that the presence of anti-materialist rhetoric in some parts of Irish public life after Independence has obscured the existence of a lively consumer culture throughout the period, as evident in the many advertisements which supported Irish newspapers and magazines, the jingles broadcast on Irish radio, and the neon advertising signs and billboards on Irish streets. The book focuses on the development of the advertising industry itself, and the sophisticated ways in which it worked to associate consumption with national pride. It also considers the advertising of Irish homes and home appliances as an important focus of consumption, and the targeting of Irish women as the principal consumers in those homes, as well as publicity stunts and advertising in public space, and the form and style of commercial broadcasting and sponsored programming from the earliest days of Irish radio. It finishes with an examination of the opposite extremes of consumer abundance displayed in the annual Christmas advertising, as opposed to the consumer culture response to shortages during World War Two.

This book vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the time of the city’s greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. Using extensive primary material including personal correspondence, memoirs, diaries and newspapers, the author draws a rich portrait of Belfast society and explores both the public and inner lives of Victorian bourgeois families. Leading business families like the Corrys and the Workmans, alongside their professional counterparts, dominated Victorian Belfast’s civic affairs, taking pride in their locale and investing their time and money in improving it. This social group displayed a strong work ethic, a business-oriented attitude and religious commitment, and its female members led active lives in the domains of family, church and philanthropy. While the Belfast bourgeoisie had parallels with other British urban elites, they inhabited a unique place and time: ‘Linenopolis’ was the only industrial city in Ireland, a city that was neither fully Irish nor fully British, and at the very time that its industry boomed, an unusually violent form of sectarianism emerged. Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast provides a fresh examination of familiar themes such as civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelicalism, recreation, marriage and family life, and represents a substantial and important contribution to Irish social history.

Irish Artisans and Radical Politics, 1776-1820: Apprenticeship to Revolution is a comparative study of the political activities of workers in three Irish cities: Dublin, Belfast and Cork. It investigates how Ireland’s journeymen and apprentices engaged in campaigns for political reform, as well as in revolutionary conspiracies, during the years 1776 to 1820. This book marks the first ever attempt to analyse the role of Irish workers in the creation of eighteenth-century republicanism, representing the careful distillation of nearly a decade of research on the topic. It argues that Irish craftsmen truly did serve an ‘apprenticeship to revolution’. In the literal sense, the experience of the workshop provided artisans with a set of traditions which shaped how new revolutionary doctrines were received. But generations of Irish workers also served a figurative apprenticeship to successive political movements: the campaigns of Irish ‘Patriot’ MPs, the Volunteering movement of the 1770s, and the revolutionary campaigns of the United Irishmen. The book explores the role of urban workers within the 1798 Irish Rebellion and Robert Emmet’s 1803 rising and, adopting a transnational framework, places the actions of these Irish artisans within the context of British radicalism and the creation of an industrial working class.

Being an Irish man was a consistent, contentious issue in the Canadas. The aim of this book is to provide the first gendered examination of male Irish migration to Upper and Lower Canada within the broader contexts of negative stereotypes about Irish violence and Irishmen’s questionable loyalty to the British Empire. Through examinations of key violent episodes and (in)famous individuals, Violent Loyalties argues that being an Irishman in the Canadas meant daily negotiations with discrimination, ethnic rivalries, the pressure to become more ‘British’, and having to base one’s sense of manliness on being the most visible ‘other’ in the colonies. Irish Catholics faced the burden of being dual minorities – the ‘other’ religion within the Anglophone world and English-speaking in the Catholic sphere already established by French-Canadians. Irish Protestants also had difficulties adapting to their new communities, as the problematic association with violent Orangeism and rivalries with Scottish and English immigrants, many of whom were United Empire Loyalists, created obstacles in the quest for upward social mobility. Both Canadian and Irish historiographies are sorely lacking in examinations of masculinity compared with those investigating American, French, Australian, or British manliness. This gap in the literature becomes even more apparent outside of a twentieth-century focus. Violent Loyalties aims to fill these lacunae in the histories of colonial Canada and the Irish diaspora.

How did Irish nationalists reconcile supporting Britain during the Great War with their patriotic traditions? This groundbreaking study reveals how nationalists mobilized the cultural memory of the 1745 battle of Fontenoy and the Irish Brigade – the 'Wild Geese' who had fought for France against England – to make sense of Ireland's role in the conflict. Drawing on extensive research, James McConnel demonstrates how pro-war nationalists refashioned an existing martial discourse – 'Fontenoyism' – to reimagine modern Irish soldiers in khaki as heirs to their illustrious forebears. From recruiting speeches invoking ‘Remember Fontenoy’ to debates over distinctive Irish uniforms and celebrations of Victoria Cross winners, nationalists tapped into existing traditions that were already meaningful to Irish people in their efforts to create consensus about what the conflict was really about. Yet this vision proved fragile. By 1915, the tradition's contradictions – particularly its highly romanticized understanding of the battlefield – became increasingly difficult to sustain amid industrial warfare's realities. This study illuminates the complex relationship between historical memory, national identity, and wartime mobilization, revealing how Irish nationalists navigated the tensions between patriotic tradition and supporting the Allies. It offers fresh perspectives on Irish military culture, memory studies, and the cultural history of Ireland's Great War.