During the years 1913-23 the people of Connacht, Ireland saw a Republican uprising against British rule, Civil War, World War, a land war, sectarian violence, and five elections. Hundreds of incidents occurred all over the province that had local, national, and even international importance. Weaving together information and photographs from a wide range of sources, this book gives the reader an unparalleled insight into what life was like for those who fought for the Republic, those who fought against it, and those who were caught in the middle.

The period 1913–22 witnessed extraordinary upheaval in Irish society. The Easter Rising of 1916 facilitated the emergence of new revolutionary forces and the eruption of guerrilla warfare. In Galway and elsewhere in the west, the new realities wrought by World War One saw the emergence of a younger generation of impatient revolutionaries. In 1916, Liam Mellows led his Irish Volunteers in a Rising in east Galway and up to 650 rebels took up defensive positions at Moyode Castle. From the western shores of Connemara to market towns such as Athenry, Tuam and Galway, local communities were subject to unprecedented use of terror by the Crown Forces. Meanwhile, conflict over land, an enduring grievance of the poor, threatened to overwhelm parts of Galway with sustained land seizures and cattle drives by the rural population. War and Revolution in the West of Ireland: Galway, 1913–1922 provides fascinating insights into the revolutionary activities of the ordinary men and women who participated in the struggle for independence. In this compelling new account, Galway historian Conor McNamara unravels the complex web of identity and allegiance that characterised the west of Ireland, exploring the enduring legacy of a remarkable and contested era.

The West must wait presents a new perspective on the development of the Irish Free State. It extends the regional historical debate beyond the Irish revolution and raises a series of challenging questions about post-civil war society in Ireland. Through a detailed examination of key local themes – land, poverty, politics, emigration, the status of the Irish language, the influence of radical republicans and the authority of the Catholic Church – it offers a probing analysis of the socio-political realities of life in the new state. This book opens up a new dimension by providing a rural contrast to the Dublin-centred views of Irish politics. Significantly, it reveals the level of deprivation in local Free State society with which the government had to confront in the west. Rigorously researched, it explores the disconnect between the perceptions of what independence would deliver and what was achieved by the incumbent Cumann na nGaedheal administration.

The narrative of the Irish revolution as a chronology of great men and male militarism, with women presumed to have either played a subsidiary role or no role at all, requires reconsideration. Women and feminists were extremely active in Irish revolutionary causes from 1912 onwards, but ultimately it was the men as revolutionary ‘leaders’ who took all the power, and indeed all the credit, after independence. Women from different backgrounds were activists in significant numbers and women across Ireland were profoundly impacted by the overall violence and tumult of the era, but they were then relegated to the private sphere, with the memory of their vital political and military role in the revolution forgotten and erased. Women and the Irish Revolution examines diverse aspects of women’s experiences in the revolution after the Easter Rising. The complex role of women as activists, the detrimental impact of violence and social and political divisions on women, the role of women in the foundation of the new State, and dynamics of remembrance and forgetting are explored in detail by leading scholars in sociology, history, politics, and literary studies. Important and timely, and featuring previously unpublished material, this book will prompt essential new public conversations on the experiences of women in the Irish revolution.

Front Up, Rise Up is the story of Connacht’s remarkable journey to becoming the 2016 Pro12 champions. The story goes inside the dressing-room, takes in their unscheduled, week-long, bonding trek to Siberia and back for a European Challenge Cup game, and all the key twists and turns along the way. It brings us the characters in this Band of Brothers, from the locals such as captain John Muldoon from Portumna to their iconic fans’ favourite Bundee Aki – who like their talismanic coach Pat Lam is a Kiwi from Auckland of Samoan descent – and their Nigerian-born and Dublin-raised match-winner Niyi Adeolokun. The story takes in the province’s troubled professional history, which had them on the brink of extinction as a professional entity in 2003 and led to Connacht and their supporters marching to the IRFU offices in a successful bid to keep them afloat. It covers their dethroning of the champions Glasgow in the Sportsground in Galway and their stunning performance in the final against Leinster in Edinburgh. In more than two decades of professional rugby, there has been no story quite like it.

The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs updates two central debates in military history--the one surrounding the concept of military revolution, and the one on military affairs--whilst advancing original research in both fields. Only a handful of publications consider the military revolution and the RMA in tandem. This book breaks new ground conceptually and appeals to an exceptionally large and diverse readership. Comparative revisionist studies of the military revolution and RMA better enable us to comprehend the historical continuum and reveal the new RMA for what it is. And for what it is shortly to become. This book presents original contributions within the "epicentre" of the military revolution debate, the 1500s, with an emphasis on gunpowder revolution (offensively and defensively). The connections with the Revolution in Military Affairs are then made explicit by scholars, a practitioner, and an analyst, with an emphasis on airborne lethal autonomous weapons systems. This is a chronologically broad and unique methodological approach to a historical debate that begs for clarification as we enter an era where killer robots will almost certainly take from humans their monopoly on violence.

The spectre of ‘The Disappeared’, those abducted by the IRA, secretly executed and their bodies buried in bogs, lakes and woodlands, has overshadowed the debate around the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland for the last two decades. This book, the first of its kind, uncovers the extent to which ‘forced disappearances’ were part of the violent political conflicts that blighted Ireland for 200 years. Succeeding where attempts by the PSNI, journalists, and other historians had failed, Ó Ruairc’s research led to the identification and recovery of a British soldier killed by the IRA. He reveals in this book the location of several other bodies that remain to be exhumed. The Disappeared cuts through the exaggeration and myth that pervade the popular history of the Irish struggle for freedom. The author examines the role of leading Irish politicians in these killings and challenges the commonly held belief that the Provisional IRA disappeared more victims than the ‘Good Old-IRA’ of the War of Independence. Behind each disappearance there is a face, a life story, and a family left searching for answers. Ó Ruairc deftly incorporates this human element, paying tribute to those who were disappeared on both sides of the conflict.