This book examines the mechanisms of the Irish revolutionary Fenian Brotherhood in the early years of its existence. Drawing on a wide range of material from places as diverse as Rome and Toronto it seeks to set the Fenian struggle within the context of competing church and state influence in mid-nineteenth century Irish society. It is particularly strong on the transatlantic comparative dimensions of church, state and Fenian activity, and demonstrates how the Fenians managed to change, forever, the terms of Irish political and social debate.

Irish revolutionary nationalism, initially dedicated to insurgency, quickly descended into less conventional violence. How successive British governments responded to this challenge and the extent of their respect for essential freedoms are the subject of The Fenian Problem. Dramatic and tragic rescues of arrested Fenian leaders, the formation of a Fenian squad to assassinate suspected informers and policemen, the bombing of a London prison, public executions of Fenians, the quality of British justice, and the struggle to develop counter-terrorism policies and an effective system of intelligence form the core of The Fenian Problem. Brian Jenkins adds new information to the established narrative of the movement, arguing that it resorted to terrorism in its pursuit of Irish independence. Jenkins discusses the parallels between the government's treatment of Fenian prisoners in the 1860s and their handling of the IRA in the 1970s as well as the similarities between the challenges posed by Fenians and those presented by Islamic insurgents, showing that nineteenth-century British and Irish history illuminate contemporary discussions of state security and liberal government responses to terrorism. Book jacket.

"This study provides the first comprehensive historical account of Joyce's writings 1898-1915 in the context both of the distinct phases and shifting currents of British-Irish history during the period, and the sometimes rather different phases important in the works"--From jacket.

Drawing on an immense body of literature and research, Brian Jenkins analyses the forces that shaped mid-nineteenth century Irish nationalism in Ireland and North America as well as the role of the Roman Catholic Church. He outlines the relationship between newly arrived Irish Catholic immigrants and their hosts and the pivotal role of the church in maintaining a sense of exile, particularly among those who had fled the famine. Jenkins also explores the essential "Irishness" of the revolutionary movement and the reasons why it did not emerge in the two other "nations" of the United Kingdom, Scotland and Wales.

This book focuses, from a legal perspective, on a series of events which make up some of the principal episodes in the legal history of religion in Ireland: the anti-Catholic penal laws of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century; the shift towards the removal of disabilities from Catholics and dissenters; the dis-establishment of the Church of Ireland; and the place of religion, and the Catholic Church, under the Constitutions of 1922 and 1937.

Interdisciplinary and transnational in scope, this book analyzes an array of state theories, literary figures, religious apparatuses, cultural artifacts, and political movements to demonstrate how the Irish not only fitted into, but also helped to form, the US racial state.