At the turn of the twentieth century women played a key role in debates about the nature of the Irish nation. Examining women's participation in nationalist and rural reform groups, this book is an important contribution to our understanding of Irish identity in the prelude to revolution and how it was shaped by women.

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.

Richard English's brilliant new book, now available in paperback, is a compelling narrative history of Irish nationalism, in which events are not merely recounted but analysed. Full of rich detail, drawn from years of original research and also from the extensive specialist literature on the subject, it offers explanations of why Irish nationalists have believed and acted as they have, why their ideas and strategies have changed over time, and what effect Irish nationalism has had in shaping modern Ireland. It takes us from the Ulster Plantation to Home Rule, from the Famine of 1847 to the Hunger Strikes of the 1970s, from Parnell to Pearse, from Wolfe Tone to Gerry Adams, from the bitter struggle of the Civil War to the uneasy peace of the early twenty-first century. Is it imaginable that Ireland might – as some have suggested – be about to enter a post-nationalist period? Or will Irish nationalism remain a defining force on the island in future years? 'a courageous and successful attempt to synthesise the entire story between two covers for the neophyte and for the exhausted specialist alike' Tom Garvin, Irish Times

Though Ireland is a relatively small island on the northeastern fringe of the Atlantic, 70 million people worldwide--including some 45 million in the United States--claim it as their ancestral home. In this wide-ranging, ambitious book, Cian T. McMahon explores the nineteenth-century roots of this transnational identity. Between 1840 and 1880, 4.5 million people left Ireland to start new lives abroad. Using primary sources from Ireland, Australia, and the United States, McMahon demonstrates how this exodus shaped a distinctive sense of nationalism. By doggedly remaining loyal to both their old and new homes, he argues, the Irish helped broaden the modern parameters of citizenship and identity. From insurrection in Ireland to exile in Australia to military service during the American Civil War, McMahon's narrative revolves around a group of rebels known as Young Ireland. They and their fellow Irish used weekly newspapers to construct and express an international identity tailored to the fluctuating world in which they found themselves. Understanding their experience sheds light on our contemporary debates over immigration, race, and globalization.

This book examines the origins of Ireland in its first independent incarnation, the Irish Free State (1922-1937). It explores how contemporary public relations and propaganda techniques were used to construct an identity for this new state – a state which after enduring seven years of insurrection and civil war, became one of the most stable democracies in Europe. This stability, the book argues, was constructed not solely through policies enacted by governments, but through the construction of a Gaelic, Catholic and Celtic national identity. By shifting the perspective to how nation building was communicated, it weaves an interdisciplinary narrative that initiates a new understanding of nation building - providing insights of increasing relevance in current world events. Avoiding a simplistic cause and effect history of public relations, the book examines the uses and effects of early public relations from a political and societal perspective and suggests that while governments were only modestly successful in their varied propaganda efforts, cumulatively they facilitated a transition from violence to peace. This will be of interest to researchers and advanced students with an interest in public relations, propaganda studies, nation building and Irish studies.

This is a survey of the origins and development of the Catholic Question in 18th and early 19th century Ireland: One of the Beresford family remarked in 1820: When I was a boy the Irish People meant the Protestants, now it means the Roman Catholics. In essence this book traces how that change came about and explains its causes.