This is the first comprehensive single volume history of County Kildare during the Irish Revolution of 1912-23. A noted garrison county, the concentration of British military personnel in Kildare was the highest in Ireland, and the Curragh was the most extensive military camp in the country. A military presence continued after the British withdrawal in 1922 when the network of military barracks passed to the National army. Based on rigorous research of British and Irish archives, this study charts the fortunes of home rule in Kildare during which the county was at the centre of the significant Curragh incident in 1914. It explains the slow development of the Irish Volunteers and the position of the local unionist community vis-a-vis home rule. Attention is drawn to the key role played by British army units from Kildare in suppressing the 1916 Rising, as well as the post-Rising development of Sinn Fein and concomitant decline of the Irish Parliamentary Party. This study challenges the depiction of Kildare as a 'quiet county' during the War of Independence by highlighting the pivotal role it played in the intelligence war and the county's strategic communications importance for both Crown forces and republicans. During the Civil War period Kildare was to the forefront of national events with the evacuation of the British army, which had a major negative impact on the local economy, and the utilization of military barracks as prisons by the Irish government. Politically, the Irish Revolution in Kildare did not see an ultimate triumph for republicanism in any form. While the emergence of Labour was notable during the Irish Revolution, nevertheless after 1923 Kildare returned to its Redmondite roots, though under a pro-Treaty label.

Using a wide variety of sources in Ireland and Britain, Patrick McGarty has produced an absorbing, comprehensive and insightful exploration of County Leitrim during the Irish Revolution. This wide-ranging study details social, political, cultural and military developments from the introduction of the ill-fated third home rule in 1912 through the First World War, Irish War of Independence and Civil War. The decade witnessed extraordinary upheaval and unrest at both a national and a local level. In Leitrim there was a decisive political transformation with the collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the unprecedented rise of Sinn Fein. McGarty pays close attention to how various modes of resistance were deployed first against British rule and after the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 against the pro-Treaty Irish government. These included political violence and widespread campaigns of boycott and intimidation and this study provides new insights on the nature and implications of both republican and state violence. McGarty offers a novel and compelling account of the Irish Revolution in a so-called 'quiet' county.

This is the first comprehensive account of County Louth's experience of the revolutionary period (1912-23), revealing a county with a strong industrial and agricultural base that faced serious challenges stemming from declining population, large-scale unemployment and extensive poverty. Although overwhelmingly nationalist, Louth's political activists were bitterly divided until the foundation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. The First World War split the Volunteers. The majority sided with Redmond and, in late summer 1914, these volunteers, with bands playing and flags flying, saw off many of their comrades to fight in the First World War. The Irish Volunteers, which opposed the war, remained few in number but took part in the 1916 Rising. As the militancy of 1916 faded, the IRA in Louth was widely criticized for its relative inactivity during the War of Independence while Sinn Fein struggled to gain political control in the face of strong nationalist opposition. By 1922, the county was central to the Provisional government's campaign to destabilize Northern Ireland, which witnessed many atrocities. During the Civil War, Louth experienced extensive violence, including streetfighting, ambushes, assassinations, executions and house burnings. When peace was restored, Louth emerged from a decade of instability more divided than ever, cut off by partition from its natural hinterland in Ulster, and facing an uncertain future.

In 1912, a bloodless revolution had already taken place in Monaghan that resulted in the overthrow of one ruling elite, which was replaced by another. What began in 1912 with the signing of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, followed the next year by the founding of the Ulster Volunteer Force, might be considered from the Protestant perspective as an attempted counter-revolution. It was, at the very least, a determined effort to remain part of the British empire, the spiritual and ancestral home of Monaghan Protestants. But constitutional nationalists were not prepared to give up the gains they had made. Separatist nationalists wanted more, and so for them the 1916 Rising represented the beginning of unfinished business. In this political maelstrom there were agrarian agitators who sought the final solution to the land question; 2,500 young men who went to war, one-fifth of whom never returned and the others who did returned to a very changed country; and paramilitaries who divided along sectarian lines. Thus, between 1912 and 1923, Monaghan politics and society were transformed for a second time, not least of all by the imposition of the border with all the attendant social and economic problems partition brought. Because of Monaghan's socio-religious demographic and its borderlands location, this book offers an intriguing insight to how the period 1912-23 played itself out at local level. (Series: Irish Revolution 1912-23) [Subject: Irish Revolution, Easter 1916, Monaghan, Irish History, Irish Studies]

The history of Roscommon in the 1912-23 period is one of transition to new political allegiances while retaining old economic desires. Almost wholly dependent on agriculture to fuel the local economy and sustain the county's people, the fight for land was the ever-present backdrop to Roscommon's recent history. By 1912 the organization that had provided leadership in that fight - the Irish Parliamentary Party - was on the cusp of achieving Irish home rule, a measure believed to have the potential to settle the land issue. The need to protect the bill saw thousands in Roscommon join the Irish Volunteers and proclaim their opposition to anti-home rule unionists. The First World War led to the suspension of home rule and a call by Irish MPs for their followers to support the British war effort. However, a combination of increasing wartime prices, inadequate food production, ongoing land issues as well as the toleration of partition by local MPs and the draconian British response to Easter 1916 caused many in Roscommon to reassess their political allegiance. Sensationally, in February 1917, Roscommon elected the first Sinn Fein-backed MP. This proved a decisive step in the demise of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the success of Sinn Fein, which reinvigorated the fight for the land as part of its efforts for a republic. In 1919, Roscommon men took up arms against the British to pursue Sinn Fein aims, only to turn the weapons on one another three years later when conflict over the continued pursuit of the Irish Republic led to civil war. In tracing the history of Roscommon during these years of instability, Burke's careful research has produced a comprehensive and accessible study that illuminates and explains the changes and continuities that defined the period.

The first comprehensive and meticulously researched study of Co. Tyrone during the Irish Revolution (1912-23) during which Tyrone was at the centre of the conflict between nationalism and unionism, the evolution of partition and the emergence of two Irish states.