Ireland underwent a dramatic economic and social transformation from the 1990s onwards, earning it the title the "Celtic Tiger". Rapid economic growth was accompanied by substantial in-migration. However in the later 2000s Ireland is also experiencing a severe economic recession. This book examines the nature and geographies of the Celtic Tiger, focusing on the evolution of industries such as information and communication technology and pharamaceuticals. It also examines the changing nature of social ties in cities, trends amongst knowledge workers and the experiences of return migrants. It concludes with reflections on the nature of the Celtic Tiger phenomenon and how this will shape Ireland’s geography and society into the future. This book was published as a special issue of Irish Geography.

Ireland in the World Order examines Ireland's development from the medieval to the modern era, comparing its unique trajectory with that of England, Scotland, and Wales. Maurice Coakley focuses on key elements that contributed to Ireland's development, examining its bloody and violent incorporation into the British state, its refusal to embrace the Protestant Reformation, and failure to industrialize in the 19th century. Coakley considers the crucial question of why Ireland's national identity has come to rest on a mass movement for independence. Cutting through many of the myths – imperialist and nationalist – which have obscured the real reasons for Ireland's course of development, Ireland in the World Order provides a new perspective for students and academics of Irish history.

This essential new history of the Irish state synthesises existing research with new findings, and adopts fresh perspectives based on neglected European and American debates. It examines the evolution of Irish diplomacy from six consulate officers in the 1920s to sixty ambassadors in the 2010s, and provides an overview of a century of Ireland's diplomatic history that has previously only been examined in a piecemeal fashion. The author's original research findings are focussed particularly on Ireland's struggle for independence in a global context, and his original analysis gives an account of how the economic performance of the Irish state formed a perpetual context for its role in international relations even when this was not a priority of its diplomats. Equal attention is paid to the history of international Irish trade, the operations of bilateral Irish relations, and multilateral diplomacy. It highlights how the Irish state came to find its role in international relations mostly by means of the UN and EU, and analyses this trend in the light of international relations theory and European history.

With clarity and depth, Gerard McCann explores the complex developments that have shaped Ireland’s economic development, north and south, and led to recurring crises and instability. The Irish economy has been traditionally portrayed as a product of its political divisions and the colonial legacy, divided and analyzed in terms of the hegemonic tensions that exist on the island. Influenced by these divisions, academics have tended to look at a two-region approach to economic development, without adequately acknowledging the interactive nature of the island economy as a source of the crises or as a solution to systemic divergence. McCann's definitive and dynamic history of the Irish economy circumvents conventional analyses and investigates the economic development of the island economy as a whole, highlighting where aggressive differentiation has been divisive and destabilizing. He concludes by considering an alternative integrated and cohesive process of economic development.

Few countries have been as dramatically transformed in recent years as Ireland. Once a culturally repressed land shadowed by terrorism and on the brink of economic collapse, Ireland finally emerged in the late 1990s as the fastest-growing country in Europe, with the typical citizen enjoying a higher standard of living than the average Brit. Just a few years after celebrating their newly-won status among the world's richest societies, the Irish are now saddled with a wounded, shrinking economy, soaring unemployment, and ruined public finances. After so many centuries of impoverishment, how did the Irish finally get rich, and how did they then fritter away so much so quickly? Veteran journalist David J. Lynch offers an insightful, character-driven narrative of how the Irish boom came to be and how it went bust. He opens our eyes to a nation's downfall through the lived experience of individual citizens: the people responsible for the current crisis as well as the ordinary men and women enduring it.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of continuity as well as change. Though properly portrayed as the era of 'Protestant Ascendancy' it embraces two phases - the eighteenth century when that ascendancy was at its peak; and the nineteenth century when the Protestant elite sustained a determined rear-guard defence in the face of the emergence of modern Catholic nationalism. Employing a chronology that is not bound by traditional datelines, this volume moves beyond the familiar political narrative to engage with the economy, society, population, emigration, religion, language, state formation, culture, art and architecture, and the Irish abroad. It provides new and original interpretations of a critical phase in the emergence of a modern Ireland that, while focused firmly on the island and its traditions, moves beyond the nationalist narrative of the twentieth century to provide a history of late early modern Ireland for the twenty-first century.

A radical new perspective revealing the truth behind the making of modern Ireland from economic rebirth to entering the EEC.