POLITICS, WORLD AFFAIRS / IRISH / HISTORY

The study of Irish history, once riven and constricted, has recently enjoyed a resurgence, with new practitioners, new approaches, and new methods of investigation. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History represents the diversity of this emerging talent and achievement by bringing together 36 leading scholars of modern Ireland and embracing 400 years of Irish history, uniting early and late modernists as well as contemporary historians. The Handbook offers a set of scholarly perspectives drawn from numerous disciplines, including history, political science, literature, geography, and the Irish language. It looks at the Irish at home as well as in their migrant and diasporic communities. The Handbook combines sets of wide thematic and interpretative essays, with more detailed investigations of particular periods. Each of the contributors offers a summation of the state of scholarship within their subject area, linking their own research insights with assessments of future directions within the discipline. In its breadth and depth and diversity, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History offers an authoritative and vibrant portrayal of the history of modern Ireland.

The definitive biography of Seán Lemass, the finest Taoiseach in the history of the Irish StateThere are few facets of Irish life which do not owe something to the genius, effectiveness or determination of Lemass. Horgan's biography explores that contribution quite brilliantly.Bertie Ahern, The Irish TimesAs a boy Seán Lemass fought in the 1916 rising. He was a member of de Valera's first cabinet, Minister for Industry and Commerce in every Fianna Fáil government between 1932 and 1959, and as Taoiseach from 1959 to 1966 was the pivotal figure in the modernisation of Ireland.The Lemass that emerges from this fine book is an enigma and a passionate patriot; a protectionist who later became an apostle of free trade; a moderniser in what was often a party of traditionalists.John Horgan's excellent biography is the work of a critical admirer who sees his subject as one of the most outstanding Irish political figures of the century. The only biographer to have had complete access to all the government papers for the full period of Lemass's political career, Horgan provides us with a rounded, sympathetic yet critical examination of the life of one of twentieth-century Ireland's most distinguished figures.... a comprehensive and thoughtful work worthy of the subject, [it] lives up to its billing as a major biography of the Fianna Fáil leader.Stephen Collins, The Sunday TribuneSeán Lemass was not only one of the most formidable, but, for all his apparently bluff straightforwardness, one of the most elusive personalities in the history of twentieth-century Ireland. John Horgan's study, skilfully crafted and elegantly expressed, is a major biography of a major figure, greatly enhancing our understanding of the making of modern Ireland.J.J. Lee, author of The Modernisation of Irish Society, 1848–19

Seán Lemass enjoys unrivalled acclaim as the 'Architect of Modern Ireland'. Yet there remain great gaps in our knowledge of this mythic figure and his golden age. Up to now Lemass, a colossus of twentieth-century Irish history, was airbrushed to fit a narrative of national progress. Today, this narrative is undergoing an agonising reappraisal. This groundbreaking study reveals the man behind the myth and asks questions previously skirted around. What emerges is an authoritarian, cunning, workaholic patriot; a shrewd political tactician whose impatience lay not just with the old Ireland, but with democracy itself. This is the untold story of a great man and his lasting impact on a nation's imagination.

The French revolution had an electrifying impact on Irish society. The 1790s saw the birth of modern Irish republicanism and Orangeism, whose antagonism remains a defining feature of Irish political life. The 1790s also saw the birth of a new approach to Ireland within important elements of the British political elite, men like Pitt and Castlereagh. Strongly influenced by Edmund Burke, they argued that Britain's strategic interests were best served by a policy of catholic emancipation and political integration in Ireland. Britain's failure to achieve this objective, dramatised by the horrifying tragedy of the Irish famine of 1846-50, in which a million Irish died, set the context for the emergence of a popular mass nationalism, expressed in the Fenian, Parnell, and Sinn Fein movements, which eventually expelled Britain from the greater part of the island. This book reassesses all the key leaders of Irish nationalism - Tone, O'Connell, Butt, Parnell, Collins, and de Valera - alongside key British political leaders such as Peel and Gladstone in the nineteenth century, or Winston Churchill and Tony Blair in the twentieth century. A study of the changing ideological passions of the modern Irish question, this analysis is, however, firmly placed in the context of changing social and economic realities. Using a vast range of original sources, Paul Bew holds together the worlds of political class in London, Dublin, and Belfast in one coherent analysis which takes the reader all the way from the society of the United Irishman to the crisis of the Good Friday Agreement.

As a contribution to cultural policy studies, this book offers a uniquely detailed and comprehensive account of the historical evolution of cultural policies and their contestation within a single democratic polity, while treating these developments comparatively against the backdrop of contemporaneous influences and developments internationally. It traces the climate of debate, policies and institutional arrangements arising from the state’s regulation and administration of culture in Ireland from 1800 to 2010. It traces the influence of precedent and practice developed under British rule in the nineteenth century on government in the 26-county Free State established in 1922 (subsequently declared the Republic of Ireland in 1949). It demonstrates the enduring influence of the liberal principle of minimal intervention in cultural life on the approach of successive Irish governments to the formulation of cultural policy, right up to the 1970s. From 1973 onwards, however, the state began to take a more interventionist and welfarist approach to culture. This was marked by increasing professionalization of the arts and heritage, and a decline in state support for amateur and voluntary cultural bodies. That the state had a more expansive role to play in regulating and funding culture became a norm of cultural discourse.

An 'Irish Cuba' - on Britain's doorstep? This book studies perceptions of the Soviets' influence over Irish revolutionaries during the Cold War. The Dublin authorities did not allow the Irish state's non-aligned status to prevent them joining the West's crusade against communism. Leading officials, such as Colonel Dan Bryan in G2, the Irish army intelligence directorate, argued that Ireland should assist the NATO powers. These officials believed Irish communists were directed by the British communist party, the CPGB. If communists in Belfast and Dublin were too isolated to pose a threat in either Irish jurisdiction, the republican movement was a different matter. The authorities, north and south, saw that a communist-influenced IRA had potential appeal. This Cold War nightmare arrived with the civil rights agitation in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. Did the left-wing republican movement constitute a security threat? Whitehall feared Dublin could become a Russian espionage hub, with the Marxist-led Official IRA acting as a Soviet proxy. To what extent was the Official IRA's political creation, the Workers' Party, useful to the Soviets' Cold War agenda, in a militarily neutral state? With a parliamentary presence in the Irish state, the party warned against Ireland's incorporation into NATO and denounced the modernization of the Western alliance's nuclear arsenal. This book offers a valuable new perspective on a much-studied period of Irish and British history.