In his exploration of the use of intelligence in Ireland by the British government from the onset of the Ulster Crisis in 1912 to the end of the Irish War of Independence in 1921, Grob-Fitzgibbon analyzes the role that intelligence played during those critical nine years.

What did the Easter Rising really change? / Peter Hart -- Ending war in a "sportsmanlike manner" : the milestone of revolution, 1919-23 / Anne Dolan -- Women's political rhetoric and the Irish revolution / Jason Knirck -- The problem of equality : women's activist campaigns in Ireland, 1920-40 / Maria Luddy -- Nuanced neutrality and Irish identity : an idiosyncratic legacy / Thomas E. Hachey -- Modernity, the past and politics in post-war Ireland / Enda Delaney -- "Ireland is an unusual place" : President Kennedy's 1963 visit and the complexity of recognition / Mike Cronin -- Sex and the archbishop : John Charles McQuaid and social change in 1960s Ireland / Diarmaid Ferriter -- Turmoil in the sea of faith : the secularization of Irish social culture, 1960-2007 / Tom Garvin -- The Irish Cattholic narrative : reflections on milestones / Louise Fuller -- Some fitting and adequate recognition : a new direction for civic portraiture in nineteenth-century Ireland's industrial capital / Gillian McIntosh -- The origins of the peace process / Thomas Hennessey.

How diaspora activism in the Irish land movement intersected with wider radical and reform causes The Irish Land War represented a turning point in modern Irish history, a social revolution that was part of a broader ideological moment when established ideas of property and land ownership were fundamentally challenged. The Land War was striking in its internationalism, and was spurred by links between different emigrant locations and an awareness of how the Land League’s demands to lower rents, end evictions, and abolish “landlordism” in Ireland connected with wider radical and reform causes. Changing Land offers a new and original study of Irish emigrants’ activism in the United States, Argentina, Scotland, and England and their multifaceted relationships with Ireland. Niall Whelehan brings unfamiliar figures to the surface and recovers the voices of women and men who have been on the margins of, or entirely missing from, existing accounts. Retracing their transnational lives reveals new layers of radical circuitry between Ireland and disparate international locations, and demonstrates how the land movement overlapped with different types of oppositional politics from moderate reform to feminism to revolutionary anarchism. By including Argentina, which was home to the largest Irish community outside the English-speaking world, this book addresses the neglect of developments in non-Anglophone places in studies of the “Irish world.” Changing Land presents a powerful addition to our understanding of the history of modern Ireland and the Irish diaspora, migration, and the history of transnational radicalism.

The key turning point in modern Ireland's history, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 has shadowed Ireland's political life for decades. In this first book-length assessment of the treaty in over seventy years, Jason Knirck recounts the compelling story of the nationalist politics that produced the Irish Revolution, the tortuous treaty negotiations, and the deep divisions within Sinn Féin that led to the slow unraveling of fragile party cohesion. Focusing on broad ideological and political disputes, as well as on the powerful personalities involved, the author considers the major issues that divided the pro- and anti-treaty forces, why these issues mattered, and the later judgments of historians. He concludes that the treaty debates were in part the result of the immaturity of Irish nationalist politics, as well as the overriding emphasis given to revolutionary unity. A fascinating story in their own right, the treaty debates also open a wider window onto questions of European nationalism, colonialism, state-building, and competing visions of Irish national independence. Treaty Documents

FIFTY ESSAYS.FIFTY CONTRIBUTORS.ONE EXTRAORDINARY YEAR. From the handover of Dublin Castle, to the dawning of a new border across the island, to the fateful divisions of the civil war, Ireland 1922 provides a snapshot of a year of turmoil, tragedy and, amidst it all, state-building as the Irish revolution drew to a close. Leading international scholars from different disciplines explore a turning point in Irish history; one whose legacy remains controversial a century on.

The important roles and contributions of the Irish in the struggle for American Independence has been minimized and overlooked by historians, both American and Irish, for generations. Quite simply, American Independence could not have been won without the vital, widespread, and timely contributions-military, political, and economic-of the Irish from 1775 to 1783. To demonstrate the widespread extent of the Irish contribution and its importance in winning final victory, this work has focused on the long-overlooked achievements of the Irish in such important battles as Trenton, Kings Mountain, and Cowpens, which were key turning points of the American Revolution. However, because of long pervasive anti-Irish sentiment in America and because the Irish of the colonial period became thoroughly Americanized after the war, the key role played by the Irish throughout the war years has become one of the most forgotten and overlooked stories of the American Revolution. Indeed, ample new evidence has revealed that nearly half of George Washington's Continental Army consisted of Irish soldiers at key moments of the American Revolution, including at Valley Forge. Year after year, the Irish served not only as the nucleus, but also as the very foundation of Washington's Army, helping to ensure its survival during a lengthy war of attrition. Ironically, the disproportionately high percentage of Irish who served in the ranks of Washington's Continental Army was a fact well-known to both sides during the war years, but was quickly forgotten once the conflict ended, ensuring that the vital contributions of the Irish would be left out of the pages of American history. The latest scholarly research and much primary source material, especially from colonial period newspaper accounts, have been incorporated into this work to reveal the forgotten contributions and achievements of the Irish on all levels during the course of the American Revolution. For the first time, this book places the role of the Irish soldier in a proper historical perspective: a detailed look that is representative of the overall Irish contribution in all phases of the Revolutionary War effort.

A masterful history of Ireland’s Easter Rising told through the lives of ordinary people who forged a revolutionary generation. On Easter Monday, 1916, Irish rebels poured into Dublin’s streets to proclaim an independent republic. Ireland’s long struggle for self-government had suddenly become a radical and bloody fight for independence from Great Britain. Irish nationalists mounted a week-long insurrection, occupying public buildings and creating mayhem before the British army regained control. The Easter Rising provided the spark for the Irish revolution, a turning point in the violent history of Irish independence. In this highly original history, acclaimed scholar R. F. Foster explores the human dimension of this pivotal event. He focuses on the ordinary men and women, Yeats’s “vivid faces,” who rose “from counter or desk among grey / Eighteenth-century houses” and took to the streets. A generation made, not born, they rejected the inherited ways of the Church, their bourgeois families, and British rule. They found inspiration in the ideals of socialism and feminism, in new approaches to love, art, and belief. Drawing on fresh sources, including personal letters and diaries, Foster summons his characters to life. We meet Rosamond Jacob, who escaped provincial Waterford for bustling Dublin. On a jaunt through the city she might visit a modern art gallery, buy cigarettes, or read a radical feminist newspaper. She could practice the Irish language, attend a lecture on Freud, or flirt with a man who would later be executed for his radical activity. These became the roots of a rich life of activism in Irish and women’s causes. Vivid Faces shows how Rosamond and her peers were galvanized to action by a vertiginous sense of transformation: as one confided to his diary, “I am changing and things around me change.” Politics had fused with the intimacies of love and belief, making the Rising an event not only of the streets but also of the hearts and minds of a generation.