Ireland presented a special case for the US when it came to what was formally titled the European Recovery Programme to help rebuild the combatants of World War II in that it had remained neutral. Whelan (modern history, U. of Limerick) explores such questions as why it received aid, what form it ca
Traces the history of the Marshall Plan and the efforts to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism during a two-year period that saw the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations and the beginning of the Cold War.
This book examines the historical, diplomatic, economic, and strategic aspects of the European Recovery Program (ERP) - popularly known as the Marshall Plan.
This volume is a major departure in the ongoing debate on Ireland's involvement in the Marshall Plan. Rather than concentrating on Irish-American relations, the contributions explore whether the Marshall Plan marked the beginning of Ireland's involvement in the process of European integration. The essays compare the Irish experience with that of other European countries to find new answers to recurring themes in the existing literature: Did Ireland rise to the challenges of the Marshall Plan? Did the country benefit from its involvement in the Marshall Plan?
This groundbreaking book is an indispensable contribution to appreciating the dilemmas facing Ireland in the ‘age of Brexit’. Encompassing an exhaustive account, it traces the relationship between Ireland and FRG by drawing on original material from both. It critiques depictions of Irish-German relations as peculiarly affable and explores the problems presented by trade, Britain, neutrality, NATO, Northern Ireland and the Cold War. The work contends the German ‘economic miracle’ was a vital stimulus for Ireland’s tardy retreat from protectionism. It maintains that Ireland’s reorientation was informed by lessons gleaned from Irish-German trade relations as well as a budding recognition of the potential offered by German industrial investment. This granted Germany weighty influence over the shape and direction of Ireland.
Post-war Marshall Plan aid to Europe and indeed Ireland is well documented, but practically nothing is known about simultaneous Irish aid to Europe. This book provides a full record of the aid – mainly food but also clothes, blankets, medicines, etc. – that Ireland donated to continental Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Balkans, Italy, and zones of occupied Germany. Starting with Ireland’s neutral wartime record, often wrongly presented as pro-German when Ireland in fact unofficially favoured the western Allies, Jerome aan de Wiel explains why Éamon de Valera’s government sent humanitarian aid to the devastated continent. His book analyses the logistics of collection and distribution of supplies sent abroad as far as the Greek islands. Despite some alleged Cold-War hijacking of Irish relief – and this humanitarianism was not above the politics of that East-West confrontation – it became mostly a story of hope, generosity and European Christian solidarity. Rich archival records from Ireland and the European beneficiary countries, as well as contemporary local and national newspapers across Europe, allow the author to measure and describe not only the official but also the popular response to Irish relief schemes. This work is illustrated with contemporary photographs and some key graphs and tables that show the extent of the aid programme.
Murphy argues against the thesis of Tom Garvin and his work, Preventing the Future. In that book, Garvin argues that old culture, old ideas and the repression of the Church held Ireland's development in check through the 1940s and 1950s. Gary Murphy suggests that the Irish government and civil service leaders were in fact open to change and new ideas and this openness led them to adopt outward-looking policies.
An examination of the emergence, reception and legacy of modernism in Ireland. Engaging with the ongoing re-evaluation of regional and national modernisms, the essays collected here reveal both the importance of modernism to Ireland, and that of Ireland to modernism. This collection introduces fresh perspectives on modern Irish culture that reflect new understandings of the contradictory and contested nature of modernism itself.--
"There is more to Irish than St. Patrick's Day and Guinness. The word Irish conjures an array of images, each with a long history. Who defined Irish? In the twentieth century Ireland, the United States, and Irish America were all invested in representation. Exerting or losing control of an ethnic image had ramifications on both sides of the Atlantic"--