From 1800 to 1922 the Irish Question was the most emotional and divisive issue in British politics. It pitted Westminster politicians, anti-Catholic British public opinion, and Irish Protestant and Presbyterian champions of the Union against the determination of Ireland's large Catholic majority to obtain civil rights, economic justice, and cultural and political independence. In this completely revised and updated edition of The Irish Question, Lawrence J. McCaffrey extends his classic analysis of Irish nationalism to the present day. He makes clear the tortured history of British-Irish relations and offers insight into the difficulties now facing those who hope to create a permanent peace in Northern Ireland.
A view of the south of Ireland – political, social, geographical – through the eyes of a liberal northern protestant being asked to rejoin it. 'A pleasure to read... Incisively mixing memoir, reportage and analysis' Daily Mail 'Discursive, humane and meticulously attentive to verbal nuances that can spell a world of meaning' Irish Examiner 'Patterson's travels provide humorous asides, telling insights and sobering pessimism' Irish Independent The reunification of Ireland, which in 1998 seemed to have been pushed over the far horizon as an aspiration, has returned with a vengeance. Brexit calls into question the British commitment to Northern Ireland and threatens its economy. There has been a surge in support for Sinn Féin in the South, a party pushing relentlessly for a poll on the future of the border. If Sinn Féin enters the government of the Republic, as seems inevitable in the coming years, this issue will move even higher up the agenda, with who knows what consequences north of the border. In The Last Irish Question, Glenn Patterson travels the country, looking at this place he is being asked to join and which a significant number of people in the North have spent a very long time shunning. Most of the South is terra incognita to them (as it is to many people who live in Dublin). There have been countless books describing and travelling through Ulster, but never one that turns its gaze the other way. Brilliantly witty and alarmingly topical, this is a social, political and geographical view of the South of Ireland, as well as a journey of discovery for a quizzical Northerner being asked to rejoin it.
This is a history of the Irish land question, surveying its evolution from the Famine to the eve of the Second World War. Arguably, the land question was even more urgent in the eyes of ordinary people than the national question, which indeed it came largely to subsume.
Originally published in 1960, this book presents a discussion of the relationship between economic theory and economic policy in relation to nineteenth-century Irish history. The text focuses on the period 1816-70 and covers a variety of areas, including the land system, absentee landlords, the poor law, private enterprise, free trade, public works, and emigration. A bibliography is included and detailed notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Irish history, British foreign policy and economic theory.
"Alvin Jackson's Home Rule: An Irish History examines the development of Home Rule and devolution in Ireland from the nineteenth century to the present. It traces some of the main themes in Irish peace-making from their late Victorian roots to the beginning of the millennium: it explores the origins of the Good Friday Agreement, and many of the interconnections between Irish political history and contemporary affairs. The work offers an incisive reappraisal of different political leaders through the period. Drawing on new archival evidence, Home Rule illuminates a crucial aspect of British and Irish history over a two-hundred-year span."--BOOK JACKET.
Gibbons uncovers the origins of the Partition of Ireland. The Partition of Ireland in 1921, which established Northern Ireland and saw it incorporated into the United Kingdom, sparked immediate civil war and a century of unrest. Today, the Partition remains the single most contentious issue in Irish politics, but its origins—how and why the British divided the island—remain obscured by decades of ensuing struggle. Cutting through the partisan divide, Partition takes readers back to the first days of the twentieth century to uncover the concerns at the heart of the original conflict. Drawing on extensive primary research, Ivan Gibbons reveals how the idea to divide Ireland came about and gained popular support as well as why its implementation proved so controversial and left a century of troubles in its wake.
