Ireland in an Imperial World interrogates the myriad ways through which Irish men and women experienced, participated in, and challenged empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most importantly, they were integral players simultaneously managing and undermining the British Empire, and through their diasporic communities, they built sophisticated arguments that aided challenges to other imperial projects. In emphasizing the interconnections between Ireland and the wider British and Irish worlds, this book argues that a greater appreciation of empire is essential for enriching our understanding of the development of Irish society at home. Moreover, these thirteen essays argue plainly that Ireland was on the cutting edge of broader global developments, both in configuring and dismantling Europe’s overseas empires.

This book examines the place of imperialism in the cultural, political and economic life of late nineteenth-century Irish society.It highlights the tensions which arose because Ireland was at the same time both a colonial subject of Britain, yet also shared aspects of the imperial culture which was being formed during this period. It considers how Empire seeped into everyday Irish life, explores how Irishmen and Irish women were intimately bound up with British expansionism, with imperial achievements and setbacks enthusiastically covered in many national and local newspapers, and discusses how Irish politicians and students vehemently debated imperial matters in public. It addresses key question including What were the similarities and differences with Britain's imperial experience? Was there a general awareness and understanding of the implications of British overseas expansionism? How was Ireland's ambiguous role in Britain's imperial enterprise perceived: did the Irish perceive themselves as empire-makers, opponents of British national chauvinism, or occupying a more neutral role? Overall, the book provides a nuanced analysis of the impact of the British Empire in Ireland, demonstrating how the Empire was central to Ireland's late nineteenth-century historical experience - for nationalists and unionists alike., opponents of British national chauvinism, or occupying a more neutral role? Overall, the book provides a nuanced analysis of the impact of the British Empire in Ireland, demonstrating how the Empire was central to Ireland's late nineteenth-century historical experience - for nationalists and unionists alike., opponents of British national chauvinism, or occupying a more neutral role? Overall, the book provides a nuanced analysis of the impact of the British Empire in Ireland, demonstrating how the Empire was central to Ireland's late nineteenth-century historical experience - for nationalists and unionists alike., opponents of British national chauvinism, or occupying a more neutral role? Overall, the book provides a nuanced analysis of the impact of the British Empire in Ireland, demonstrating how the Empire was central to Ireland's late nineteenth-century historical experience - for nationalists and unionists alike.

This book explores Irish participation in the British imperial project after ‘Southern’ Ireland’s independence in 1922. Building on a detailed study of the Irish contribution to the policing of the Palestine Mandate, it examines Irish imperial servants’ twentieth-century transnational careers, and assesses the influence of their Irish identities on their experience at the colonial interface. The factors which informed Irish enlistment in Palestine’s police forces are examined, and the impact of Irishness on the personal perspectives and professional lives of Irish Palestine policemen is assessed. Irish policing in Palestine is placed within the broader tradition of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)-conducted imperial police service inaugurated in the mid-nineteenth century, and the RIC’s transnational influence on twentieth-century British colonial policing is evaluated. The wider tradition of Irish imperial service, of which policing formed part, is then explored, with particular focus on British Colonial Service recruitment in post-revolutionary Ireland and twentieth-century Irish-imperial identities.

This edited collection explores the complexities of Irish involvement in empire. Despite complaining regularly of treatment as a colony by England, Ireland nevertheless played a significant part in Britain’s imperialism, from its formative period in the late eighteenth century through to the decolonizing years of the early twentieth century. Framed by two key events of world history, the American Revolution and Indian Independence, this book examines Irish involvement in empire in several interlinked sections: through issues of migration and inhabitation; through literary and historical representations of empire; through Irish support for imperialism and involvement with resistance movements abroad; and through Irish participation in the extensive and intricate networks of empire. Informed by recent historiographical and theoretical perspectives, and including several detailed archival investigations, this volume offers an interdisciplinary and evolving view of a burgeoning field of research and will be of interest to scholars of Irish studies, imperial and postcolonial studies, history and literature.

How the Irish Revolution was shaped by international actors and events The Irish War of Independence is often understood as the culmination of centuries of political unrest between Ireland and the English. However, the conflict also has a vitally important yet vastly understudied international dimension. The Irish Revolution: A Global History reassesses the conflict as an inherently transnational event, examining how circumstances and individuals abroad shaped the course Ireland’s struggle for independence. Bringing together leading international scholars of modern Ireland, its diaspora, and the British Empire, this volume discusses the Irish revolution in a truly global sense. The text situates the conflict in the wider context of the international flourishing of anti-colonial movements following World War I. Despite the differences between these movements, their proponents communicated extensively with each other, learning from and engaging with other revolutionaries in anti-imperial metropoles such as Paris, London, and New York. The contributors to this volume argue that Irish nationalists at home and abroad were intimately involved in this exchange, from mobilizing Ireland’s vast diaspora in support of Irish independence to engaging directly with radical causes elsewhere. The Irish Revolution is a vital work for all those interested in Irish history, providing a new understanding of Ireland’s place in the evolving postwar world.

This international edited book collection of ten original contributions from established and emerging scholars explores aspects of Ireland’s place in the world since the 1780s. It imaginatively blends comparative, transnational, and personal perspectives to examine migration in a range of diverse geographical locations including Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Jamaica, and the British Empire more broadly. Deploying diverse sources including letters, interviews, press reports, convict records, and social media, contributors canvas important themes such as slavery, convicts, policing, landlordism, print culture, loyalism, nationalism, sectarianism, politics, and electronic media. A range of perspectives including Catholic and Protestant, men and women, convicts and settlers are included, and the volume is accompanied by a range of striking images.

This book explores the life and career of Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1826–1902). Dufferin was a landowner in Ulster, an urbane diplomat, literary sensation, courtier, politician, colonial governor, collector, son, husband and father. The book draws on episodes from Dufferin’s career to link the landowning and aristocratic culture he was born into with his experience of governing across the British Empire, in Canada, Egypt, Syria and India. This book argues that there was a defined conception of aristocratic governance and purpose that infused the political and imperial world, and was based on two elements: the inheritance and management of a landed estate, and a well-defined sense of ‘rule by the best’. It identifies a particular kind of atmosphere of empire and aristocracy, one that was riven with tensions and angst, as those who saw themselves as the hereditary leaders of Britain and Ireland were challenged by a rising democracy and, in Ireland, by a powerful new definition of what Irishness was. It offers a new perspective on both empire and aristocracy in the nineteenth century, and will appeal to a broad scholarly audience and the wider public.

Shows that a rising antipathy in Ireland toward Victorian Britain's expanding global imperialism was a crucial factor in popular support for Irish Home Rule.

The actions of Irish nationalists in Britain are often characterised as a 'sideshow' to the revolutionary events in Ireland between 1912 and 1922. This original study argues, conversely, that Irish nationalism in Britain was integral to contemporary Irish and British assessments of the Irish Revolution between the Third Home Rule Bill and the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Darragh Gannon charts the development of Irish nationalism across the Irish Sea over the course of a historic decade in United Kingdom history – from constitutional crisis, to war, and revolution. The book documents successive Home Rule and IRA campaigns in Britain coordinated by John Redmond and Michael Collins respectively and examines the mobilisation of Irish migrant communities in British cities in response to major political crises, from the Ulster crisis to the First World War. Finally, Conflict, Diaspora, and Empire assesses the impacts of Irish nationalism in metropolitan Britain, from Whitehall to Westminster. The Irish Revolution, this study concludes, was defined by political conflicts, and cultures, across the Irish Sea.

This book brings together new research on loyalism in the 26 counties that would become the Irish Free State. It covers a range of topics and experiences, including the Third Home Rule crisis in 1912, the revolutionary period, partition, independence and Irish participation in the British armed and colonial service up to the declaration of the Republic in 1949. The essays gathered here examine who southern Irish loyalists were, what loyalism meant to them, how they expressed their loyalism, their responses to Irish independence and their experiences afterwards. The collection offers fresh insights and new perspectives on the Irish Revolution and the early years of southern independence, based on original archival research. It addresses issues of particular historiographical and political interest during the ongoing 'Decade of Centenaries', including revolutionary violence, sectarianism, political allegiance and identity and the Irish border, but, rather than ceasing its coverage in 1922 or 1923, this book - like the lives with which it is concerned - continues into the first decades of southern Irish independence. CONTRIBUTORS: Frank Barry, Elaine Callinan, Jonathan Cherry, Seamus Cullen, Ian d'Alton, Sean Gannon, Katherine Magee, Alan McCarthy, Pat McCarthy, Daniel Purcell, Joseph Quinn, Brian M. Walker, Fionnuala Walsh, Donald Wood