The British army was almost unique among the European armies of the Great War in that it did not suffer from a serious breakdown of discipline or collapse of morale. It did, however, inevitably suffer from disciplinary problems. While attention has hitherto focused on the 312 notorious "shot at dawn" cases, many thousands of British soldiers were tried by court martial during the Great War. This book will be essential reading for military and Irish historians and their students, and will interest any general reader concerned with how units maintain discipline and morale under the most trying conditions.

Nuala C. Johnson explores the complex relationship between social memory and space in the representation of war in Ireland. The Irish experience of the Great War, and its commemoration, is the location of Dr Johnson's sustained and pioneering examination of the development of memorial landscapes, and her study represents a major contribution both to cultural geography and to the historiography of remembrance. Attractively illustrated, this book combines theoretical perspectives with original primary research showing how memory literally took place in post-1918 Ireland, and the various conflicts and struggles that were both a cause and effect of this process. Of interest to scholars in a number of disciplines, Ireland, The Great War and The Geography of Remembrance shows powerfully how Irish efforts to collectively remember the Great War were constantly in dialogue with issues surrounding the national question, and the memorials themselves bore witness to these tensions and ambiguities.

Circumstances placed John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party at the center of British politics in 1912. After more than a century of struggle, Irish nationalists looked likely to return a parliament to Dublin that would allow the Irish people, as one nation, to determine their own domestic affairs. Staunch Ulster Unionists stood in opposition, determined to reject Home Rule for their region. Alongside them were Unionist Party members who declared that such an action would destroy the British Empire, wreck the constitution, and possibly foment a civil war. Over the next decade, the Home Rulers saw their cause betrayed and their party destroyed. Asquith, Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill all served to undercut Redmond and his supporters in the interests of political expediency. Four years of war in Europe, followed by four years of conflict in Ireland, led to a more radical approach to the Irish question that allowed Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army to make the nationalist cause their own. By 1922, Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, James Craig and their followers took possession of a divided Ireland embittered by the enmity of two Irish identities and the strains of factional strife.

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.

Highlighting the work of both established and emerging scholars in Irish studies, this collection brings together fifteen essays working at the intersection of two important and developing fields of Irish studies: gender studies and cultural geography. Developed from papers first presented at a regional meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies in South Carolina in 2006, not only does this work suggest the importance of linking gender and geography, but it also suggests, in the range of literary and historical topics, the rich interdisciplinary nature of Irish studies at present. Central to all of the essays is an attention to intersections of gender and sexual identity formation with the politics of place and space. Although considerations of geographic space have long been staples of Irish cultural studies, especially in relation to political identities, these pieces suggest the critical importance of linking spatial and geographic analysis more clearly to ongoing examinations of gender and sexuality. From institutions such as the Magdalen laundries and the prison to the domestic garden and home, across urban and rural landscapes, from the Dublin GPO to a St. Patty's festival in the southern United States—this book examines the local and human contexts of identity formation and performance.

During the First World War approximately 200,000 Irish men and 5,000 Irish women, many from Catholic and Nationalist communities, served in the British armed forces. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Irish recruitment patterns. These varied notably between North-East Ulster and the rest of Ireland and between urban and rural areas.

In the past, while visiting the First World War battlefields, the author often wondered where the various Victoria Cross actions took place. He resolved to find out. In 1988, in the midst of his army career, research for this book commenced and over the years numerous sources have been consulted. Victoria Crosses on the Western Front – Somme 1916 is designed for the battlefield visitor as much as the armchair reader. A thorough account of each VC action is set within the wider strategic and tactical context. Detailed sketch maps show the area today, together with the battle-lines and movements of the combatants. It will allow visitors to stand upon the spot, or very close to, where each VC was won. Photographs of the battle sites richly illustrate the accounts. There is also a comprehensive biography for each recipient covering every aspect of their lives ‘warts and all’ – parents and siblings, education, civilian employment, military career, wife and children, death and burial/commemoration. A host of other information, much of it published for the first time, reveals some fascinating characters, with numerous links to many famous people and events.

Irish Officers in the British forces, 1922-45 looks at the reasons why young Irish people took the king's commission, including the family tradition, the school influence and the employment motive. It explores their subsequent experiences in the forces and the responses in independent Ireland to the continuation of this British military connection.

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.

This is a major, collaborative study of organised military activity and its broad impact on Ireland over the last thousand years or so, from the middle of the first millennium AD to modern times. It integrates the best recent scholarship in military history into its social and political context to provide a comprehensive treatment of the Irish military experience. The eighteen chronologically-organised chapters are written by leading scholars each of whom is an authority on the period in question. Drawing the whole work together is a wide-ranging introductory essay on the 'Irish military tradition' which explores the relationship of Irish society and politics with militarism and military affairs. The text is illustrated throughout by over 120 pictures and maps.