The success of the Irish Counter-Reformation was a crucial development in the history of the island and subsequently a vital component in the troubled relationship between Ireland and Britain. For centuries the politics of the archipelago have been affected by conflicts whose deepest roots are located in the religious changes of the seventeenth century. This book offers a scholarly and dramatic reappraisal of a central episode in the extension of Catholic reform to the island, the papal nunciature of GianBattista Rinuccini. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin situates Rinuccini's mission in its wider European context, and provides an entirely new perspective, not only on the man at the heart of events during the turbulent 1640s, but also on the seventeenth-century penetration of Catholic reform into Ireland and on the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Defenders of the Union is a concise and readable overview of the history and contentious politics of Unionism and the affect it has had on Anglo-Irish relations over the last two hundred years. It is an essential guide to this confusing topic and covers key areas such as: * definition of unionism * establishment of the union * Unionist literature * loyalists since 1972.

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.

How the British Secret Service failed to neutralize Sinn Fein and the IRA

Fully revised and updated with over 100 beautiful maps, charts and graphs, and a narrative packed with facts this outstanding book examines the main changes that have occurred in Ireland and among the Irish abroad over the past two millennia.

In October 1641 a rebellion broke out in Ireland. Dispossessed Irish Catholics rose up against British Protestant settlers whom they held responsible for their plight. This uprising, the first significant sectarian rebellion in Irish history, gave rise to a decade of war that would culminate in the brutal re-conquest of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell. It also set in motion one of the most enduring and acrimonious debates in Irish history. Was the 1641 rebellion a justified response to dispossession and repression? Or was it an unprovoked attempt at sectarian genocide? John Gibney comprehensively examines three centuries of this debate. The struggle to establish and interpret the facts of the past was also a struggle over the present: if Protestants had been slaughtered by vicious Catholics, this provided an ideal justification for maintaining Protestant privilege. If, on the other hand, Protestant propaganda had inflated a few deaths into a vast and brutal “massacre,” this justification was groundless. Gibney shows how politicians, historians, and polemicists have represented (and misrepresented) 1641 over the centuries, making a sectarian understanding of Irish history the dominant paradigm in the consciousness of the Irish Protestant and Catholic communities alike.

The stories of these conflicts, with their scores of killings, torture, reprisals and long- lasting bitterness are told concisely in this book. &newpara;Easter 1916 – the rebellion which took place in Ireland 90 years ago was arguably the most momentous event in this country's history. &newpara;The War of Independence – the guerrilla war, characterised by marvellous courage and miserable cruelty. &newpara;The Civil War – few episodes in Irish history are as poignant, bloody and unnecessary. &newpara;This book traces the causes, events and consequences of these events. It will help a peaceful generation for which the bloody birth of modern Ireland is ancient history, to gain a better understanding of the essence of their nation.

This book examines the mechanisms of the Irish revolutionary Fenian Brotherhood in the early years of its existence. Drawing on a wide range of material from places as diverse as Rome and Toronto it seeks to set the Fenian struggle within the context of competing church and state influence in mid-nineteenth century Irish society. It is particularly strong on the transatlantic comparative dimensions of church, state and Fenian activity, and demonstrates how the Fenians managed to change, forever, the terms of Irish political and social debate.

Inspired by debates among political scientists over the strength and depth of the pre-modern roots of nationalism, this study attempts to gauge the status of ethnic identities in an era whose dominant loyalties and modes of political argument were confessional, institutional and juridical. Colin Kidd's point of departure is the widely shared orthodox belief that the whole world had been peopled by the offspring of Noah. In addition, Kidd probes inconsistencies in national myths of origin and ancient constitutional claims, and considers points of contact which existed in the early modern era between ethnic identities which are now viewed as antithetical, including those of Celts and Saxons. He also argues that Gothicism qualified the notorious Francophobia of eighteenth-century Britons. A wide-ranging example of the new British history, this study draws upon evidence from England, Scotland, Ireland and America, while remaining alert to European comparisons and influences.

The 70 years of late Stuart and early Hanoverian Britain following 1680 were a crucial period in British politics and society, seeing the growth both of political parties and of stability. This collection of original essays provides a coherent account of Britain in the 'First Age of Party'.