The fifth volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish Catholicism—covering the period from the Great War, through the Second World War and the Second Vatican Council—surveys the transformed ecclesial landscape between the papacies of Benedict XV and Pope Francis. It explores the efforts of bishops, priests and people in Ireland and Scotland, Wales and England to respond to modern challenges and reintegrate the experiences and expertise of the laity into the ministry of the Church. Alongside the twentieth century's designation as an era of technological innovation, war, peace, globalization, decolonization and liberation, this period has also been designated 'the People's Century'. Viewed through the lens of the Catholic church in Britain and Ireland, these same dynamics are explored within thematic, synoptic chapters by leading scholars. As a century characterized by the rise, or better renewal of the apostolate of the laity, this edited collection traces the struggles to reconcile tradition, re-evaluate hierarchical authority, adapt to social and educational mobility, as well as to adjudicate serious challenges from outside and within—including inflammatory biopolitics and clerical sexual abuse—to religious belief and the legitimacy of the Church as an institution.

After 1830 Catholicism in Britain and Ireland was practised and experienced within an increasingly secure Church that was able to build a national presence and public identity. With the passage of the Catholic Relief Act (Catholic Emancipation) in 1829 came civil rights for the United Kingdom's Catholics, which in turn gave Catholic organisations the opportunity to carve out a place in civil society within Britain and its empire. This Catholic revival saw both a strengthening of central authority structures in Rome, (creating a more unified transnational spiritual empire with the person of the Pope as its centre), and a reinvigoration at the local and popular level through intensified sacramental, devotional, and communal practices. After the 1840s, Catholics in Britain and Ireland not only had much in common as a consequence of the Church's global drive for renewal, but the development of a shared Catholic culture across the two islands was deepened by the large-scale migration from Ireland to many parts of Britain following the Great Famine of 1845. Yet at the same time as this push towards a degree of unity and uniformity occurred, there were forces which powerfully differentiated Catholicism on either side of the Irish Sea. Four very different religious configurations of religious majorities and minorities had evolved since the sixteenth-century Reformation in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Each had its own dynamic of faith and national identity and Catholicism had played a vital role in all of them, either as 'other' or, (in the case of Ireland), as the majority's 'self'. Identities of religion, nation, and empire, and the intersection between them, lie at the heart of this volume. They are unpacked in detail in thematic chapters which explore the shared Catholic identity that was built between 1830 and 1913 and the ways in which that identity was differentiated by social class, gender and, above all, nation. Taken together, these chapters show how Catholicism was integral to the history of the United Kingdom in this period.

Immigration and Integration: The Irish in Wales, 1798-1922 is the first book-length study of the Irish in modern Wales. Emigration has been one of the defining experiences of modern life for the Irish, and a significant number of the Irish diaspora settled in Wales during the nineteenth century. In this pioneering work Paul O'Leary examines the causes of emigration and seeks to understand the experience of Irish immigrants in Wales. Initially, there was little evidence of Celtic solidarity and the Irish often met with violent hostility from the Welsh. Nevertheless, by the late nineteenth century the tortuous process of integration was well underway and appeared to be relatively trouble free in comparison with the Irish experience in many other parts of Britain. The author considers key aspects of immigrant life in depth: pre-famine immigration; the role of the Irish in the labour force; criminality and drink; the establishment of community institutions, ranging from Catholic churches and schools to pubs and bookshops, from friendly societies to political organizations; the mobilization of support for Irish nationalist organizations; and Irish participation in the labour movement. In each case the author links the distinctive experiences of the Irish to developments in Welsh society.

From the 1860s, the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island was the scene of two major goldfields, attracting hopefuls from all over the world. Suddenly, where there had been the native bush and wide rivers, towns with 400 pubs and accommodation housing had appeared. Among the new arrivals were Irish miners, many of whom stayed on after the goldrushes as part of a community with its own distinctive character. This is the first academic study on the history of those Irish where they came from, who they were, how many women came and what they did, how people sustained their family connections, what they believed in the context of the history of the larger Irish diaspora. Illustrated with historical photographs, the book draws on private letters and oral histories as well as more conventional sources, and includes many individual migration and settlement stories.

This book is a history of the Irish civil service and its response to revolutionary changes in the State. It examines the response of the civil service to the threat of partition, World War, the emergence of the revolutionary forces of Dáil Éireann and the IRA through to the Civil War and the Irish Free State. Questioning the orthodox interpretation of evolution rather than revolution in the administration of the State it throws new light on civil service organization in British-ruled Ireland, the process whereby Northern Ireland came into existence, the Dáil Éireann administration in the War of Independence, and civil service attitudes to the new Irish Free State. Based on a wide range of new sources, the book is of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Irish, Imperial and Commonwealth history and of post-colonial, governance and political studies as well as a reader with an interest in the role of the State in the process of decolonisation in the 20th century.