A new analysis of the difficulties in normalising opposition in the Irish Free State, this book analyses the collision between nineteenth-century monolithic nationalist movements with the norms and expectations of multiparty parliamentary democracy. The Irish revolutionaries’ attempts to create a Gaelic, postcolonial state involved resolving tension between these two ideas. Smaller economically-driven parties such as the Labour and Farmers’ parties attempted to move on from the revolution’s unnatural focus on nationalist political issues while the larger revolutionary parties descended from Sinn Féin attempt to recreate or restore notions of revolutionary unity. This conflict made democracy and opposition hard to establish in the Irish Free State.

Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality.

Remembering the Irish Revolution chronicles the ways in which the Irish revolution was remembered in the first two decades of Irish independence. While tales of heroism and martyrdom dominated popular accounts of the revolution, a handful of nationalists reflected on the period in more ambivalent terms. For them, the freedoms won in revolution came with great costs: the grievous loss of civilian lives, the brutalisation of Irish society, and the loss of hope for a united and prosperous independent nation. To many nationalists, their views on the revolution were traitorous. For others, they were the courageous expression of some uncomfortable truths. This volume explores these struggles over revolutionary memory through the lives of four significant, but under-researched nationalist intellectuals: Eimar O'Duffy, P. S. O'Hegarty, George Russell, and Desmond Ryan. It provides a lively account of their controversial critiques of the Irish revolution, and an intimate portrait of the friends, enemies, institutions and influences that shaped them. Based on wide-ranging archival research, Remembering the Irish Revolution puts the history of Irish revolutionary memory in a transnational context. It shows the ways in which international debates about war, human progress, and the fragility of Western civilisation were crucial in shaping the understandings of the revolution in Ireland. It provides a fresh context for analysis the major writers of the period, such as Sean O'Casey, W. B. Yeats, and Sean O'Faolain, as well as a new outlook on the genesis of the revisionist/nationalist schism that continues to resonate in Irish society today.

THE IRISH BESTSELLER 'Ferriter has richly earned his reputation as one of Ireland's leading historians' Irish Independent 'Absorbing ... A fascinating exploration of the Civil War and its impact on Ireland and Irish politics' Irish Times In June 1922, just seven months after Sinn Féin negotiators signed a compromise treaty with representatives of the British government to create the Irish Free State, Ireland collapsed into civil war. While the body count suggests it was far less devastating than other European civil wars, it had a harrowing impact on the country and cast a long shadow, socially, economically and politically, which included both public rows and recriminations and deep, often private traumas. Drawing on many previously unpublished sources and newly released archival material, one of Ireland's most renowned historians lays bare the course and impact of the war and how this tragedy shaped modern Ireland.

Should Brexit or Trump cause us to doubt our faith in democracy? Are ‘the people’ too ignorant or stupid to rule? Numerous commentators are seriously arguing that the answer to these questions might be ‘yes’. In this take-no-prisoners book, Canadian-Irish author Roslyn Fuller kicks these anti-democrats where it hurts the most – the facts. Fuller shows how many academics, journalists and politicians have embraced the idea that there can be ‘too much democracy’, and deftly unravels their attempts to end majority rule, whether through limiting the franchise, pursuing Chinese ‘meritocracy’ or confining participation to random legislation panels. She shows that Trump, Brexit or whatever other political event you may have disapproved of recently aren’t doing half the damage to democracy that elite self-righteousness and corruption are. In fact, argues Fuller, there are real reasons to be optimistic. Ancient methods can be combined with modern technology to revitalize democracy and allow the people to truly rule. In Defence of Democracy is a witty and energetic contribution to the debate on the future of democracy.

When we read a history we believe ourselves to be reading cold, hard, facts of the events that took place and how they occurred. But there is no real, truthful way to know the approach our historian has taken with the historical sources. This book deals with the uncertainty in writing history in the context of Irish history in particular. Regan argues in this book that the notion of elision, simply ignoring unhelpful evidence, threatens Irish history today. Regan believes that some historians have ignored unhelpful facts that perhaps do not further their point or perhaps contradict them altogether. Each chapter focuses on a period of Irish history that Regan believes to be inconsistent or incomplete in its facts. He asks the controversial questions about the period of history such as why do some historians deny or marginalise the British threat of war and re-conquest in 1922?, why do so many Irish historians describe Michael Collins as a constitutionalist or a democrat when the evidence argues otherwise? Was the Irish Civil War really fought between democrats defending the state, against dictators attempting its overthrow? Did the new state briefly experience a military-dictatorship under Collins in 1922? Thinking historically is not about learning history or accepting the past as it is presented to us it is, as Regan argues in his thought-provoking work, about developing the critical skills to interpret history for ourselves.

Matthew Whiting explores Irish republicanism's transformation from violence to political power. He examines their electoral participation and engagement in democratic bargaining, the role of Irish-America and British government policy to argue that moderation was a long-term process of concessions in return for increased political inclusion.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre provides the single most comprehensive survey of the field to be found in a single volume. Drawing on more than forty contributors from around the world, the book addresses a full range of topics relating to modern Irish theatre from the late nineteenth-century to the most recent works of postdramatic devised theatre. Ireland has long had an importance in the world of theatre out of all proportion to the size of the country, and has been home to four Nobel Laureates (Yeats, Shaw, and Beckett; Seamus Heaney, while primarily a poet, also wrote for the stage). This collection begins with the influence of melodrama, and looks at arguably the first modern Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde, before moving into a series of considerations of the Abbey Theatre, and Irish modernism. Arranged chronologically, it explores areas such as women in theatre, Irish-language theatre, and alternative theatres, before reaching the major writers of more recent Irish theatre, including Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, and their successors. There are also individual chapters focusing on Beckett and Shaw, as well as a series of chapters looking at design, acting, and theatre architecture. The book concludes with an extended survey of the critical literature on the field. In each chapter, the author does not simply rehearse accepted wisdom; all of the contributors push the boundaries of their respective fields, so that each chapter is a significant contribution to scholarship in its own right.

An innovative and original analysis of Protestant advanced nationalists, from the early twentieth century to the end of the Irish Civil War.